WASHINGTON: An American college student who has been in a coma, according to his parents, while serving a 15-year prison term in North Korea, was released and evacuated Tuesday as the Trump administration revealed a rare exchange with the reclusive country.
The release of Otto Warmbier came during a visit to North Korea by former NBA star Dennis Rodman, one of few people to have met both North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump. But State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told reporters Rodman had nothing to do with Warmbier’s release. Rodman had told reporters before arriving in Pyongyang that the issue of Americans detained by North Korea is “not my purpose right now.”
Instead, the administration credited the release to its diplomatic intervention. It said its special envoy on North Korean policy met with North Korean foreign ministry representatives in Norway last month. The North Koreans agreed to allow consular visits to four Americans held in the North. Such meetings are unusual because the two governments do not have diplomatic relations.
While North Korea’s move to free Warmbier could potentially provide an opening for talks on security issues, the prospects still appear bleak. International negotiations on the dispute over North Korea’s nuclear program have been in limbo for years, as the US cranks up economic sanctions and North Korea won’t give up weapons it considers a guarantee against invasion.
The detention of Americans, often sentenced to draconian prison sentences for seemingly small offenses in the totalitarian nation, has compounded tensions between Washington and Pyongyang. Three Americans remain in custody.
Warmbier, 22, a University of Virginia undergraduate, was convicted and sentenced in a one-hour trial in North Korea’s Supreme Court in March 2016. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison with hard labor for subversion after he tearfully confessed that he had tried to steal a propaganda banner.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced that the State Department had secured Warmbier’s release at the direction of the president. He said Warmbier, of Cincinnati, was en route to the US
Fred and Cindy Warmbier said in a statement to The Associated Press that their son is in a coma and flying home. They said they were told their son has been in a coma since his trial — when he was last seen in public — and they had learned of this only one week ago. US officials did not confirm those details. The State Department would not comment on Warmbier’s condition, citing privacy concerns. Nauert said the last consular visit to Warmbier, by Swedish diplomats, was March 2.
“We want the world to know how we and our son have been brutalized and terrorized by the pariah regime” in North Korea, Warmbier’s parents said. “We are so grateful that he will finally be with people who love him.”
A White House official said Trump had instructed Tillerson to take all appropriate measures to secure the release of Americans held in North Korea. The official referred to them as “hostages.”
The US government accuses North Korea of using such detainees as political pawns. North Korea accuses Washington and South Korea of sending spies to overthrow its government.
Following the May meeting in Oslo, North Korea urgently requested another meeting, which took place last week between the US envoy on North Korea, Joseph Yun, and the North’s ambassador at the UN in New York. There, Yun learned about Warmbier’s “condition,” the White House official said.
The official, who was not authorized to speak on the record about the sequence of events and requested anonymity, said that after Tillerson consulted with Trump, Yun was dispatched to North Korea. He visited Warmbier with two doctors on Monday, and demanded his release on humanitarian grounds. Warmbier was evacuated Tuesday.
A North Korean foreign ministry official, requesting anonymity because no formal North Korean statement had been released, said only that Warmbier was released and left the country Tuesday.
It’s not clear if Warmbier’s release during Rodman’s visit was purely coincidental. Rodman has traveled to the isolated nation four times since 2013, attracting a lot of publicity, much of it unfavorable. In 2014, Rodman arranged a basketball game with other former NBA players and North Koreans and regaled leader Kim with a rendition of “Happy Birthday.”
Rodman’s current trip is his first since Trump, his former “Celebrity Apprentice” boss, became president. He told reporters in Beijing, as he departed for Pyongyang, that he hopes his trip will “open a door” for Trump.
North Korea poses one of the greatest national security challenges for Trump as it tries to develop a nuclear-tipped missile that could strike America. He is looking to increase economic and diplomatic pressure on North Korea, with help from China, but has said he’s open to meeting Kim.
In the past, North Korea has held out until senior US officials or statesmen came to personally bail out detainees. A 2009 visit by former President Bill Clinton secured the freedom of American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling.
