Aurelia Butler

The statement by Han Dong-hoon makes it more likely that President Yoon Suk Yeol will be impeached in a parliamentary vote on Saturday.In a surprise about-face, the leader of President Yoon Suk Yeol’s governing party said on Friday that he supported the impeachment of the president, calling him unfit to lead South Korea after his short-lived martial law decree catapulted the country’s democracy into turmoil.“I think that President Yoon Suk Yeol should be suspended from office as soon as possible,” said Han Dong-hoon, the leader of the People Power Party, or P.P.P., during an emergency party leadership meeting.It was not clear how many members of the party shared Mr. Han’s view. But his comments increased the likelihood that the impeachment bill against Mr. Yoon would gain enough support to pass through the National Assembly. A vote is scheduled for Saturday evening. The bill needs two-thirds of the 300-member Assembly to pass. With all 192 opposition lawmakers supporting the bill, they would need at least eight votes from the 108 legislators in Mr. Yoon’s governing camp to impeach the president.How the Impeachment of South Korea’s President Could UnfoldA detailed look at each stage of the impeachment process, and what is to come for President Yoon.The opposition party proposed impeaching Mr. Yoon this week, arguing that he had committed “insurgency” and other anti-constitutional crimes when he declared martial law on Tuesday night. He banned all political activities and sent troops to take over the National Assembly. Legislation on martial law banned such acts, the opposition said in its impeachment bill formally submitted on Thursday.If impeached, Mr. Yoon would be suspended from office until the Constitutional Court decides whether to reinstate or remove him.Mr. Yoon’s martial law lasted only six hours, until early Wednesday. He was forced to lift it following the Assembly’s vote to reject the military rule. But the short-lived episode, which the opposition likened to a failed “palace coup” by an extremely unpopular leader, triggered outrage across South Korea. Even if briefly, it also exposed the fragility of the democracy South Koreans have been proud of.On Thursday, Mr. Han said he opposed impeaching Mr. Yoon for fear of creating more national confusion. But on Friday he said, “There is fear that if President Yoon stays in office, he may repeat extreme actions like martial law.”“If that happens, South Korea and its people will fall into a bigger crisis,” he said.Some opposition lawmakers have warned that Mr. Yoon might attempt to impose martial again out of desperation. More

“Purity tests are not a recipe for long-term success,” the former president said in the speech in Chicago.In his first speech since the presidential election in November, Barack Obama urged Americans who want democracy to survive to look for ways to compromise, engage with the other side, turn away from identity politics and build relationships with unlikely potential allies.“Pluralism is not about holding hands and singing ‘Kumbaya,’” Mr. Obama said in Chicago on Thursday. “It is not about abandoning your convictions and folding when things get tough. It is about recognizing that, in a democracy, power comes from forging alliances and building coalitions, and making room in those coalitions not only for the woke, but the waking.”He added: “Purity tests are not a recipe for long-term success.”Billed as an address on “the power of pluralism,” the speech — a road map of sorts for political survival for liberals in a second term for Donald J. Trump — was delivered before hundreds of people as part of an annual Democracy Forum put on by the Obama Foundation, a private nonprofit entity that is led by Mr. Obama.Mr. Obama opened the speech with an acknowledgment that when he told friends of the focus of this year’s forum, the topic drew groans and eye rolls.“We’ve just been through a fierce, hard-fought election, and it’s fair to say that it did not turn out as they had hoped,” said Mr. Obama, who had, along with his wife, Michelle, campaigned intensely for Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate, in the final weeks.For Mr. Obama’s friends, he said, talk of bridging differences in a bitterly divided country seemed like an academic exercise.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

President-elect Donald J. Trump has named one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent conservative investors, donors and media personalities to help oversee American tech policy.David Sacks, a venture capitalist and an early executive at PayPal who launched a hit podcast, will be the “White House A.I. and Crypto Czar,” the president-elect announced in a social media post on Thursday. Mr. Sacks is a close friend of Elon Musk, and Mr. Sacks has been among the people over the last year or so encouraging Mr. Musk to delve deeper into Republican politics.The position will be new, and further cements the expectation that the Trump White House intends to take a lighter hand with the regulation of technology and in particular cryptocurrencies, which have surged in value since Mr. Trump won the election and in which Mr. Trump personally has a business interest. Mr. Sacks, who leads a venture capital firm called Craft Ventures, has in general called for a more permissive policy on both cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence.Mr. Sacks won a battle within the Trump transition effort. Some people were pitching Mr. Trump’s team on separate positions where different people would oversee artificial intelligence and crypto, according to a person close to the process. But Mr. Sacks was chosen to oversee them all together in a joint appointment.“David will guide policy for the Administration in Artificial Intelligence and Cryptocurrency, two areas critical to the future of American competitiveness,” Mr. Trump said on Thursday evening. “David will focus on making America the clear global leader in both areas.”It is not clear if his role will be full time; Mr. Sacks has previously told friends that he did not want a formal role because it would require him to leave his position overseeing his venture capital fund, The New York Times has previously reported. Mr. Sacks announced a new start-up funding round led by his firm just this week.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Benoist de Sinety, former vicar general of Paris, was on his scooter that April evening in 2019, driving across the Pont Neuf toward the Left Bank when he spotted flames in his rearview mirror billowing from under the eaves of Notre-Dame. He cursed, made a U-turn and sped toward the cathedral. Mary Queen of Scots […] More

