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Adidas is set to update investors Friday about the unsold Yeezy shoes that have put the German sportswear giant in a predicament since it cut ties with Kanye West over his antisemitic comments late last year.

Executives are expected to tackle the issue when the company reports first-quarter results Friday which will likely show a 4% decline in net sales to $5.07 billion, according to a company-compiled consensus.

Investors have high hopes new CEO Bjorn Gulden can turn Adidas around: the stock has gained around 65% since Nov. 4 when the former Puma CEO was first floated as a successor to Kasper Rorsted, despite Adidas warning it could make a $700 million loss this year if it writes the Yeezy shoes off entirely.

Adidas has been in discussions over the footwear, including with people who “have been hurt” by West’s antisemitic comments, Gulden said in March, but there are no easy fixes.

The value of Yeezy shoes in the resale market has rocketed since Adidas stopped producing them, with some models more than doubling in price, but the company has yet to decide what to do with its unsold stock.

If Adidas decides to sell the shoes, any proceeds should go towards efforts to fight antisemitism, said Holly Huffnagle, U.S. Director for Combating Antisemitism at the American Jewish Committee, a non-governmental organization.

“The challenge is if these shoes are going to be out there and be worn by people, we must ensure that the antisemitic messaging of the shoes’ creator doesn’t spread,” she said.

Gulden in March said the company could donate the proceeds of the Yeezy sale to charities, but Adidas has given no updates since. “We continue to evaluate options for the use of the existing Yeezy inventory,” an Adidas spokesperson said, declining to comment on the possible timeline for a decision.

The market would welcome a resolution, but it may be too early given the complexities involved, said Geoff Lowery, analyst at Redburn in London, who sees a donation to charities as the most likely outcome.

The Anti-Defamation League, an international Jewish non-governmental organization based in New York, told Reuters it “stands ready and prepared to work with Adidas.”

Adidas in November donated more than $1 million to the organization.

The American Jewish Committee met with Adidas executives in December to discuss their commitment to reject antisemitism.

Adidas said it continues to “stand with the Jewish community in the fight against antisemitism and with all communities around the world facing injustice and discrimination.”

Shareholders want Adidas to draw a line under the Yeezy episode and develop ways to reboot the brand.

“Being successful with Yeezy probably made Adidas lazy on finding other growth drivers,” said Cedric Rossi, nextgen consumer analyst at Bryan Garnier in Paris.
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The coronation of Britain’s King Charles III takes place in London on Saturday. The king came to the throne after the September death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II. Charles is head of state not only in the United Kingdom, but in more than a dozen countries. In Australia, the death of Queen Elizabeth has reignited the debate about the country’s constitutional future.

As the coronation approaches, republican sentiment in Australia is again stirring. Campaigners argue that Australia’s constitutional monarchy, under which King Charles III is the head of state and is represented in Australia by a governor-general whose role is almost exclusively ceremonial, is outdated, although they have yet to settle on the type of republic they would favor. A poll in January showed support for a republic had risen from 36% to 39% among voters since the death of Queen Elizabeth II. The survey was carried out for The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper.

Charles first visited Australia as a teenager in 1966 and has developed a “special connection” to the country through several visits over the years.

Matt Thistlethwaite is the Australian government’s assistant minister for the republic – a position the Labor government created in the expectation that a referendum would be held in the next few years. He told the Australian Broadcasting Corp last month that change was well overdue.

“We woke up in September last year when the queen passed away, and all of a sudden, we had a new head of state,” he said. “The Australian people weren’t consulted about that. The Australian people didn’t get a choice in who should be their head of state, despite the fact that we govern by democratic means.”

Charles is the head of state in more than a dozen countries, including Canada, Papua New Guinea and New Zealand, all members of the Commonwealth, a grouping of former British colonies.

Australia voted against severing its ties to the British crown in a referendum in 1999.

Supporters of the monarchy believe the system has made Australia’s democracy safe and secure.

Rachel Bailes, an official spokesperson for the Australian Monarchist League, told local media that it gives her country stability.

“I believe that a constitutional monarchy is a system that works,” she said. “It allows our government to get on with the business of serving the people of Australia through hard-nosed issues like the economy, energy crisis and housing affordability.”

