SOUTH KOREA
Opposition leader sentenced
The Seoul Central District Court yesterday handed Lee Jae-myung, the country’s opposition leader, a suspended prison sentence for contravening election laws — a ruling that might prevent him from running in the next presidential election. The court ruled that Lee, the leader of the main opposition Democratic Party, was guilty of making false statements in violation of the Public Official Election Act. It handed him a one-year jail term, suspended for two years, a court spokesperson said. Lee called the ruling a dark day in history and vowed to appeal. “The verdict is very difficult to accept,” he said. “I believe that our people, using common sense and a sense of justice, can come to their own conclusions.”
FRANCE
Dengue hits Guadeloupe
The overseas territory of Guadeloupe on Thursday declared a dengue epidemic, with authorities saying the outbreak was being driven by the dengue 3 serotype, a less common strain of the mosquito-borne disease. “Dengue fever has entered the epidemic phase,” officials said in a statement.
VENEZUELA
Jailed activist dies
An opposition activist who was arrested during a post-election crackdown died on Thursday in custody, his party said. Jesus Martinez, 36, died in a hospital in the eastern city of Barcelona from a heart problem associated with complications from type II diabetes. On Wednesday, his family had reported that one of his legs would have to be amputated due to necrosis, the death of body tissue. Martinez was a member of the Vente Venezuela party of opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who has called President Nicolas Maduro’s election to a third term as fraudulent. Machado, commenting on Martinez’s death, told reporters: “This is a crime, this is murder.” She said that Martinez’s fellow prisoners and mother had for days begged prison guards to transfer him to a hospital. “When he arrived at the hospital ... he was practically beyond saving,” she said.
UNITED STATES
Onion buys Infowars
Satirical news publication The Onion on Thursday was named the winning bidder for Alex Jones’ Infowars at a bankruptcy auction, backed by families of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims whom Jones owes more than US$1 billion in defamation judgements for calling the massacre a hoax. However, the judge in Jones’ bankruptcy case said that he had concerns about how the auction was conducted and ordered a hearing for next week after complaints by lawyers for Jones and a company affiliated with Jones that put in a US$3.5 million bid. The purchase would turn over Jones’ company to a humor Web site that plans to relaunch the Infowars platform in January as a parody.
UNITED STATES
Kennedy tapped for health
President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday tapped Robert F. Kennedy Jr as his secretary of health. “We want you to come up with things and ideas and what you’ve been talking about for a long time and I think you’re going to do some unbelievable things,” Trump told Kennedy during an event at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Kennedy, a scion of the famous US political family, is an environmental campaigner who abandoned a bid for the presidency to endorse Trump. If approved by the Senate, Kennedy would take over the Health and Human Services Department, which has a budget of close to US$2 trillion.
The Venezuelan government on Monday said that it would close its embassies in Norway and Australia, and open new ones in Burkina Faso and Zimbabwe in a restructuring of its foreign service, after weeks of growing tensions with the US. The closures are part of the “strategic reassignation of resources,” Venezueland President Nicolas Maduro’s government said in a statement, adding that consular services to Venezuelans in Norway and Australia would be provided by diplomatic missions, with details to be shared in the coming days. The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it had received notice of the embassy closure, but no
A missing fingertip offers a clue to Mako Nishimura’s criminal past as one of Japan’s few female yakuza, but after clawing her way out of the underworld, she now spends her days helping other retired gangsters reintegrate into society. The multibillion-dollar yakuza organized crime network has long ruled over Japan’s drug rings, illicit gambling dens and sex trade. In the past few years, the empire has started to crumble as members have dwindled and laws targeting mafia are tightened. An intensifying police crackdown has shrunk yakuza forces nationwide, with their numbers dipping below 20,000 last year for the first time since records
EXTRADITION FEARS: The legislative changes come five years after a treaty was suspended in response to the territory’s crackdown on democracy advocates Exiled Hong Kong dissidents said they fear UK government plans to restart some extraditions with the territory could put them in greater danger, adding that Hong Kong authorities would use any pretext to pursue them. An amendment to UK extradition laws was passed on Tuesday. It came more than five years after the UK and several other countries suspended extradition treaties with Hong Kong in response to a government crackdown on the democracy movement and its imposition of a National Security Law. The British Home Office said that the suspension of the treaty made all extraditions with Hong Kong impossible “even if
Former Japanese prime minister Tomiichi Murayama, best known for making a statement apologizing over World War II, died yesterday aged 101, officials said. Murayama in 1995 expressed “deep remorse” over the country’s atrocities in Asia. The statement became a benchmark for Tokyo’s subsequent apologies over World War II. “Tomiichi Murayama, the father of Japanese politics, passed away today at 11:28am at a hospital in Oita City at the age of 101,” Social Democratic Party Chairwoman Mizuho Fukushima said. Party Secretary-General Hiroyuki Takano said he had been informed that the former prime minister died of old age. In the landmark statement in August 1995, Murayama said
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