The House on Thursday night blocked the release of a damaging Ethics Committee report about former Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, as Republicans voted to bury it, an expected move that makes it less likely the materials will ever be made public.Republicans closed ranks to turn back two nearly identical Democratic-written resolutions that would have forced the release of the report on the ethics panel’s yearslong investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct and illicit drug use by the former congressman.They did so by moving to refer both measures back to the committee, which has so far refused to make public its conclusions.The vote on the first resolution was 206 to 198, almost entirely along party lines, with nearly all Republicans voting to block the report’s release and Democrats voting to make it public. The vote on the second measure, which included language about preserving the records but also demanded their release, was 204 to 198, also almost all along party lines.Just one Republican, Representative Tom McClintock of California, sided with the Democrats.Democrats have continued to press for the release of the ethics report, even though Mr. Gaetz has resigned from Congress and removed himself as President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice for attorney general, at least in part because the ethics report was complicating his confirmation process.Speaker Mike Johnson has said that because Mr. Gaetz is no longer a sitting member of Congress, the release of the report would set a bad precedent in the House and has urged the Republican-led committee not to release its findings.Democrats have argued that burying the report is concealing credible allegations of sexual misconduct.“No workplace would allow that information to be swept under the rug simply because someone resigned from office,” Representative Sean Casten, the Illinois Democrat who has spearheaded the move to release the report, told ABC News.Mr. Gaetz has denied all of the allegations.Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the House majority leader, called the question of releasing the report “moot” since Mr. Gaetz has resigned.Tom Brenner for The New York Times“The member being referenced in the resolution has actually resigned from the House of Representatives; therefore, the question is moot,” Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the House majority leader, said on the floor Thursday night, moving to refer the resolution back to the committee.Since 2021, the House Ethics Committee has been investigating allegations about Mr. Gaetz. That year, it opened an inquiry into sexual misconduct allegations as well as claims that Mr. Gaetz misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use, accepted impermissible gifts under House rules, and shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, among other transgressions.The secretive, bipartisan committee met earlier on Thursday for close to three hours to discuss the report, but all of its members were mum as they left the meeting.After the session, the committee issued a terse statement saying that it “met today to discuss the matter of Representative Matt Gaetz. The committee is continuing to discuss the matter. There will be no further statements other than in accordance with committee and House rules.” More

State and local officials were working to assess the full scope of the damage, but early reports appeared to show that the quake did not cause major destruction.An earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 struck off the coast of Northern California on Thursday, briefly prompting a tsunami warning and leaving residents rattled from Southern Oregon to the San Joaquin Valley in California.State and local officials in California were working to assess the full scope of the damage, and early reports appeared to show that the earthquake did not cause major destruction. But it was the strongest to shake the state in more than five years.Here’s what we know so far.Where did the earthquake hit?The quake struck about 30 miles off the California coast a little before 11 a.m. local time, about 62 miles southwest of Ferndale, which has a population of about 1,300 people. It hit near a seismically active area known as the Mendocino Triple Junction, where three major tectonic plates meet.More than a dozen aftershocks were reported after the initial earthquake, including one with a magnitude of 4.3. The aftershocks could continue for weeks, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.Stephen DeLong, a geologist with the Earthquake Science Center at the U.S.G.S., said in a news briefing on Thursday that those closest to the epicenter, including residents of Ferndale, were the most likely to feel shaking or see any damage.The quake was the strongest to hit California since July 2019, when an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.1 hit near Ridgecrest in the Mojave Desert.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

With his surfboard tucked under his arm, Alex Felton was about to walk a couple of blocks to San Francisco’s Ocean Beach on Thursday morning when his cellphone blared. “TSUNAMI WARNING!” an alert screamed. “You are in danger.”A lifelong surfer, Mr. Felton, 31, has ridden 10-foot waves at Ocean Beach many times. He considered jumping into the ocean anyway, he acknowledged later. But texts from friends convinced him to follow the alert’s directions and move away from the coast, not toward it.Which friends were worried that he might make a bad decision? “All of them,” he said with a grin.Bay Area residents rode a metaphorical wave together on Thursday, after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake off the California coast shook the ground for hundreds of miles and prompted the National Weather Service to issue a tsunami warning for coastal counties in Northern California and southern Oregon.First, blaring phone alerts scared the wits out of people across the region, their hearts pounding as they wondered what sort of disaster-movie-type scenario was about to occur. Then they calmed down and even laughed as the alert was called off about an hour later.“It was a lot to take in, in the moment,” said Johnny Williams, who owns a bookstore in Berkeley. “It felt like a science fiction movie.”Alex Felton, right, working the afternoon shift at Aqua Surf Shop in San Francisco. His planned morning surf session was interrupted by a tsunami warning. Loren Elliott for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

About five minutes after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Northern California on Thursday morning, forecasters issued a tsunami warning at the highest of four levels.The warning, sent shortly before 11 a.m. Pacific Time, advised people to evacuate because of the potential for waves that could “injure or kill people and weaken or destroy buildings.” It was part of the National Tsunami Warning Center’s protocol in response to an earthquake, according to Dave Snider, a tsunami warning coordinator at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The warning was canceled about an hour later, but Mr. Snider said it was typical for a broad alert to be issued initially before it was refined or rolled back.In the first five minutes of an earthquake, the warning center acts quickly to decide whether to issue an alert and at which level, based on the magnitude and the location “because that’s all we have” at that point, Mr. Snider said.Then, about 20 minutes after a quake strikes, the center receives more details that can inform whether a warning should remain active.The center continued monitoring data from deep ocean sensors and coastal tide stations on Thursday, watching for “any very small and local problems to develop from underwater landslides,” Mr. Snider said. After determining that no tsunami was occurring, the center canceled the warning at 11:54 a.m.The warning center takes care with its decision to issue a tsunami warning, Mr. Snider said. “That’s a big deal.” More