South Korea's anti-corruption officials on Thursday requested that prosecutors indict impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol for insurrection and abuse of power for his short-lived martial law declaration.
The Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO) named Yoon, the first sitting president to be arrested in South Korea’s history, as the ringleader of an insurrection, also involving his defence minister of the time.

The dramatic events of recent weeks have plunged South Korea into a political crisis that has dragged on the economy and raised concerns among allies, including the U.S., about the country's political stability.
Yoon, impeached and suspended from power on Dec. 14, has been incarcerated since last week while investigators probe his Dec. 3 attempt to impose martial law - a move that shocked the nation even though it was overturned within hours by parliament.

Gangs in Haiti could overrun the capital, Port-au-Prince, leading to a complete breakdown of government authority without additional international support for the beleaguered national police, the United Nations chief warned.
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a report to coincide with a Security Council meeting Wednesday on the deteriorating situation in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country that “time is of the essence.”

Further delays in providing the police with additional officers for the multinational force trying to curb gang violence or additional assistance “carry the risk of a catastrophic collapse of national security institutions,” he said.
“This could allow the gangs to overrun the entire metropolitan area, resulting in a complete breakdown of state authority and rendering international operations, including those to support communities in need, in the country untenable,” Guterres said.
“We must urgently do everything in our power to prevent such an outcome

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he would add new tariffs to his sanctions threat against Russia if the country does not make a deal to end its war in Ukraine, and added that these could also be applied to "other participating countries."
In a post on Truth Social, Trump modified comments he made on Tuesday that he would likely impose sanctions against Russia if President Vladimir Putin refused to negotiate an end to the nearly three-year conflict.

"If we don't make a 'deal,' and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other participating countries," Trump said.
Russia's deputy U.N. Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy said Moscow will have to see what Trump thinks a "deal" to end the war in Ukraine means.

"It's not merely the question of ending the war," Polyanskiy told Reuters. "It's first and foremost the question of addressing root causes of Ukrainian crisis.

The United States, Australia, India and Japan recommitted to working together on Tuesday, after the first meeting of the China-focused "Quad" grouping's top diplomats since President Donald Trump returned to the White House.
In a joint statement after the talks in Washington, hosted by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on his first day in the job, the four nations said officials would meet regularly to prepare for an upcoming leaders' summit in India, expected this year.

The four countries share concerns about China's growing power and analysts said the meeting was designed to signal that countering Beijing is a top priority for Trump, who began his second term in office on Monday.
Rubio earlier said he said would stress the importance of working with allies "on the things that are important to America and Americans" during the meeting.

He posed with Australia's Penny Wong, India's Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and Japan's Takeshi Iwaya in front of the flags of their countries.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping vowed to take his country’s ties with Russia to a new level this year in a video conference with counterpart Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, hours after the inauguration of US President Donald Trump.
The two leaders have made it an annual tradition to speak around the new year – a feature of a close personal rapport that’s helped cement a partnership between their countries that’s only grown as Putin wages war on Ukraine.

Xi expressed his readiness to “guide China-Russia relations to a new height” and respond to “external uncertainties” with the “stability and resilience of China-Russia ties,” a readout from China’s Foreign Ministry said.
The two countries should deepen “strategic coordination” and “practical cooperation” and “firmly support each other,” Xi told the Russian president, who appeared via video link on a large screen in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People during the conference call.

India's Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri will visit Beijing on Jan. 26-27 to discuss steps to boost ties with China, as the Asian neighbours revive relations that were strained since a deadly military clash on their disputed frontier in 2020.
New Delhi and Beijing reached a milestone pact in October on lowering military tensions on their Himalayan border and have begun taking baby steps to restore ties following talks between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Russia.

India's foreign ministry said on Thursday that Misri's visit "flows from the agreement at the leadership level to discuss the next steps for India-China relations, including in the political, economic, and people-to-people domains".
The military and diplomatic tensions sparked by the 2020 clash hurt ties in other areas as India slowed visa approvals for Chinese nationals, banned popular Chinese mobile apps and tightened scrutiny of investments from China.

