HERE ARE THE TOP STORIES
South Korean President Park Geun-hye has been impeached over corruption allegations.
The impeachment is the culmination of a corruption scandal, centered around Park and her close associate Choi Soon-sil, who stands accused of using her connections to make financial gains. South Koreans took to the streets of the capital, Seoul, last month to protest the 64-year-old president’s actions and call for her to step down. The vote means she is suspended from office, and Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn will lead the country in the meantime.
WE’RE KEEPING AN EYE ON
Donald Trump will remain an executive producer on the next season of The Celebrity Apprentice.
The president-elect and NBC will stay in business together even after the inauguration, BuzzFeed News has confirmed.
Trump hosted the show for seven seasons until NBC cut ties after he called Mexicans “rapists,” among other things.
And a little extra
Trump has picked the CEO of Hardee's/Carl’s Jr. to run the US Labor Department. Andy Puzder is a vocal opponent of minimum wage hikes and has strong opinions about women in bikinis eating burgers.
And under Trump, sanctuary cities may not be so safe. A BuzzFeed News investigation shows that the LAPD violated its own rule against cooperating with immigration agents, a scenario that may become more common if Trump targets undocumented immigrants.
The site of a deadly Oakland fire slipped past inspectors for decades.
Despite fire inspections being a yearly requirement in the city, an incorrect address on file means the maze-like warehouse where at least 36 people died last week slipped past authorities for 30 years.
“In a town like Oakland, businesses and occupancies can change so frequently that we may inspect it one day and two days later it can be a totally different place, and we won’t know it until we go back in a year-and-a-half later,” Dan Robertson, Oakland firefighter and head of the local firefighters’ union, said.
DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THIS?
John Glenn, the first US astronaut to orbit the Earth, has died at age 95.
Glenn joined the newly created NASA in 1958 at the dawn of the Space Age, and was selected for the first “Mercury 7” cadre of astronauts. He was also the oldest person to fly into space, at age 77, when he traveled aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1998.
Glenn was the prototype of the astronaut politician, a lion of the US Senate for 25 years, representing his home state of Ohio from 1974 until his retirement in 1999. He led efforts to counter nuclear proliferation and improve government operations. He was “an inspiration to all Americans,” President John F. Kennedy once said.
Uber has laid out hard rules for the first time on what it takes for riders to get banned.
TL;DR: No sex, no barfing, no guns, and absolutely no flirting!
Drivers have had them for a while, but now riders are subject to definitive community guidelines. If someone reports misbehavior to Uber, the company will investigate and possibly suspend the rider’s account while they’re looking into the complaint.
WEEKEND READS
A new essay story by author T.C. Boyle on his friend’s death. “I turned my best friend’s incredible life into fiction. But when he died, Lester showed me that he was far bigger — and more important to me — than any page could hope to contain.”
Donald Trump and the end of Time. The magazine has long chosen controversial, notorious, or reviled figures as its “Person of the Year.” But in the age of Trump, has the nuance of “winning” the honor disappeared?
This was the year America finally saw the South. In 2016, from music to television, the experience of black Southerners was everywhere.
How Black Lives Matter went global. Activists for black, brown, and Indigenous rights around the world have adopted the Black Lives Matter slogan alongside homegrown movements against racism and police brutality.
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