The South Korean president, Yoon Suk Yeol, has apologised for his short-lived attempt to impose martial law this week, promising to face any legal or political consequences hours before parliament is due to vote on his impeachment.

In a two-minute televised address to the nation, his first public appearance since he rescinded the martial law order on Wednesday, Yoon said he was “very sorry” for the decision, which he said was born of desperation, and promised not to attempt to impose martial law a second time.

“I am very sorry and would like to sincerely apologise to the people who were shocked,” Yoon said and bowed. “I leave it up to my party to take steps to stabilise the political situation in the future, including the issue of my term in office.”

Lee Jae-myung, the leader of the main opposition Democratic party, dismissed Yoon’s apology as “very disappointing” and said it had only increased public anger and betrayal.

“The president’s very existence is the biggest risk to South Korea right now,” Lee said, maintaining that there was “no other solution” than his immediate resignation or removal through impeachment.

The leader of Yoon’s own People Power party (PPP), Han Dong-hun, also said that the president’s early resignation was unavoidable and that he was no longer in a position to fulfil his duty, according to the national news wire Yonhap.

On Friday, Han had said Yoon was a danger to the country and needed to be removed from power, increasing the pressure on Yoon to quit even though PPP members later reaffirmed a formal opposition to his impeachment.

It was not clear whether the motion submitted by opposition lawmakers would get the two-thirds majority required for Yoon to be impeached. But it appeared more likely after Han on Friday called for suspending his constitutional powers, describing him as unfit to hold the office and capable of taking more extreme action, including renewed attempts to impose martial law.

Impeaching Yoon would require support from 200 of the National Assembly’s 300 members. The opposition parties that jointly brought the impeachment motion have 192 seats combined.

That means they would need at least eight votes from Yoon’s PPP. On Wednesday, 18 of its members joined a vote that unanimously cancelled martial law 190-0, less than three hours after Yoon declared the measure on television, calling the opposition-controlled parliament a “den of criminals” bogging down state affairs. The vote took place as hundreds of heavily armed troops encircled the National Assembly in an attempt to disrupt the vote and possibly to detain key politicians.

The turmoil resulting from Yoon’s bizarre and poorly-thought-out stunt has paralysed South Korean politics and sparked alarm among key diplomatic partners, including neighbouring Japan and Seoul’s top ally, the United States, as one of the strongest democracies in Asia faces a political crisis that could unseat its leader.

Opposition lawmakers claim that Yoon’s martial law declaration amounted to a self-coup and drafted the impeachment motion around rebellion charges.

The Democratic party lawmaker Soyoung Lee sought to reassure the international community on Friday night, saying that her country was open for business.

“If President Yoon is impeached today or tomorrow, there is no need to be alarmed; the international community can continue to invest with confidence in Korea’s strong democracy and resilience,” she said.

The PPP decided to oppose impeachment at a lawmakers’ meeting, despite pleas by Han, who isn’t a lawmaker and has no vote.

But they face a difficult choice ahead of the vote. A recent poll showed 73.6% of South Koreans support impeachment, with majority support even in traditional conservative strongholds.

The Daegu mayor, Hong Joon-pyo, also a PPP member, warned that if Yoon becomes the second president to be impeached following that of former president Park Geun-hye in 2017, “the party will have no reason to exist and will disappear”.

The crisis has also exposed tensions in South Korea’s traditionally rigid political landscape, where voters typically remain loyal to their ideological camp regardless of individual candidates.

Han on Friday said he had received intelligence that during the brief period of martial law, Yoon ordered the country’s defence counterintelligence commander to arrest and detain unspecified key politicians based on accusations of “anti-state activities”.

Hong Jang-won, the first deputy director of South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, later told lawmakers in a closed-door briefing that Yoon called after imposing martial law and ordered him to help the defence counterintelligence unit to detain key politicians.

The targeted politicians included Han, Lee Jae-myung and the National Assembly speaker Woo Won Shik, according to Kim Byung-kee, one of the lawmakers who attended the meeting.

