Ex-first lady sentenced to 20 months for receiving gifts for political favours, as Yoon Suk Yeol awaits rebellion verdict
The wife of South Korea’s ousted president Yoon Suk Yeol has been sentenced to 20 months in prison for corruption, as her husband awaits a verdict on a high-stakes rebellion charge that could result in the death penalty or life imprisonment.
Kim Keon Hee was sentenced for receiving luxury gifts including a Graff diamond necklace and a Chanel bag from the Unification Church in return for promises of political favours.
In 20 years, Danish capital’s fashion week has pushed for greener standards and catapulted homegrown talent to global success
When it comes to fashion weeks, there used to be four key cities: New York, London, Milan and Paris. While they remain titleholders, a host of other cities from Berlin to Seoul and Lagos have been vying for the same recognition to become “the fifth fashion week”. But so far only one real winner has emerged: Copenhagen fashion week.
On Tuesday, the Danish showcase, which has helped catapult homegrown brands including Ganni into the international spotlight while spearheading sustainability initiatives, kicked off the start of its 20th-anniversary celebrations.
When Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web in 1989, his vision was clear: it would used by everyone, filled with everything and, crucially, it would be free.
Today, the British computer scientist’s creation is regularly used by 5.5 billion people – and bears little resemblance to the democratic force for humanity he intended.
Most people don’t relish being locked in a confined space, in close proximity to strangers, travelling at speed. And yet, so many people do nothing to elevate the experience for others.
I am floored at the enthusiasm of people who stand at the crack of elevator doors waiting for them to open, as if it were 9am at the Black Friday sales. When the doors open, they recoil in surprise – presumably they were expecting to be the first passengers on the maiden voyage of this metal tube sliding up and down the building’s shaft.
If you’re wearing tight clothes and flashing your ankles, you may want to make some bold changes
Is your wardrobe cringe? Does it make you look out-of-touch and cause younger and cooler people to look upon you with pity? Do you really want me to answer that? Never mind, I’m going to anyway, so buckle up. Brutal honesty is very January, so I will give it to you straight. But before we get down to dissecting your wardrobe, two quick questions for you. Do you put full stops in text messages? Were you baffled by Labubus? If the answer to those two questions is yes, then I’m afraid the signs are that your wardrobe is almost certainly cringe.
Being cringe is essentially being old-fashioned, but worse. Being old-fashioned is what happens when you grow older with grace and dignity. Cringe is when you lose your touch while convincing yourself you are still down with the kids.
Briton has been training in Thailand ahead of his return
Tyson Fury is to make his comeback against Arslanbek Makhmudov on April 11 in a fight that will be screened on Netflix.
Fury announced his retirement a year ago in the wake of successive defeats to Oleksandr Usyk but has been training in Thailand ahead of his return to the ring. The venue for the bout will be announced later.
US president says armada heading towards Iran is ‘prepared to fulfil its missions with violence if necessary’
The threat of a US-Iranian war may be looming closer after Donald Trump warned time was running out for Tehran and said a massive US armada was moving quickly towards the country “with great power, enthusiasm and purpose”.
Writing on social media, the US president said the fleet headed by the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln was larger than the one sent to Venezuela before the removal of Nicolás Maduro earlier this month and was “prepared to rapidly fulfill its missions with speed and violence if necessary”.
Gergely Karácsony urged people to take to streets in June in pushback against Orbán government’s attack on rights
Prosecutors in Hungary have filed charges against the progressive mayor of Budapest, seeking to fine him months after hundreds of thousands of people heeded his call to take to the streets in defiance of the government’s ban on Pride.
The June march made headlines around the world after the ruling Fidesz party, led by the rightwing populist prime minister, Viktor Orbán, backed legislation that created a legal basis for Pride to be banned, citing a widely criticised need to protect children.
In a new weekly column about the world of classical music, Tom Service bemoans Hollywood turning pieces into slop through overuse. Plus: Philip Glass withdraws his symphony from the Kennedy Center
Back in 2008, Transport for London came up with a ruse to dispel antisocial behaviour: it piped classical music into supposedly problematic stations in the crime hotspots of south London. I think that was when I realised just how far the association of classical music with relaxing affect instead of real emotion had gone. Once an entire genre has become associated with relaxification, it’s enough for you to hear the sound of an orchestra and think, “This isn’t for me”. Whatever its BPM, classical music will only be a backdrop, the sound of luxury goods, the sound of cultural anaesthetic.
