Munich — Franz Beckenbauer, who won the World Cup both as player and coach and became one of Germany’s most beloved personalities with his easygoing charm, has died, news agency dpa reported Monday. He was 78.

“It is with deep sadness that we announce that my husband and our father, Franz Beckenbauer, passed away peacefully in his sleep yesterday, Sunday, surrounded by his family,” the family said in a statement to dpa, the German news agency. “We ask that we be allowed to grieve in peace and be spared any questions.”

The statement did not provide a cause of death. The former Bayern Munich great had struggled with health problems in recent years.

Beckenbauer was one of German soccer’s central figures. As a player, he reimagined the defender’s role in soccer and captained West Germany to the World Cup title in 1974 after it had lost to England in the 1966 final. He was the coach when West Germany won the tournament again in 1990, a symbolic moment for a country in the midst of reunification, months after the Berlin Wall fell.

Beckenbauer was also instrumental in bringing the highly successful 2006 World Cup to Germany, though his legacy was later tainted by charges that he only succeeded in winning the hosting rights with the help of bribery. He denied the allegations.

Beckenbauer and three other members of the committee were formally made criminal suspects that year by Swiss prosecutors who suspected fraud in the true purpose of multi-million euro (dollar) payments that connected the 2006 World Cup with FIFA. But he was eventually not indicted in 2019 for health reasons and the case ended without a judgment when the statute of limitations expired in 2020 amid delays to the court system caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

The allegations damaged Beckenbauer’s standing in public perception for the first time. Until then, Beckenbauer had seemingly been unable to say or do anything wrong. Germans simply loved him.

The son of a post official from the working-class Munich district of Giesing, Beckenbauer became one of the greatest players to grace the game in a career that also included stints in the United States with the New York Cosmos in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Born on Sept. 11, 1945, months after Germany’s surrender in World War II, Beckenbauer studied to become an insurance salesman but he signed his first professional contract with Bayern when he was 18.

“You are not born to become a world star in Giesing. Football for me was a deliverance. Looking back, I can say: Everything went according to how I’d imagined my life. I had a perfect life,” Beckenbauer told the Sueddeutsche newspaper magazine in 2010.

Beckenbauer personalized the position of “libero,” the free-roaming nominal defender who often moved forward to threaten the opponent’s goal, a role now virtually disappeared from modern football and rarely seen before his days.

An elegant, cool player with vision, Beckenbauer defined as captain the Bayern Munich side that won three successive European Cup titles from 1974 to 1976.

In his first World Cup as player in 1966, West Germany lost the final to host England. Four years later, with his arm strapped to his body because of a shoulder injury, Germany lost a memorable semifinal to Italy.

Finally, in 1974 at home, Beckenbauer captained West Germany to the title.

Beckenbauer left Bayern for New York in 1977 to play for the Cosmos of the North American Soccer League. He missed the 1978 World Cup because the Germans decided not to invite players playing abroad. He returned to Germany in 1980, spent two seasons with Hamburger SV — and won another Bundesliga championship, his fifth — before returning for a final season with the Cosmos.

Although he had never coached before, Beckenbauer was hired to revive West Germany in 1984 after a flop at the European Championship.

West Germany made it to the final of the 1986 World Cup, losing to Diego Maradona’s Argentina in Mexico City. Although West Germany failed to win the 1988 Euros title at home, it went to the final of the 1990 World Cup and defeated Argentina in the final in Rome, another highlight in the year after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Later, at the news conference, he said he was “sorry for the rest of the world” because a united Germany would be unbeatable for years to come. But Germany had to wait 24 years before winning another World Cup title.

Beckenbauer retired from the West Germany job after coaching the team to the 1990 World Cup triumph. The final was the last tournament game played by a West Germany-only team.

He didn’t have much success at coaching Marseille but won the Bundesliga title with Bayern in 1994 and the UEFA Cup in 1996, both after taking over as coach late in the season. He later became Bayern’s president, until leaving most functions when he turned 65 in 2010.

