Aurelia Butler

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    President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea Declares Martial Law, Then Backs Down

    Soon after President Yoon Suk Yeol’s declaration on Tuesday, lawmakers voted to defy him, prompting the president to say he was lifting his order.President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea declared emergency martial law on Tuesday night, then reversed himself hours later as thousands of protesters flooded the streets, capping an extraordinary night of tumult in the deeply divided country.The threat of military rule had brought political chaos to one of America’s closest allies in Asia and carried echoes of South Korea’s postwar years of military rule and political violence.But Mr. Yoon’s gambit appeared to quickly backfire, leaving his political future uncertain and the opposition baying for his impeachment.His announcement imposing martial law, at 10:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday, had immediately raised questions over whether the president could commandeer such a highly developed industrialized democracy.Before dawn on Wednesday, those questions appeared to be answered.The National Assembly quickly passed a resolution demanding an end to martial law, and Mr. Yoon backed down, saying he would lift his emergency declaration just five and a half hours after he had issued it.Martial law was formally lifted at a Cabinet meeting early Wednesday.President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea declared emergency martial law on Tuesday evening.Ahn Young-Joon/Associated PressWe 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

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    Montana Lawmakers Reject Bid to Restrict Bathroom Use for Trans Legislators

    The proposal would have effectively barred transgender women from using the State Capitol restroom for female lawmakers. Some Republicans joined Democrats in voting it down.State lawmakers in Montana on Tuesday rejected a proposal that could have restricted bathroom access for transgender lawmakers at the State Capitol in Helena.The decision came down to a narrow vote in the Legislature’s joint rules committee. All Democrats opposed the measure. Several Republicans argued against it, too.“This particular action will have the effect of making people famous in the national news,” Representative David Bedey, a Republican from Hamilton, said during the committee meeting, “and will not contribute to the effective conduct of our business.”The proposal, which addressed the restrooms reserved for lawmakers between the House and Senate chambers, would have effectively barred transgender people from using the bathrooms that align with their gender identities.Representative Jerry Schillinger, a Republican from Circle who sponsored the measure, said it would ensure that “the gals’ restroom will be used only by gals, and the guys’ restroom will be used only by guys.”The debate over the measure came about a month after the re-election of Zooey Zephyr, a Democrat from Missoula and a transgender woman who is now beginning her second term in the State House.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

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    Children Worked Dangerous Shifts at Iowa Slaughterhouse, Inquiry Finds

    Qvest Sanitation was ordered to pay nearly $172,000 after the Labor Department found it had employed 11 children to clean equipment on overnight shifts at a pork processing plant in Sioux City, Iowa.An Oklahoma-based cleaning company has been fined nearly $172,000 after federal investigators found that it had hired nearly a dozen children to work dangerous overnight shifts at an Iowa slaughterhouse.The 11 children were hired by Qvest Sanitation of Guymon, Okla., to work at a pork processing plant in Sioux City, Iowa, operated by Seaboard Triumph Foods, the Labor Department said. The children used corrosive cleaners to wash equipment, including head splitters, jaw pullers, band saws and neck clippers, the department said last week.The department did not say how old the children were when they were working in the plant.Adam Greer, Qvest’s vice president of operations, said in a statement that the company had not been able to confirm the allegations because the Labor Department “has declined to provide us with any names or specific information related to the alleged violations.”“In spite of this, Qvest has not only fully cooperated with the Department of Labor but is and has been committed to strengthening our onboarding process,” he said.It was the second time this year that a company that had been hired to clean the Seaboard Triumph Foods plant in Sioux City had been the target of enforcement action by the Labor Department.In May, a Tennessee-based company, Fayette Janitorial Service, was ordered to pay $649,000 in civil penalties after an investigation found that it had hired at least two dozen children as young as 13 to work overnight shifts cleaning equipment at Seaboard’s Sioux City plant and a Perdue Farms plant on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Nine of those children worked at the Seaboard plant, the Labor Department said.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

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    Can Rahm Emanuel Flip the Script Again?