Tillerson said the State Department is continuing “to have discussions” with North Korea about the release of other three American citizens imprisoned there. They are:
— Kim Hak Song, who was detained in early May to be investigated for committing unspecified hostile acts, North Korea has said. He worked at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology.
— Tony Kim, who also goes by his Korean name Kim Sang-duk, was detained April 22 at the Pyongyang airport. He had also taught at the university. He was accused of committing unspecified criminal acts intended to overthrow the government.
— South Korean-born US citizen Kim Dong Chul, who was sentenced in April 2016 to 10 years in prison with hard labor after being convicted of espionage.
High-level U.S. visit leads North Korea to free student in coma
High-level U.S. visit leads North Korea to free student in coma
New York taxi jumps sidewalk outside Macy’s on Christmas Day, injuring 7
- Cab driver suffered a medical episode, police said on Wednesday
- The store is a magnet for tourists and native New Yorkers around the holidays
The incident took place in Midtown Manhattan near Macy’s flagship store in Herald Square near the corner of West 34th Street and Avenue of the Americas, or Sixth Avenue. The store, with its elaborately decorated display windows, is a magnet for tourists and native New Yorkers around the holidays.
In addition to the 58-year-old taxi driver, the injured included a 9-year-old boy, two women aged 49 and three other women aged 19, 37 and 41, police added.
One 49-year-old woman with a leg injury, the 9-year-old boy who suffered a cut and the 41-year-old woman who sustained an injury to her head were taken to hospital, police said.
The remaining three pedestrians declined medical attention, according to police, which added that all the injuries were non-life-threatening.
Media images of the cab showed a heavily damaged vehicle with broken parts and dents all over it.
NBC New York cited law enforcement sources as saying that the boy and his mother who were wounded were visiting New York City from Australia. The report added that no charges had been filed and a probe into the crash was ongoing.
India readies for 400 million pilgrims at mammoth Kumbh Mela festival
- The millennia-old sacred show of religious piety and ritual bathing is held once every 12 years at the site where the holy Ganges, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati rivers meet
PRAYAGRAJ, India: Beside India’s holy rivers, a makeshift city is being built for a Hindu religious festival expected to be so vast it will be seen from space, the largest gathering in history.
Line after line of pontoon bridges span the rivers at Prayagraj, as Indian authorities prepare for 400 million pilgrims – more than the combined population of the United States and Canada – during the six-week-long Kumbh Mela.
The millennia-old sacred show of religious piety and ritual bathing is held once every 12 years at the site where the holy Ganges, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati rivers meet.
But this edition from January 13 to February 26 is expected to be a mega draw, as it is set to coincide with a special alignment of the planets.
Beads of sweat glisten on laborer Babu Chand’s forehead as he digs a trench for seemingly endless electrical cables, one of an army of workers toiling day and night at a venue sprawling over 4,000 hectares (15 square miles).
“So many devotees are going to come,” 48-year-old Chand said, who says he is working for a noble cause for the mela, or fair.
“I feel I am contributing my bit – what I am doing seems like a pious act.”
A humongous tent city, two-thirds the area of Manhattan, is being built on the floodplains of Prayagraj, formerly called Allahabad, in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
“Some 350 to 400 million devotees are going to visit the mela, so you can imagine the scale of preparations,” said Vivek Chaturvedi, the spokesman for the festival.
Preparing for the Kumbh is like setting up a new country, requiring roads, lighting, housing and sewerage.
“What makes this event unique is its magnitude and the fact that no invitations are sent to anybody... Everyone comes on their own, driven by pure faith,” Chaturvedi said.
“Nowhere in the world will you see a gathering of this size, not even one-tenth of it.”
Around 1.8 million Muslims take part in the annual Hajj pilgrimage to Makkah in Saudi Arabia.
The Kumbh numbers, according to Chaturvedi, are mind-boggling.
Some 150,000 toilets have been built, 68,000 LED lighting poles have been erected, and community kitchens can feed up to 50,000 people at the same time.
