South Korean prosecutors seek 30 years' jail for ousted president

Agencies
February 27, 2018

Seoul, Feb 27: South Korean prosecutors on Tuesday sought a 30-year jail term for former president Park Geun-hye who was ousted last year amid an influence-peddling scandal as supporters braved the winter cold outside the Seoul court demanding her immediate release.

Park, 66, was dismissed in March after being impeached and is standing trial on charges of bribery, abuse of power and coercion in a case that rocked the country’s business and political elite. She denies wrongdoing.

The prosecution’s recommendation came two weeks after Choi Soon-sil, a longtime friend of Park who was at the center of the scandal, was jailed for 20 years for taking bribes from "chaebol", or conglomerates, including electronics powerhouse Samsung and retail giant Lotte.

Prosecutors are also seeking a 118.5 billion won ($127.1 million) fine for Park, who has been detained since 31 March 2017.

Park Seung-gil, a lawyer representing the former president, tearfully pleaded before Seoul Central District Court for mercy, saying Park had tried her hardest in leading the country “day and night”.

Park’s trial began in May and a verdict is expected before April in a case that brought scrutiny to the cosy ties between South Korea’s political leaders and its largest chaebol, the so-called “Republic of Samsung”.

“(Park) brought a national crisis by letting a person who has never been involved in state management rule the country,” a prosecutor said.

“She and Choi took tens of billions of won in bribes and yet denied her crimes and obstructed efforts to establish the truth.”

Receiving bribes carries a penalty of up to life in jail.

Hundreds of supporters gathered outside the court, proclaiming Park’s innocence.

"Immediately release our president," they chanted.

The Liberty Korea Party, a conservative opposition party formerly led by Park, condemned the call for jail.

“What the prosecution is demanding is harsher than the death penalty,” the party said in a statement.

 Seoul Central District Court had also sentenced Shin Dong-bin, chairman of the country’s fifth-largest conglomerate, Lotte Group, to two years and six months in prison in the same case.

Seoul High Court suspended a prison sentence for Samsung Group heir Jay Y Lee in early February — a surprise decision that sent shockwaves through political and business circles.

The court sentenced Lee to two and a half years in jail on charges including bribery and embezzlement — reducing the original term by half — but suspended the sentence for four years, meaning that he is unlikely to serve any more time in jail.

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June 1,2020

Washington, Jun 1: As protesters gathered outside the White House on Friday night in Washington DC, US President Donald Trump was briefly taken to the White House underground bunker, The New York Times reported citing a person having firsthand knowledge about the incident.

Trump was there for less than an hour before being brought upstairs. After hundreds of people surged towards the White House on Friday, Secret Service and the United States Park Police officers sought to block them.

Trump's team was surprised by the protests that were witnessed outside the White House on Friday night, according to the US daily. It is, however, unclear if Melania Trump and Barron Trump were also taken down with him.

in response to the continuing protests against the death of African-American man George Floyd in police custody.

National Guard members have been activated in 15 states and Washington, DC with another 2,000 prepared to activate if needed.

Demonstrators across the United States have been protesting since May 25, when George Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American man, died under the police custody in the city of Minneapolis.

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News Network
June 25,2020

Ottawa, Jun 25: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took his son out for ice cream on Wednesday in his first family outing since Canada started easing out of its pandemic lockdown.

It was also Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day in Quebec province.

Wearing masks, the Canadian leader and his six-year-old son Hadrien were cheered at Chocolats Favoris in Gatineau, Quebec.

According to a pool report, Trudeau said the shop tapped into a federal emergency wage subsidy and business loan in order to weather the pandemic, and "avoid being frozen out of the frozen treat market."

Hadrien is said to have bounced with excitement, settling on a vanilla cone with a cookie topping while dad bought a vanilla cone dipped in chocolate for himself.

Father and son then headed out to the patio, where they doffed their masks to eat their cones.

Canada's provinces and territories declared states of emergency mid-March, closing schools and non-essential businesses in response to the pandemic.

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Agencies
January 9,2020

Washington, Jan 9: The U.S. and Iran stepped back from the brink of possible war Wednesday as President Donald Trump signaled he would not retaliate militarily for Iran's missile strikes on Iraqi bases housing U.S. troops. No one was harmed in the strikes, but U.S. forces in the region remained on high alert.

Speaking from the White House, Trump seemed intent on deescalating the crisis, which spiralled after he authorized the assassination of Iran's top general, Qassem Soleimani. Iran responded overnight by firing more than a dozen missiles at two installations in Iraq, its most direct assault on America since the 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

Trump's takeaway was that “Iran appears to be standing down, which is a good thing for all parties concerned and a very good thing for the world.”

The region remained on edge, however, and American troops including a quick-reaction force dispatched over the weekend were on high alert. Hours after Trump spoke, an ‘incoming’ siren went off in Baghdad's Green Zone after what seemed to be small rockets “impacted” the diplomatic area, a Western official said. There were no reports of casualties.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the overnight strike was not necessarily the totality of Iran's response. “Last night they received a slap,” Khamenei said. “These military actions are not sufficient (for revenge). What is important is that the corrupt presence of America in this region comes to an end.”

The strikes had pushed Tehran and Washington perilously close to all-out conflict and left the world waiting to see whether the American president would respond with more military force. Trump, in his nine-minute, televised address, spoke of a robust U.S. military with missiles that are “big, powerful, accurate, lethal and fast.'' But then he added: “We do not want to use it."

Iran for days had been promising to respond forcefully to Soleimani's killing, but its limited strike on two bases--one in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil and the other at Ain al-Asad in western Iraq--appeared to signal that it too was uninterested in a wider clash with the U.S. Foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted that the country had “concluded proportionate measures in self-defence.”

Trump said the U.S. was “ready to embrace peace with all who seek it.” That marked a sharp change in tone from his warning a day earlier that “if Iran does anything that they shouldn't be doing, they're going to be suffering the consequences, and very strongly.”

Trump opened his remarks at the White House by reiterating his promise that “Iran will never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.” Iran had announced in the wake of Soleimani's killing that it would no longer comply with any of the limits on uranium enrichment in the 2015 nuclear deal crafted to keep it from building a nuclear device.

The president, who had earlier pulled the U.S. out of the deal, seized on the moment of calm to call for negotiations toward a new agreement that would do more to limit Iran's ballistic missile programmes and constrain regional proxy campaigns like those led by Soleimani.

Trump spoke of new sanctions on Iran, but it was not immediately clear what those would be.

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