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A town in France has decided to hide from public view a sign noting its brief connection to the former supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

The sign, which includes a portrait of Khomeini, stands on private land in Neauphle-Le-Chateau, outside of Paris, but it is visible from the street.

Khomeini stayed there for several months in late 1978 and early 1979 before returning to Iran.

Amid the current protests in Iran sparked by the death in police custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, a collection of 40 groups asked the town government to take several steps to distance itself from its links to Khomeini, including hiding the sign.

International Women’s Law League posted on Facebook that its representatives met Wednesday with the town’s mayor, Elisabeth Sandjivy, to discuss their requests.

Agence France-Presse reported that Sandjivy told the news agency the sign “will be hidden,” probably by way of a large panel installed on the sidewalk to block it.

Some information for this report came from Agence France-Presse.
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Police in riot gear began evicting climate activists Wednesday from a condemned village in western Germany that is due to be demolished for the expansion of a coal mine.

Some stones and fireworks were thrown as officers entered the tiny hamlet of Luetzerath, which has become a flashpoint of debate over the country’s climate efforts, Wednesday morning.

Police spokesperson Andreas Mueller said the attacks on officers were “not nice” but noted that most of the protest so far had been peaceful.

He said police would stick to their tactic of trying to avoid any escalation by offering to let any activists who leave on their own accord to do so without facing further police measures or prosecution.

Still, some protesters complained of undue force by police and others said the scale of the police response — with officers brought in from across the country and water cannons on standby — was itself a form of escalation not justified by the peaceful protest. At least one woman screamed in apparent pain as officers used force to remove her from a roadblock outside the village.

By Wednesday afternoon dozens of activists remained camped out in Luetzerath, some in elaborate tree houses, as police slowly moved through the village clearing barricades and a communal soup kitchen.

Some activists read books or played the accordion while perched atop 3-meter tripods. A few sat or stood on the roofs of Luetzerath’s remaining buildings despite the chilly wind.

“I’m really afraid today,” Petra Schumann, a 53-year-old local who had been at the site for several days, said from a top-floor window of one of the few remaining houses. Schumann said she still held out hope of preserving what’s left of Luetzerath “until nothing is left standing; hope dies last.”

Environmentalists say bulldozing the village to expand the nearby Garzweiler coal mine would result in huge amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. The government and utility company RWE argue the coal is needed to ensure Germany’s energy security.

However, a study by the German Institute for Economic Research calls into question the government’s stance. Its authors found other existing coal fields could be used instead, though the cost to RWE would be greater.

Another alternative would be for Germany to increase production of renewable power, cut demand through energy efficiency measures, or import more coal or gas from abroad, the study found.

Citing the study and the urgent need to curb global carbon emissions, protesters refused to heed a court ruling Monday that effectively banned them from the area.

Some activists expressed particular anger at the environmentalist Green party, which is part of both the regional and national governments that reached a deal with RWE last year allowing it to destroy the village in return for ending coal use by 2030, rather than 2038.

Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck, a Green who is Germany’s economy and climate minister, defended the agreement as a “good decision for climate protection” that fulfills many of the environmentalists’ demands and saves five other villages from demolition.

“I think climate protection and protests need symbols but the empty hamlet of Luetzerath, where no one lives any more, is the wrong symbol from my point of view,” Habeck told reporters in Berlin.

Climate campaigners counter that expanding a massive open-cast coal mine goes against Germany’s international commitments to reduce emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases. The country is expected to miss its ambitious targets for the second year in a row.

Luetzerath “is now the European place of crystallization for the climate movement,” said Lakshmi Thevasagayam, a spokesperson for the Luetzerath Lives activist group. “We know that the coal under Luetzerath isn’t needed for energy security — it must remain in the ground so that we can achieve climate justice.”

“Now we can do something against the climate catastrophe, but at some point we won’t be able to anymore,” Thevasagayam said. She accused police of engaging in “a complete escalation” by moving ahead with the eviction Wednesday.

RWE said in a statement that a 1.5-kilometer fence will be built around the site. It appealed to activists to peacefully “end the illegal occupation” of the site it legally owns.

Andreas Mueller, the police spokesperson, said authorities were prepared for the eviction operation to last weeks, if necessary.

The heads of several environmental organizations planned to visit Luetzerath on Thursday to express solidarity with the activists there. A large protest was also scheduled near the site Saturday, attended by prominent Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg.

 
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U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the battle for Soledar in eastern Ukraine is a “very fluid,” “dynamic fight,” amid reports that the city had fallen to the Russians.

“At this point, we can’t corroborate that reporting,” Austin said in joint press briefing with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and their Japanese counterparts at the State Department on Wednesday.

There were claims and counterclaims from Russian and Ukrainian militaries as to who controlled the town.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Russia’s mercenary Wagner Group, said his forces had captured all of the mining town and killed 500 Ukrainian troops in heavy fighting.

Minutes later, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the fighting continued.

