Elections

Prosecutors are investigating whether President Yoon Suk Yeol and his followers committed insurrection when they briefly put South Korea under martial law.Kim Yong-hyun, the former defense minister of South Korea, was taken into custody early Sunday as prosecutors investigated his role in President Yoon Suk Yeol’s short-lived effort last week to impose martial law. That episode set off political upheaval in South Korea, including an opposition-led attempt to impeach the president and huge protests.Mr. Kim is the first person to be detained as prosecutors begin their investigation into allegations made by President Yoon’s political opponents​. The opposition asserts that Mr. Yoon and his followers in the ​government and military​ committed insurrection and other crimes when they sent soldiers and police officers into the National Assembly to seize the legislature shortly after the president declared martial law on Tuesday night.Mr. Kim, who surrendered himself to investigators early Sunday, was arrested with​out a court warrant. The police and prosecutors ​can use such an “emergency​ arrest” when they have grounds to suspect a person committed a serious crime and there is risk of them fleeing or destroying evidence. ​They must apply for a court warrant​ within two days to formally arrest the suspect.Mr. Kim, a key supporter of Mr. Yoon’s martial law plan, resigned after the extraordinary move fell through. The military rule lasted only six hours, after the National Assembly voted against it early Wednesday and forced Mr. Yoon to back down.It was unclear whether Mr. Kim had a legal representative. Before his arrest, in an interview with the daily Dong-A Ilbo, he said he had been involved in Mr. Yoon’s declaration of martial law, but that it was imposed according to legal procedures.​For most of the two and a half years he has been in office, Mr. Yoon has endured low approval ratings and been in a near-constant political standoff with the opposition. They have tussled especially over his refusal to accept their demands that a special prosecutor be appointed to investigate allegations of corruption involving his wife.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

The slippers, worn by Judy Garland in “The Wizard of Oz,” were stolen from the museum that bears her name in 2005 before investigators recovered them in 2018.The ruby slippers that Judy Garland wore as Dorothy in the 1939 production of “The Wizard of Oz” were sold for a record-breaking $28 million on Saturday during a live auction in Dallas in the latest turn for one of the most recognizable and storied artifacts in film history.Heritage Auctions sold the slippers on behalf of a collector, Michael Shaw, who owned them. The slippers — which sold for vastly more than the $10 million that the auction house’s executive vice president, Joe Maddalena, believed they would — are one of only four known surviving pairs worn by Ms. Garland in the movie.The auction house did not immediately disclose the identity of the buyer.“There is simply no comparison between Judy Garland’s ruby slippers and any other piece of Hollywood memorabilia,” Mr. Maddalena said.The final bid of $28 million was the largest sum spent at an auction for a piece of entertainment memorabilia, the auction house said. It exceeded the previous record-holder, Marilyn Monroe’s subway dress from the 1955 film “The Seven Year Itch,” which sold in 2011 for $5.52 million with fees, the auction house said. Including taxes and fees, the slippers sold for $32.5 million.During the auction, which was peppered with “Wicked” and “Wizard of Oz” references and puns, the auctioneer excitedly held a crouching position — like the Wicked Witch of the West in the story — as he pointed to people around the room, who called out bids in $100,000 increments. At times, a bidder, often on the phone with a client, would elevate the top bid by $800,000 or more, which garnered some stifled “ooohs” and “ahhhs” from attendees.The auction included other pieces of “Wizard of Oz” memorabilia. A Wicked Witch of the West hat worn by the actress Margaret Hamilton sold for nearly $3 million, the auction house 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