While Yoon’s presidency has been plagued by policy missteps, economic woes and controversial personnel appointments, it has also been overwhelmed by scandals involving his wife Kim Keon Hee, who has proved to be his greatest political liability.

These include allegations of stock price manipulation, unlawful involvement in party candidate nominations, and accepting a 3m won (£1,675) Dior bag as a gift from a pastor.

Yoon has vetoed three separate bills seeking to establish a special counsel to investigate his wife, leading opposition lawmakers to include the alleged attempts to shield his family from investigation among their reasons for impeachment.

Parliament is expected to vote on a fourth attempt to establish a special counsel to investigate Kim right before the impeachment motion. The strategy appears designed to ensure ruling party lawmakers attend both votes, rather than boycotting the crucial impeachment decision through absence.

Large-scale protests took place across the country on Friday night, with more demonstrations planned for Saturday.

Labour unions and civic groups announced a major candlelight march near the national assembly, while Korean communities worldwide are staging their own protests, with demonstrations taking place in London, Paris and Berlin calling for Yoon to step down.

Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report

Police in Akron, Ohio, have released body-camera footage of the fatal shooting of a 15-year-old boy, in an incident the city’s mayor called “deeply troubling”.

Video of the Thanksgiving night killing of Jazmir Tucker does not clearly show what led up to the shooting, but suggests that an officer quickly fired at the teenager upon encountering him, and that a group of officers waited seven minutes to approach the boy after he had been shot. The family’s attorneys have said officers did not start rendering aid for 10 minutes.

“In hindsight, the amount of time that expired between the shooting and the initiation of physical aid to Jazmir is deeply troubling to me,” Akron’s mayor, Shammas Malik, said in a statement on Thursday, alongside the release of the footage. “I want to be clear that any unreasonable delay in the rendering of aid by police officers is unacceptable and has no place in Akron.”

Police have said that two patrol officers heard nearby gunshots just after 11pm on 28 November and got out of their parked car to investigate. The officers then encountered Jazmir and ran after him, officials said. One officer fired his assault rifle at the teen, fatally striking him. The boy was later pronounced dead at a hospital and no officers were injured.

The boy was found with a gun in a zipped-up pocket, raising concerns about why lethal force had been used, Malik said: “Why did the officer decide to use his weapon?”

The roughly eight-minute video released by police is difficult to decipher. The sound is off for the first 30 seconds, which is standard when a body camera first turns on. The shooting happens within that timeframe. The footage suggests the officer was chasing Jazmir, raised his rifle and fired at him for about three seconds, potentially shooting about seven times.

The shooting officer’s arms and long gun, however, block the camera’s view, and Jazmir is not visible in the moments before and during the shooting.

Once the sound on the footage begins, that officer and others are heard yelling at Jazmir, who is on the ground, repeatedly telling the unresponsive teen to raise his hands. Between eight and 10 officers ultimately converge on Jazmir about seven minutes after he is shot. At that point, officers handcuff him and search his pockets. Police have not released details about what any of the officers did to try to save his life.

The mayor said the footage left him with “serious questions”, including why officers did not activate their cameras upon arrival. He said their cameras eventually started automatically recording due to the presence of a nearby cruiser with activated lights.

“I also believe that many will ask why the officers used rifles instead of handguns in responding to this incident,” Malik said. “This will be something that we discuss more going forward, including in the internal investigation, and as part of our comprehensive review of use of force, including when and how different weapons are used.”

The family’s attorneys said in a statement that the fact that Jazmir had a weapon was “irrelevant because officers didn’t know he had it until they unzipped his pocket after he was shot”.

“The police department did a number of things tactically wrong in this case, starting with the aggressiveness that they initiated this pursuit … These officers came out with the intent to do one thing: shoot and kill,” the attorney Robert Gresham said in a statement. “What I perceive to be the biggest issue here is there’s a culture of violence in this particular police department.”

