South Korea police impose foreign travel ban on ex-PM Han and ex-finance minister Choi
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
34 minutes ago
- The Independent
Japan's emperor says he will honor Japanese POWs who were held in Mongolia
Japan 's Emperor Naruhito said Wednesday that he will honor thousands of Japanese prisoners of World War II who were held under harsh conditions in Mongolia when he visits the country next week. Naruhito, marking the 80th anniversary of the end of WWII, has been visiting some of the places where the bloodiest battles and bombings occurred, including Iwo Jima, Okinawa and Hiroshima. It's part of his effort at atonement and remembrance of the tragedy of war fought in the name of his grandfather, Emperor Hirohito. 'I will pay tribute to the Japanese people who unwillingly died in the distant land away from home, and think of their hardships,' Naruhito said at a news conference ahead of his July 6-13 trip to Mongolia. His Harvard-educated former diplomat wife, Empress Masako, will accompany him. Just before the end of the hostilities in 1945, the Soviet Union had declared war on Japan, taking most of about 575,000 Japanese POWs to Siberia. But around 12,000 to 14,000 of them were taken to Mongolia, which was fighting alongside the Soviets against Japan. Most of the POWs were put to hard labor and construction work for the Mongolian government's headquarters, a state university and a theater that are still preserved in the capital Ulaanbaatar. The prisoners toiled under harsh conditions and scarce food. Japanese records show about 1,700 of them died in Mongolia. 'As we mark the 80th anniversary of the end of the war this year, we should never forget the pain and sorrow of the people,' Naruhito said. 'I believe it is important to not forget those who died, deepen understanding of the wartime past and to nurture the peace-loving heart.' Naruhito has repeatedly stressed the importance of telling the war's tragedy to younger generations, pledging to contribute to efforts to promote the understanding of history and the determination for peace. The emperor's trip to Mongolia will be his second since he visited in 2007 as crown prince to mark the 35th anniversary of the diplomatic ties between the countries.
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Judges order 'robust' inquiry into MI5 false evidence exposed by BBC
The High Court has ordered a "robust and independent" new investigation into how MI5 gave false evidence to multiple courts, after rejecting two official inquiries provided by the Security Service as seriously "deficient".The two reviews took place after the BBC revealed MI5 had lied to three courts in a case concerning a neo-Nazi state agent who abused women.A panel of three senior judges said it would be "premature" to decide whether to begin contempt of court proceedings against any individuals before the new investigation was also "commended" the BBC for "bringing these matters to light". The two official inquiries, one of which was commissioned by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, absolved MI5 and its officers of deliberate the judgement concludes that the "investigations carried out by MI5 to date suffer from serious procedural deficiencies" and that "we cannot rely on their conclusions".The three judges - England and Wales' most senior judge, Lady Chief Justice Baroness Sue Carr, President of the King's Bench Division Dame Victoria Sharp and Mr Justice Chamberlain, said: "It is to be hoped that events such as these will never be repeated."Their judgement says the new investigation should be carried out under the auspices of the Investigatory Powers Commissioner Sir Brian Leveson, who has oversight of MI5's surveillance activities. His office, IPCO, was also provided with false evidence by MI5 in the director general Sir Ken McCallum repeated his "full and unreserved apology for the errors made in these proceedings".He said resolving this matter was "of the highest priority for MI5" and that they would co-operate fully with IPCO."MI5's job is to keep the country safe. Maintaining the trust of the courts is essential to that mission," he said. The case began in 2022 with an attempt to block the BBC from publishing a story about a neo-Nazi agent known as X. It has become a major test of how the courts view MI5 and the credibility of its gave evidence to three courts, saying that it had never breached its core secrecy policy of neither confirming nor denying (NCND) that X was a state in February, the BBC was able to prove with notes and recordings of phone calls with MI5 that this was MI5 officer had confirmed the agent's status as he tried to persuade me to drop an investigation into X, a violent misogynist who used his Security Service role to coerce and terrify his former girlfriend, known publicly as "Beth".The two official inquiries criticised by the High Court were an internal MI5 inquiry and an "external" investigation by the government's former chief lawyer, Sir Jonathan Jones KC. The latter was commissioned by the home sectary and Sir the judgement said that "there was in our view a fundamental incoherence in Sir Jonathan's terms of reference". The ruling said he was asked to establish the facts of what happened but not to "make findings about why specific individuals did or did not do certain things".However, the judges said Sir Jonathan nevertheless "did make findings" that there was no deliberate attempt by anyone to mislead the court - without ever speaking to an MI5 officer at the centre of the case and without considering key additional BBC evidence about what took judgement also found that MI5's director general of strategy, who is the