A top-selling pop singer as a teenager in the 1980s, she also had an award-winning career as a dramatic actress.Miho Nakayama, a reigning J-pop star of the 1980s who broke through to become a critically acclaimed dramatic actress and gained international attention for her starring role in the sentimental Japanese drama “Love Letter,” died on Friday at her home in Tokyo. She was 54.Ms. Nakayama was found dead in a bathtub, according to a statement from her management company. The statement added, “We are still in the process of confirming the cause of death and other details.”The Japan Times reported that Ms. Nakayama had canceled an appearance at a Christmas concert in Osaka, Japan, scheduled for that same day, citing health issues.Born in the city of Saku in Nagano Prefecture on May 4, 1970, and raised in Tokyo, Ms. Nakayama — known by the affectionate nickname Miporin — rocketed to fame in 1985, becoming one of Japan’s most successful idols, as popular young entertainers there are known, with the release of her first single, “C.” That same year, she took home a Japan Record Award for best new artist.She exploded on both the big and small screens that same year with starring roles in the comedy-drama series “Maido Osawagase Shimasu” (roughly, “Sorry to Bother You All the Time”) and the film “Bi Bappu Haisukuru” (“Be-Bop High School”), an action comedy set on a dystopian campus filled with uniformed schoolgirls and brawling schoolboys.Such stories were popular teenage fare at the time, as evidenced by her subsequent role in “Sailor Fuku Hangyaku Doumei” (“The Sailor Suit Rebel Alliance”), a television series that made its debut in 1986, in which Ms. Nakayama played a member of a group of martial arts-savvy girls who squared off against wrongdoers at a violence-marred high school.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

U.S. intelligence agencies are closely monitoring suspected chemical weapons storage sites in Syria, looking for indications that forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad are preparing to employ them against the collection of rebel groups fighting to depose him, officials said Saturday.The agencies assess that Mr. al-Assad’s forces have maintained limited stockpiles of chemical weapons, including munitions loaded with the nerve agent sarin, and there is growing concern that the government could employ them as part of a last-ditch effort to prevent rebels from seizing the capital, Damascus, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.Mr. al-Assad’s government has repeatedly used chemical weapons, including nerve agents and chlorine gas, against rebels and his own people during the 13-year civil war, according to assessments by human rights monitors, the United States and others.Key Arab allies of the United States want to keep Mr. al-Assad in power because they fear that if the collection of rebel groups topples the government in Damascus, the country could become a more dangerous haven for terrorism. While many of those allies have opposed Mr. al-Assad in the past, they see him as a known quantity and better than the rebel-led alternative, a senior Biden administration official said.Aides to President Biden have made clear in recent days that the United States has no intention of intervening to affect the war’s outcome, either in support of the rebels or Mr. al-Assad.That message was echoed on Saturday by President-elect Donald J. Trump, who wrote in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, “Syria is a mess, but is not our friend, & THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!”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

People across the state have reported seeing scores of large, low-flying objects in recent weeks. Officials haven’t said where they’re coming from, or why they’re here.Brightly lit against a dark night sky, the low-flying object wasn’t a star, and it wasn’t moving like a plane or a helicopter.Kat Dunbar spotted the strange object early one night several weeks ago while driving home with her children, and she was stumped.“I was like, ‘What is that? Is that a U.F.O.?’” said Ms. Dunbar, a 37-year-old acupuncturist and mother of three. “And we watched it the whole way home.”Then, she said, she thought nothing more about it. Until earlier this week, when similarly bright, large and buzzing objects began flying low over her home in Bedminster, N.J.They were drones, she realized. And since then, she said, they have been back every night. Usually she and her husband, Nick Dunbar, see the first drone not long after sunset. Then they keep coming, one after another: sometimes five or more, following the same flight path.“In the last week, it became a little bit of a menacing and, like, creepy thing,” Ms. Dunbar said.Ms. Dunbar is not alone. Drone sightings have been reported in at least 10 New Jersey counties since mid-November. They have been spotted flying over important infrastructure, like reservoirs, power lines and railroads, in people’s backyards and above highways. They often fly in groups and emit a loud humming noise that Mr. Dunbar, 39, described as similar to the sounds made by electric cars. The drones appear to be significantly larger than those widely available to hobbyists.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