Stanley Jackson, another family attorney, added: “The mayor and the police department weaponized the police by allowing them to carry assault rifles, right? And then, the police department weaponizes Jaz’s skin and his youth. That’s the problem.”

At a news conference, Jazmir’s relatives said they are devastated by his death. Ashley Greene said her son was a “great kid”, adding she was “extremely hurt that I couldn’t help my baby”.

“It hurt me to see that no one helped my baby,” Greene said, according to Fox 8 News. “The police never addressed us. I had to find out that was my son through social media.”

Jazmir’s great-aunt, Connie Sutton, described him as a child who was always laughing: “Everybody loved Jaz, and Jaz loved everybody else.”

The officer who fired the shots has been on the force for nearly five years. He and his partner were placed on paid administrative leave, per department policy, and their names have not been released.

Brian Harding, Akron’s police chief, said in a statement: “Our community, our department, and most importantly, Jazmir’s family deserve and need answers to those questions.”

The Ohio bureau of criminal investigation is leading the inquiry, and Akron police are conducting a separate internal investigation.

In October, the city of Akron paid the family of Jayland Walker a $4.8m settlement, after eight police officers fired 94 bullets at the 25-year-old in a 2022 incident that sparked widespread protests. A grand jury declined to indict the officers last year over the killing, which began with a traffic stop over a broken taillight.

On Friday, the Ohio supreme court ruled that the city could continue to conceal the names of the officers who shot Walker.

Harvey Weinstein’s lawyers are afraid he will die during his incarceration at Rikers Island, where he has been since a 2020 rape conviction in New York was overturned on appeal, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

According to Weinstein’s legal team, the disgraced movie producer has faced egregious conditions while jailed, including being left to fester in blood-spattered clothes, wearing the same underwear for weeks and exposure to freezing temperatures. They also allege that he was denied basic medicine for cancer treatment.

Lawyers for Weinstein say that his mistreatment has been so horrific that they suspect it is deliberate by the prison and that their client’s death is the “inevitable outcome”.

Last week, Weinstein’s lawyers filed a legal claim against New York City seeking $5m in damages. They allege that Weinstein is a victim of negligent medical care and is being forced to live in “gulag”-like conditions.

In October, it was reported that Weinstein was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia. He was eventually taken to the prison ward at lower Manhattan’s Bellevue hospital after a blood test showed dangerously low levels of white cells, raising his risk of serious infection.

During the lengthy legal proceedings, Weinstein’s legal team had been pushing for him to be allowed to stay full-time in a unit at Bellevue hospital. During his many court appearances, he would often be brought in by wheelchair.

Weinstein’s attorney, Imran H Ansari, told the Hollywood Reporter that his visits to Rikers made him “question whether I was in a prison facility that is supposed to be managed in accordance with our constitution, or a gulag where the prisoners are treated like animals”.

“I don’t want to be speculative, but he is certainly not just another inmate number,” said Ansari. “I’m sure everyone knows this is Harvey Weinstein. This was the guy who was living in the lap of luxury and was at the top of his game in Hollywood, and here he is now.”

Weinstein’s retrial in the rape case at the center of his overturned conviction is scheduled for 2025. Rikers Island is supposed to be closed in 2027, but New York City has postponed closure deadlines.

After spending 24 years in prison on an overturned murder conviction, Shaurn Thomas received a $4.1m payout from the city of Philadelphia – and became a standard-bearer for the Pennsylvania Innocence Project.

Now, seven years after his release, Thomas has admitted to killing a different man in early 2023 over a comparatively paltry $1,200 drug debt. And as a result, Thomas will probably go back to a cell for the rest of his life.

In another bizarre twist, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported, Thomas, 50, met his victim through an association of former inmates who had their convictions overturned. A girlfriend whose brother was also wrongly imprisoned for murder introduced Thomas to a childhood friend, who took cocaine worth $1,200 from him to sell but failed to pay him the money.

