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      South Korea’s President Impeached After Martial Law Crisis

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      Some members of President Yoon Suk Yeol’s own party helped remove him from office. But the political uncertainty is far from over.Eleven days ago, President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea made a bold power grab, putting the country under military rule for the first time in 45 years, citing frustration at the opposition for obstructing his agenda in Parliament.His martial law decree lasted only hours, and now he finds himself locked out of power: impeached and suspended by the National Assembly after a vote on Saturday in which a dozen members of his own party turned against him.Lawmakers sought to draw a line under Mr. Yoon’s tenure after his declaration threw the country’s democracy into chaos and drew public outrage across the country.Street protests turned to celebrations outside the Assembly when news broke that the impeachment bill had passed. Mr. Yoon’s popularity has plummeted during his two and a half years in office, a term marked by deepening political polarization, scandals involving his wife and a near-constant clash between his government and the opposition-dominated Parliament.But the political turmoil and uncertainty unleashed by his short-lived declaration of martial law is far from over. Speaking soon after the vote, Mr. Yoon vowed to fight in court to regain his power, even as the police and prosecutors closed in on him with a possible criminal charge of insurrection.Protesters holding signs calling for President Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment in Seoul on Saturday.Jun Michael Park 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

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      How Sweden Could End Its Epidemic of Gang Violence

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      We used to believe in Sweden that the rights and well-being of children should always come first. But over the past two decades, a surge in gang violence has shaken that commitment. In 2023, 363 shootings took the lives of 53 people; this year, over 100 bombings stemming from gang violence had already been recorded by November. Our country now has one of the highest per capita rates of gun violence in the European Union. One key factor in the phenomenon: Gangs are grooming and recruiting children as young as 11, the police say, as contract killers.Swedes aged 15 to 17 who commit crimes are usually placed in government-run residential homes instead of prison.Such youth homes have come under scrutiny for mixing children who need housing because of family problems alongside those who have committed serious crimes.A basic tenet of the country’s juvenile justice system was that long prison sentences hurt both children and our society. Until recently, young people who committed crimes were likely to be placed in residential homes, where they received treatment for addiction and mental health disorders. Imprisonment was extremely rare. Offenders ages 18 to 21 often received sentence reductions, known as “youth rebates,” and were also placed in treatment homes.As crime among young people rises, though, the government has moved to toughen sentences for these offenders and eliminate most youth rebates. As a result, two teenage boys were ordered to serve 10 and 12 years in prison in August — the longest sentence Sweden has given to such young people in modern history — after being convicted in connection with a shooting spree that left three dead and injured two others, including a 2-year-old child.Essa Kah Sallah was about 11 years old when he began committing minor crimes. He later founded the Chosen Ones, one of Sweden’s most dangerous gangs. “The gang gives you an illusion of togetherness,” Mr. Sallah said. “But there is no brotherhood, no loyalty — just pointless violence and death.” He left the Chosen Ones four years ago and now works for a program that helps others leave gangs.Politicians have laid the blame for the gang violence on Sweden’s generous refugee policies, and the country has moved to tighten its borders. Some on the far right argue that aggressive repatriation of foreigners, particularly Muslims, is the only solution. And in the aftermath of a deadly shooting this past spring, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson denounced “a kind of inhumane, an animalistic attitude” among the group of youths said to have committed the crime.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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      Meet Rep. Greg Casar, the Texas Millennial Trying to Rebrand the Democrats