The Russians “are trying to pretend that part of our town of Soledar … is some sort of a Russian possession,” he said in a video address. “But fighting continues. The Donetsk theater of operations is holding.”

In a statement on Facebook, the Ukrainian general staff said Russian forces were suffering heavy losses. Russia has been trying to capture the salt-mining town since August because of its salt caverns and proximity to Bakhmut.

Active conflict

The area is one of the most active in the conflict, making it difficult for an independent assessment of the situation.

A Reuters photographer who recently reached the edge of Soledar said she could see smoke rising over the town, and the incoming artillery fire was relentless, Reuters reported. Ambulances were waiting to receive the wounded on the road from Soledar to Bakhmut.

Also  Wednesday, Russia’s Defense Ministry announced that General Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff, was taking over command of the forces in Ukraine. General Sergei Surovikin, who had held the job for three months, will now be Gerasimov’s deputy.

Britain’s Defense Ministry said the move is “an indicator of the increasing seriousness of the situation Russia is facing, and a clear acknowledgement that the campaign is falling short of Russia’s strategic goals.”

It added in a tweet that Russian ultra-nationalists and military bloggers critical of Gerasimov are likely to greet the news with “extreme displeasure.”

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said at a news briefing Wednesday that Ukraine’s defense in the Bakhmut area “shows once again the bravery of Ukrainian forces as they fight to defend their homeland,” and how vital it is to boost military support for Ukraine.

“Our support makes a real difference on the ground and at this key juncture of the war, we must do even more, even faster,” Stoltenberg said.

Patriot training

Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, said late Tuesday a U.S. decision to train Ukrainian troops on the use of the Patriot missile defense system at Fort Sill in Oklahoma confirms “Washington’s de facto involvement in the Ukrainian conflict.”

“The real goal of the administration is to inflict on Russia as much damage on the battlefield as possible, using Ukrainians as proxies,” Antonov told reporters, according to a statement posted by the Russian embassy.

Pentagon press secretary Brigadier General Pat Ryder said the U.S. would look for ways to “accelerate the training timeline” so that Ukrainians could return to the battlefield as quickly as possible.

Zelenskyy made further pleas for Western military aid in his nightly address Tuesday, saying it is important to bolster Ukraine’s forces before a Russian escalation.

He also made an appearance at Tuesday night’s Golden Globes awards ceremony, saying in a separate video message to television and movie stars gathered in California, “There will be no third world war.”

Some information for this report came from Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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A Madrid court ordered two Spanish women who married Islamic State fighters remanded in custody Wednesday on terror-related charges after they were flown back from Syrian detention camps with 13 children, legal documents showed.

They arrived at the Torrejon de Ardoz Air Base near Madrid late Monday nearly two months after the Spanish government agreed to fly them home from the notorious Roj detention camp in Kurdish-controlled northeastern Syria.

Detained on arrival, Yolanda Martinez Cobos and Luna Fernandez Grande were brought before a judge on Wednesday at the Audiencia Nacional, Spain’s top criminal court.

After hearing their statements, the judge ordered they be held in pre-trial detention without bail on charges of “joining a terror organization” — namely Daesh, which is the Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

In his ruling, the judge said there was “a concrete flight risk given the serious charges against them,” as well as an “obvious” risk of reoffending.

But he did not suspend their parental rights given that they would be in prison, which meant there was “no potential risk of them continuing the possible indoctrination of their children.”

Their children are currently in the care of Madrid’s regional social services.

El Pais newspaper, which interviewed the pair and a third Spanish woman at another Syrian detention camp in 2019, said Martinez, now 37, had four children, while Fernandez, 34, had five.

The other four children were orphans with grandparents in Madrid whom Fernandez had cared for in the camp. They, too, were now in the custody of social services.

‘Unwavering commitment to IS’

In his ruling, the judge said the women and their husbands had been investigated in 2014 for their involvement in the so-called Al-Andalus Brigade. It was set up in Madrid to radicalize and recruit volunteers and help them reach Syria and Iraq to carry out attacks.

The pair “participated in activities supporting Daesh before and after moving out to the Syrian-Iraqi conflict zone with their husbands in mid-2014,” the judge said.

After they left, there was “no reliable information” about them until they appeared, alongside a third woman, in the El Pais video interview published in 2019.

Despite Martinez’s efforts to distance herself from membership in IS, her remarks in the interview — in which she said they were given a house, and her husband got a job in the IS courts — told a different story.

“Her words gave her away, because only members would be given a house and a job in the administration” of the IS caliphate, the judge said. The fact she remained in the area “shows her and her husband’s unwavering commitment to Daesh,” he added.

Fernandez, he said, played “a key role among the women within the Al-Andalus Brigade.” Her remarks in the same interview demonstrated a “radical and extremist internalization of Islam.”

El Mundo newspaper said Fernandez was a widow but that Martinez’s husband was in jail in Syria.

Third woman missing

In November, Spain agreed to repatriate three women, but the third — identified in the 2019 El Pais interview as Lubna Miludi from Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta — could not be located.

