Deposed South Korean president arrested, jailed after long saga

March 31, 2017

South

Seoul, Mar 31: South Korea's disgraced former President Park Geun-hye was arrested and jailed Friday over high-profile corruption allegations that have already ended her tumultuous four-year rule and prompted an election to find a successor. A convoy of vehicles, including a black sedan carrying Park, entered a detention facility near Seoul before dawn after the Seoul Central District Court granted a prosecutors' request to arrest her.

Many Park supporters waved national flags and shouted “president” as Park's car entered the facility. An opponent held up a mock congratulatory ribbon with flowers that read “Park Geun-hye, congratulations for entering prison. Come out as a human being after 30 years.”

Prosecutors can detain her for up to 20 days before formally charging her. The Seoul court's decision is yet another humiliating fall for Park, South Korea's first female president who was elected in 2012 amid overwhelming support from conservatives, who recall her dictator father as a hero who lifted the country from poverty in the 1960-70s despite a record of severe human rights abuses.

Prosecutors accuse Park of colluding with a confidante to extort big businesses, take a bribe from one of the companies and commit other wrongdoing. The allegations led millions of South Koreans to protest in the streets every weekend for months before lawmakers impeached her in December and the Constitutional Court ruled in March to formally remove her from office.

It made Park the country's first democratically elected leader to be forced from office since democracy came here in the late 1980s. South Korea will hold an election in May to choose Park's successor. Opinion surveys say liberal opposition leader Moon Jae-in, who lost the 2012 election to Park, is the favorite.

Prosecutors can charge Park without arresting her. But they said they wanted to arrest her because the allegations against her are “grave” and because other suspects involved the scandal, including her confidante Choi Soon-sil and Samsung heir Lee Jae-yong, have already been arrested. The Seoul court said it decided to approve Park's arrest because it believes key allegations against her were confirmed and there were worries that she may try to destroy evidence.

Park's conservative party described her arrest as “pitiful,” while the liberal politician favored in polls to succeed her said the country took a step toward restoring “justice and common sense.”

The camp of Moon Jae-in, who lost the 2012 presidential race to Park, said in a statement that the nation should now “turn the page on painful history” and focus on creating a fair and clean country.

A day earlier, Park was questioned at a court hearing for nearly nine hours. As she left for the hearing, hundreds of her supporters, many of them elderly citizens, gathered at her private Seoul home. They wept, chanted slogans and tried to block Park's car before being pushed back by police.

In the coming weeks, prosecutors are expected to formally charge Park with extortion, bribery and abuse of power. Her bribery conviction alone is punishable by the minimum 10 years in prison and the maximum life imprisonment in South Korea.

Prosecutors believe Park conspired with Choi and a top presidential adviser to bully 16 business groups, including Samsung, to donate 77.4 billion won ($69 million) for the launch of two nonprofits that Choi controlled. Company executives said they felt forced to donate in fear of retaliatory measures including state tax investigations.

Park and Choi are accused of separately receiving a bribe from Samsung and colluding with top officials to blacklist artists critical of Park's policies to deny them state financial assistance programs, according to prosecutors. Park also is alleged to have passed on state secrets to Choi via a presidential aide.

Park and Choi deny most of the allegations. Park has said she only let Choi edit some of her presidential speeches and got her help on “public relations” issues. Choi made similar statements. The women, both in their 60s, have been friends for 40 years. Park once described Choi as someone who helped her when she had “difficulties,” an apparent reference to her parents' assassinations in the 1970s.

Park's father, Chung-hee, was gunned down by his own intelligence chief in 1979, five years after his wife was killed in an assassination attempt that targeted him. Park Geun-hye served as first lady after her mother's death.

After her father's killing, Park Geun-hye left the presidential Blue House and secluded herself from the public eye before she entered politics in the late 1990s — when public nostalgia for her father emerged after the country's economy was hit hard by the Asian financial crisis. She had since become an icon of South Korean conservatives, earning the nickname “Queen of Elections” for her ability to led her conservative party to win tight elections.

Park now becomes South Korea's third head of state to be jailed after leaving office.

Former presidents Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo, both previously army generals, received a life sentence and a 17-year prison term, respectively, in 1996 on charges including treason and bribery. They were released in December 1997 on a special presidential amnesty.

Chun and Roh staged a 1979 coup that put Chun in power more than eight years after Park Chung-hee's death. Roh was elected president in 1987 after Chun's government caved to massive pro-democracy protests and accepted direct, free elections. In 2009, prosecutors questioned former liberal President Roh Moo-hyun over corruption allegations, but they later closed the investigation after Roh leaped to his death.

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News Network
June 13,2020

Mexico City, Jun 13: The number of people, who have died of COVID-19 in Mexico, has risen by 544 to 16,448 within the past 24 hours, Jose Luis Alomia, the director of epidemiology at the Health Ministry, said.

He also said on late Friday that the number of confirmed coronavirus cases had increased by 5,222 to 139,196 within the same period of time.

