Raphael Stevens

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    Ex-South Korean President Lee back to prison after ruling

    Former South Korean President Lee Myung-bak was sent back to prison on Monday, four days after the country’s top court upheld his 17-year prison term for corruption crimes.South Korean television stations showed a convoy of black vehicles, including one carrying Lee, arriving at Seoul’s Dongbu Detention Center. Center officials later confirmed his imprisonment. Earlier Monday, Lee was taken from his home to a Seoul prosecutors’ office to be formally notified about his sentence and undergo identification checks there.Lee, 78, was convicted of taking bribes from big businesses including Samsung, embezzling corporate funds from a company that he owned and committing other corruption-related crimes before and when he served as president from 2008-13. A Seoul district court initially sentenced Lee to 15 years in prison in 2018. He was bailed out of prison several months later but was taken back into custody this February, after an appellate court handed down a 17-year term and canceled his bail. Days later, however, he was released again after he appealed the ruling on his bail cancellation. On Thursday, the Supreme Court confirmed the 17-year term. Lee, a former Hyundai CEO, won the 2007 presidential election on a promise to reinvigorate the country’s economy. But his five years in office were marred by the global financial crisis, massive public protests over the resumption of U.S. beef imports and military animosities with North Korea.Lee’s corruption case erupted after his successor, fellow conservative Park Geun-hye, was removed from the presidency and jailed over a separate corruption scandal in 2016 and 2017 that sparked one of the biggest anti-government protests in South Korea. More

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    The US Election 2020: The facts, the figures and the legends

    The president’s official residence in Washington – 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue – has a history scarcely less colourful than that of the presidency. Work began on it in 1792. John Adams was the first to occupy it (before it was finished) in 1800 and Dolley Madison famously did it up, with the help of a grant from Congress, only for the British to burn it to a shell in 1814. James Monroe spent $50,000 – controversially – doing it up again, in extravagant Parisian style. Martin Van Buren was attacked for turning it into “a palace as splendid as that of the Caesars”. Chester A Arthur auctioned off wagon-loads of priceless presidential memorabilia in order to pay for another makeover in the 1880s. There have been numerous refurbishments and additions since, including extensive restorations under Theodore Roosevelt (who added the West Wing), William Howard Taft (who added the Oval Office) and Harry S Truman (after the house was declared to be in imminent danger of collapse in 1948). The most extravagant recent redecoration was instigated by Jacqueline Kennedy, with the help of the French designer Stéphane Boudin.Your daily US politics newsletterSign upAlready have an account? Log in here More

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    Deep divisions at home will go on weakening America regardless of who is elected

    Students taking exams in modern history in coming decades are likely to be asked about the nature and importance of Donald Trump’s years in office. Among the questions those future students may have to answer, there is likely to be one along the following lines: “President Trump promised when elected in 2016 to make America great again. How far did he succeed in doing so and, if he did not, why not?”This should be an easy question for the students to answer because they can truthfully give a categorical black-and-white response: the US is demonstrably weaker as a world power than it was in 2016 because, as a nation, it is more deeply divided than at any time since the Civil War, a century-and-a-half ago. This multifaceted division is not going to disappear, regardless of whether Trump or Joe Biden win the presidential election, and it may well be exacerbated by the result.American hegemony was originally based on its economic might and by victory in the Second World War, enhanced by the collapse of the Soviet Union, its only rival, in 1991. Its economic dominance has been challenged by China and the EU, though it remains the sole financial superpower. Its military superiority is sustained by vast expenditure but has been dented by its failure to win wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. More

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    The future of Ukraine and Zelensky’s low-profile relationship with Britain

    Blink and you could have missed it. The President of Ukraine and his wife have just spent two days on an official visit to the UK, and almost no one noticed – which was a pity.The president of where, you ask. Ukraine – you remember, the country we made such a fuss about a few years ago when Moscow lopped off its Crimean peninsula and attached it to Russia, claiming it belonged there all along? And who is the president exactly? Well, you must remember something about the guy everyone called a comedian who played a fictional president in a television series and then won an election for real? Well, that’s who. Volodymyr Zelensky is now President Zelensky, he has a wife called Olena, and they were in London on 7 and 8 October.  The First Couple (though I don’t think they particularly embrace American-style titles) took tea at Buckingham Palace with William and Kate, the first event to be held at the reopened palace. And the president signed a voluminous agreement on all sorts of bilateral cooperation with Boris Johnson. There was no public welcome at the door of No 10, however, and no joint press conference either. More

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    Government revive push to make apps like WhatsApp and iMessage weaken protections so they can read messages