The United Nations welcomed the women’s repatriation from the Roj camp. A spokesman described conditions in the Syrian detention camps as “almost inhuman and extremely challenging.”

Over the past decade, thousands of extremists in Europe traveled to Syria to become IS fighters. They often took their wives and children to live in the “caliphate” it set up in territory seized in Iraq and Syria.

Since the caliphate fell in 2019, the return of family members of fighters either captured or killed has been a thorny issue for European countries.

The United States has pressed for repatriations as the best long-term solution and said it was “grateful” to Spain.

“We urge all governments to follow Spain’s example and repatriate their nationals, especially women and children,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said.

Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands have also repatriated relatives of jihadist fighters.
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The crackle of gunfire and roar of armored vehicles reverberated around sleepy west Ukrainian towns near the Belarusian border on Wednesday as Kyiv’s forces trained for the threat of a fresh assault across a new front in the north.

Ukraine fears Russia could build up forces on the territory of its ally Belarus before striking in the northwest or even try to drive toward Kyiv as it did when it invaded last February.

By reopening a northern front, Russia would stretch Kyiv’s forces, which have been focused for months on battles raging in the east and south, forcing it to divert troops to the north.

Colonel Roman Voloschuk of the 104th Territorial Defense brigade sought to project strength on the sidelines of military drills in three secret locations in Ukraine’s northwest.

“They can try, but we’re ready for them. We’ve prepared, every turn and every junction has been dug up. There will be colossal resistance from every building,” he told Reuters.

Soldiers from his territorial defense unit, one of hundreds of militias raised shortly before Russia’s February 24 invasion, said they were well prepared to face down any new threat.

“They will get their comeuppance … we are waiting for them,” said Artur Horodniuk, a 28-year-old machine gunner.

Anticipating what kind of attack Ukraine may face, Kyiv’s troops on Wednesday practiced urban warfare, firing assault rifles, driving armored vehicles and freeing hostages.

In another exercise in the snowbound countryside, troops practiced ambushing and destroying reconnaissance groups, a feature of the first Russian assault from Belarus that Moscow abandoned early last April.

Voloschuk said the mild winter so far would help defense efforts as it had left river levels higher than usual and many of his soldiers were battle-hardened from last year’s fighting.

Despite bringing colossal pressure onto the eastern town of Soledar in recent days, Russian forces have appeared on the back foot on the battlefield for months and a sudden assault from Belarus would mark an astonishing change of dynamic.

Konrad Muzyka, head of defense analysis firm Rochan Consulting, said a slow buildup of Russian forces could be observed in Belarus, but it was much smaller than the force that piled into northern Ukraine last February.

Nevertheless, a Russian offensive was possible and a push into western Ukraine could jeopardize supply lines of weapons from Europe, he added.

Serhiy Nayev, commander of Ukraine’s Joint Forces, said Ukraine had enough troops to defend the current threat and would match any increases on the other side of the border if needed.

“At present, the balance of forces and equipment between our side and the enemy is not in favor of the enemy,” he said.

Local Ukrainian commanders said there were 15,000 Russian troops in Belarus, too few to launch a major offensive.

There has been a slew of military activity for months in Belarus, ranging from joint exercises to the establishment of a joint regional Belarusian-Russian military force.

Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko in December in a rare trip to Minsk, prompting speculation it preceded an attack on Ukraine, possibly with the direct involvement of the Belarusian army, even though Minsk has said it will not enter the war.

Muzyka put the chances of Belarus joining on Russia’s side at 50-50, noting the intensity of the military training exercises there was the highest since the Cold War. Belarus could send 100,000 to 200,000 conscripts to the war, but its dated equipment would not provide new capabilities, he added.

Despite talking up the danger in comments last month, Ukrainian general Nayev now downplayed the threat of a new offensive from across the border.

“We do not see an increase in the presence of Russian troops on Belarusian territory,” he said, but he added anything was possible in future.
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The leaders of Britain and Japan signed a defense agreement Wednesday that could see troops deployed to each other’s countries.

The two countries are strengthening military ties amid growing concern about China’s increasing military assertiveness and designs toward Taiwan, which it considers a renegade province.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida formally signed the agreement in the symbolic setting of the Tower of London fortress. The British government said the agreement “cements our commitment to the Indo-Pacific” region.

“The relationship between our two countries is stronger than ever, not just across trade and security, but also our values,” Sunak told his Japanese counterpart.

Kishida, referring to the importance of security and cooperation between Japan and the U.K., said he hoped he and Sunak would have a “strategic discussion.”

The Reciprocal Access Agreement, Japan’s first defense agreement with a European nation, allows the two Group of Seven countries to hold joint military exercises. The deal had been in the works for years and was discussed when Kishida visited then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson in London in May.

The British government said it will allow the armed forces of the U.K. and Japan “to plan and deliver larger and more complex military exercises and deployments.”

The agreement reflects a new “Indo-Pacific tilt” in Britain’s foreign policy following the country’s departure from the European Union in 2020. Britain sees Japan as its key East Asian ally.