The playlist included the finale of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony – music that is obsessive and wild, the sound of barely controlled hysteria, full of harmonic grind and rhythmic assault. This radical and Dionysian music, that was literally made to push communities of orchestras and listeners to their extremes in the early 19th century, was being reduced to calming and inoffensive aural wallpaper.
Charles Victor Thompson would be the first person executed in the US this year for the 1998 shooting deaths
A Texas man who at one time escaped from custody and was on the run for three days after being sentenced to death for fatally shooting his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend nearly 27 years ago was scheduled on Wednesday to be the first person executed in the US this year.
Charles Victor Thompson was condemned for the April 1998 shooting deaths of his ex-girlfriend, Glenda Dennise Hayslip, 39; and her new boyfriend, Darren Keith Cain, 30, at her apartment in the Houston suburb of Tomball.
Iraq’s former prime minister Nouri al-Maliki has angrily denounced “blatant American interference” in the country’s election after Donald Trump threatened to withdraw US support if he was returned to power.
“We reject the blatant American interference in Iraq’s internal affairs and consider it a violation of its sovereignty,” al-Maliki, who is nominated by the country’s dominant political bloc to return to the premiership, said in a statement on Wednesday.
Hello and welcome to The Long Wave. This week, distressing scenes continue to unfold on the streets of Minneapolis, as confrontations between US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and protesters intensify. Behind the headlines, there are communities, in the US and beyond, for whom this is a generationally traumatic moment. I spoke to Somali experts and activists across the diaspora, in Mogadishu, and in the state of Minnesota, which has the largest Somali community in the US. The picture that emerged was of anxiety but also solid resolve.
For almost all of his second term, Donald Trump has been fixated on Somali Americans, making derogatory comments about both them and Somalia, linking his opinion of them to justify anti-immigration policies in general, but particularly in Minnesota, a state that is home to more than 100,000 people of Somali descent. He appears to be particularly personally exercised by Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who is of Somali origin, and who has exchanged barbs with him, taking his revenge on her entire demographic. So deep is his hatred that when Omar was attacked this week by a man who sprayed her with an unknown substance, Trump responded by calling her a fraud who “probably had herself sprayed”. But the broad reason for picking on the Somali community, according to Prof Idil Abdi Osman, at Leicester University, is that it is convenient. The shift towards the right in Europe and the US, she told me, constitutes a “political thunderstorm” that “Somalis have become absorbed in” because “they become an embodiment of the kind of communities that Trump can easily target and use as a scapegoat – that is convenient for the populist narrative”.
Veteran dropped for alleged outburst at match officials
Andy Farrell dealt further blow by Hugo Keenan injury
Ireland are set to kick off the Six Nations next week without two of their most influential and experienced backline players. Bundee Aki and Hugo Keenan, key members of last year’s British & Irish Lions tour to Australia, should have been involved against France next week but are now facing spells on the sidelines for contrasting reasons.
Aki has not travelled to Ireland’s training camp in Portugal following a “misconduct complaint” relating to an alleged post-match incident with match officials at the weekend after Connacht’s URC game against Leinster.
Christian Democrats and VVD join centrist D66 party three months after surprise win left fragmented parliament
The leaders of three Dutch political parties have agreed a new coalition deal, paving the way for a rare minority government in the Netherlands almost three months after elections that produced an upset victory for the centrist D66 party.
The liberal-progressive, pro-European party, led by the probable new prime minister,Rob Jetten, will join up with the conservative Christian Democrats and the right-wing VVD in a government that holds only 66 seats in the 150-seat lower house.
Snow athletes have rebounded with a radical overhaul after funding was cut in response to poor results at Beijing Winter Olympics
Just days before the Winter Olympics in Milano-Cortina, the young Team GB members who think nothing of flying 30ft in the air while spinning like gyroscopes have once again proved they have the X Factor. Last Friday, Mia Brookes, 19, soared to X Games gold in the snowboard slopestyle in Aspen. Zoe Atkin, 23, followed suit in the freeski superpipe and before the weekend was through Kirsty Muir, 21, added a third gold in the freeski slopestyle, along with a big air silver.
All told it was a hugely successful time for GB Snowsport, with Charlotte Bankes winning her first World Cup snowboard cross event since breaking her collarbone in April in China the previous week. Little wonder, then, that Atkin is bullish about the British skiers’ and snowboarders’ chances in Italy.