A day earlier, the Latin American nation has recorded 4,790 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus, with 587 fatalities.

The World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic on March 11. To date, more than 7.6 million people have been infected with the coronavirus worldwide, with over 425,000 fatalities, according to Johns Hopkins University.

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News Network
May 29,2020

Washington, May 29: US President Donald Trump while speaking with reporters at the White House on Thursday said that he is more liked in India than the media in his own country --the United States.

"I know. And they like me in India. I think they like me in India certainly more than the media likes me in this country, " Trump told reporters at his Oval office.

"And I like Modi (Prime Minister Narendra Modi). I like your prime minister a lot. He's a great gentleman. A great gentleman," he added further while briefing the reporters.

But when asked over ties between India and China, the US President said, "They have a big conflict going with India and China. Two countries with 1.4 billion people. Two countries with very powerful militaries. And India is not happy, and probably China is not happy."

Reiterating his offer to mediate between India and China on the border issue, Trump said that he spoke to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is not in "good mood" about the ongoing situation with Beijing.

However, informed sources from the Ministry of External Affairs told ANI on Friday that there has been no recent contact between Prime Minister Modi and the US President. The last conversation between them took place on April 4, 2020, on the subject of hydroxychloroquine.

Asked about his Wednesday's tweet regarding his offer to mediate between India and China, Trump said, "I would do that. If they (China and India) thought it would help." However, Trump did not clarify when did he speak to Modi.

Trump on Wednesday tweeted that he is "ready, willing and able to mediate" between India and China."We have informed both India and China that the United States is ready, willing and able to mediate or arbitrate their now raging border dispute," the US President said.

In response to Trump's mediation offer, India said on Thursday that it is engaged with the Chinese side to resolve the border issue peacefully.

India's Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said that the two sides have established mechanisms both at military and diplomatic levels to resolve situations that may arise in border areas peacefully through dialogue and "continue to remain engaged through these channels."

Indian and Chinese field commanders have been holding talks on de-escalating the tensions.

China has also struck a conciliatory tone on the border issue with India, saying the two countries pose no threat to each other and should resolve their differences through communication, while not allowing them to overshadow bilateral relations.

"We should never let differences overshadow our relations. We should resolve differences through communication. China and India should be good neighbours of harmonious coexistence and good partners to move forward hand in hand," said Chinese Ambassador to India, Sun Weidong, on Wednesday.

The tensions escalated between India and China following a number of confrontations between soldiers of both armies.

Troops of India and China were engaged in two face-offs in Eastern Ladakh and North Sikkim along the disputed Line of Actual Control (LAC), where troops from both sides suffered injuries early this month.

Studies over the anti-malarial drug, which is believed to cure the highly contagious coronavirus, have shown side-effects, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organisation. But Trump continues to defend his decision to take hydroxychloroquine saying he believes that it gives an additional level of safety.

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Agecnies
July 13,2020

Moscow, Jul 13: Russia has become the first nation to complete clinical trials of a COVID-19 vaccine on humans. Chief researcher Elena Smolyarchuk, who heads the Center for Clinical Research on Medications at Sechenov University, told Russian news agency TASS on Sunday that the human trials for the vaccine have been completed at the university and the volunteers will be discharged soon.

"The research has been completed and it proved that the vaccine is safe. The volunteers will be discharged on July 15 and July 20," Smolyarchuk was quoted as saying in the report.

Though the results have been favourable with respect to the medication’s effectiveness, no further information was provided on when this vaccine would enter commercial production stage.

Russia had allowed clinical trials of two forms of a potential COVID-19 vaccine developed by the Gamaleya National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology on June 18.

The first vaccine, in the form of a solution for intramuscular administration, was carried out at the Burdenko Military Hospital.

Another vaccine, in the form of a powder for the preparation of a solution for intramuscular administration, was carried out at Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University.

The first stage of research on the vaccine at Sechenov University involved a group of 18 volunteers and the second group involved 20 volunteers.

After vaccination, all volunteers were expected to remain in isolation in a hospital for 28 days.

Earlier, results of the COVID-19 vaccine tests performed on a group of volunteers in Russia showed that they were developing immunity to the coronavirus.

"The data obtained by the Gamalei National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology, proves that volunteers of the first and second groups are forming an immune response after injections of the vaccine against the coronavirus," according to an earlier statement from the Russian Defense Ministry.

Russia has reported 719,449 cases and 11,188 deaths to date.

There are at least 21 vaccines currently under key trials, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

The overall number of global COVID-19 cases crossed 12.9 million, while the deaths have increased to more than 5,69,000, according to Johns Hopkins University in the US.

As of Monday morning, the total number of cases stood at 1,29,10,357, while the fatalities rose to 5,69,128.

The US accounted for the world's highest number of infections at over 33 lakh. Brazil came in the second place with over 18 lakh infections. India is third worst affected with over 8.7 lakh people reported to have COVID-19.

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