Ultimately it will be up to about 18 million Australian voters to decide the country’s constitutional future.

Although enthusiastic for change, Australia’s Labor government says a vote on a republic won’t be held until its next term in office if it is reelected. Another referendum is taking priority. Later this year, Australians will decide whether to recognize Indigenous people in the constitution.

Constitutional change, though, in Australia is rare. Only eight out of 44 referendums have been passed since 1901.
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U.S. law enforcement officials have charged a Russian national with running Try2Check, a network of websites that verified stolen credit card numbers for cybercriminals.

The network’s four websites have been taken offline, and the State Department announced a $10 million reward for information leading to the capture of Denis Gennadievich Kulkov, the alleged mastermind of Try2Check.

Kulkov is believed to live in Samara, Russia.

A grand jury indictment unsealed on Wednesday charges him with access device fraud, computer intrusion and money laundering.

If convicted, he could face up to 20 years in prison.

Breon Peace, United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York, and Patrick Freaney, special agent-in-charge of the U.S. Secret Service’s New York field office, announced the charges.

“Today is a bad day for criminals who relied on the defendant’s platform as the gold standard to verify that the credit cards they stole from hard working individuals living in the Eastern District of New York and across the world had value,” Peace said in a statement.

According to court documents, Kulkov created Try2Check in 2005, and he developed it into a critical online service for cybercriminals buying and selling stolen credit cards.

Cybercriminals steal millions of credit card numbers every year by hacking into corporate databases and payment systems. They then sell the numbers in batches of thousands or even millions through online message boards known as “carding forums.” But many of the numbers are worthless because they’re either inactive or deactivated.

To weed out the bad numbers, cybercriminals use “card checking” websites such as Try2Check.

These services allow cybercriminals to verify the authenticity of the stolen credit card numbers before selling them.

Try2Check was one of the most popular services of its kind, processing tens of millions of checks per year through its four separate websites, according to court documents.

On carding forums, cybercriminals offering stolen cards sometimes included a screenshot of a verification report produced by Try2Check, according to court documents.

Try2Check charged the equivalent of 14 cents in bitcoin per check, earning Kulkov at least $18 million.

The FBI and U.S. Secret Service had been investigating Try2Check since 2013, according to court documents.

The takedown was coordinated with law enforcement in Austria and Germany.

Credit card fraud is a growing problem worldwide.

The Nilson Report estimates that global losses from card fraud will exceed $397 billion over the next 10 years, including $165 billion in the United States.
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Ukrainian and Iranian women living in London are finding a common cause, joining in regular protests against Russian expansionism and the tyranny of the Iranian regime. Marcus Harton narrates this report from Umberto Aguiar in London.
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The United States is providing about $300 million in new military aid for Ukraine in a package that is expected to include more artillery rounds and rockets for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) ahead of an expected Ukrainian offensive, according to defense officials.

The Pentagon officials, who spoke to VOA on condition of anonymity ahead of the package’s release later Wednesday, said the latest aid also includes Hydra 70 air-launched unguided rockets to provide air support and anti-armor capabilities needed to push back Russian ground forces that have dug into occupied areas of Ukraine.

Heavy trucks and spare parts also will be included.

Wednesday’s aid package marks the 37th authorized presidential drawdown of military equipment from U.S. Defense Department inventories since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022.

Moscow began a renewed offensive in Ukraine this year that has stalled, and Kyiv is preparing for a massive counteroffensive that is expected to begin in the coming days or weeks.
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Journalist Margaret Sullivan says that when she received word that former colleague Evan Gershkovich had been detained in Russia on spy charges, “The color of the world changed.”

Sullivan was in a Washington hotel room watching the news when her former editorial assistant Gershkovich appeared on television.

The pair had worked together when Sullivan was the public editor at The New York Times. She is now a columnist at The Guardian.

“It just really hit me hard from a personal standpoint to imagine this wonderful, humorous, intelligent, helpful, dedicated journalist in the situation, charged with espionage for merely doing his job,” Sullivan told VOA. “So I felt very upset and certainly angry but mostly concerned for him.”

