📌 Impeachment Motion, Sedentary Teens, More

A motion to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol was submitted today after lawmakers blocked Yoon's declaration of martial law.

The country woke up to an uncertain reality after a night of unprecedented scenes, including Yoon unexpectedly imposing martial law, 190 lawmakers gathering to vote it down, and a sudden reversal of the decision.

After tabling the impeachment motion, South Korea's main opposition Democratic Party condemned Yoon's initial martial law declaration as "insurrectionary behavior.” Parliament will have to vote on whether to impeach Yoon by Saturday.

The Party wants to charge Yoon with "crimes of rebellion.” It named Minister Kim Yong-hyun and Interior Minister Lee Sang-min “key participants” of the martial law declaration, saying it wanted them charged alongside Yoon. Schools, banks and government offices in Seoul are operating as usual, but protests have continued throughout the city.

"Arrest Yoon Suk-yeol," some angry citizens chanted as they filled the streets. South Korea's largest labor group, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, vowed on Wednesday to go on indefinite strike until the president steps down.

The presidential office defended declaring martial law as "strictly within [the country's] constitutional framework.” It said the announcement was timed to “minimize the damage” to the economy and people’s lives.

A study finds teenagers spend 8–10 hours daily on sedentary activities, far more than the World Health Organization advises.

The World Health Organization recommends up to two to three hours per day of sedentary time for youths. However, according to a multinational study, they spend over three times the recommended time watching television, using electronic devices, playing video games, and riding in motorized vehicles.

The most notable finding of the study, led by Professor James F. Sallis at the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science, University of California San Diego, was having a social media account was linked with higher sedentary time in both males and females.

“These findings are concerning, as excessive sedentary behavior has been linked to a range of health problems, including obesity, diabetes and mental health issues,” said Sallis.

Researchers analyzed accelerometer data from 3,982 adolescents aged 11–19 and survey measures of sedentary behavior from 6,302 participants in the International Physical Activity and the Environment Network Adolescent Study, which covered 15 geographically and culturally diverse countries.

“Parents, policymakers and technology companies can work together to reduce access to screens, limit social media engagement and promote more physical activity, thus helping adolescents develop healthier habits and reduce their risk of chronic diseases,” a researcher said.

Women who devote four minutes a day to high-intensity routine activities could halve their risk of heart attacks, a study suggests.

Until now, it was unclear whether much shorter bursts of this type of activity, often part of a daily routine, may also be effective at boosting heart health, and if so, what the minimum threshold for measurable effects might be.

The researchers said this was particularly important for women who don’t or can’t exercise regularly, for whatever reason, because women tended to have a lower level of cardiorespiratory fitness than men at any given age.

The benefits of these bursts of effort, which could include walking quickly for the bus, for example, were pronounced in women – with 1.5 to four minutes a day leading to “substantially lower risks” of heart problems.

The associations were less clear and less significant in men. Men who managed 5.6 minutes of these activity bursts a day, but no formal exercise cut their risk of heart attacks, strokes and heart failure by 16%.

The study used data from 81,052 middle-aged people participating in the UK Biobank study who wore an activity tracker for seven days between 2013 and 2015. Among them, 22,368 people reported doing no regular exercise or, if they did, only went for a walk once a week.

Jill Biden left Tuesday on her final solo foreign trip as first lady, a six-day tour through Italy, the UAE, Qatar and France.

Biden’s office said she will focus on the issues she has championed as first lady, including support for military families, education, and research into cancer and women's health. She will highlight US partnerships with the countries hosting her.

Biden is the first Italian American to become first lady and has planned a side trip to her ancestral hometown of Gesso, the tiny Sicilian village where her father's family hailed from.

As first lady, Biden has become a world traveler. Tuesday's trip is her 10th solo excursion outside the US. She has also accompanied her husband, President Joe Biden, on several of his foreign trips.

She led the US delegations to the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Olympics in 2021 and this year's Games in Paris. She traveled to Ukraine after Russia invaded and visited Latin America and Africa. In October, she attended the inauguration of Mexico's first female president, Claudia Sheinbaum.

The trip wraps with her and President-elect Donald Trump joining other dignitaries in Paris to celebrate the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral.

An unusual planetary system with three known ultra-low density "super-puff" planets has at least one more planet, researchers say.

The research team set out to study Kepler-51d, the third planet in the system, with NASA's James Webb Space Telescope but almost missed their chance when the planet unexpectedly passed in front of its star two hours earlier than models predicted.

After scrutinizing data from space and Earth-based telescopes, the researchers found the best explanation is a fourth planet, whose gravitational pull impacts the orbits of the other planets in the system.

"If trying to explain how three super puffs formed in one system wasn't challenging, now we have to explain whether a fourth planet is a super puff. And we can't rule out additional planets in the system either,” said Jessica Libby-Roberts, a postdoctoral fellow at Penn State and co-author of the paper.

Super puff planets are unusual because they have low mass and density. They are thought to have tiny cores and huge atmospheres of hydrogen and helium.

“Continuing to look at transit timing variations might help us discover planets that are further away from their stars and might aid in our search for planets that could potentially support life,” Libby-Roberts said.

Ireland faces weeks of talks before it gets a government as the country’s center-right parties work to form a coalition.

With all 174 legislative seats filled Monday after three days of counting election ballots, Fianna Fail had won 48 seats and Fine Gael 38. The two parties, who have governed in coalition since 2020, fell just short of the 88 needed to achieve a majority without third-party support.

Left-of-center party Sinn Fein won 39 seats in the Dail, parliament’s lower house, but is unlikely to be part of the next government. Fine Gael and Fianna Fail have long refused to work with Sinn Fein, partly because of its ties with the Irish Republican Army during 30 years of violence in Northern Ireland.

Fianna Fail and Fine Gael allied after the 2020 election ended in a virtual dead heat. The two parties took turns holding the premier post for about two years each. Fianna Fail’s bigger seat tally means Martin looks likely to become prime minister, or taoiseach, rather than Simon Harris of Fine Gael.

They will need support to command a majority in parliament. They could turn to the Social Democrats and the Irish Labour Party, who both increased their seat totals to 11 each, or to independent lawmakers.

The new government will face huge pressure to ease rising homelessness, driven by soaring rents and property prices, and to better absorb a growing number of asylum-seekers.

An adopted woman searching for her birth parents for eight years found she was Facebook friends with her biological dad.

Georgian journalist Tamuna Museridze, 40, grew up unaware she was adopted, but when her mother died in 2016, she was clearing her house and found a birth certificate with Tamuna’s name but a different birth date. She suspected she may have been adopted and began what would become an eight-year search.

In the summer, she received a message on Facebook from a person who knew a woman who concealed a pregnancy and gave birth in September 1984, around the time Tamuna was born. However, when she tried to contact her birth mother, the woman screamed and told Tamuna she had never had a child.

When it was confirmed she was, she asked her mother for the name of her father, who turned out to be a man named Gurgen Korava. Tamuna began searching for her father on Facebook. To her surprise, Gurgen was already her friend and had been following her story to try and find her father for three years.

Tamuna then arranged to meet him and traveled 160 miles to his hometown of Zugdidi. She said the moment her father looked at her, he knew she was his daughter. They caught up and realized they had many similar interests. Gurgen had been a renowned dancer and Tamuna’s daughters both loved dancing.

He said he had had a brief relationship with her biological mother but had not known she had become pregnant. Tamuna now has a new family, including half-siblings, aunts and uncles.