Park Geun-hye, South Korea’s Ousted President, Gets 24 Years in Prison

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Park Geun-hye, South Korea’s Ousted President, Gets 24 Years in Prison Photo Supporters of former President Park Geun-hye of South Korea calling for her release on Friday, near the courthouse in Seoul where she was sentenced. Credit Ahn Young-Joon/Associated Press SEOUL, South Korea — Park Geun-hye, South Korea’s impeached and ousted president, was sentenced on Friday to 24 years in prison on a variety of criminal charges, in a case that exposed the entrenched, collusive ties between South Korea’s government and huge conglomerates like Samsung.
A three-judge panel at the Seoul Central District Court also ordered Ms. Park to pay $17 million in fines, in a ruling that marked a climactic moment in an influence-peddling scandal that shook the country’s political and business worlds.
Ms. Park’s conviction on bribery, coercion, abuse of power and other charges was the first lower-court ruling on a criminal case to be broadcast live in South Korea. She is the country’s first former leader to ..

Volokolamsk journal: ‘When a City of 40,000 People Gets Poisoned, They Don’t Care’

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‘When a City of 40,000 People Gets Poisoned, They Don’t Care’ Photo An aerial view of the Yadrovo landfill site near the town of Volokolamsk, west of Moscow. Credit Dmitry Serebryakov/Associated Press VOLOKOLAMSK, Russia — Five years ago, Aleksei G. Stelmakh thought he had built his little wooden house in one of the best neighborhoods around Moscow. Every day he could walk out onto his porch, breathe fresh air and scan the picturesque pine forest nearby.
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By The New York Times Now, all he sees is a giant landfill, a heap of trash about 100 feet tall, so big that trucks on it look like insects. The fresh air is now s..

Yulia Skripal Is Awake and at the Center of a Russia-U.K. Confrontation

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Yulia Skripal Is Awake and at the Center of a Russia-U.K. Confrontation Photo A picture of Yulia Skripal obtained from her Facebook account. A month after being poisoned by a rare nerve agent, she is awake and talking. Credit Yulia Skripal LONDON — Russian television broadcast a telephone recording on Thursday said to be of Yulia Skripal, who was poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent a month ago and is at the center of an escalating confrontation between Russia and Britain.
In the recording, which the Rossiya 24 news announcer emphasized could not be verified, Ms. Skripal tells her cousin Viktoria that both she and her father, Sergei V. Skripal, are healthy, and that neither of them have suffered long-term health damage from the poisoning.
The recording contradicted public statements by the British authorities, who have described Mr. Skripal’s condition as “critical but stable,” and said that only Ms. Skripal was conscious.
Within hours of the program’s broadcast, the British poli..

Pentagon Wades Deeper Into Detainee Operations in Syria

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Pentagon Wades Deeper Into Detainee Operations in Syria Photo A Bahraini man suspected of aiding ISIS was detained by Kurdish forces in Syria in February. Several thousand detainees are being held in camps in northern Syria, American and Kurdish officials said. Credit Delil Souleiman/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images WASHINGTON — The United States military is spending about $1 million to help detain thousands of Islamic State fighters and their family members in makeshift camps run by Kurdish militias in northern Syria, pulling the Pentagon deeper into the war zone detention operations it has sought to avoid.
The dilemma is unfolding even as President Trump has pledged to withdraw the 2,000 remaining United States troops in Syria, many of whom are vetting the most dangerous detainees, and suspend more than $200 million in State Department recovery funds for the country.
Defense Department and Kurdish officials said several thousand detainees — including at least 400 fighters from mor..