Secretary of state does not rule out further US military action in Venezuela, according to prepared remarks
The Trump administration is ready to take new military action against Venezuela if the country’s interim leadership strays from US expectations, according to Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state.
In prepared testimony for a hearing before the Senate foreign relations committee, Rubio says the US is not at war with Venezuela and that its interim leaders are cooperating, but he notes that the Trump administration would not rule out using additional force following the capture of Nicolás Maduro early this month.
In the fast-paced, almost psychotically unforgiving video game business, you really do have to stick the landing. Launching a new game is an artform in itself – do you go for months of slowly building hype or a sudden shock reveal, simultaneously announcing and releasing a new project in one fell swoop? The latter worked incredibly well for online shooter Apex Legends, which remains one of the genre’s stalwarts six years after its surprise launch on 4 February 2019. What you don’t do with a new release, is something that falls awkwardly between those two approaches. Enter Highguard.
This new online multiplayer title from newcomer Wildlight Entertainment has an excellent pedigree. The studio was formed by ex-Respawn Entertainment staff, most of whom previously worked on Titanfall, Call of Duty and the aforementioned Apex Legends. They know what they’re doing. But the launch has been … troubled.
Thinktank says about 1.2m Russians troops killed, wounded or missing to date and 600,000 Ukrainians
The number of Russian and Ukrainian troops killed, wounded or gone missing in nearly four years of war could reach 2 million by this spring, according to a study, as Moscow’s invasion shows no sign of abating.
A report by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) estimates Russia has had about 1.2 million casualties, including as many as 325,000 deaths, while close to 600,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed, wounded or gone missing.
‘It’s a Grand Slam, it’s always very difficult against Novak’
Jannik Sinner says his semi-final meeting with Novak Djokovic presents one of the toughest challenges in tennis after defeating Ben Shelton on Wednesday afternoon. “It’s very difficult,” Sinner said. “It’s one of the toughest challenges we have in our sport. It’s great to have Novak playing at this very, very high level. It’s a Grand Slam, it’s always very difficult against Novak. Let’s see what’s coming.”
Sinner’s 6-3, 6-4, 6-4 quarter-final victory over the seventh seed extended his commanding record against Shelton to 9-1, with Sinner winning 22 consecutive sets since the 23-year-old American won their first meeting. Such dominance over one of the best young players in the world indicates just how far ahead Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz are of the rest of the field.
Trump calls Minnesota congresswoman a ‘fraud’ who ‘probably had herself sprayed’; Omar says ‘I don’t let bullies win’ in remarks after town hall attack
Late last night and early in the morning, lawmakers from both parties came out to condemn the spraying attack on Ilhan Omar during her town hall in Minneapolis.
Limelight, Belfast At 73, the lodestar of Americana still writes with urgency, as the patient force of her band sends the music grooving skywards
‘Thanks for being receptive to my complaining,” Lucinda Williams says late on, deadpan, after a run of songs circling power and consequence. Outside, Storm Chandra keeps the streets jumpy. Inside Belfast’s Limelight, a sold-out crowd sits on fold-up seats for a show shifted from Mandela Hall at short notice, the room oddly calm for a venue known for sweat and shoving.
Williams is a lodestar in the broad galaxy of music still called Americana, and two days after turning 73, she has the authority of a multiple Grammy winner who writes with urgency. She is living with the after-effects of a stroke, stepping on and off stage with care, yet once she’s behind the mic she radiates resolve. If anything, the voice sounds newly burnished; the phrasing more deliberate, the vibrato catching the light.
Outrage followed ‘would-be assassin’ lie but experts say architect of ICE drive too dominant a figure to be shunned
Pressure is growing on the key White House senior adviser Stephen Miller over the killing of the intensive care nurse Alex Pretti by border patrol agents in Minneapolis and its politically divisive aftermath.
Miller, the architect of Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policy, finds himself in the rare position of being contradicted and excluded from crucial decisions by the US president.
A year into Trump’s second term, critics say the EPA is rolling back dozens of protections and giving a leg up to polluters
After a tumultuous year under the Trump administration, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has adopted a new, almost unrecognizable guise – one that tears up environmental rules and cheerleads for coal, gas-guzzling cars and artificial intelligence.
When Donald Trump took power, it was widely anticipated the EPA would loosen pollution rules from sources such as cars, trucks and power plants, as part of a longstanding back and forth between administrations over how strict such standards should be.
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