“In this increasingly competitive world, it is more important than ever that democratic societies continue to stand shoulder to shoulder as we navigate the unprecedented global challenges of our time,” Sunak said.

During their meeting at the Tower of London, a 1,000-year-old former palace and prison that houses the Crown Jewels, the leaders viewed Japanese armor presented to King James in 1613 by Shogun Tokugawa Hidetada of Japan to mark the first-ever trade agreement between England and Japan.

Japan has joined Western nations in condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and imposing sanctions against Moscow. Japan also has supplied Ukraine with helmets and other non-lethal military aid.

Japan is concerned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could have an impact in East Asia, where China’s military has grown increasingly assertive and threatened to unite with Taiwan by force if necessary.

Concerned about rapid weapons advancement in China and North Korea, Japan in December adopted key security and defense reforms, including a counterstrike capability that makes a break from the self-defense-only principle it has maintained since its defeat in World War II.

Japan holds the presidency of the G-7 this year, and Kishida is on a weeklong trip to visit allies including Italy, France, Canada and the United States, where he is due to meet President Joe Biden at the White House on Friday.
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Fishing boats arrive back at Idenau, a coastal village near Cameroon’s western border with Nigeria.

Authorities say there are several hundred fishers in Idenau and most of their catch is exported to neighboring states like Nigeria as well as to Europe.

But fishing authorities say many of the fishers operating in Cameroon’s waters in the Gulf of Guinea are not registered and not from Cameroon.

That’s why fishers in Cameroon are urging authorities to crack down on hundreds of illegal fishers and fish farmers operating in the Gulf of Guinea after the EU banned imports of Cameroon’s seafood. The EU announced the ban last week saying Cameroon was not cooperating in the fight against illegal and unregulated fishing and fish farming. 

Beninese fisher Thomas Wessie, 45, said he left his town of Djougou in 2017 to fish in Cameroon’s Southwest region, where Idenau is located.

Wessie said his company has seven medium-size vessels for semi-industrial fish farming. He said besides Cameroonians, Togolese, Beninese, Ghanaians and Nigerians, the Chinese are very involved in either semi-industrial or industrial fish farming in Cameroon’s part of the Atlantic Ocean.

Wessie said boats prefer fishing in Cameroon’s waters because neighboring Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Nigeria have firm military controls to stop illegal fishing.

The EU on January 5 banned Cameroon-caught seafood, citing a zero-tolerance policy for illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing that threatens ocean resources.

Cameroon’s Fish Farmers Associations met Wednesday in the capital, Yaounde, to discuss the issues.

Koulou Boulou Pierre, a member of the association, said most illegal fishers in Cameroon’s waters are from Africa and China. He said the illegal fishers operate through corrupt government officials and ignore prohibited fishing zones.

Pierre said there is a lack of political will to stop high waves of corruption that are responsible for the proliferation of illegal fishing firms all over Cameroon. He said if the government does not take measures for the EU ban to be lifted, Cameroon’s economy will be severely hurt as much of the 8,000 tons of shrimp and prawns for export will not get to European markets.

Last year, the EU said it found many shortcomings in Cameroon’s fishing industry, including allowing foreign boats that fish illegally to fly Cameroon’s flag.

The EU Commission said it will lift the ban against Cameroon if the country improves its fisheries governance and meets international obligations in fighting illegal and unregulated fishing.

Adrian Ngo’o Bitomo is coordinator of Agropole, a Cameroon government project to promote agro-industrial products including fish. Speaking to Cameroon’s state broadcaster CRTV Wednesday, he said quick action is needed or the EU ban will disrupt plans to export 200,000 tons of fish this year.

Bitomo said Cameroon should clear its south Atlantic and Gulf of Guinea maritime zones of hundreds of illegal African and Chinese fish firms that refuse to respect international regulations aimed at ensuring sustainability. Bitomo said by stopping illegal fishing, the Cameroon government will ensure that the present generation does not deprive future generations of their right to natural resources through overfishing and catching immature fish.

Cameroon’s Ministry of Livestock, Fisheries and Animal Industries did not respond to VOA’s request for comment on the EU ban and allegations of corruption.

China has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and said it has tightened oversight of deep-sea fishing boats. 
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As Russia’s war on Ukraine approaches its one-year anniversary, Moscow is increasingly suspected of manipulating its official death toll, diminishing its own losses and exaggerating Ukraine’s. 

Russia’s defense minister said last September that 5,937 Russian troops had been killed in the war. In November, U.S. officials estimated that Moscow’s casualties were “well over 100,000 Russian soldiers killed and wounded.” At the time, American officials estimated that Ukraine’s armed forces “probably” suffered a similar number and that as many as 40,000 Ukrainian civilians had been killed. 

Especially high in Russia’s numbers: casualties among international volunteers fighting for Ukraine. 