organisation's third-in-command, gave misleading assurances to the court in a witness said its original explanations were "a fair and accurate account" of secret material which, at that point, had not been court forced the government and MI5 to hand over the material, and the judges concluded that MI5's explanations were not "fair and accurate" and "omitted several critical matters" - including that IPCO had been misled and what was known by several MI5 officers at relevant judgement said that it was "regrettable that MI5's explanations to this court were given in a piecemeal and unsatisfactory way - and only following the repeated intervention of the court"."The impression has been created that the true circumstances in which false evidence came to be given have had to be extracted from, not volunteered by, MI5," they said. Today's highly critical judgement also found: In this one case MI5 has misled two separate branches of the High Court, as well as the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, the Investigatory Powers Commissioner, and security cleared barristers representing the BBC known as special advocatesMI5's core NCND secrecy policy about the status of agents was maintained in the legal proceedings long after "any justification for its maintenance had disappeared"The BBC and I, as well as our lawyers and special advocates, should be "commended" for the "central role" we have played in bringing these matters to light The judgement said that a "major" failing by the official reviews is that they did not contact me, despite the fact I was the other person involved in the key judges said that, having "considered carefully" further evidence I submitted in response to the reviews - such as records and notes that showed both reviews included false statements - it "paints a significantly different picture" to the one presented by added that they accepted the internal investigators and Sir Jonathan in the external review later considered my evidence "in good faith".But they said that because they had already reached a conclusion that there had been no deliberate attempt to mislead the court, they would "inevitably find it difficult" to revise those conclusions in the light of evidence which "fundamentally affects" the basis of their conclusions.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Former January 6 defendant now advising justice department's ‘weaponization working group'
A former FBI agent who allegedly shouted 'kill 'em!' at law enforcement during the January 6 insurrection is now advising a 'weaponization working group' in the Trump justice department, a sign of the elevated role rioters are playing since they were granted clemency by the president. Jared L Wise has been named an adviser or counselor to Ed Martin, the advocate for January 6ers who was previously acting as US attorney for Washington DC and is now leading the weaponization working group, the New York Times and ABC News reported on Tuesday. The contours of Wise's role are not clear. The move is a further embrace by the Trump administration of those who stormed the US Capitol in 2021 seeking to overturn Trump's electoral loss and shows how fundamentally the justice department has shifted on January 6 since Trump won last November, tailoring itself to his retribution agenda. The justice department's prosecution of Wise was under way when Trump took office in January, so it was one of many cases that were dismissed before a verdict. He had been charged with two felonies and four misdemeanors, and he had pleaded not guilty. On his first day in office, Trump granted clemency to all who were convicted or charged for their roles in the January 6 riot, including those who faced charges of violent acts. The justice department, under the Biden administration, had identified Wise in footage inside the US Capitol and engaging with police among a group of protesters outside. Video footage from a Metropolitan police department body camera showed Wise saying to police officers: 'You guys are disgusting. I'm former – I'm former law enforcement. You're disgusting. You are the Nazi. You are the Gestapo. You can't see it … Shame on you! Shame on you! Shame on you!' The department's press release on Wise notes that once violence broke out against law enforcement in front of him, Wise said, 'Yeah, fuck them! Yeah, kill 'em!' and then, in the direction of people who were attacking the police line: 'Kill 'em! Kill 'em! Kill 'em!' Prior to attending the January 6 riot, he was an FBI special agent and supervisory special agent from 2004 to 2017, according to the justice department. He was also an operative for the rightwing media outlet Project Veritas, where he was 'assigned to infiltrate teacher unions in Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Kentucky', according to the New York Times. The justice department's weaponization working group was set up in February to analyze instances in the prior four years in which 'a department's or agency's conduct appears to have been designed to achieve political objectives or other improper aims rather than pursuing justice or legitimate governmental objectives', according to a memo announcing it. This includes the investigations into Trump, prosecutions of January 6 defendants, anti-abortion protests and supposed anti-Catholic bias. Martin, whose nomination to become the US attorney for DC was withdrawn after it became unclear how he could secure confirmation, is a vocal and frequent advocate for January 6 defendants. Stanley Woodward, who had defended people involved in the insurrection and many others in Trump's orbit over the years, is now in the No 3 position in the justice department, associate attorney general.