Nearly 900 humanitarian aid trucks entered the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, the third day of a ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas, as a senior U.N. official said so far there had been no apparent law-and-order issues.
The latest arrivals bring the three-day total to more than 2,400 trucks entering the enclave.

Throughout the 15-month war, the U.N. has described its humanitarian operation as opportunistic - facing problems with Israel's military operation, access restrictions by Israel into and throughout Gaza and more recently looting by armed gangs.
Muhannad Hadi, the top U.N. aid official for Gaza and the West Bank, said there had been minor incidents of looting in the past three days, but "not like before."

"It's not organized crime. Kids jumped on some trucks trying to take food baskets. There were some other people (who) tried to take some bottled water,"

Israel said on Thursday the terms of a ceasefire with Hezbollah were not being implemented fast enough and there was more work to do, while the Iran-backed group urged pressure to ensure Israeli troops leave south Lebanon by Monday as set out in the deal.
The deal stipulates that Israeli troops withdraw from south Lebanon, Hezbollah remove fighters and weapons from the area and Lebanese troops deploy there - all within a 60-day timeframe which will conclude on Monday at 4 a.m (0200 GMT).

The deal, brokered by the United States and France, ended more than a year of hostilities triggered by the Gaza war. The fighting peaked with a major Israeli offensive that displaced more than 1.2 million people in Lebanon and left Hezbollah severely weakened.
"There have been positive movements where the Lebanese army and UNIFIL have taken the place of Hezbollah forces, as stipulated in the agreement," Israeli government spokesmen David Mencer told reporters, referring to UN peacekeepers in Leban

Russia’s crucial diesel attack submarines can likely no longer operate in the Mediterranean Sea, after Moscow appears to have been kicked out of its naval base in the Syrian port of Tartus.
The new Syrian government terminated a 49-year lease on the base the Kremlin brokered with the Bashar al-Assad regime in 2019, according to Russian and Syrian media reports.

Two Russian cargo ships that had been waiting offshore for three weeks were tracked entering the port on Tuesday and Wednesday to begin a probable evacuation.
It marks a major loss for Russia. The port at Tartus has played a vital role as a hub for its military presence in the Mediterranean, which it has increased over the past decade to support its operations in Africa.
Russia effectively lost its military use of the port in early December, when its fleet withdrew 10 miles off the coast as Moscow-backed dictator Assad was overthrown after a lightning-quick rebel offensive.

Any attempt to get Ukraine into Nato will run into a “buzz saw” in Washington unless Europe pays for it, a top diplomat for Donald Trump has said.
Richard Grenell, a US special presidential envoy, suggested that US taxpayers would not be prepared to fund Ukrainian membership of the Western alliance.

However, he appeared to leave the door open to expansion in future if European countries were prepared to shoulder more of the financial burden for defending the Continent.
Nato’s secretary general and the former prime minister of the Netherlands, warned that Russian president Vladimir Putin should not be allowed to “veto” Ukraine joining the military alliance.
Mr Grenell said: “I think you’re going to run into a big buzz saw in America if we have the Nato secretary general talking about adding Ukraine to Nato.

“You cannot ask the American people to expand the umbrella of Nato when the current members aren’t paying their fair share – and that includes the Dutch, who need to step up

North Korea's state media on Wednesday reported U.S. President Donald Trump's inauguration but without any commentary on his presidency, but did accuse the United States of committing atrocities during the 1950-53 Korean War.
The Rodong Sinmun, the ruling Workers' Party mouthpiece, published a brief article saying Trump was elected as the 47th president in a November election and an inauguration ceremony.

It did not elaborate and include any commentary on Trump or U.S. affairs, though the newspaper carried a photo of young students receiving propaganda education about the Korean War and "soaring in rage at the atrocities committed by the enemy, the U.S."

South Korea's National Intelligence Service told lawmakers last week that Pyongyang's recent missile tests were partly aimed at "showing off its U.S. deterrent assets and drawing Trump's attention" after vowing "the toughest anti-U.S. counteraction"

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte warned on Thursday that a Russian victory over Ukraine would undermine the dissuasive force of the world’s biggest military alliance and that its credibility could cost trillions to restore.
NATO has been ramping up its forces along its eastern flank with Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, deploying thousands of troops and equipment to deter Moscow from expanding its war into the territory of any of the organization’s 32 member countries.