    There’s a buzz around Rahm Emanuel — the former Bill Clinton adviser, former Illinois congressman, former chief of staff to President Barack Obama, former mayor of Chicago — possibly becoming the next head of the Democratic National Committee. The progressive left despises his pragmatism and liberal centrism. He has a reputation for abrasiveness. And his current job, as ambassador to Japan, has traditionally served as a posting for high-level political has-beens like Walter Mondale and Howard Baker.But he also has a gift for constructing winning coalitions with difficult, unexpected partners.More on that in a moment. When I meet him for breakfast this week at a New York City hotel, what he wants to talk about is a looming crisis in Asia. “What started as two wars in two theaters is now one war in two separate theaters,” he says of the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. “We need to ensure that it does not expand into a third theater.”How soon might that happen? I mention 2027, a year that’s often seen as China’s target date for reunification with Taiwan, if necessary by force.“I think it’s actually 2025,” he answers.What Emanuel has in mind are Asia’s other flashpoints, including along the 38th parallel that divides North and South Korea, where Russia is “poking” Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, “to do something” and where South Korea’s president briefly declared martial law, and also in the South China Sea, where China and the Philippines are coming to blows over Beijing’s illegal maritime claims. Unlike with Taipei, to which America’s obligations are deliberately ambiguous, with Manila and Seoul our defense commitments are ironclad.That could mean war for the United States on multiple unexpected fronts. Emanuel’s tenure as ambassador was distinguished by his role in engineering two historic rapprochements — last year between Japan and South Korea and this year between Japan and the Philippines — that, along with the AUKUS defense pact with Britain and Australia, form part of a broad diplomatic effort by the Biden administration to contain China.The Chinese, Emanuel says, “have a theory of the case in the Indo-Pacific. We have a theory of the case. Their attempt is to isolate Australia, isolate the Philippines and put all the pressure on that country,” often through abusive trade practices. “Our job is to flip the script and isolate China through their actions.”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

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    BlackRock Acquires HPS, a Major Lender of Private Credit

    The world’s largest investor is buying HPS, a major provider of private credit, for $12 billion.BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, is known for its heft in the public markets, particularly through its iShares exchange-traded funds.But this year, BlackRock has been aggressively claiming a major foothold in the private markets. On Tuesday, it made its latest push, announcing a deal to buy HPS Investment Partners — a firm that specializes in making private loans to companies — for roughly $12 billion.Buying HPS, which manages $148 billion in investor money, would fundamentally reshape almost any other financial firm in the world. For BlackRock, which manages about $11.5 trillion for its clients, that figure is just a small percentage of its overall asset base.Still, the deal to buy HPS, after two other significant private-market transactions this year, is helping answer a question that BlackRock’s own investors have been asking: With so much money already, where can BlackRock grow?Early this year, BlackRock spent roughly $12.5 billion to acquire Global Infrastructure Partners, a major investor in airports and data centers across the globe. In June, it announced a $3 billion deal to buy Preqin, a major data provider for the private markets.The HPS deal will make BlackRock one of the five largest providers of private credit in the world.Private credit is a corner of finance that has exploded in recent years. A number of nonbank investment firms, including HPS, Blue Owl and Ares, have become major lenders to large, typically highly indebted companies. In doing so, they’ve taken market share away from major banks.In the past decade, this private-credit market has grown to about $2 trillion, more than 10 times its size in 2009. In its news release announcing Tuesday’s deal, BlackRock predicted that the market would more than double to $4.5 trillion by 2030.BlackRock’s chief executive and chairman, Laurence D. Fink, said investors were increasingly looking for a mix of both private debt and publicly traded bonds. “The blending of public and private credit is a standard for long-term durable fixed income portfolios,” he said on a conference call on Tuesday.Investors appeared to like the deal, sending BlackRock’s stock up nearly 2 percent Tuesday. This year, its stock has jumped 30 percent, outperforming the S&P 500, which is up about 27 percent.While most analysts, including Glenn Schorr at Evercore ISI, cheered the deal, Mr. Schorr offered a note of caution on BlackRock’s recent spate of deal-making: “It does come with execution risk as money, power and integration issues” arise. More

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    Retired Louisiana Priest Pleads Guilty to Rape and Kidnapping Charges

    Lawrence Hecker, who was indicted last year on charges related to a sexual assault in the 1970s, pleaded guilty on Tuesday just before jury selection for his trial was set to begin.A retired Roman Catholic priest who was indicted last year in Louisiana on charges related to the sexual assault of a teenage boy in the 1970s pleaded guilty to the crimes on Tuesday, his lawyer said, just before jury selection for the trial was set to begin.The retired priest, Lawrence Hecker, 93, pleaded guilty to state charges of first-degree rape, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated crime against nature, and theft over $500, said his lawyer, Bobby Hjortsberg. The charges came after allegations surfaced last year that the Archdiocese of New Orleans had known about accusations against Mr. Hecker for decades.“Him ultimately taking responsibility for it was the right thing to do, and the necessary thing to do at this point,” Mr. Hjortsberg said. “I hope everybody involved can move forward in whatever way is best for them.”The guilty plea did not include a plea deal, Mr. Hjortsberg said. Mr. Hecker is set to be sentenced on Dec. 18, and he faces life in prison.Mr. Hecker’s trial had been delayed multiple times over concerns about his mental competency, and because the judge recused himself over a conflict with prosecutors. The new judge, Nandi Campbell of the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court, ordered Mr. Hecker to undergo physical and psychological evaluations before trial. Mr. Hjortsberg confirmed that the retired priest had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and dementia.The charges against Mr. Hecker came months after The Guardian reported that he confessed to his superiors in 1999 that he had sexually molested or committed other forms of sexual misconduct against multiple teenagers in the 1960s and ’70s. Mr. Hecker later confirmed to The Guardian and the New Orleans news outlet WWL-TV that he had committed “overtly sexual acts” with at least three underage boys.Mr. Hecker continued to serve with the New Orleans archdiocese until his retirement in 2002. But the archdiocese did not publicly identify him as an accused sexual predator until 2018, when it released a list of “credibly accused” priests.Thousands of Catholic priests have been accused of misconduct since the sexual abuse crisis in the American Catholic Church exploded into public view in the early 2000s. But relatively few have faced criminal prosecution. In September, a Catholic priest in Texas was indicted on felony sexual assault charges after several victims accused him of sexual and financial abuse.The New Orleans archdiocese filed for bankruptcy in 2020 amid a flood of abuse claims, and it is among about a dozen dioceses and archdioceses that are currently in bankruptcy proceedings.In a statement on Tuesday after Mr. Hecker’s guilty plea, a spokesman for the archdiocese said that it was the church’s “hope and prayer that today’s court proceedings bring healing and peace to the survivor and all survivors of sexual abuse.” More

