Author: niyidaram

Kim Keon Hee, the wife of disgraced former South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol, was sentenced on Wednesday to one year and eight months in prison after being found guilty of bribery. The ruling marks just one of three criminal cases she is currently facing, and both prosecutors and Kim’s legal team retain the right to appeal. The court convicted Kim of accepting luxury gifts from the Unification Church, including a Chanel handbag and a Graff diamond necklace. She was acquitted of stock manipulation charges and of conspiring with her husband to obtain free opinion polls, with judges citing insufficient…

A senior Indian politician is among five people killed after a private jet crashed near Baramati in Maharashtra on Wednesday morning, January 28. Maharashtra’s Deputy Chief Minister and Nationalist Congress Party leader Ajit Pawar died when the Learjet 45 he was travelling in went down while attempting a second landing near Baramati airport. Four others, including two pilots and members of his security team, also lost their lives. The aircraft, operated by private firm VSR, departed Mumbai at 8:10 a.m. and disappeared from radar around 8:45 a.m. Officials said the jet lost control moments before touchdown and plunged roughly 100…

Iran has executed a man accused of spying for Israel, according to the judiciary’s media outlet Mizan. The report said Hamidreza Sabet Esmailpour was hanged at dawn on Wednesday after being convicted of passing classified information to a Mossad agent. Mizan said Esmailpour had been arrested on April 29, 2025, and was found guilty of espionage and intelligence cooperation with a hostile foreign service, with the sentence upheld by Iran’s Supreme Court. Rights groups say at least 12 people have been executed on similar espionage charges since Israel’s war with Iran in June 2025. The execution comes as Iran faces…

Paul Thomas Anderson’s counterculture comedy One Battle After Another has emerged as the leading contender at this year’s Bafta awards with 14 nominations, narrowly ahead of Ryan Coogler’s vampire thriller Sinners, which picked up 13. While Sinners made history last week by becoming the first film ever to secure 16 Oscar nominations, it was Anderson’s gonzo caper that took the slight edge in Tuesday’s Bafta announcement. Close behind are Marty Supreme and Hamnet with 11 nominations each, followed by Frankenstein and Sentimental Value on eight. One of the biggest surprises was British Tourette comedy I Swear, which earned five nominations,…

Keir Starmer has announced plans to cap ground rents at £250 a year for leaseholders in England and Wales, alongside proposals to ban leaseholds for new flats and give existing leaseholders the right to switch to commonhold. The prime minister revealed the change in a TikTok video, calling it “good news for homeowners” and saying many leaseholders would save hundreds of pounds a year. He said easing housing costs was central to tackling the cost-of-living crisis and described the move as a key election promise now being delivered. The reforms will be set out in a draft leasehold and commonhold…

A decision to involve US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in security operations at Italy’s upcoming Winter Olympic Games has sparked backlash from politicians and campaigners, with Milan’s mayor saying the agents are “clearly not welcome” in the co-host city. Sources at the US embassy in Rome confirmed that ICE agents will take part in security arrangements during the Milan-Cortina Games, which begin on February 6. ICE said its Homeland Security Investigations unit would support the US State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service and Italian authorities in assessing risks from transnational criminal organisations, stressing that all security operations would remain under…

Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman has defected from the Conservative Party to Reform UK, becoming the latest sitting Tory MP to cross the floor. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage announced the move at a rally for party activists in central London. Braverman told supporters she had ended her 30-year Conservative Party membership, saying, “I feel like I’ve come home.” Her defection makes her the third Conservative MP to join Reform UK this month, following Robert Jenrick and Andrew Rosindell, and the fourth since the 2024 general election. Reform now has eight sitting MPs. Braverman has been an MP since 2015.…

Former Spain manager, Robert Moreno, was sacked for heavily relying on ChatGPT to make decisions in his team. Moreno, 48, left Russian First League club FC Sochi last September after picking up just one point from seven matches. According to the club’s former sporting director Andrei Orlov, Moreno was a big fan of ChatGPT and used it to make some bizarre decisions. On an away trip to Khabarovsk, Moreno rigidly stuck to the Artificial Intelligence platform’s prompts to plan his team’s schedule. He ordered his team to train at 7am two days before the match and demanded they stay awake…

The corruption trial of Diezani Alison-Madueke, a former Nigerian minister of petroleum resources and the first woman to serve as president of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), is set to begin in London on Monday, January 26. Alison-Madueke, 65, faces five counts of accepting bribes and one count of conspiracy to commit bribery in connection with her tenure as Nigeria’s oil minister between 2010 and 2015, during the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan. Prosecutors allege that she accepted “financial or other advantages” from individuals linked to two energy companies between 2011 and 2015. The alleged benefits…

Iran has issued a fresh warning to the United States after President Donald Trump ordered a major naval deployment towards the country and said Washington was “watching” Tehran closely, amid escalating tensions following a deadly crackdown on protests ordered by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The warning came as a senior Iranian cleric, Mohammad Javad Haj Ali Akbari, said Tehran could target US-linked investments across the Middle East if Washington moved to strike Iran. “The one trillion dollars you have invested in the region is under the watch of our missiles,” he said. The standoff has intensified after Trump issued renewed…