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      “We can’t bring a policy book to a gunfight,” said Representative Greg Casar of Texas, the incoming chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.Ever since they lost big in November, Democrats have talked about how much their party needs to change.Representative Greg Casar is living it.Last week, Casar, a 35-year-old Democrat from Austin, Texas, was elected as the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, becoming the youngest person ever tapped to lead the group of liberals at a moment when his party is struggling with younger voters. He’s also the first leader from Texas, a state Democrats find perennially vexing.Casar, a former union organizer, will be tasked with leading progressives through a challenging period, one that has some Democrats blaming them for tugging the party too far to the left. He believes it was centrists like Joe Manchin, the former Democrat and departing senator from West Virginia, who caused the party to water down policies that could have galvanized working-class voters. But he says progressives need to shift their message, too.I spoke by phone with Casar this week, for the second in my series of interviews with Democrats grappling with how to move the party forward. Our conversation was edited for length and clarity.JB: Why should somebody from a red state lead progressive Democrats?GC: Right now, the Democratic Party is doing really important soul-searching. As we work to regain working-class voters’ trust, as we work to bring Democrats back into the fold that decided to vote for Trump this time, I think it’s really important that progressives build a big tent.It is important for the Democratic Party leadership to be as diverse as the voters that we’re trying to bring in. We need older leadership. We need younger leadership, leadership from the South. We need leadership from the coast, but we can’t have it all from the coast.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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      Turkey Emerges as a Big Winner in the Wake of al-Assad’s Ouster

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      In the messy aftermath of the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, many questions remain about the country’s future, but one thing is clear: Turkey has emerged as a winner, with more influence than ever over the rebels who now control most of Syria.Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had long worked with and supported the Syrian rebels who marched on Damascus this month and forced President Bashar al-Assad to flee.That carefully cultivated relationship opens up “an incredibly big domain for economic and political influence,” said Asli Aydintasbas, a visiting fellow at Brookings Institution in Washington with a particular focus on Turkey.“Syria may not have a smooth transition, and there may be renewed fighting between factions,” she added. “But what is uncontestable is that Turkey’s influence will only grow, economically and politically.”In the process, Turkey appears to have also weakened the regional influence of Russia, which along with Iran was a key backer of the Syrian president, she said. It is unclear whether Russia will be able to retain the military bases it has on Syria’s Mediterranean coast.Initially, Turkey did not say much when the rebels swept across northern Syria, seizing two important cities in a few days. But when Mr. Erdogan finally did speak, he was quietly confident.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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      U.S. Charges Ex-Syrian Prison Official With Torture

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      The indictment was the second time in a week that the Justice Department announced that it had charged top Syrian officials with human rights abuses.A federal grand jury in Los Angeles charged a former Syrian government official on Thursday with torturing political dissidents at a notorious prison in Damascus.The former official, Samir Ousman al-Sheikh, 72, ran Adra prison, according to federal prosecutors, where he was personally involved in torturing inmates in a bid to stifle opposition to its recently deposed authoritarian president, Bashar al-Assad.Prosecutors said Mr. al-Sheikh ordered prisoners to be taken to a part of the prison known as the “punishment wing,” where they were beaten while hanging from the ceiling. Guards would forcibly fold bodies in half, resulting in terrible pain and fractured spines.The indictment was the second time in a week that the Justice Department announced that it had charged top Syrian officials with human rights abuses. The moves underscore its efforts to hold to account the top reaches of the government for a brutal system of detention and torture that flourished under Mr. al-Assad.The charges against Mr. al-Sheikh on Thursday add to earlier charges in July that accused him of attempted naturalization fraud in his effort to seek U.S. citizenship, according to a criminal complaint. He was arrested attempting to fly to Beirut.The U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, Martin Estrada, cast the new charges against Mr. al-Sheikh in a grim light. “The allegations in this superseding indictment of grave human rights abuses are chilling,” he said.Mr. al-Sheikh was charged with three counts of torture and one count of conspiracy to commit torture.Mr. al-Sheikh immigrated to the United States in 2020 and applied for U.S. citizenship in 2023, lying on federal forms about the abuses, the authorities have said.Prosecutors said he was appointed governor of the province of Deir al-Zour by Mr. al-Assad in 2011. Mr. al-Assad’s authoritarian government crumbled over the weekend after rebels routed his forces and took control of swaths of the country.On Monday, federal prosecutors unsealed charges against two top-ranking Syrian intelligence officials, accusing them of war crimes. The pair, Jamil Hassan and Abdul Salam Mahmoud, oversaw a prison in Damascus during the Syrian civil war, prosecutors said.That indictment signaled the first time the United States had criminally charged top Syrian officials with human rights abuses used to silence dissent and spread fear through the country.Mr. Hassan was the head of the Air Force Intelligence Directorate, and Mr. Mahmoud served as a brigadier general in the Air Force’s intelligence unit. Their location is unknown. More