Gershkovich’s arrest in late March comes at an all-time high of journalists being jailed globally. Media watchdogs warn that press freedom is in decline globally. And by late 2022, at least 363 journalists were jailed around the world in retaliation for their work, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The arrest of a journalist has a ripple effect for newsrooms, as colleagues and the greater media community grapple with concern for jailed colleagues and efforts to report on the cases. 

It’s an experience that Ben Dunant knows all too well. Dunant was in Britain in May 2021 when he received a 5 a.m. phone call to say that his colleague and friend — American journalist Danny Fenster — had been arrested in Myanmar. 

Dunant, now editor-in-chief of the English-language news magazine Frontier Myanmar, had already left Myanmar for safety reasons a few months after a February 2021 coup. But Fenster, then the magazine’s managing editor, decided to stay a little longer. 

“At first, there wasn’t really time to absorb the emotional impact, because there were some immediate practical steps to take to mitigate the extreme situation,” Dunant told VOA from Bangkok. “And as I did then consider what had happened throughout the day, there was just this incredibly strong sense that that could’ve been me.”

 Survivor’s guilt is a normal response to this kind of trauma, according to Katherine Porterfield, a psychologist at Columbia University’s Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma. 

“It’s incredibly distressing to think about a person losing their liberty because of the work that they do — and that you do,” Porterfield said. “It’s very distressing to think of someone whose human rights are really being violated in your field, doing your job. So I think that journalists need to recognize that that stress is valid.” 

In Dunant’s words, “I felt it was just incredibly arbitrary and unfair. There was no good reason why it would be Danny and not me.”

That toll can come into play when journalists are tasked with reporting on their colleagues and friends, Porterfield said. 

“When you’re touched by the content, in any way, of your own story,” she said, “you are going to be more vulnerable as a journalist.” 

“The problem is when journalists ignore the fact that they’re having a reaction — minimize it, deny it, say it’s not valid, and then just charge ahead,” Porterfield said.

With Gershkovich’s case, Sullivan says that The Wall Street Journal has been doing a great job at maintaining attention on his case. “I don’t see his situation fading from our interest and our concern,” Sullivan said. 

Gershkovich also worked as an editorial assistant for Elizabeth Spayd, who succeeded Sullivan as The New York Times’ public editor. Like Sullivan, Spayd said she was heartbroken to hear of the arrest. 

“We’re pushing because he’s a journalist,” Spayd said about Gershkovich. “There are few more worthy causes in journalism than trying to get someone out who’s essentially being held hostage.”

Frontier’s Dunant said that Fenster’s case was an emotional challenge from the outlet, but an added difficulty was the military-imposed barriers to reporting on the situation, including a trial that took place behind closed doors. 

Fenster was eventually released in November 2021. 

“I was absolutely overjoyed. It felt like a weight was lifted off of all of us,” Dunant said. “It was just an incredibly happy day after we’ve had so much bad news from Myanmar.” 

But some cases are prolonged.

Emily Angwin, a freelance reporter in the Philippines, worked in Beijing as an anchor at the Chinese state-run TV channel CGTN from 2019 until her colleague Cheng Lei’s arrest on espionage charges in 2020.

Cheng, an Australian national, had a closed-door trial last year, but China has still not publicly announced the verdict.

“She is a strong and resilient woman, but that uncertainty of being behind bars without a verdict or a sentence would take its toll on anyone,” Angwin told VOA. 

“Lei’s detention is heart wrenching, not just because she is my friend, a former colleague and a fellow Australian but also because she is a journalist,” Angwin said. Angwin added that Cheng’s detention was a contributing factor in her decision to leave China and report elsewhere. 

“Lei was a great colleague to have. We both connected as two Aussies and particularly as Melburnians,” Angwin added, recalling how Cheng always knew where to get a good meal or cocktail. “I miss her dearly and hope she gets some certainty about her situation as soon as possible.”

Sullivan and Spayd agreed that journalists have a duty to draw attention to cases like Gershkovich’s and advocate for a free press. 

