A South Korean court has sentenced former President Yoon Suk Yeol to 30 years in jail for sending drones into North Korea.

Prosecutors argued that Yoon ordered the operation in October 2024 to provoke Pyongyang and create a pretext for his failed martial law bid later that year.

When Yoon declared martial law on 3 December, he had claimed he was protecting the country from “anti-state” forces that sympathised with North Korea. But it soon became clear he was driven by domestic troubles and he rolled back the order in the face of mass protests.

Yoon was impeached and is now serving time in prison after he was sentenced to life for insurrection over his botched martial law attempt.

On Friday, the Seoul District Court found Yoon, as well as his former defense minister Kim Yong-hyun, former head of the Defense Counterintelligence Command Yeo In-hyung and former head of Drone Operations Commands Kim Yong-dae guilty of treason and abuse of power.

Kim was sentenced to 30 years in jail, while Yeo received 15 years and Kim Yong-dae received three years in prison with a five-year suspended sentence.

“The defendants used the guise of a military operation to induce provocations from North Korea with the aim of creating a state of emergency,” the court said.

It added that all three officials had “provoked North Korea”, thus “increasing the risk of a military conflict”, but concluded that Yoon bore the “greatest responsibility” in this event.

Yoon’s lawyers had argued that his actions were a “legitimate” response to North Korea’s “provocations with rubbish balloons”.

This was a reference to North Korea dropping hundreds of balloons in 2024, which were later found to contain “filthy waste and trash”, across the border in the South.

The two countries have used such “propaganda balloons” in their campaigns since the Korean War, where messages are put inside the balloons.

But tensions shot up in 2024 when North Korea accused the South of flying drones into its capital. These drones allegedly scattered propaganda leaflets all over Pyongyang, in what the North described as a provocation that could lead to war.

It was Yoon who sent these drones into the North expecting it to strike back, said a judge in Friday’s ruling.

Apart from insurrection, Yoon has was also sentenced to five years in jail for abuse of power and obstructing his own arrest.

Yoon’s martial law attempt and the protests that followed created months of chaos in the country, ending in an election which saw the opposition Democratic Party’s Lee Jae-myung win a decisive mandate.

[BBC]

US police are investigating a large imprint of the numbers 8-6-4-7 that were apparently drawn in the grass of the National Mall in Washington DC.

“Eighty-six” is a slang term for “get rid of”, and Trump administration officials claim that the numbers are meant to encourage violence against Trump, the 47th president.

US Park Police “responded to a report of vandalism” at around 11:30ET (16:30GMT) on Thursday morning, the agency said in a statement.

“The cause of the discoloration has not yet been determined. Grass samples have been collected for testing. The investigation is ongoing.”

Images of the grass show the numbers 8, 6 and 7, but the number 4 is not clearly visible.

The investigation comes as US prosecutors attempt to jail the former director of the FBI for a social media post in which the numbers were seen written on a beach in sea shells.

James Comey is facing multiple charges related to an alleged threat to kill Trump. He has denied the charges and called the prosecution politically-motivated.

The numbers have been used by opponents of Trump, and have appeared at protests against his administration.

The slogan written in the grass appears somewhat faded, with the number 8 appearing more prominently than the others. It is located close to the World War 2 memorial.

The alleged vandalism comes amid a beautification campaign of US monuments in the city, led by Trump. The campaign includes $13.1m (£9.6m) to repaint the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, as well as a plan to build an arch decorated with golden figures including lions and eagles.

[BBC]

A cleaning team was combing Mount Everest’s perilous upper slopes for rubbish last Thursday, after a busy climbing season, when they spotted a man in a bright blue summit suit crawling at the foot of the Khumbu Icefall, widely regarded as one of the most dangerous sections of the world’s highest peak.

It was Hillary Dawa Sherpa, a climbing guide who got separated from his clients when descending the mountain six days earlier. He had been presumed dead – yet another life claimed by Everest’s treacherous slopes. By the time the 57-year-old reappeared, his family had already begun funeral rites for him.

Although frostbitten and thoroughly spent, Hillary Dawa could still sit upright and talk to those who found him, before he was airlifted to a hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital.

News of his miraculous survival made international headlines and sent shockwaves throughout the mountaineering community.

However, it also raises troubling questions for the booming high-altitude tourism industry, and shines a spotlight on the deadly risks Sherpas who work on Mount Everest face.