Ukraine says more than 20,000 foreign volunteers from 52 countries have answered President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s call to help fight Russian forces. Most foreigners fighting in Ukraine are doing so for ideological reasons, though Russia routinely brands them “mercenaries” — a designation that excludes them from the protections guaranteed under the 1949 Geneva Conventions. 

Chuck Pfarrer is a writer and former U.S. Navy SEAL who is closely monitoring the situation in Ukraine and maintains contact with American and other foreign volunteers on the ground. He also has covered the conflict for the Kyiv Post.

Pfarrer is the author of “SEAL Target Geronimo: The Inside Story of the Mission to Kill Osama Bin Laden,” a New York Times bestseller, which disputed parts of the White House’s description of the mission and was called a “fabrication” by a spokesperson for U.S. special operations command. Pfarrer has defended his reporting and said the government was covering up unflattering details. 

Pfarrer told VOA on January 3 that Russia’s manipulation of statistics is part of a Kremlin disinformation narrative to justify military aggression in Ukraine. 

“Putin desperately wants Russian citizens to think that Russia is ‘fighting NATO’ in Ukraine,” Pfarrer said. “The more ‘international’ deaths Russia can claim, the easier it will be for him to sell this fantasy.” 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

VOA: Since the beginning of its full-fledged invasion last February, the Russian Defense Ministry has announced daily heavy losses delivered to Ukrainian troops. Do you believe these numbers are trustworthy and verifiable or more likely false and exaggerated?

Pfarrer: The Russian numbers are suspect for several reasons. Russian offensive operations have achieved only limited success in the last several months, with gains often measured in meters instead of kilometers, especially in heavily contested areas such as Bakhmut. [First], “official” Russian accounts of Ukrainian [and/or] international casualties are suspect because an accurate count would presume that Russia had captured significant swaths of territory. Second, [Russia’s claim] that Ukrainian soldiers had abandoned their dead on the battlefield. Third, that recovered bodies carried passports or other documents to indicate that they were foreign volunteers. 

But Russian gains have been small, and Ukraine has been scrupulous about recovering their dead and wounded. Thus, Russian claims are greatly exaggerated.

VOA: Why do you think Russia exaggerates Ukrainian losses, and is it possible to assess how significant these manipulations are?

Pfarrer: The pressure for Russian military command to exaggerate Ukrainian casualties is intense. Despite massive numbers of Russian dead and the loss of thousands of tanks, armored vehicles, artillery systems and hundreds of aircraft, Russia is no closer to subduing Ukraine than it was at the beginning of its “special military operation” in February of last year.

Ukraine has reported more than 108,190 Russian troops have been killed in action. A rough estimate of the number of Russian soldiers wounded in this period would be north of 324,000. With Russian casualties approaching half a million, the need for Russia to report substantial Ukrainian losses is imperative, but the numbers of Ukrainian dead and wounded are only a fraction of Russian casualties.

Four-hundred-and-fifty thousand Russian casualties might seem high, but this estimate is bolstered by Russia’s need to hastily mobilize 300,000-plus men during the last part of 2022. A second mobilization is slated to occur in the next two weeks. This one, as well, will call more than 300,000 Russian men to military service. These mobilizations are made necessary by heavy Russian casualties and tactical failure on the battlefield.

VOA: Ukraine does not announce its daily losses, but occasionally confirms total casualties. How accurate are their numbers?

Pfarrer: True, Ukraine, as a rule, does not confirm daily losses. But an estimate by the U.S. Military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff earlier in the war put the number of Ukrainian casualties at approximately 100 per day. Using a standard ratio of “one killed [out of] three wounded,” that would suggest perhaps 30 Ukrainian soldiers are killed and approximately sixty wounded per day. These numbers, of course, can vary widely. Three-hundred-and-fourteen days in, one might project upwards of 10,000 Ukrainian dead and [at least] 19,000 wounded. These are very rough estimates, but certainly a good approximation.

As for the Ukrainian stats of Russian personnel losses: Military sources in NATO and Ukraine have told me that the actual number of Russian casualties exceeds the numbers given in Ukrainian briefings.

Frankly, Russian intelligence has not been good enough to identify Ukrainian military targets like barracks or troop assembly areas. On the other hand, Ukraine’s battlefield intelligence has been excellent — human intelligence, signals intelligence, electronic intelligence and overhead imagery allows Ukraine to prosecute high value Russian targets like ammo storage areas, HQ elements and Russian troop concentrations on a daily basis. HIMARS allows them to strike deep behind the line of contact. Partisans and deeply inserted Ukrainian Special Operations Forces provide up-to-the-minute targeting information for Ukrainian HIMARS batteries and precision strike munitions. 

VOA: As you follow closely the events unfolding in Ukraine while the country defends itself from the Russian aggression, what is your own assessment of the casualties among the foreigners who joined Ukrainian forces?

Pfarrer: Social media, especially Twitter, is quick to report on the death or wounding of international volunteers, much more often than the deaths of Ukrainian soldiers. Most sources agree that approximately 20,000 foreign volunteers from 52 nations are now in Ukrainian military service. Several hundred additional troops are likely integrated into regular Ukrainian units and do not serve as members of the International Legions.