    End-to-end encryption lets users use messaging services without the owners of those services being able to access the conversations.Government representatives, including Home Secretary Priti Patel, US Attorney General Bill Barr, and others, said they are concerned that “encryption is applied in a way that wholly precludes any legal access to content”.The governments say they “support strong encryption, which plays a crucial role in protecting personal data, privacy, intellectual property, trade secrets and cyber security.”However, with regards to certain crimes, such as child exploitation, the government should be allowed access to private channels.This access would:”Embed the safety of the public in system designs, thereby enabling companies to act against illegal content and activity effectively with no reduction to safety, and facilitating the investigation and prosecution of offences and safeguarding the vulnerable;”Enable law enforcement access to content in a readable and usable format where an authorisation is lawfully issued, is necessary and proportionate, and is subject to strong safeguards and oversight; and”Engage in consultation with governments and other stakeholders to facilitate legal access in a way that is substantive and genuinely influences design decisions.”WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal are all end-to-end encrypted, while other platforms like Facebook Messenger, Twitter, Instagram, and text messages are not.However if end-to-end encryption is ‘broken’, by allowing a backdoor for law enforcement agencies as these governments have suggested, it could allow malicious individuals the ability to access private conversations.Read moreMany large technology companies, advocacy groups, and the general public have criticised the use of backdoors.Earlier this year, when Zoom said that its free video calling service would not be end-to-end encrypted so it could work better with law enforcement, over 19,000 internet users signed a petition from Mozilla and the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) to Zoom in protest. Zoom eventually reversed the decision.“We reiterate that data protection, respect for privacy and the importance of encryption as technology changes and global Internet standards are developed remain at the forefront of each state’s legal framework”, the governments’ statement concludes.“However, we challenge the assertion that public safety cannot be protected without compromising privacy or cyber security”. More

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    Daniel Ellsberg: The nuclear war planner who knew too much

    Suppose a grave-looking man, after approaching you on the sidewalk, announced that the government had contingency plans to annihilate the bulk of humanity and most large non-human species to boot. Odds are you would offer a nervous grin or grimace and pick up your pace. Imagine this same man kept track and informed you he had once served in the highest reaches of the national-security bureaucracy as a nuclear war expert when such plans were being hatched, and not much has changed since then. At this point you might search for a convenient storefront or cafe to make your prompt escape. But what if your unwelcome interlocutor then grabbed you by your cuff and warned of “a catastrophe waiting to happen!” What then?It is an uncomfortable hypothetical, although not as uncomfortable as the fact that someone like this man does exist, and everything he has to say is credible. His name is Daniel Ellsberg. In the introduction to The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, the historic whistleblower of Pentagon Papers fame cuts to the chase: “The hidden reality I aim to expose is that for over 50 years, all-out thermonuclear war — an irreversible, unprecedented, and almost unimaginable calamity for civilisation and most life on Earth — has been, like the disasters of Chernobyl, Katrina, the Gulf oil spill, Fukushima Daiichi, and before these, World War One, a catastrophe waiting to happen, on a scale infinitely greater than any of these. And this is still true today.” More

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    Coronavirus: Women leaders acted more quickly and decisively to save lives, study finds

    Female leaders acted faster and more decisively to save lives from the oncoming threat of the coronavirus, a study has suggested.

    Early lockdowns have been considered a key element of an effective initial response to the Sars-Cov-2, the virus which causes Covid-19, with the UK’s professor suggesting shuttering society a week sooner could have halved the UK’s death toll.

    Now researchers at the University of Liverpool have suggested female leaders – like New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern and Germany’s Angela Merkel – made quick decisions that resulted in “systematically and significantly better” outcomes for their citizens. More

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    What Kamala Harris's memoir reveals about her politics and personality

    Senator Kamala Harris mentions Joe Biden only once in her memoir, The Truths We Hold, and she does so in passing. “I was sworn in on 3 January 2017, by vice president Joe Biden during his final month in office.” That’s it.

    But if Harris had been somehow gaming out her own veep prospects under a potential Biden nomination when her book was published in 2019, she could have done no better. In her book, Harris praises Biden’s eldest son, the late Beau Biden – who served as Delaware’s attorney general while Harris held that post in California – as “an incredible friend … a man of principle and courage”. They worked together during the great recession, she recalls, investigating banks involved in the foreclosure crisis and seeking more money for struggling homeowners. “Beau and I talked every day,” she writes. “We had each other’s backs.” When Harris and Joe Biden made their first public appearance as running mates, they both invoked the memory of Beau in bringing them together.

    The Truths We Hold, published in advance of Harris’s failed run at the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, is a conventional political memoir – a mix of biography, reflections and policy prescriptions. Even its title and subtitle are a generic combo of American civics and political speak. Its most memorable moments are those personal touches: Harris’s recollections of family, friendships and, above all, of her late mother, an Indian immigrant and cancer researcher who raised Harris and her younger sister. More