“I think it’s OK for journalists to stand for certain kinds of things, and press freedom is absolutely at the top of the list,” Sullivan said. “Whether it’s a personal story or a column or contributing to a news story about it, I just don’t see anything wrong with that.”
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A senior Ukrainian presidential official said Wednesday that Kyiv had nothing to do with any drone attack on the Kremlin, and that such actions achieved nothing for Kyiv on the battlefield and would only provoke Russia to take more radical action.

Presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said in comments sent to Reuters that the allegation that Kyiv was behind the attack, and Russia’s arrest of alleged Ukrainian saboteurs, could indicate Moscow was preparing for a large-scale “terrorist” attack against Ukraine in coming days.

“Of course, Ukraine has nothing to do with drone attacks on the Kremlin. We do not attack the Kremlin because, first of all, it does not resolve any military tasks,” Podolyak said.  

Russia accused Ukraine on Wednesday of attacking the Kremlin with drones overnight in a failed attempt to kill President Vladimir Putin.

Podolyak said: “In my opinion, it is absolutely obvious that both ‘reports about an attack on the Kremlin’ and simultaneously the supposed detention of Ukrainian saboteurs in Crimea … clearly indicates the preparation of a large-scale terrorist provocation by Russia in the coming days.”
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Former Audi boss Rupert Stadler will plead guilty over the “dieselgate” vehicle emissions-cheating scandal, a German court said Wednesday, which would make him the first auto CEO to be convicted in the resulting lawsuits.

Stadler will admit guilt in exchange for a suspended sentence after reaching an agreement with the Munich district court over the scandal that rocked Audi’s parent company Volkswagen.

German car giant VW — whose subsidiaries include Porsche, Audi, Skoda and Seat — admitted in September 2015 that it had installed software to rig emission levels in 11 million diesel vehicles worldwide.

The so-called defeat devices made the vehicles appear less polluting in lab tests than they were on the road.

After a trial that started in late 2020, Stadler’s defense lawyers and prosecutors had finally accepted a “plea bargain proposal”, a court spokesman told AFP.

“According to the proposal, Mr. Stadler will receive a suspended sentence of 18 to 24 months if he confesses. In addition, he will have to pay $1.2 million,” he said.

The confession is expected to be read out in two weeks.

Stadler, 60, had previously denied the charges of fraud, falsifying certifications and false advertising against him.

Last month Wolfgang Hatz, another former Audi executive who was on trial alongside Stadler, pleaded guilty, confessing that he and two other colleagues had arranged the installation of emissions-cheating software.

His defense team and the court recommended a suspended sentence of 18 to 24 months, though prosecutors have objected.

Diesel trickery

Volkswagen had always insisted that the diesel trickery was the work of a handful of lower-level employees acting without the knowledge of their superiors, a claim challenged by prosecutors.

Stadler had been Audi’s chief executive for 11 years when he was arrested in June 2018.

He spent four months in pretrial detention owing to prosecution concerns that he would try to influence witnesses.

Prosecutors say Stadler knew about the scam by the end of September 2015 “at the latest” but he nevertheless allowed thousands more vehicles fitted with the illegal defeat devices to be sold.

He was originally put on trial alongside Hatz and two Audi engineers, one of whom has also entered a guilty plea in exchange for a suspended sentence.

The charges against them covered 434,420 Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche vehicles sold in Europe and the United States as far back as 2009.

Volkswagen’s former CEO Martin Winterkorn was supposed to stand trial for fraud over the scandal, but the case has been indefinitely postponed due to his poor health.

The “dieselgate” saga shocked Germany and is seen as the country’s biggest post-war industrial scandal.

It has already cost VW tens of billions of dollars in fines, legal costs and compensation to car owners, mainly in the United States.

The fallout has also accelerated development of environmentally friendly electric vehicles, requiring huge investments in a tough economic climate.
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German police arrested dozens of people across the country on Wednesday in an investigation of the Italian ‘Ndrangheta organized crime group, German public prosecutors and state police said. 

The ‘Ndrangheta is based in the southern region of Calabria, the toe of Italy’s boot, and has surpassed Cosa Nostra to become the most powerful mafia group in the country – and one of the largest crime networks in the world. 