“If Ukraine loses then to restore the deterrence of the rest of NATO again, it will be a much, much higher price than what we are contemplating at this moment in terms of ramping up our spending and ramping up our industrial production,” Rutte said.
“It will not be billions extra; it will be trillions extra,” he said, on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Rutte insisted that Ukraine’s Western backers must “step up and not scale back the support” they are providing to the country.

The Trump administration has moved with lightning speed to roll out the president’s immigration agenda, effectively closing off the US southern border to asylum seekers, severely limiting who’s eligible to enter the United States and laying the groundwork to swiftly deport migrants already in the country.

President Donald Trump signed a spate of executive actions that have already had wide-ranging impacts for people both inside and outside the US. By Wednesday, incoming refugee flights were canceled, troops were moving to the border, federal authorities were given permission to arrest people in or near schools and churches, and the pool of undocumented immigrants eligible for quick deportation without a judicial hearing was expanded.

Behind the scenes, federal agencies, like the Justice Department, were standing up their immigration crackdown, firing people in key leadership roles who oversee the nation’s immigration courts and threatening to prosecute state and local officials..

A surrendering North Korean soldier risked his life by refusing to drop his sausage at gunpoint, according to the Ukrainian paratroopers who captured him.
A detailed video account, published by Ukrainian special forces, described how the soldier refused to lay down his food, while one of his compatriots tried to kill himself by running into a pillar.

They later asked to watch Korean romance films, the Ukrainians said.
“He was lying there, with his head and an arm wounded. He had a grenade, a knife and a sausage on him,” one of the soldiers of Ukraine’s 95th Air Assault Brigade said.
“I asked him to drop everything, but he refused to drop the sausage because it was food, so we let him keep it.”
The brigade captured the two North Koreans alive on Jan 11 – the first of Pyongyang’s troops to be taken back to Kyiv for questioning.

After a failed North Korean assault on Ukrainian positions, the paratroopers said they found the first soldier lying in a trench, his head and arm wound

When U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson took the stage at Howard University in June of 1965, he had already signed the Civil Rights act into law, and he said he expected to sign the Voting Rights Act shortly.
The hard-fought legislation, crafted after widespread protests and demonstrations by Black Americans, was not enough, Johnson told Howard's historically Black university's graduating class. He laid out the vast economic gulf between Black and white Americans and his plans to address it.

Black poverty is not the same as white poverty, Johnson, a Democrat, said, it was also caused by "ancient brutality, past injustice and present prejudice."
Black Americans are still "buried under a blanket of history and circumstance. It is not a lasting solution to lift just one corner of that blanket. We must stand on all sides and we must raise the entire cover if we are to liberate our fellow citizens," he said.
Rather than improving, their situation was declining by many measures, Johnson

Putin is repeating a Soviet-era mistake, which is ruining Russia's economy, Poland's foreign minister said.
Speaking at Davos, Radoslaw Sikorski said Putin was overspending on the military and bankrupting Russia.
"He was very insistent that this mistake should not be repeated. And he's doing exactly that," he said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is copying Soviet-era approaches that bankrupted the USSR and that he used to criticize, according to Poland's foreign minister.
Speaking on a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday, Radoslaw Sikorski said "Putin is repeating the mistakes of Soviet leadership" in regards to his invasion of Ukraine.
"The Soviet Union took on the West and lost," he said.
Sikorski said that Putin "is on the record saying that under Brezhnev, the Soviet Union overspent on the military and bankrupted the country."

He said Putin was "very insistent that this mistake should not be repeated. And he's doing exactly that."

The U.S. military has moved its Typhon launchers - which can fire multipurpose missiles up to thousands of kilometres - from Laoag airfield in the Philippines to another location on the island of Luzon, a senior Philippine government source.
The Tomahawk cruise missiles in the launchers can hit targets in both China and Russia from the Philippines; the SM-6 missiles it also carries can strike air or sea targets more than 200 km (165 miles) away.