There are approximately 270,000 men and women in service with the Ukrainian military, with about 100,000 more in reserve units. By this ratio, international volunteers make up only about 6% of [Ukrainian] forces, and a significant percentage of international volunteers do not serve in front line units but in other capacities. About five to 10 international volunteer casualties are reported on social media per week — and, again, reported casualties are three times as likely to be reported wounded as killed.

Russian claims of hundreds of foreign volunteers killed daily are absurdly high.

Putin desperately wants Russian citizens to think that Russia is “fighting NATO” in Ukraine. The more “international” deaths Russia can claim, the easier it will be for him to sell this fantasy. In March, Russia claimed to have killed 180 “foreign mercenaries” in a single engagement in Yavoriv. In June, Russia claimed 162 Canadians had been killed to date in Ukraine. Earlier, during the battle of Mariupol, Russia claimed alternatively to have captured or killed a U.S. Marine Corps major general. None of those claims were true.  

 
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Authorities in France say an attacker armed with a knife wounded six people Wednesday morning at a busy train station in Paris. 

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told reporters police shot the attacker, who was “between life and death” after being taken to a hospital. 

The attack happened at the Gare du Nord station, one of the busiest in Europe. 

The motive for the attack was unclear, and authorities say they have opened a criminal investigation. 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters. 
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Australian Cardinal George Pell, a leading Roman Catholic conservative and former top Vatican official who in 2020 was acquitted of sexual abuse allegations, died Tuesday at the age of 81, his private secretary said.  

Father Joseph Hamilton told Reuters that Pell died in Rome on Tuesday night.  

Archbishop Peter Comensoli, the archbishop of Melbourne, said Pell had died from heart complications following hip surgery.  

“Cardinal Pell was a very significant and influential Church leader, both in Australia and internationally, deeply committed to Christian discipleship,” he said in a statement on Facebook. 

An Australian appeals court ruling in 2020 quashed convictions that Pell sexually assaulted two choir boys in the 1990s. He spent 13 months in jail. 

The ruling allowed the then-78-year-old Pell to walk free, ending the case of the most senior figure accused in the global scandal of historical sex abuse that has rocked the Roman Catholic Church worldwide. 

Pell, a former archbishop of Melbourne and Sydney, served as Vatican economy minister from 2014 until he took a leave of absence in 2017 to return to Australia to face the charges. 

He had been living in Rome since his acquittal in 2020 and had several meetings with Pope Francis. Pell often attended the pontiff’s Masses, and Francis praised him publicly after his return. 

Even before the sexual assault allegations, Pell was a polarizing figure in the two decades that he dominated the Australian Catholic hierarchy, revered by conservative Catholics but scorned by liberals for his staunch opposition to same-sex marriage, abortion and women’s ordination. 

In May 2018, Pell was committed to stand trial on multiple historical sexual offense charges relating to alleged incidents at a pool in his hometown of Ballarat in the 1970s and at Melbourne’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral in the 1990s. The so-called swimmers case was dropped after a judge did not allow certain evidence. 

Returning from Rome where he had been tasked with cleaning up the Vatican’s finances, Pell denied the allegations but did not take the stand at two trials, the first of which ended with a hung jury. At the retrial, a jury unanimously convicted him on five charges of assaulting two teenage choirboys at the cathedral when he was archbishop of Melbourne. 

Pell was sentenced to six years in jail, becoming the most senior Catholic official worldwide to go to prison for child sex assault. He lost his first appeal and was in solitary confinement for 404 days until Australia’s seven High Court judges unanimously overturned his conviction, saying it was not proven beyond reasonable doubt. 

“Look, it was bad, it wasn’t like a holiday, but I don’t want to exaggerate how difficult that was. But there were many dark moments,” Pell said of his jail time in a Reuters interview after returning to Rome in 2020. 

The former choirboy who accused Pell at his trial and was known as Witness J said he understood it was difficult to satisfy a criminal court beyond the shadow of a doubt that child sexual assault offenses occurred. The other former choirboy died before Pell was charged. 

Gold miner’s son   

The high-profile case was one of the Australia’s most divisive, and some media organizations went so far as to breach a court suppression order barring coverage of the trial. 

The son of an Anglican gold miner father and a devout Irish Catholic mother, Pell was talented both academically and at sports. At 18, he landed a contract to play professional Australian Rules football and played in the reserves for a club, but later chose to enter the seminary. 

He went on to earn a doctorate in church history from Oxford and then became a parish priest in Ballarat. 

A burly and imposing figure at 1.9 meters, Pell rose to prominence in the mid-1990s first as archbishop of Melbourne, then archbishop of Sydney in 2001. 

Through the 1990s, the church increasingly came under attack for protecting priests and other church personnel who had committed sexual offenses and for failing to support their victims. 