Himalayan Traverse Adventure (HTA), the company that Hillary Dawa was working for, maintains that all its processes in handling the incident were above board, and that poor weather hampered rescue efforts

But many are asking whether the company, known for offering packages below market rates, has done enough to look after their guides.

Hillary Dawa was hired as a camp cook – why then was he leading clients up the 8,849m (29,032ft) mountain? Why was a search launched only three days after he disappeared, and would it have begun sooner if he had been a client and not a guide?

The Sherpa’s family has filed a police report accusing HTA of negligence, and Nepal’s tourism department is investigating the incident.

Disaster at 7,500m

HTA had initially employed Hillary Dawa as a cook to be stationed at Camp 2, but ended up using him as a substitute for a guide who “fell sick at Base Camp”, the company said.

He took up the spontaneous change in assignment because he “wanted to earn some extra money”, HTA manager Angfurba Sherpa tells the BBC.

That’s how Hillary Dawa ended up accompanying two clients, British climber Chris Thrall and Polish climber Mariusz Chmielewski on his ill-fated trek up Mount Everest. Also with them was fellow guide Pasang Kaji Sherpa.

On the southern route to Everest there are four camps established above the main Base Camp, which climbers typically use as resting and acclimatisation points. Camp 4, which sits at 7,920m above sea level, is the highest.

The group started their descent from Camp 4 on 29 May, with Pasang Kaji and Chmielewski going first, as Chmielewski was running out of oxygen.

Thrall, who followed behind with Hillary Dawa, said the Sherpa had stopped to sit on his backpack just above Camp 3, at around 7,500m, “as he had done hundreds of times before to take a short rest”.

“I turned around and said, ‘Hillary, are you okay brother?'” Thrall recounted in a video on Instagram. “He says, ‘Yes, yes, I’m fine Chris, please go.'”

The conditions were so bad that Thrall and Chmielewski both recorded farewell messages for their loved ones, thinking they may not make it back alive.

The group took some 38 hours to finally arrive at Base Camp. At this point, they had assumed Hillary Dawa was dead.

“It was a complete whiteout,” Thrall said. “All the ropes were a foot under snow… In none of the time when I looked back up the mountain did I see any sign of Hillary.”

Chmielewski, meanwhile, has also accused HTA of negligence.

“Look, Hillary Dawa was left alone; he rescued himself,” Chmielewski tells the BBC. “This shows the sad truth about how Himalayan Traverse regards its employees. Customers are treated similarly.”

Chmielewski claims that Pasang Kaji Sherpa, the other mountain guide in their group, had notified the company on 30 May that Hillary Dawa was missing, but that no search operation was launched until days later.

Chmielewski, who was also admitted to hospital with frostbite, further suggests that decisions were made haphazardly during the expedition, and that the company appeared unprepared.

“I have huge reservations about the agency that organised this expedition,” he says. “I think they should lose their licence.”

Hillary Dawa maintains he was “forced to stay behind” near Camp 3, which sits about 7,200m above sea level, because he had run out of oxygen and could no longer walk.

Without supplemental oxygen, a fully acclimatised climber would typically survive only two to three days at that altitude.

“I couldn’t walk… I didn’t eat anything for the first two days. Then I began chewing ice, but it pained my teeth,” Hillary Dawa told BBC Nepali from HAMS Hospital in Kathmandu. “I didn’t think I would be alive.”

Then he discovered chocolates in his pocket, and managed to get some melted ice to drink.

He made his way down slowly, only to fall into a crevasse, according to two people who spoke to him about his ordeal.

Then, an avalanche that sent snow tumbling into the crevasse gave him the first hope he had had in days.

“Stepping on the snow, I stood up and looked above… It felt like I could get out from there,” he said.

Once he scrambled out, he found ropes nearby that helped him manoeuvre further down. It was there he saw the cleaning team, the first people he had encountered in almost a week.

Hillary Dawa was transferred from the intensive care unit to a general ward early this week and is “recovering well”, his family tells BBC Nepali.

HTA’s founder and president Dawa Sherpa said that when his company had realised on 30 May that Hillary Dawa was uncontactable, it had notified its partner, 8K Expeditions, the larger expedition company that helped issue Thrall and Chmielewski’s climbing permits.

“The search operation was delayed solely due to adverse weather conditions, but it does not mean there was negligence,” he tells the BBC.

“The weather was really bad, it was a whiteout, meaning we had deep snow continually for a few days. It wouldn’t have been possible to send a helicopter immediately. I would have been sending the rescuers to die.”