Thomas shot and killed the man, 38-year-old Akeem Edwards, in January 2023. And on Thursday in Philadelphia, he pleaded guilty to charges including third-degree murder and weapons offenses. He will be sentenced in February.

According to the Inquirer, the common pleas court judge, Roxanne Covington, expressed incredulity that Thomas, a multimillionaire, would have committed murder for a relatively minor sum of money.

“Are these facts true?” she asked Thomas after prosecutors explained how he had tracked down Edwards in a Philadelphia neighborhood and shot him in cold blood before later allegedly saying to his girlfriend, Ketra Veasy, that he had previously been involved in at least three homicides.

“Yes, your honor,” Thomas replied, according to the newspaper. The Inquirer recounted how Thomas was originally found guilty of the 1990 robbery and murder of a north Philadelphia businessman and had his conviction overturned on appeal in 2017.

The Philadelphia district attorney’s office declined to retry that case after Thomas’s conviction was thrown out. But prosecutors also expressed doubt that Thomas was entirely innocent.

Members of Edwards’s family spoke out against Thomas after Thursday’s plea hearing. “There’s not enough time for them to possibly give him,” his sister, Tyeisha Marshall, said of Thomas, the Inquirer reported. She told the newspaper her brother was genuine and a loving father.

Sharondah King, the mother of Edwards’s child, criticized Veasy for her role in the crime, which included driving in the car with Thomas on the day her partner was murdered.

“If it wasn’t for her [introducing them], this would’ve never happened,” she said.

The CEO of UnitedHealth Group, Andrew Witty, told employees he would increase security, including “perimeter protection,” at the company’s sites following the killing of one of their colleagues, CEO of the company’s health insurance branch Brian Thompson.

In comments shared with the Guardian, Witty said the company would make “permanent” changes that would make campuses less “welcoming”, but they were necessary in the country’s current “climate”.

“We guard against the pressures that exist for unsafe or unnecessary care to be delivered, in a way that makes the whole system too complex and ultimately unsustainable,” Witty said, according to comments shared with the Guardian.

“I have never been more proud of what this company and our colleagues do on behalf of the people in this country. I urge you to tune out the negative messaging you hear on social media,” Witty said.

Witty made the comments in the face of online vitriol in response to the killing of Thompson, a 50-year-old CEO of United HealthCare, who is survived by two sons and his wife, Paulette.

Thompson was killed early Wednesday morning in midtown Manhattan, just outside the site of the company’s annual investor meeting, by an unknown assailant who shot the executive at least twice and then fled on an e-bike.

Police are still searching for the suspect, and released photos and information about items found at the scene, including shell casings scrawled with the words, “deny,” “depose” and “defend”. The motive for the killing is unknown.

The killing has been strongly condemned by lawmakers such as Amy Klobuchar, Democratic US Senator of Minnesota, who on social media described Thompson’s death as, “horrifying and shocking act of violence”.

In response to questions about the webcast and comments, a spokesperson for UnitedHealth Group referred the Guardian to a published statement: “While our hearts are broken, we have been touched by the huge outpouring of kindness and support in the hours since this horrific crime took place.

So many patients, consumers, healthcare professionals, associations, government officials and other caring people have taken time out of their day to reach out. We are thankful, even as we grieve.

Our priorities are, first and foremost, supporting Brian’s family; ensuring the safety of our employees; and working with law enforcement to bring the perpetrator to justice.

We, at UnitedHealth Group, will continue to be there for those who depend upon us for their health care.

We ask that everyone respect the family’s privacy as they mourn the loss of their husband, father, brother and friend.”

In a webcast to employees shared with the Guardian, Witty said that the company would, “provide as much support as we could possibly do to Brian’s family” and “for as long as the family need us”.

Witty then turned to security of the company’s sites: “We’ve also been working hard to make sure that people who feel concerned about security, individually, but more importantly perhaps for our sites, continues to be reviewed and strengthened and to make sure we have put in place all of the appropriate mechanisms to keep our organization and our people safe.”