Pell took pride in having set up one of the world’s first schemes to compensate victims of child sexual abuse in Melbourne. Critics, however, later told a government-appointed inquiry that the scheme was designed to persuade victims not to pursue legal action. 

The inquiry, known as a Royal Commission, began in 2013, a five-year investigation into child sex abuse in the Catholic Church and other institutions. 

It found the church and other institutions had repeatedly failed to keep children safe with cultures of secrecy and cover-ups. It also found that Pell was aware of child sex abuse by at least two priests in the 1970s and 1980s and had failed to take steps to get the priests removed. 

The commission also said Pell should have looked into why Gerard Ridsdale, a priest who was subsequently convicted on more than 130 charges of sexually abusing children, was being moved from one parish to another during the 1970s and 1980s. 

Pell told the commission he was unaware of Ridsdale’s offenses until his 1993 conviction. 

“It’s a sad story, and it wasn’t of much interest to me,” he said. 
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Constantine, the former and last king of Greece who spent decades in exile, died Tuesday. He was 82.

Doctors at the private Hygeia Hospital in Athens confirmed to The Associated Press that Constantine died late Tuesday after treatment in an intensive care unit but had no further details pending an official announcement.

When he rose to the throne as Constantine II 1964 at the age of 23, the youthful monarch who had achieved glory as an Olympic gold medalist in sailing was hugely popular. By the following year he had squandered much of that support with his active involvement in the machinations that brought down the elected Center Union government of Prime Minister George Papandreou.

The episode involving the defection from the ruling party of several lawmakers, still widely known in Greece as the “apostasy,” destabilized the constitutional order and led to a military coup in 1967. Constantine eventually clashed with the military rulers and was forced into exile.

The dictatorship abolished the monarchy in 1973; a referendum after democracy was restored in 1974 dashed any hopes that Constantine had of ever reigning again.

Reduced in the following decades to only fleeting visits to Greece that raised a political and media storm each time, he was able to settle again in his home country in his waning years when opposing his presence no longer held currency as a badge of vigilant republicanism. With minimal nostalgia for the monarchy in Greece, Constantine became a relatively uncontroversial figure.

Constantine was born June 2, 1940, in Athens, to Prince Paul, younger brother to King George II and heir presumptive to the throne, and Princess Frederica of Hanover. His older sister Sophia is the wife of former King Juan Carlos I of Spain. The Greek-born Prince Philip, the late Duke of Edinburgh and husband of the late Queen Elizabeth II, was a relative.

The family, which had ruled in Greece from 1863 apart from a 12-year republican interlude in 1922-1935, was descended from Prince Christian, later Christian IX of Denmark, of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Gluecksburg branch of the Danish ruling family.

Before Constantine’s first birthday, the royal family was forced to flee Greece during the German invasion in World War II, moving to Alexandria in Egypt, South Africa and back to Alexandria. King George II returned to Greece in 1946, following a disputed referendum, but died a few months later, making Constantine the heir to King Paul I.

Constantine was educated at a boarding school and then attended three military academies as well as Athens Law School classes as preparation for his future role. He also competed in various sports, including sailing and karate, in which he held a black belt.

In 1960, at age 20, he and two other Greek sailors won a gold medal in the Dragon Class — now no longer an Olympic class — at the Rome Olympics. While still a prince, Constantine was elected a member of the International Olympic Committee and became an honorary member for life in 1974.

King Paul I died of cancer on March 6, 1964, and Constantine succeeded him, weeks after the Center Union party had triumphed over the conservatives with 53% of the vote.

The prime minister, George Papandreou, and Constantine initially had a very close relationship, but it soon soured over Constantine’s insistence that control of the armed forces was the monarch’s prerogative.

With many officers toying with the idea of a dictatorship and viewing any non-conservative government as soft on communism, Papandreou wanted to control the ministry of defense and eventually demanded to be appointed defense minister. After an acrimonious exchange of letters with Constantine, Papandreou resigned in July 1965.

Constantine’s insistence on appointing a government composed of centrist defectors that won a narrow parliamentary majority on the third try was hugely unpopular. Many viewed him as being manipulated by his scheming mother, dowager Queen Frederica.

“The people don’t want you, take your mother and go!” became the rallying cry in the protests that rocked Greece in the summer of 1965.

Eventually, Constantine made a truce of sorts with Papandreou and, with his agreement, appointed a government of technocrats and then a conservative-led government to hold an election in May 1967.

But, with the polls heavily favoring the Center Union and with Papandreou’s left-leaning son, Andreas, gaining in popularity, Constantine and his courtiers feared revenge and prepared a coup. They were instead surprised by a coup led by a group of lower-ranking officers who proclaimed a dictatorship on April 21, 1967.

On Dec. 13, 1967, Constantine and his family flew to the northern city of Kavala with the intention of marching on Thessaloniki and setting up a government there. His counter coup, badly managed and infiltrated, collapsed and Constantine was forced to flee to Rome the following day. He would never return as reigning king.

