Police seeking to arrest South Korea’s Yoon Suk Yeol clash with supporters

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Officials move to detain impeached president after previous failure to execute warrant

South Korean investigators seeking to arrest the impeached president, Yoon Suk Yeol, have clashed with his supporters as they launched a fresh attempt to execute an arrest warrant over insurrection accusations related to his 3 December declaration of martial law.

Video footage showed investigating officers from the Corruption Investigation Office (CIO) trying to push through a crowd of Yoon’s supporters gathered outside his hillside villa in Seoul, where he has been holed up for weeks behind barbed wire and a small army of personal security.

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FBI releases more details on how New Orleans attacker planned his rampage

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Authorities piece together timeline of radicalization of Shamsud-Din Jabbar, the US army veteran behind the attack

Before plowing a pickup truck into a crowd of New Year’s revelers in New Orleans and killing 14 people, the man who carried out the Islamic State group-inspired attack had researched how to access a balcony on the city’s famed Bourbon Street and looked up information about a similar attack at a Christmas market in Germany, the FBI said.

Nearly two weeks after Shamsud-Din Jabbar’s rampage, the FBI continues to uncover new information detailing the extensive planning by the 42-year-old US army veteran who scouted out the area multiple times in the months leading up to the attack. Authorities have also been piecing together a timeline of his radicalization.

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NATO launches new naval operation in Baltic Sea after severing of cables – The Washington Post

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  1. NATO launches new naval operation in Baltic Sea after severing of cables  The Washington Post
  2. International underwater cable attacks by Russia, China are no ‘mere coincidence’ warns EU’s top diplomat  Fox News
  3. News: NATO launches 'Baltic Sentry' to increase critical infrastructure security, 14-Jan.-2025  NATO HQ
  4. US allies' undersea cables are cut, world looks to Russia and China  NBC News
  5. The shadowy war on subsea cables and pipelines  Financial Times
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France’s Bayrou buys himself time with overture to Socialists – POLITICO Europe

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  1. France’s Bayrou buys himself time with overture to Socialists  POLITICO Europe
  2. French Socialist Party raises threat of backing no-confidence vote against government  Reuters.com
  3. French Prime Minister Signals He Will Revisit Unpopular Retirement Law  The New York Times
  4. France’s new prime minister says he'll renegotiate a contested plan to raise the retirement age  The Associated Press
  5. French PM Bayrou to re-open talks on Macron's unpopular pension reform  FRANCE 24 English
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Russia is on pace to run out of financial reserves by this fall, which would cripple war efforts, economist says – Business Insider

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  1. Russia is on pace to run out of financial reserves by this fall, which would cripple war efforts, economist says  Business Insider
  2. Russia's Hidden War Debt Creates a Looming Credit Crisis  The Moscow Times
  3. Russia Inflation Set to Jump at Year-End as Ukraine War Pushes Up Prices  Bloomberg
  4. Russian Economy Time Bomb: Putin Warned of 'Seismically Disruptive' War Debt  Newsweek
  5. Russia’s economic dilemmas give Trump important leverage in negotiations on Ukraine. But will he use it?  Chatham House
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Who is Tulip Siddiq, niece of deposed Bangladeshi PM who quit Treasury role?

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Former Labour minister’s family background is indelibly bound up with Bangladesh

When Keir Starmer became the Labour leader in 2020, Tulip Siddiq described him in her local paper as a “good friend through thick and thin”.

On Tuesday, she found out where the limits of that friendship lay after the prime minister accepted her resignation from the government after weeks of revelations about Siddiq’s closeness to her aunt, the former prime minister of Bangladesh.

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Giving Tulip Siddiq anti-corruption job seen by insiders as own goal

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Some in No 10 wish they had thought a bit more about how it looked before giving job to niece of ousted Bangladesh PM

The warning signs were always there. When a photo of Tulip Siddiq standing alongside Vladimir Putin and her aunt, the now ousted leader of Bangladesh, emerged in 2015, alarm bells rang within the Labour party.

At the time, Siddiq was the Labour candidate for the marginal seat of Hampstead and Kilburn. Yet she brushed aside concerns over her presence at the signing of a billion-dollar arms deal and nuclear power project at the Kremlin two years earlier.

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Andrew Malkinson calls miscarriage of justice watchdog’s ex-head ‘shameless’

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Helen Pitcher resigned from the CCRC saying she had been ‘scapegoated’ over Malkinson’s case

Andrew Malkinson has called the former head of the miscarriage of justice watchdog “shameless” as she resigned from the job saying she had been “scapegoated for entirely legitimate decisions” taken over his case.

Helen Pitcher handed in her resignation as chair of the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) on Tuesday afternoon after learning that an independent panel had concluded by a majority of two to one that she was no longer fit to be chair.

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Insurance firms are sending firefighters to defend homes amid LA wildfires

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Private efforts to combat wildfires are not just for the superrich – many work for insurers seeking to minimize the policies they’d have to pay out

When a wildfire started spreading through the Pacific Palisades last Tuesday morning, employees of Wildfire Defense Systems, which provides “loss intervention services” to insurance companies, were already nearby, Dave Torgerson, the company’s founder, said.

Once they arrived at the scene, the private company’s workers stood back for a while, waiting for the government firefighters to complete the most urgent life-saving efforts. When they got clearance from public fire officials, they started their job, which focuses on protecting insured homes and businesses, Torgerson said.

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Ban on naming Sara Sharif care case judges would have ‘corrosive impact’, court told

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Media organisations are challenging ruling that they cannot name three judges involved in proceedings relating to 10-year-old who was later murdered

A unprecedented ban on naming judges who oversaw proceedings related to the care of Sara Sharif before she was murdered is likely to have a “corrosive impact” on public confidence in the justice system, the court of appeal has been told.

Mr Justice Williams ruled in December that the media could not name three judges who oversaw three sets of family court proceedings relating to the 10-year-old schoolgirl over concerns they would be subject to a “virtual lynch mob”. He also said he did not believe the media could be trusted to report matters in a fair, accurate and responsible way.

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‘I’m not perfect’: Pete Hegseth testifies on sexual assault and drinking claims

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Trump Pentagon pick grilled by Democrats at Senate confirmation hearing amid concerns of his personal history

Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s pick for US secretary of defense, defended his record in a contentious Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday, acknowledging he was “not a perfect person” as Democratic lawmakers grilled the military veteran and Fox News host on allegations of sexual assault, excessive alcohol use and financial mismanagement.

Hegseth can only afford to lose the votes of three Senate Republicans, assuming every Democratic senator opposes his nomination, but none appeared ready to break ranks despite some having previously voiced concerns about Hegseth’s personal history and his views on women in the military.

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