Applicants for government posts, including inside the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies, say they have been asked about their thoughts on Jan. 6 and who they believe won the 2020 election.At the Trump transition offices in West Palm Beach, Fla., prospective occupants of high posts inside the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies typically run through a gamut of three to four interviews, conducted in recent weeks by a mix of Silicon Valley investors and innovators and a team of the MAGA faithful.The applicants report that they have been asked about how to overhaul the Pentagon, or what technologies could make the intelligence agencies more effective, or how they feel about the use of the military to enforce immigration policy. But before they leave, some of them have been asked a final set of questions that seemed designed to assess their loyalty to President-elect Donald J. Trump.The questions went further than just affirming allegiance to the incoming administration. The interviewers asked which candidate the applicants had supported in the three most recent elections, what they thought about the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and whether they believed the 2020 election was stolen. The sense they got was that there was only one right answer to each question.This account is based on interviews with nine people who either interviewed for jobs in the administration or were directly involved in the process. Among those were applicants who said they gave what they intuited to be the wrong answer — either decrying the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 or saying that President Biden won in 2020. Their answers were met with silence and the taking of notes. They didn’t get the jobs.Three of the people interviewed are close to the transition team and confirmed that loyalty questions were part of some interviews across multiple agencies, and that the Trump team researched what candidates had said about Mr. Trump on the day of the Capitol riot and in the days following. Candidates are also rated on a scale of one to four in more than a half-dozen categories, including competence.Karoline Leavitt, the incoming White House press secretary, declined to address specific questions about the topics being raised in job interviews. Instead, she said: “President Trump will continue to appoint highly qualified men and women who have the talent, experience, and necessary skill sets to make America great again.”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

Capturing a suspect who slips away from a crime scene requires solid police work, help from the public and a little luck, experts say. So far, it’s not working.A shocking early morning act of violence, a frantic New York Police Department search for a suspect and a gunman seemingly in the wind: The year was 2022, and the man the police had fanned out to find was Frank R. James, who had set off smoke grenades inside a crowded subway car in Brooklyn and opened fire.Now, more than two years later, another manhunt has gripped the city. But unlike Mr. James, who was apprehended the day after his rampage, the man who assassinated the chief executive of a health insurance company just before dawn on Wednesday in Midtown Manhattan has not been caught or even identified after more than four days.The two most recent fugitive searches in New York City have involved gunmen who made seemingly improbable escapes in a city teeming with surveillance cameras and people. But despite some similarities between the cases and the investigative tactics being used to try to solve them, the search for the man who killed Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, has proved far more challenging.The suspect’s ability to evade capture appears to be tied to his methodical planning, including wearing a mask and a hood during nearly all of his time in New York City and paying with cash everywhere, along with using a fake driver’s license.And unlike Mr. James, who did essentially nothing to conceal himself after slipping away amid the chaotic aftermath of the shooting that wounded 10 people, the suspect in Mr. Thompson’s killing fled quickly into Central Park, away from the surveillance cameras that blanket much of Manhattan. He also appears to have left the state long before the police could possibly have begun to track his movements.“I don’t think I’ve seen this level of operational preplanning in any crime, never mind in a murder,” said Kenneth E. Corey, a former chief of department in the New York Police Department.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

Five years after a ruinous fire, the reopening of the cathedral restored it in full glory to the Paris skyline and delivered a much-needed morale boost for France.Five years after a fire that devoured its roof and nearly collapsed its walls, a renovated Notre-Dame Cathedral reopened its doors on Saturday, its centuries-old bell clanging, its 8,000-pipe organ first groaning — and then roaring back to life.It was an emotional rebirth for one of the world’s most recognized monuments, a Gothic medieval masterpiece and cornerstone of European culture and faith.“Brothers and sisters, let us enter now into Notre-Dame,” Laurent Ulrich, the archbishop of Paris, said before poking three times on the cathedral doors with the point of his staff, made with a beam of the roof that survived the fire.As he pushed open the door, the sounds of brass instruments and the melodic voices of dozens of children singing in the cathedral choir filled the nave.The ceremony restored the cathedral to the Parisian skyline in its full glory and delivered a much-needed morale boost for France at a time of political dysfunction, a stagnating economy and a bitter budget standoff that this week resulted in the toppling of the center-right government.With the successful reopening of Notre-Dame, on a schedule that many had derided as too ambitious, France showed off its ability to execute major projects, as it did with the Summer Olympics, and exhibited its artistic and artisanal expertise.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