Beckenbauer’s legal issues around the 2006 World Cup continued into his retirement, but he remained a much-loved figure in German soccer and society.
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BEIJING — China says it has detained an individual accused of collecting state secrets on behalf of Britain’s foreign intelligence agency MI6.

The Ministry of State Security posted on social media Monday that Britain had been cooperating since 2015 with the person, who it said was a citizen of a third nation and had the surname Huang.

The ministry said Huang had received training in intelligence gathering, was provided with equipment and had collected numerous state secrets on repeated visits to China. No further information on the intelligence gathered was given, nor did the ministry say when he or she had been detained or where they were being held.

The definition of state secrets is not clearly defined under China’s opaque political and legal system, and many consulting and advisory firms have been investigated for obtaining data that would ordinarily be in the public record, particularly if they were shared with foreign entities.

The British government declined to comment, in keeping with its longstanding policy on intelligence matters.

China’s allegations follow a deterioration of relations between the sides sparked in part by British opposition to Chinese investments in the country, especially in the power and communications industries where the ruling Communist Party exercises strong influence.

In September, British police said two men were arrested earlier last year on suspicion of spying for Beijing. Police did not name the men, but British media reported that the younger man was a parliamentary researcher who worked with senior Conservative Party lawmakers focused on China. The U.K. condemned the interference in British parliamentary democracy, but China denied the spying allegations.

London has also been highly critical of China’s curtailment of political rights in Hong Kong, a former British colony where violent anti-government protests in 2019 were met with Beijing’s imposition of a sweeping national security law and electoral changes. Those have largely eliminated any political opposition to Beijing’s decrees and silenced freedom of speech in what had been one of Asia’s most dynamic societies and a major financial center.
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Kyiv, Ukraine — Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa paid a surprise visit Sunday to Kyiv where she said Tokyo was “determined” to keep supporting Ukraine, as the second anniversary of Moscow’s invasion nears.  

Kamikawa, the first high-level foreign official to visit Kyiv this year, announced new deliveries of defense equipment and discussed Tokyo’s plans to host a February conference to promote Ukraine’s economic reconstruction.   

“Japan is determined to support Ukraine so that peace can return to Ukraine,” Kamikawa told a press conference with her Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, held in a bomb shelter as an air raid siren rang out.

“I can feel how tense the situation in Ukraine is now.”  

Her visit came during escalating attacks by both sides in the conflict.  

“I once again strongly condemn Russia’s missile and drone attacks, particularly on New Year’s Day,” said Kamikawa.  

She said Tokyo would “allocate” $37 million to provide Ukraine with a drone detection system. It will also supply five generators to help Ukraine “survive” another winter.

Kamikawa visited the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, where Russian forces are blamed for a 2022 massacre of civilians, saying she was “shocked” by what she saw. She also went to Irpin, a past scene of heavy fighting.  

‘Comprehensive support’

Her unannounced visit is part of a two-week tour starting Friday that was planned to take in Poland, Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, the United States, Canada, Germany and Turkey.

Kuleba said Kyiv was thankful for Japan’s decision last year to provide Ukraine with F-16s jets, but said the country also needed air defense systems.   

“Every day, Ukrainian cities are destroyed by Russian missiles and drones. They cannot capture us, so they are trying to destroy us,” he said.  

Kuleba said the two also discussed “threats from North Korea,” and he expressed “solidarity” after the recent earthquake in Japan.  

Kamikawa later met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who thanked Tokyo for its security, economic and humanitarian “assistance” to Kyiv.  

“Japan is our very important and strong partner,” Zelenskyy said on social media.  

Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal also hailed a “meaningful meeting” with Kamikawa, thanking Japan for its “comprehensive support,” including humanitarian and financial assistance.

In a Telegram message, he applauded Japan for its “decision to allocate $1 billion for humanitarian projects and reconstruction, with a readiness to increase this amount to $4.5 billion through the mechanisms of international institutions.”

