South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol has declared emergency martial law.

The move comes as Yoon’s People Power Party and the main opposition Democratic Party continue to disagree over next year’s budget bill

In a surprise late night television address he says the measure is necessary to protect the country from North Korea’s communist forces and to eliminate anti-state elements

Analysis: Yoon is mired by several controversies and has been a lame duck president since the last general election

Both the ruling party and opposition have vowed to block the declaration, Yonhap news agency reports.

(BBC News)

A van containing 2,500 pies destined for a Christmas market has been stolen, prompting an appeal from a Michelin-starred chef.

Tommy Banks, who runs award-winning restaurants in North Yorkshire, says “nearly a tonne” of pies, worth £25,000 in total, were taken after the van was driven away from Barker Business Park in Melmerby on Sunday night.

The refrigerated vehicle was due to make a delivery to the chef’s pop-up pie stall at York Christmas Market, however staff found it had vanished on Monday morning.

“The team are very gutted because it’s days and days of work gone,” he told the BBC.

“Vans get replaced on insurance but all that work and all those ingredients, just nicked.”

The stolen items, which included steak and ale pies, turkey and cranberry pies and butternut squash pies, would have been enough to stock Tommy’s Pie Shop for a week, according to the chef.

He continued: “The thing that I’m gutted about especially is, what are they going to do with them, are they going to dump them somewhere?

“It’s just a real shame.”

North Yorkshire Police said it had been informed of the theft and asked anyone with information to get in touch.

“The guys are absolutely scrambling but I think we have enough to get through today and we’re just working like crazy to make more,” he said.

“Hopefully we’ll be able to stock ourselves back up again.”

Mr Banks put out a video message on social media appealing for the thieves to “do the right thing” and donate the pies to a community centre to avoid thousands of meals going to waste.

“I know they’ve gone now and we obviously aren’t going to recover them to sell them,” Mr Banks said.

“I just think that’s 2,500 people we could feed and there’s a lot of people who could do with a hot meal right now. If we can find them, they can have them.”

(BBC News)

Syrian government forces have withdrawn from the city of Aleppo following an offensive by rebels opposed to the rule of President Bashar al-Assad.

The army acknowledged that rebels had entered “large parts” of the city, the country’s second largest, but vowed to stage a counterattack.

The offensive marks the most significant fighting in Syria’s civil war in recent years.

More than 300 people, including at least 20 civilians, have been killed since it began on Wednesday, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).

Speaking on Saturday, President Assad vowed to “defend [Syria’s] stability and territorial integrity in the face of all terrorists and their backers”.

“[The country] is capable, with the help of its allies and friends, of defeating and eliminating them, no matter how intense their terrorist attacks are,” his office quoted him as saying.

The civil war, which has left around half a million people dead, began in 2011 after the Assad government responded to pro-democracy protests with a brutal crackdown.

The conflict has been largely dormant since a ceasefire agreed in 2020, but opposition forces have maintained control of the north-western city of Idlib and much of the surrounding province.

Idlib sits just 55km (34 miles) from Aleppo, which itself was a rebel stronghold until it fell to government forces in 2016.

(BBC News)