The senior Philippine government source said the redeployment would help determine where and how fast the missile battery could be moved to a new firing position. That mobility is seen as a way to make them more survivable during a conflict
Satellite images showed the batteries and their associated gear being loaded onto C-17 transport aircraft at Laoag International Airport in recent weeks, said Jeffrey Lewis of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. The Typhon system is part of a U.S. drive to amass a variety of anti-ship weapons

The Philippines will soon decide on an international platform to sue China for alleged damage to the marine environment, its justice minister said, as it pursues a second high-profile legal challenge against Beijing over the South China Sea.
The Philippines won a landmark case at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in 2016 that found China's sweeping claim of sovereignty in the South China Sea had no basis under international law. It now wants to hold Beijing accountable for what it says is its harvesting of giant clams and substantial environmental damage to coral reefs in the Philippines' exclusive economic zone.

"We're in discussion and the decision has to come very soon," Justice Secretary Crispin Remulla said, referring to which legal forum to file the case.
"The sins are really so obvious," he said. "In the end, this is the best way to attack. There are many ways of solving a problem, but this is one of the most novel ways." China was incensed by the 2016 arbitration case....

Syria's new authorities are using Islamic teachings to train a fledgling police force, a move officers say aims to instil a sense of morality as they race to fill a security vacuum after dismantling ousted president Bashar al-Assad's notoriously corrupt and brutal security forces.
Police they brought into Damascus from their former rebel enclave in the northwestern region of Idlib are asking applicants about their beliefs and focusing on Islamic sharia law in the brief training they offer recruits, according to five senior officers and application forms seen by Reuters.

Ensuring stability and winning the trust of people across Syria will be crucial for the Sunni Muslim Islamists to cement their rule. But the move to put religion at the centre of policing risks seeding new rifts in a diverse country awash with guns after 13 years of civil war and alienating foreign governments they have been trying to woo, regional analysts warn.

U.S. investment bank JPMorgan has downgraded its recommendation on Panama's bonds after U.S. President Donald Trump ramped up his threat this week to "take back" the Panama canal.
The Central American country's bonds have been struggling since Trump made the pledge during his election campaign, but JPMorgan's analysts said its prominence during his inauguration speech on Monday had ratcheted up the stakes.

The canal, which was once owned by the United States but was handed over to Panama decades ago, gives vessels a much shorter route between the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean.
While the two countries could end up resolving the issue, "the potential noise associated to the path that could get us there should cause markets to be increasingly sensitive to headline risks," the analysts warned.

Combined with "little clarity on the endgame" for Trump, they cut Panama's bonds to "market weight" from "overweight" - effectively a signal to exposed investors to scale back.

Panama has complained to the United Nations over US President Donald Trump's "worrying" threat to seize the Panama Canal, even as it launched an audit of the Hong Kong-linked operator of two ports on the interoceanic waterway.
In a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the government in Panama City referred to an article of the UN Charter precluding any member from "the threat or use of force" against the territorial integrity or political independence of another.

The missive, distributed to reporters Tuesday, urges Guterres to refer the matter to the UN Security Council, without asking for a meeting to be convened.
Trump, in his inaugural address Monday, repeated his complaint that China was effectively "operating" the Panama Canal through its growing presence around the waterway, which the United States handed over at the end of 1999.
"We didn't give it to China, we gave it to Panama. And we're taking it back," Trump said.

The Kremlin said Thursday it saw nothing new in US President Donald Trump's calls for Russia to end its military offensive in Ukraine, and that Moscow was ready for "mutually respectful" dialogue with him.
The US leader had on Wednesday threatened fresh sanctions on Moscow if Russia did not strike a deal to end its nearly three-year campaign against Ukraine.

Expectations are high that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump will soon hold a phone call to discuss the conflict, after the Republican pledged on the campaign trail to bring a swift end to the fighting.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia was "ready for equal, mutually respectful dialogue."
"We are waiting for signals, which we have not yet received," he added.

Trump has not said publicly how he sees the contours of a potential peace deal between Kyiv and Moscow.

Putin has outlined maximalist demands that include the Ukrainian withdrawal from parts of its own territory still under Kyiv's control.

Tech titan Elon Musk cast doubt Wednesday on a $500 billion AI project announced by US President Donald Trump, saying the money promised for the investment actually wasn't there.
The comments marked a rare instance of a split between the world's richest man and Trump, with Musk playing a key role in the newly installed administration after spending $270 million on the election campaign.