He said the meeting also covered the Ukrainian president’s conditions for peace, the implementation of reforms, and joint cooperation on infrastructure projects.

Shmyhal said Kyiv and Tokyo are also strengthening trade relations.

“We have already held meetings with two business delegations from Japan and are interested in locating production facilities of leading Japanese companies in Ukraine,” he added.
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ISTANBUL — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday named former environment minister Murat Kurum as the ruling AK Party’s candidate in Istanbul’s mayoral election in March, bidding to win back control of Turkey’s largest city.

Kurum will stand against incumbent Ekrem Imamoglu from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), whose election as mayor in 2019 ended 25 years of rule in Istanbul by the AKP and its Islamist predecessors.

Last May, Erdogan won re-election as president while his AKP and its nationalist allies took a majority in parliamentary elections, illustrating the challenge faced by the opposition in the nationwide municipal elections on March 31.

“Working shoulder to shoulder, we will definitely bring Istanbul out of the interregnum of the last five years,” Erdogan said at a ceremony to announce the candidacy of Kurum and other AKP candidates in the elections.

Kurum, 47, was environment and urbanization minister from July 2018 until last June, leaving the post after the elections. He was then elected as a member of parliament for Istanbul, Turkey’s commercial hub and a city of 16 million, or some 20% of the population.

Kurum was one of the most prominent figures in the government’s response to the devastating earthquakes that shook southern Turkey last February, killing more than 50,000 people.

He studied engineering at university and worked in Turkey’s mass housing administration before his time as a minister.

Erdogan announced his party’s candidates for more than two dozen of the country’s municipalities on Sunday and was expected to announce its candidates for the others, including the capital Ankara, later this month.
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LONDON — U.K. police have opened a fraud investigation into Britain’s Post Office over a miscarriage of justice that saw hundreds of postmasters wrongfully accused of stealing money when a faulty computer system was to blame.

The Metropolitan Police force said late Friday that it is investigating “potential fraud offences arising out of these prosecutions,” relating to money the Post Office received “as a result of prosecutions or civil actions” against accused postal workers.

Police also are investigating potential offenses of perjury and perverting the course of justice over investigations and prosecutions carried out by the Post Office.

Between 1999 and 2015, more than 700 post office branch managers were accused of theft or fraud because computers wrongly showed that money was missing. Many were financially ruined after being forced to pay large sums to the company, and some were convicted and sent to prison. Several killed themselves.

The real culprit was a defective computer accounting system called Horizon, supplied by the Japanese technology firm Fujitsu, that was installed in local Post Office branches in 1999.

The Post Office maintained for years that data from Horizon was reliable and accused branch managers of dishonesty when the system showed money was missing.

After years of campaigning by victims and their lawyers, the Court of Appeal quashed 39 of the convictions in 2021. A judge said the Post Office “knew there were serious issues about the reliability” of Horizon and had committed “egregious” failures of investigation and disclosure.

A total of 93 of the postal workers have now had their convictions overturned, according to the Post Office. But many others have yet to be exonerated, and only 30 have agreed to “full and final” compensation payments. A public inquiry into the scandal has been underway since 2022.

So far, no one from the publicly owned Post Office or other companies involved has been arrested or faced criminal charges.

Lee Castleton, a former branch manager who went bankrupt after being pursued by the Post Office for missing funds, said his family was ostracized in their hometown of Bridlington in northern England. He said his daughter was bullied because people thought “her father was a thief, and he’d take money from old people.”

He said victims wanted those responsible to be named.

“It’s about accountability,” Castleton told Times Radio on Saturday. “Let’s see who made those decisions and made this happen.”

The long-simmering scandal stirred new outrage with the broadcast this week of a TV docudrama, Mr. Bates vs the Post Office. It charted a two-decade battle by branch manager Alan Bates, played by Toby Jones, to expose the truth and clear the wronged postal workers.