The CEO also said the company would strengthen the “perimeter protection” of UHC campuses as time goes on.

“We will see permanent changes that will make our sites less welcoming, especially for guests and visitors, but it’s a necessary change to make in the changing climate in this country,” Witty said.

The comments come as corporate CEOs are on edge following Thompson’s death, and as political violence researchers warn that the online reaction to the killing is evidence of the growing acceptability of violence as a means to resolve conflict in the US.

In another part of what appears to be the same webcast, Witty also lambasted the media coverage of Thompson’s death.

“I’d like to give you a little bit of advice around the media,” said Witty in video obtained by reporter Ken Klippenstein and republished by the Daily Beast. “My strong advice and request to everybody is just don’t engage with the media. If you’re approached, I would recommend not responding and, if necessary, simply refer them to our own media organization.”

Authorities in Pennsylvania believe they have located the body of Elizabeth Pollard, a woman who fell into a sinkhole while searching for her cat earlier this week.

Sean Hribal, a deputy coroner in Westmoreland county near Pittsburgh, confirmed to the Associated Press that searchers believe they have found the remains of the 64-year-old grandmother on the fourth day of searching.

Pollard was last seen four days earlier near a sinkhole above a shuttered coal mine. The sinkhole was reported to have opened directly above the abandoned mine.

The search for Pollard began on Monday after her family reported she went missing while searching for Pepper, her lost cat. Searchers quickly focused on the sinkhole that may have only recently opened up in the village of Marguerite. The sinkhole is reported to have a manhole-sized surface gap.

“The sinkhole, it appears that it was most likely created during the time while, unfortunately, Miss Pollard was walking around,” the Pennsylvania state trooper Steve Limani told ABC affiliate WTAE-TV. “There is no evidence of any time where that hole would have been here prior to her deciding to walk around looking for her cat.”

A challenging excavation has been ongoing at the site of the 70-year-old abandoned coal mine. The body has yet to be recovered.

“We’re going to dig, and we should be able to get, reach into the area where we believe she has fallen, and there is a complexity of dirt there, and slowly take it out,” Limani said.

Shortly after Pollard went missing, authorities were able to locate her five-year-old granddaughter in her parked car near the sinkhole. Despite being in freezing temperatures for about 12 hours, the girl was unharmed.

Elon Musk has emerged as the sole financial architect behind a provocative political action committee that appropriated the name of late US supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to bolster Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, according to federal campaign finance reports released on Thursday.

The RBG Pac, funded entirely by the world’s richest man with a $20.5m donation in the final two weeks of the campaign, ran advertisements and mailers suggesting an ideological alignment between Trump and Ginsburg on abortion.

That’s a narrative that Clara Spera, the justice’s granddaughter, denounced as fundamentally misleading.

“The use of her name and image to support Donald Trump’s re-election campaign, and specifically to suggest that she would approve of his position on abortion, is nothing short of appalling,” she told the New York Times in October.

​​The RBG Pac’s strategic advertising push arrived at a critical political moment, following months of Democratic attacks on Trump’s abortion stance. Its website featured a photo of Trump and Ginsburg with the caption “Great Minds Think Alike” – a claim that directly contradicts Ginsburg’s well-documented judicial philosophy and her personal opposition to Trump.

“Why did Ruth Bader Ginsburg agree with Donald Trump’s position on abortion?” the website asked. “Because RBG believed that the federal government shouldn’t dictate our abortion laws.”

The Pac claimed that Trump doesn’t support a federal abortion ban – something Trump himself said on the campaign trail – although he will face pressure from Republicans and opponents of abortion to enact one once he takes office anyway.

Spera has shared in the past that Ginsburg’s dying wish in September 2020 had been that she was not replaced on the court until a new president was sworn in. That request was ignored by Trump when he appointed Amy Coney Barrett, who would later be part of the conservative majority overturning Roe v Wade.