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    Read President Yoon’s Speech Declaring Martial Law in South Korea

    Honorable citizens, as President, I appeal to you with a feeling of spitting blood.Since the inauguration of our government, the National Assembly has initiated 22 impeachment motions against government officials, and since the inauguration of the 22nd National Assembly in June, it is pushing for the impeachment of 10 more. This is a situation that is not only unprecedented in any country in the world, but has never been seen since the founding of our country.It is paralyzing the judiciary by intimidating judges and impeaching a number of prosecutors, and it is paralyzing the executive branch by trying to impeach the Minister of the Interior, the Chairman of the Communications Commission, the Chair of the Board of Audit, and the Defense Minister.The handling of the national budget also undermined the essential functions of the state and turned Korea into a drug paradise and a public order panic by completely cutting all major budgets for cracking down on drug crimes and maintaining public security. The Democratic Party cut 4.1 trillion won from next year’s budget, including 1 trillion won for disaster preparedness reserves, 38.4 billion won for child care support allowances, and a project to develop a gas field in the city for youth jobs.They even put the brakes on funding to improve the treatment of military officers, including raising salaries and allowances for entry-level officers and increasing on-call duty fees.This budget outrage is nothing short of manipulating the national finances of the Republic of Korea. The legislative dictatorship of the Democratic Party, which uses even the budget as a means of political struggle, did not hesitate to impeach the budget. The government is paralyzed, and the people’s sighs are growing.This trampling of the constitutional order of the free Republic of Korea and the disruption of legitimate state institutions established by the constitution and laws is an obvious anti-state act that plots insurrection. The lives of the people are of no concern, and the government is in a state of paralysis due to impeachment, special investigation, and the defense of the opposition leader.Our National Assembly has become a den of criminals and is attempting to paralyze the nation’s judicial administration system through legislative dictatorship and overthrow the liberal democracy system. The National Assembly, which should be the foundation of liberal democracy, has become a monster that collapses the liberal democracy system. Now, Korea is in a precarious situation where it would not be surprising if it collapsed immediately.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

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    Patagonia C.E.O.: Corporate Responsibility Still Matters

    Companies continue to invest in sustainability, though many are no longer broadcasting it.This personal reflection is part of a series called Turning Points, in which writers explore what critical moments from this year might mean for the year ahead. You can read more by visiting the Turning Points series page.Turning Point: Some of the world’s largest financial firms pulled out of a group committed to fighting climate change.It’s been a tough year for companies wanting to do the right thing. In addition to managing a turbulent global economy, brands have faced backlash from a handful of activists on everything from climate and diversity commitments to supporting Pride events and even encouraging people to vote. More than 100 laws against environmental, social and governance principles have been introduced in Congress and state legislatures since 2023, and right-wing politicians and activists continue to force companies that value corporate responsibility into a culture war by smearing them as “woke.”When a few companies got skittish and pulled back on their diversity or climate efforts, headlines crowed about the demise of corporate responsibility as a whole.This is what happens when sound bites and taglines replace the real work needed to make progress. It seems impossible to find a product now that doesn’t claim to be “green” or “sustainable” or made responsibly. Although some businesses are putting in the time and work to back up those claims, others are confronting the reality that their investors and customers are paying close attention, and the bill to produce results is past due.As I look back on 2024, I think the backlash against corporate responsibility — and sustainability in particular — has been overstated. But while some companies are talking less about their commitments, I’m heartened that many are still quietly setting ambitious targets to reduce emissions, care for their employees and create inclusive communities. They’re doing the work to get there, and they’re pressing ahead in the face of disgruntled pundits and social media trolls.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