Post Office Chief Executive Nick Read, appointed after the scandal, welcomed the TV series and said he hoped it would “raise further awareness and encourage anyone affected who has not yet come forward to seek the redress and compensation they deserve.”

A lawyer for some of the postal workers said 50 new potential victims had approached lawyers since the show aired on the ITV network.

“The drama has elevated public awareness to a whole new level,” attorney Neil Hudgell said. “The British public and their overwhelming sympathy for the plight of these poor people has given some the strength to finally come forward. Those numbers increase by the day, but there are so many more out there.”
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Paris — France’s foreign minister told her Iranian counterpart Saturday that “Iran and its affiliates” must stop “destabilizing acts” that could spark a broader conflict in the Middle East amid the war in Gaza. 

During a telephone call with Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, Catherine Colonna “delivered a very clear message: the risk of regional conflagration has never been so great; Iran and its affiliates must immediately cease their destabilizing acts,” according to a statement on the X social media platform. “Nobody would win from escalation.”   

Their call came after the Iran-backed Hezbollah group in Lebanon said it had targeted an Israeli base with 62 missiles in an “initial response” to the killing of Hamas’s deputy leader in Beirut. 

Israel has vowed to eradicate Hamas militants from Gaza after their lightning attack on Israel on October 7, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials.

Since then, Israel has been carrying out a relentless bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza that have killed at least 22,722 people, most of them women and children, according to the territory’s health ministry. 

Iran state media also said Saturday that the twin bombing attack Wednesday at a ceremony near the tomb of a top Revolutionary Guards general had killed 91 people, a higher toll than initially reported after two victims died of their wounds. 

The Islamic State militant group claimed responsibility for the strike, which added to fears of a wider conflict in the region. 

In an earlier statement, Colonna said she had also spoken with Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry. 

“Egypt and France are on the front line for access of humanitarian aid to Gaza and the evacuation of the most seriously wounded,” she said on X. 

Colonna added she had also had a “useful conversation” Saturday with her Qatari counterpart Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani, focusing on three issues — namely, the “freedom of all hostages, cessation of hostilities in Gaza (and) a credible perspective for a Palestinian state.” 

Colonna’s ministry said that since the start of the year she had also held talks with Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati as well as Riyad al-Maliki, the foreign affairs minister of the Palestinian National Authority. 
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Rome — Pope Francis has urged prayers for Nicaragua where two Catholic bishops,15 priests and two seminarians are in custody, with the most recent arrests taking place on Dec. 31. Observers fear the government of President Daniel Ortega is trying to eradicate the Catholic Church’s presence in Nicaragua.

The pontiff opened the new year with an appeal for prayer for the Central American country, expressing his deep concern for bishops and priests “deprived of their freedom” there and urging “the path of dialogue be always sought to overcome difficulties.”

“I follow with worry the events in Nicaragua, where priests and bishops have been deprived of their liberty,” he said. “I express closeness to families and the people, and I invite all of you of here present and all the people of God [to pray fervently], and hope for peace to overcome the difficulties. Let us pray for Nicaragua.”

Observers say the pope used his New Year’s Day address to shed light on the growing crackdown by Ortega’s government on the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, where clerics have been arrested, Catholic radio stations and a university have been shuttered, missionaries expelled, and religious festivities restrained.

Jason Problete is a U.S.-based Catholic lawyer specializing in international religious freedom issues. He told VOA that there is no real functioning opposition in Nicaragua, a deeply Catholic country, and that has made the Catholic Church a target for Ortega’s government as international sanctions bite.

“The Catholic Church, it’s an easy target for Ortega,” Problete said. “The priests, to their credit, they don’t want to be involved in politics. But they are being thrust into that because the people of Nicaragua are looking for leadership in Nicaragua. There is a civil society outside of Nicaragua, but they have no sway inside Nicaragua. Where do people go to next? The Catholic Church is still a force to be reckoned with.”

Observers point to the deterioration in relations between the Catholic Church and Ortega’s government during protests against social security reforms in 2018. Ortega accused Catholics of supporting the opposition during demonstrations, after the church sheltered protesters. Anyone seen as a government critic is severely repressed, analysts say.