To his final days, Constantine, while accepting that Greece was now a republic, continued to style himself King of Greece and his children as princes and princesses even though Greece no longer recognized titles of nobility.

For most of his years in exile he lived in Hampstead Garden Suburb, London, and was said to be especially close to his second cousin Charles, the Prince of Wales and now King Charles III.

While it took Constantine 14 years to return to his country briefly to bury his mother, Queen Frederica in 1981, his visits increased and, from 2010, made his home there.

He is survived by his wife, the former Princess Anne-Marie of Denmark, youngest sister of Queen Margrethe II; five children, Alexia, Pavlos, Nikolaos, Theodora and Philippos; and nine grandchildren.
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French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo doubled down on its ridicule of Iran’s religious rulers on Tuesday, with fresh cartoons of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, despite protests from Iran and its allies.

“The mullahs aren’t happy. The caricatures of their supreme leader … do not seem to have made them laugh,” the paper’s editor, known as Riss, writes in the latest edition, which hits newsstands on Wednesday.

“Laughing at themselves has never been a strong point of tyrants,” he added.

The paper was hit by a cyberattack after publishing cartoons of Khamenei in last week’s special edition, which marked the anniversary of the 2015 attack on its Paris offices that left 12 dead.

“A digital attack doesn’t leave anyone dead, but it sets the tone. The mullah’s regime feels in such danger that it considers it vital to its existence to hack the website of a French newspaper,” Riss wrote.

“It is an honour in one sense, but above all proves that they feel their power is very fragile.”

There have been months of protests in Iran sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a woman arrested for allegedly violating the country’s strict dress code.

Iran issued an official warning to France over the “insulting and indecent” cartoons in last week’s Charlie Hebdo.

Earlier on Tuesday, Hezbollah, the pro-Iranian movement in Lebanon, also condemned the cartoons, saying Khamenei was not just a ruler but “a religious symbol for tens of millions of believers.”
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A court in Romania’s capital Bucharest has upheld the 30-day arrest of divisive social media personality and self-described misogynist Andrew Tate on charges of organized crime, human trafficking and rape, an official said late Tuesday.

Ramona Bolla, a spokesperson for Romanian anti-organized crime agency DIICOT, said the court rejected an appeal by Tate against a judge’s earlier decision to extend his arrest from 24 hours to 30 days.

Tate, 36, a British-U.S. citizen who has 4.5 million followers on Twitter, was initially detained on December 29 for 24 hours along with his brother Tristan, who was charged in the same case. Two Romanian women also were taken into custody.

The court late Tuesday rejected all four appeals against a judge’s December 30 decision to grant prosecutors’ request to extend the arrest period. A document explaining the judge’s reasoning said “the possibility of them evading investigations cannot be ignored,” and that they could “leave Romania and settle in countries that do not allow extradition.”

Tate and the other three defendants arrived at Bucharest’s Court of Appeal in handcuffs Tuesday and were taken away in the afternoon. Eugen Vidineac, a Romanian defense lawyer representing Tate, told journalists after a morning hearing that “all four of the accused have made statements” and that “the lawyers’ pleas were listened to entirely.”

Tate, a former professional kickboxer, is reported to have lived in Romania since 2017, previously was banned from various prominent social media platforms for expressing misogynistic views and hate speech. The week of his arrest, he traded insults on Twitter with teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg.

DIICOT said it had identified six victims in the trafficking case who were subjected to “acts of physical violence and mental coercion” and were sexually exploited by the members of the alleged crime group.

The agency said victims were lured by pretenses of love, and later intimidated, kept under surveillance, and subjected to other control tactics while being coerced into performing pornographic acts that were intended to make money for the alleged persecutors.

Prosecutors investigating the case have seized 15 luxury cars, at least seven of which were owned by the Tate brothers, and more than 10 properties or land owned by companies registered to them, DIICOT spokesperson Bolla said.

Bolla said if prosecutors can prove the Tates gained money through human trafficking, the assets “will be taken by the state and [will] cover the expenses of the investigation and damages to the victims.”

After the appeals court upheld the arrest warrant extension, prosecutors can now request detentions of up to 180 days for the four people charged.

Since Tate’s arrest, a series of ambiguous posts have appeared on his Twitter account. Each tweet garners widespread media attention.

One, posted Sunday and accompanied by a Romanian report suggesting he or his brother have required medical care since their arrests, reads: “The Matrix has attacked me. But they misunderstand, you cannot kill an idea. Hard to Kill.”

Another post, from Saturday, reads: “Going to jail when guilty of a crime is the life story of a criminal … going to jail when completely innocent is the story of a hero.”

Hope not Hate, a U.K. advocacy group, said it monitored Tate for years “because of his close links to the far right.” It described the influencer in a report it produced last year as an “extreme misogynist” who holds conspiratorial views.

“Our major concern is that his brand of extreme and sometimes violent misogyny is reaching a young male audience and that he could serve as a gateway to wider far-right politics,” Hope not Hate said in a statement after Tate was banned by Facebook parent company Meta in August.
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