Alongside religious preparations, Prayagraj has undergone a major infrastructure overhaul, and huge posters of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and state Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath dot the city.
Both are from the ruling Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), with politics and religion deeply intertwined.
The Kumbh Mela is an ancient celebration, with its origins rooted in Hindu mythology.
Hindus believe that taking a dip in Sangam, the confluence of the rivers, will cleanse them of their sins and help them attain “moksha,” setting them free from the cycle of birth and death.
According to legends, deities and demons fought over a pitcher – or “kumbh” – containing the nectar of immortality.
During the battle, four drops fell to Earth.
One drop landed in Prayagraj.
The others fell at Haridwar, Nashik and Ujjain – the three other cities where the rotating Kumbh Mela is held on other years.
But the one in Prayagraj – held every 12 years – is the largest.
Organizing authorities are calling it the great, or “Maha” Kumbh Mela.
The last Kumbh Mela at Prayagraj in 2019 saw 240 million devotees, according to authorities – but that was the smaller “Ardh” or half festival, spaced in between the main event.
“When you talk about the Kumbh, you have to talk about astronomy,” said historian Heramb Chaturvedi, 69.
“Jupiter transits one zodiac sign in a single year,” he added. “Therefore, when it completes 12 zodiac signs, then it is Kumbh.”
Core to celebrations is giving alms to the “wise and learned, the poor and the needy,” he said.
Some pilgrims have already arrived, including naked naga sadhus – wandering monks who have walked for weeks from the remote mountains and forests where they are usually devoted to meditation.
They will lead the dawn charge into the chilly river waters on the six most auspicious bathing dates, starting with the first on January 13.
“I have come here to give my blessings to the public,” 90-year-old naga sadhu Digambar Ramesh Giri, naked with dread-locked hair in a bun, said.
“Whatever you long for in your heart you get at Kumbh.”
Bride, groom, spy: India’s wedding detectives
- As more Indian marry for love, families engage sleuths with high-tech spy tools to investigate prospective partners
- Some families want background checks while partners after marriage use spies to confirm a suspected affair
NEW DELHI: From an anonymous office in a New Delhi mall, matrimonial detective Bhavna Paliwal runs the rule over prospective husbands and wives — a booming industry in India, where younger generations are increasingly choosing love matches over arranged marriage.
The tradition of partners being carefully selected by the two families remains hugely popular, but in a country where social customs are changing rapidly, more and more couples are making their own matches.
So for some families, the first step when young lovers want to get married is not to call a priest or party planner but a sleuth like Paliwal with high-tech spy tools to investigate the prospective partner.
Sheela, an office worker in New Delhi, said that when her daughter announced she wanted to marry her boyfriend, she immediately hired Paliwal.
“I had a bad marriage,” said Sheela, whose name has been changed as her daughter remains unaware her fiance was spied on.
“When my daughter said she’s in love, I wanted to support her — but not without proper checks.”
Paliwal, 48, who founded her Tejas Detective Agency more than two decades ago, says business is better than ever.
Her team handles around eight cases monthly.
In one recent case — a client checking her prospective husband — Paliwal discovered a decimal point salary discrepancy.
“The man said he earns around $70,700 annually,” Paliwal said. “We found out he was actually making $7,070.”
It is discreet work. Paliwal’s office is tucked away in a city mall, with an innocuous sign board saying it houses an astrologer — a service families often use to predict an auspicious wedding date.
“Sometimes my clients also don’t want people to know they are meeting a detective,” she laughed.
Hiring a detective can cost from $100 to $2,000, depending on the extent of surveillance needed.
That is a small investment for families who splash out many times more on the wedding itself.
It is not just worried parents trying to vet their prospective sons or daughters-in-law.
Some want background checks on their future spouse — or, after marriage, to confirm a suspected affair.
“It is a service to society,” said Sanjay Singh, a 51-year-old sleuth, who says his agency has handled “hundreds” of pre-matrimonial investigations this year alone.