The crackdown was part of a coordinated probe by investigators in Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, Portugal and Spain as well as Europol and Eurojust, they said. 

The suspects are accused of money laundering, criminal tax evasion, fraud and smuggling of drugs, they added. 

State police in Bavaria said the arrests were the result of more than three years of an investigation dubbed “Operation Eureka.” 

It said that Italian and Belgian investigators believe that the crime group smuggled close to 25 tons of cocaine between October 2019 and January 2022 and funneled more than $24.24 million from Calabria to Belgium, the Netherlands and South America. 

Among those arrested were four people in Bavaria, 15 in North Rhine-Westphalia, and 10 in the southwestern German state of Rhineland Palatinate, and police seized potential evidence at dozens of locations including homes and offices. 

Two suspects who were under investigation in the western state of Saarland, were arrested in Italy. Police did not identify them, saying only that one was 47 years old and the other 25. 
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Afghan protesters took to Paris streets this week, demanding the international community refuse to recognize the Taliban. The demonstration comes as a U.N.-convened conference is underway in Doha on how to engage with the Taliban. Jalal Mirzad has the story, narrated by Mary Alice Salinas. Roshan Noorzai contributed to this report.
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New developments:

An explosion has derailed a second train in the Bryansky region of Russia adjacent to Ukraine and Belarus.
The White House estimates 20,000 Russians have been killed in eastern Ukraine since December. White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said almost half of them were part of the Wagner Group mercenary force.
The head of the Wagner Group says his fighters aren't getting the supplies they need due to the lack of support from Moscow.
Ukrainian troops are pushing back against Russian troops in the beleaguered city of Bakhmut, launching counterattacks that have forced Russian soldiers to abandon some positions.

The United States is sending Ukraine about $300 million in military aid, with the official announcement expected as early as Wednesday, U.S. officials said, as Ukraine gears up for a spring counteroffensive.

The package will include rounds for artillery, howitzers, along with rockets for HIMARS, mortars, missiles and anti-tank rifles.

For the first time, the U.S. is sending Hydra-70 rockets, which are launched from aircraft and could be used in air support for advancing Ukraine ground forces.

The weapons will come from Pentagon stocks and resemble earlier deliveries.

The 37th shipment of arms to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion, February 2022, comes as Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said Ukraine is in the “home stretch, when we can say: ‘Yes everything is ready.'”

Second attack in Russia

For the second day in a row, an explosion on Tuesday in a Russian region bordering Ukraine caused a freight train to derail, the local governor said in a social media post, but there were no casualties.

“An unidentified explosive device went off near the Snezhetskaya railway station. There were no casualties,” Bryansk regional governor Alexander Bogomaz wrote on Telegram.

“As a result of the incident, a locomotive and several wagons of a freight train derailed,” he added, without saying who was responsible.

Russian authorities say the region, which borders Ukraine and Belarus, has seen multiple attacks by pro-Ukrainian sabotage groups in the 14 months since Russia invaded.

An explosion went off Monday in the same region, also causing a train to derail.

Both sides have denied targeting civilians since the Russian invasion on Ukraine began in February 2022.

Leaked documents

In an interview Tuesday in The Washington Post, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the White House did not inform him about a leak of secret U.S. documents last month.

“I did not receive information from the White House or the Pentagon beforehand,” Zelenskyy told The Post.

Of the leak, he said, “It is not beneficial to the reputation of the White House, and I believe it is not beneficial to the reputation of the United States.”

The materials posted online included a snapshot of the war in Ukraine. The New York Times first reported on the leaked documents on April 6.

On April 12, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said the Pentagon document leaks contained a mixture of true and false information about his country’s military and downplayed its negative impact, Reuters reported.

In response to Zelenskyy’s comments, a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council told Reuters: “We are in constant communication with our Ukrainian counterparts about a range of issues, including over the unauthorized disclosures, but we aren’t going to get into the details of those private discussions.”

A Pentagon spokesperson said U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had spoken to a number of allies, including Reznikov, regarding the issue.

Some material in this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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With Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erodgan facing a tough re-election challenge, opposition and non-government organizations are stepping up efforts to ensure a fair vote amid growing concerns over voter security. Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul.
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