In his first full day in the White House, Trump on Tuesday announced a major investment to build infrastructure for artificial intelligence led by Japanese giant SoftBank and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI.
Trump said the venture, called Stargate, "will invest $500 billion, at least, in AI infrastructure in the United States."
But in a post on his social media platform X, Musk said the main investors "don't actually have the money."

"SoftBank has well under $10B secured. I have that on good authority," Musk added in a subsequent post.

'I Am Not Going to Apologize': Bishop Who Confronted Trump Speaks Out...
President Donald Trump lashed out on Wednesday at the bishop who had delivered a pointed plea directly at him on behalf of immigrants and LGBTQ+ children during a service at the National Cathedral a day earlier.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump called the Episcopal Bishop of Washington, Mariann Edgar Budde, a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater” who is “not very good at her job.” He said she “brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way” and demanded an apology.
Maybe because she's a lesbian...

Budde’s sermon may have been the only critical words Donald Trump heard during his first full day in office.
As Trump sat in the first pew of the National Cathedral on Tuesday during a traditional prayer service, Bishop Budde asked Trump “to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now.” Trump glared and shifted uncomfortably as she spoke.

God ordained president fighting as a TRUE Christian. Thanks President Donald J. Trump.
Donald Trump took to his Truth Social platform early Wednesday to rant about a pastor who called him out during her sermon at a prayer service at the Washington National Cathedral, while the president was in attendance.
The Right Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, asked Trump to have “mercy” on those “scared” about his return to the White House and the effect his policies may have on them, such as LGBTQ children and undocumented immigrants.
Trump, ripping Budde as a “so-called Bishop” who was a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater.”
“She brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way,” Trump fumed. “She was nasty in tone and not compelling or smart.”
Trump concluded: “Apart from her inappropriate statements, the service was a very boring and uninspiring one. She is not very good at her job! She and her church owe the public an apology!”

Chinese officials and ordinary people are hopeful but on edge as Donald Trump returns to the White House, eager to avoid a repeat of the bruising trade war that drove a wedge between the economic superpowers during his first term.

Chinese Vice President Han Zheng, in meetings with Tesla CEO Elon Musk and other members of the U.S. business community in Washington ahead of Trump's inauguration, said he hoped U.S. companies would "take root" in China and help to stabilise bilateral relations.
When Trump was last president, he heaped tariffs on more than $300 billion of Chinese imports. In recent months, he has said he would add tariffs of at least 10% on top of what is already imposed on Chinese goods, a move that would hurt China at a time when its economy is struggling to find a firm footing.
At the same time, the U.S. president-elect made the seemingly conciliatory move of inviting Chinese President Xi Jinping to attend his inauguration on Monday. Xi sent Han in his place.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday revoking the security clearances of 50 former intelligence officials, most of whom Republicans have accused of coordinating with Joe Biden's 2020 White House campaign.

All but one of the former intelligence officials signed a 2020 letter that said the public release of emails that reportedly belonged to Hunter Biden had "all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation." Trump also revoked the clearance of his former national security adviser, John Bolton, who became a vocal critic.

The letter signers Trump targeted include former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, an intelligence official who worked for Republican and Democratic administrations; former CIA Director Michael Hayden, who led the department under former President George W. Bush; his successor in Barack Obama's administration, Leon Panetta; and John Brennan, who held the role for much of Obama's second term.

President Donald Trump moved quickly to remake the Department of Homeland Security Tuesday, firing the heads of the Transportation Security Administration and Coast Guard before their terms are up and eliminated all the members of a key aviation security advisory group.

Trump's immigration policy changes drew the most attention at DHS, but he is also making changes at the rest of the massive agency.

Members of the Aviation Security Advisory Committee received a memo Tuesday saying that the department is eliminating the membership of all advisory committees as part of a “commitment to eliminating the misuse of resources and ensuring that DHS activities prioritize our national security.”

The aviation security committee, which was mandated by Congress after the 1988 PanAm 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, will technically continue to exist but it won't have any members to carry out the work of examining safety issues at airlines and airports.

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