Private eye Akriti Khatri said around a quarter of cases at her Venus Detective Agency were pre-marriage checks.
“There are people who want to know if the groom is actually gay,” she said, citing one example.
Arranged marriages binding two entire families together require a chain of checks before the couple even talk.
That includes financial probes and, crucially, their status in India’s millennia-old caste hierarchy.
Marriages breaking rigid caste or religious divisions can have deadly repercussions, sometimes resulting in so-called “honor” killings.
In the past, such premarital checks were often done by family members, priests or professional matchmakers.
But breakneck urbanization in sprawling megacities has shaken social networks, challenging conventional ways of verifying marriage proposals.
Arranged marriages now also happen online through matchmaking websites, or even dating apps.
“Marriage proposals come on Tinder too,” added Singh.
The job is not without its challenges.
Layers of security in guarded modern apartment blocks mean it is often far harder for an agent to gain access to a property than older standalone homes.
Singh said detectives had to rely on their charm to tell a “cock and bull story” to enter, saying his teams tread the grey zone between “legal and illegal.”
But he stressed his agents operate on the right side of the law, ordering his teams to do “nothing unethical” while noting investigations often mean “somebody’s life is getting ruined.”
Technology is on the side of the sleuths.
Khatri has used tech developers to create an app for her agents to upload records directly online — leaving nothing on agents’ phones, in case they are caught.
“This is safer for our team,” she said, adding it also helped them “get sharp results in less time and cost.”
Surveillance tools starting at only a few dollars are readily available.
Those include audio and video recording devices hidden in everyday items such as mosquito repellent socket devices, to more sophisticated magnetic GPS car trackers or tiny wearable cameras.
The technology boom, Paliwal said, has put relationships under pressure.
“The more hi-tech we become, the more problems we have in our lives,” she said.
But she insisted that neither the technology nor the detectives should take the blame for exposing a cheat.
“Such relationships would not have lasted anyway,” she said. “No relationship can work on the basis of lies.”
Ousted Bangladesh PM Hasina’s son denies graft in $12.65 billion nuclear deal
- Bangladesh’s Anti Corruption Commission has launched corruption inquiry into Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant project, backed by Russia’s state-owned Rosatom
- Rosatom, world’s largest supplier of enriched uranium, refuted the allegations, adding that it was committed to combat corruption in all its projects
NEW DELHI: Ousted Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s son and adviser on Tuesday described allegations of corruption involving the family in the 2015 awarding of a $12.65 billion nuclear power contract as “completely bogus” and a “smear campaign.”
Bangladesh’s Anti Corruption Commission said on Monday it had launched an enquiry into allegations of corruption, embezzlement and money laundering in the Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant project, backed by Russia’s state-owned Rosatom.
A deal for two power plants, each with a capacity of 1,200 megawatts, was signed in 2015.
The commission has alleged that there were financial irregularities worth about $5 billion involving Hasina, her son Sajeeb Wazed and her niece and British treasury minister Tulip Siddiq, through offshore accounts.
Rosatom, the world’s largest supplier of enriched uranium, refuted the allegations, adding that it was committed to combat corruption in all its projects and that it maintains a transparent procurement system.
“Rosatom State Corporation is ready to defend its interests and reputation in court,” it said in an emailed statement to Reuters.
“We consider false statements in the media as an attempt to discredit the Rooppur NPP project, which is being implemented to solve the country’s energy supply problems and is aimed at improving the well-being of the people of Bangladesh.”
Siddiq did not respond to a request for comment.
A spokesperson for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Siddiq had denied any involvement in the claims and that he had confidence in her. Siddiq would continue in her role, the spokesperson added.
Wazed, speaking on behalf of the family, said they were the targets of a political witch hunt in Bangladesh.
“These are completely bogus allegations and a smear campaign. My family nor I have ever been involved or taken any money from any government projects,” he told Reuters from Washington, where he lives.
“It is not possible to siphon off billions from a $10 billion project. We also don’t have any offshore accounts. I have been living in the US for 30 years, my aunt and cousins in the UK for a similar amount of time. We obviously have accounts here, but none of us have ever seen that kind of money.”