Musk’s political spending far exceeded this single Pac, ballooning to more than $260m in the 2024 election cycle. His primary vehicle was America Pac, which raised about $252m, with Musk making high-profile campaign appearances and conducting voter outreach initiatives that included controversial $1m giveaways in swing states.

The billionaire’s political donations also extended to a $3m contribution to a Super Pac linked to Robert F Kennedy Jr and nearly $1m directly to Trump’s campaign committee.

Now with the Trump win, Musk is positioned to play a significant role in the incoming administration. He’s set to co-lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency” alongside biotech entrepreneur and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, pledging to dramatically reduce federal bureaucracy.

The US added 227,000 jobs in November, with 54,000 added jobs in healthcare, 53,000 leisure and hospitality jobs and 33,000 government jobs added in the month

The unemployment rate increased to 4.2%, from 4.1% in October.

The final jobs report of 2024 was released prior to the December meeting of the Federal Reserve. The Fed is expected to cut interest rates for the third time in 2024 given softening inflation and a slow down in the jobs market.

The latest report follow October’s disappointing tally. Ahead of election day the labor department announced the US had added only 12,000 jobs in the month. Two hurricanes and a strike of 33,000 workers at Boeing impacted the jobs report, which was far below the projected estimates of 120,000 jobs. October’s report was the weakest month for job growth in the US since December 2020.

The Boeing strike ended last month and the November jobs report was expected to show a rebound from October, as 32,000 jobs were added in transportation equipment manufacturing. Although hurricane impacts are still being felt by businesses, jobs in repair and renovation work were expected to offset those impacts.

“The Biden Administration is handing off a rock-solid labor market after their strategic investments strengthened our economy and ushered in the fastest recession recovery on record,” said Lindsay Owens, executive director of the progressive economic advocacy nonprofit Groundwork Collaborative, in a statement in response to the jobs report. “President-elect Trump would do well to continue to invest in the workers and communities that have powered this resilience. But if he pursues trillions in tax cuts for the wealthy and implements the proposals to slash public investments that people like Musk have championed, the labor market will surely deteriorate and workers will suffer the consequences of these choices.”

“President-elect Trump would do well to continue to invest in the workers and communities that have powered this resilience. But if he pursues trillions in tax cuts for the wealthy and implements the proposals to slash public investments that people like Musk have championed, the labor market will surely deteriorate and workers will suffer the consequences of these choices.”

On Wednesday ADP, the US’s largest payroll supplier, said companies added 146,000 jobs in October, less than economists had expected. ADP’s chief economist, Nela Richardson, said: “Manufacturing was the weakest we’ve seen since spring. Financial services and leisure and hospitality were also soft.”

November’s job report is the penultimate reading on the labor market before Donald Trump assumes the presidency. Economists are already parsing the impact of Trump’s proposed policies on hiring.

“One big source of uncertainty in the November data is the impact of Donald Trump’s plans for mass deportation. The reference week was after the election, so there may already be some effect showing up in the data,” said Dean Baker, economist and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), in a blog post on what to expect in the November jobs report.

“It is likely that the October data already reflected the sharp decrease in immigration at the start of the summer. The data are highly erratic, and not seasonally adjusted, but the increase in the employment of foreign-born workers in the three months ending in October was just 89,000. That compares to 328,000 for the three months ending in October 2023, and 768,000 for October of 2022.”

A top Romanian court has annulled the first round of the country’s presidential election, days after declassified intelligence alleged Russia ran a coordinated online campaign to promote the far-right outsider who won the first round.

The constitutional court’s decision – which is final – came on Friday after President Klaus Iohannis declassified intelligence two days earlier that alleged Russia ran a sprawling campaign comprising thousands of social media accounts to promote Calin Georgescu across platforms like TikTok and Telegram.

Despite being a huge outsider who declared zero campaign spending, Georgescu emerged as the frontrunner on 24 November. He was due to face the reformist Elena Lasconi, of the Save Romania Union party, in a runoff on Sunday.

More details soon …