International lawyer Problete sees Ortega carrying out the left-wing Sandinista’s policies against the Catholic Church. In 1979, Ortega led the Sandinista revolution, which overthrew the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza Debayle. But having lost elections in 1990, Ortega regained the presidency in 2007. Analysts, like Problete, say he has squelched any opposition.

“The Sandinista’s ultimate goal is to eradicate the Catholic Church,” he said. “This is their words. They don’t want the Catholic Church in Nicaragua.”

Martha Patricia Molina, a Nicaraguan lawyer and author of the study “Nicaragua: A Persecuted Church?” reports that the Ortega government has carried out more than 770 arrests, attacks, expropriations and harassments against the Catholic Church, including “impediments to processions, prayers, masses in cemeteries,” as well as spread hate messages, since 2018.
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Russia and Ukraine rang in 2024 by attacking each other, as Ukraine continues its quest to push invading Russian forces out. But much of the drama around this conflict is centered in Washington, where Republicans are reluctant to grant President Joe Biden’s increasingly urgent request for tens of billions in funding for Ukraine. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from the White House.
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COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Europe experienced stark weather contrasts on Wednesday, with extreme cold and snowstorms disrupting transportation and closing schools in Scandinavia while strong winds and heavy rain in western Europe caused flooding and at least one death. 

Temperatures fell below minus 40 degrees Celsius (minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit) in the Nordic region for a second consecutive day Wednesday. In Kvikkjokk-Årrenjarka in Swedish Lapland, the mercury dropped to minus 43.6 C (minus 46.5 F) the lowest January temperature recorded in Sweden in 25 years, Sweden’s TT news agency reported. 

Extremely cold temperatures, snow and gale-force winds disrupted transportation throughout the Nordic region, with several bridges closed and some train and ferry services suspended. Several schools in Scandinavia were closed. 

Police across most of Denmark urged motorists to avoid unnecessary trips as wind and snow battered the northern and western parts of the country. 

Western Russia has been swept by a wave of cold air coming from Siberia and the Arctic region, with temperatures in Moscow and other areas plummeting to minus 30 C (minus 22 F).

Weather experts say western Russia is recording much colder temperatures than the average in early January, when they typically hover around minus 10 degrees Celsius. 

Officials in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other areas have issued orange weather warnings, cautioning residents against possible health risks. 

Mild but wet and windy conditions prevailed further south, where a storm wreaked havoc in parts of western Europe. 

In Britain, a driver died after a tree fell on his car in western England. Gloucestershire Police said the man died in the incident near the town of Kemble on Tuesday afternoon. 

The storm, which has been named Henk by the official weather services of Britain, Ireland and the Netherlands, has caused power cuts, transport troubles, property damage and disruption across the U.K. 

More than 300 flood warnings were in place across England and Wales on Wednesday, while 10,000 homes remained without power. A severe flood alert, meaning a danger to life, was announced for the River Nene in Northampton in central England. Several residents were evacuated from houseboats and caravans at the nearby Billing Aquadrome. 

The U.K.’s rail network was hit by flooding and power cuts, with many operators reporting ongoing issues for the Wednesday morning commute into work. 

The strongest gales in the U.K. were recorded on the Isle of Wight, just off the coast in southern England, where wind speeds reached 151 kilometers per hour. 

In the Netherlands, police near the city of Eindhoven said strong winds may have played a role in the death of a 75-year-old man who fell off his bicycle late Tuesday as high winds lashed much of the country. 

Also in the southern Netherlands, a small section of a dike that regulates water levels was washed away Wednesday afternoon, the country’s water authority said. The water was flowing into the already swollen river Maas near the city of Maastricht. Owners of a number of houseboats were being evacuated as a precaution. 

Parts of Germany were also grappling with flooding, which could be aggravated by more rain falling in the worst-affected northwestern state of Lower Saxony. 
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