Reuters could not contact Hasina, who has not been seen in public since fleeing to New Delhi in early August following a deadly uprising against her in Bangladesh. Since then, an interim government has been running the country.
The government in Dhaka said on Monday it had asked India to send Hasina back. New Delhi has confirmed the request but declined further comment.
Wazeb said the family had not made a decision on Hasina’s return to Bangladesh and that New Delhi had not asked her to seek asylum elsewhere.
Cancer-hit UK king hails doctors in Christmas speech
- “We cannot help but think of those for whom the devastating effects of conflict in the Middle East … pose a daily threat to so many people’s lives,” king said
LONDON: King Charles III thanked “selfless doctors and nurses” for supporting the royal family in his Christmas address, marking the end of a year during which he and Princess Catherine have battled cancer.
Speaking in a pre-recorded message from a former hospital chapel, the king paid tribute to medical staff, veterans and humanitarian workers, and touched upon topics ranging from global conflicts to the far-right riots in the UK this summer.
The monarch’s traditional Christmas message, the first in nearly two decades made outside a royal residence, was symbolically filmed in the ornate Fitzrovia Chapel in central London.
“I offer special heartfelt thanks to the selfless doctors and nurses who this year have supported me and other members of my family through the uncertainties and anxieties of illness, and have helped provide the strength, care and comfort we have needed,” Charles, 76, said.
“I am deeply grateful too to all those who have offered us their own kind words of sympathy and encouragement,” the king added.
His daughter-in-law Princess Catherine was also diagnosed with cancer just weeks after him, temporarily removing the two senior royals from frontline duties.
They have gradually resumed engagements, with Kate, as she is widely known, announcing she had completed chemotherapy in September. Charles is still undergoing regular treatment for cancer, expected to continue into 2025.
Charles, who became monarch in 2022 after the death of his mother Queen Elizabeth II, also hailed the country’s response to divisive far-right riots that took place across England in August and September following the fatal stabbing of three young girls.
“I felt a deep sense of pride here in the United Kingdom when in response to anger and lawlessness in several towns this summer, communities came together not to repeat these behaviors, but to repair,” Charles said.
Calling for peace, the king reflected on conflicts across the world in a year which also marked the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings.
“During previous (D-Day) commemorations, we were able to console ourselves with the thoughts that these tragic events seldom happen in the modern era,” said Charles.
“But on this Christmas Day, we cannot help but think of those for whom the devastating effects of conflict in the Middle East, in Central Europe, in Africa and elsewhere, pose a daily threat to so many people’s lives and livelihoods.”
Charles praised the “diversity of culture, ethnicity and faith” in Commonwealth countries, after attending a summit in Samoa in October.
“Across the Commonwealth, we are held together by a willingness to listen to each other,” Charles added, as the bloc increasingly confronts the legacy of slavery and colonialism under the former empire.
The eco-conscious king notably did not address climate change or environmental concerns this time around, in a shift from last year’s address.
However, in the backdrop of the broadcast was a live Christmas tree that was later donated and replanted, a tradition begun by Charles in 2023.
The king ended the speech with a call for “peace on earth.”
“And so it is with this in mind that I wish you and all those you love a most joyful and peaceful Christmas,” he concluded.
In keeping with tradition, Charles and his wife Queen Camilla, 77, were joined by other senior royals for their annual festive gathering at the family’s Sandringham estate in eastern England.
Heir-to-the-throne Prince William and Kate along with their three children were part of the royal entourage attending a morning church service followed by Christmas lunch.
Disgraced Prince Andrew, however, was missing from the festivities after revelations of his dealings with a suspected Chinese spy emerged just weeks earlier.
The king’s younger brother was present at last year’s gathering despite being shunned from royal life over his ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Also missing were Prince Harry and his wife Meghan — who quit royal life in 2020 and moved to California — making it the sixth royal Christmas they have missed in a row.