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      South Korea President Yoon Defends Martial Law Decree in Defiant Speech

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      President Yoon Suk Yeol vowed to “fight to the end,” despite the opposition’s push to impeach him and his own party’s demand that he resign.President Yoon Suk Yeol on Thursday defended his botched attempt to put South Korea under martial law last week, vowing to “fight to the end” despite the opposition-dominated legislature’s push to impeach him and his own party’s demand that he resign from office.In a televised speech, Mr. Yoon said he had never intended to disrupt the “constitutional order” when he declared martial law on Dec. 3 and sent hundreds of troops into the National Assembly. He said he had done so to “save the country” from what he called the “anti-state” opposition parties. Mr. Yoon said the opposition parties had used their majority in the Assembly to “paralyze” the country.Mr. Yoon said his action was part of his constitutional powers as president and did not amount to “insurrection,” as the opposition has charged.“I will fight to the end,” he said.Mr. Yoon’s People Power Party, which blocked opposition lawmakers’ attempt to impeach him on Saturday, has recommended that he instead resign in February or March. That would mean a new presidential election in April or May, which the party argues is the swiftest way to end the political turmoil triggered by the short-lived martial law decree.But Mr. Yoon indicated in his speech that he intends to remain in office while the opposition tries again to impeach him and, if impeached, will fight his removal at the Constitutional Court.If a president is impeached by the National Assembly, he is suspended from office while the Constitutional Court decides whether to reinstate or formally remove him, a process that can take up to six months.This is a developing story. More

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      Scholz Calls for Confidence Vote, in Step Toward German Elections

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      Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who had few alternatives after his three-party coalition broke up, is widely expected to lose when Parliament takes up the measure on Monday.Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany called for a confidence vote in Parliament on Wednesday, taking the first formal step toward disbanding the German government and leading to snap elections likely to oust him from office.The move, culminating in a parliamentary vote on Monday, became all but necessary in November, when the chancellor fired his finance minister, precipitating the breakup of his fragile three-party coalition.“In a democracy, it is the voters who determine the course of future politics. When they go to the polls, they decide how we will answer the big questions that lie ahead of us,” Mr. Scholz said from the chancellery in Berlin on Wednesday.Mr. Scholz expects to lose the vote. The collapse of the government along with the early election on Feb. 23 amount to an extraordinary political moment in a country long known for stable governments.The political turbulence in Germany and the fall last week of the government in France have left the European Union with a vacuum of leadership at critical moment: It is facing challenges from Russia’s war in Ukraine and the imminent return to the presidency of Donald J. Trump in the United States.Mr. Trump has threatened a trade war with Europe and has consistently expressed skepticism about America’s commitment to the NATO alliance that has been the guarantor of security on the continent for 75 years.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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      North Korea Breaks Silence on South Korea’s Martial Law Declaration

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      In its first statement about the turmoil over President Yoon Suk Yeol’s martial law decree, the North said nothing about how inter-Korean relations might be affected.North Korea made its first public statement on Wednesday about the short-lived declaration of martial law in South Korea last week, with its state media saying that President Yoon Suk Yeol had plunged his country into “pandemonium.”The article gave no indication of how the turmoil in the South might affect relations between the Koreas. Since Mr. Yoon, who has a confrontational policy toward North Korea, took office in 2022, the relationship has reached its lowest point in years.The North’s main government newspaper, the Rodong Sinmun, gave the article relatively little prominence, running it on the sixth page of its Wednesday edition. It summarized Mr. Yoon’s failed attempt to seize control of the National Assembly on Dec. 3 by sending in troops, the spread of protests across South Korea and the political uncertainty that has prevailed since then.“The puppet Yoon Suk Yeol’s shocking decision to level his fascist guns and bayonets at his own people has turned the puppet South into pandemonium,” the article said.It also said that the failure of opposition lawmakers’ attempt to impeach Mr. Yoon in the National Assembly on Saturday, after Mr. Yoon’s People Power Party boycotted the vote, had turned all of South Korea into a “protest scene.”The political vacuum in the South has raised concerns that its government and military could be ill-prepared for any escalation in tensions with Kim Jong-un’s regime in the North.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