Month: January 2023

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 …

READ MORE

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 …

READ MORE

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.  …

READ MORE

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 …

READ MORE

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 …

READ MORE

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 …

READ MORE

A Turkish-Swiss dual national who stabbed a passer-by to death in a rare jihadi attack in Switzerland was sentenced Tuesday to 20 years in a psychiatric institution. Named only as Omer A., the 29-year-old was found guilty of murder, attempted murder, attempted arson in trying to blow up a gas station, support for the Islamic State group, downloading depictions of atrocious acts of violence, and breaking drug laws. On the evening of Sept. 12, 2020, he stabbed to death a 29-year-old Portuguese national at a kebab restaurant in the otherwise-tranquil town of Morges on the shores of Lake Geneva in …

READ MORE