In a landmark decision, the court ruled 7-2 that criminalizing abortion restricts pregnant women’s rights to self-determination by forcing them to maintain the pregnancies, though giving birth and child-rearing have a “decisive” impact on women’s lives.

“The article criminalizing abortion results in forcing pregnant women to bear physical and psychological burdens of maintaining pregnancies, physical pain and danger that giving birth entails, and also social and economic suffering,” the court said in the verdict.

The ruling in itself will not immediately legalize abortion.

The current law criminalizing abortion will remain effective through Dec. 31, 2020, until lawmakers pass a bill reflecting the court’s decision. If lawmakers fail to pass a related bill, Articles 269 and 270 of the Criminal Code will become invalid.

Hundreds of women and men gathered in front of the court in central Seoul to celebrate the decision, chanting, “Abortion is unconstitutional. We won!” and “New world! Right now!”

Only a few meters away, scores of anti-abortion activists denounced the decision, shouting, “Protect women and fetuses! The state must perform its duty to protect the fetus’s right!”

Activists from both sides have held rallies and press conferences in front of the Constitutional Court since Thursday morning.

Abortion has been illegal in South Korea since 1953, except in cases of rape, incest or severe hereditary disorders and where the mother’s health is at risk. All abortions, without exception, have been illegal after 24 weeks of gestation.

Women who terminate their pregnancies can be jailed for a year or fined up to 2 million won ($1,750), and doctors who perform the procedure face up to two years in prison, though they have rarely been prosecuted for abortions.

The current case was filed in 2017 by a female doctor who was prosecuted in 2013 for conducting 69 abortions. She filed a petition arguing the abortion ban violates women’s right to happiness.

In 2012, the court recognized a fetus’s right to life and ruled the abortion ban had not excessively restricted pregnant women’s rights to self-determination. It also said abortion would run rampant if not punished.

A historic decision in favor of the pro-choice movement had been widely expected, given the change in the composition of the Constitutional Court. Six of the nine justices were appointed under the Moon Jae-in administration and at least three had publicly said the ban on abortion should be reconsidered.

Calls to scrap the abortion ban have gained momentum in recent years amid a growing feminist movement.

An opinion poll by Realmeter in 2017 showed that 51.9 percent were in favor of abolishing the ban. When the pollster conducted the survey in 2012, 53.1 percent of respondents said abortion should not be legalized.

The deal struck during late night talks in Brussels means that, if London remains in the EU after May 22, British voters will have to take part in European elections — or crash out on June 1.

Prime Minister Theresa May said she would now keep working to get her withdrawal agreement approved by parliament to ensure an orderly split, saying her goal was to leave “as soon as possible”.

The other 27 EU leaders met without May over dinner to thrash out what European Council president Donald Tusk called “a flexible extension until 31 October”.

    May later returned to agree the new deadline, which British newspapers were quick to note falls on Halloween.

She will address the House of Commons on Thursday before her officials meet for further talks with the main opposition Labour party to try to find a way through the political deadlock.

Without a postponement, Britain would have ended its 46-year membership of the EU at midnight (2200 GMT) on Friday with no deal, risking economic chaos on both sides of the Channel.

Tusk had proposed a year-long delay, but said: “It’s still enough to find the best possible solution. Please do not waste this time.”

He suggested May’s government now had time to ratify the deal agreed with EU leaders in November, to rethink its approach or to stop the entire Brexit process.

The summit conclusions say Britain must hold European elections set for May 23 or if “the United Kingdom fails to live up to this obligation, the withdrawal will take place on 1 June 2019”.

Britain has already started planning for the polls, but May told reporters that she hoped she could still get her deal agreed by May 22 and avoid taking part.

“The EU have agreed that the extension can be terminated when the Withdrawal Agreement has been ratified,” she said.

   – French opposition –

The summit was more tense than expected, with France’s President Emmanuel Macron the strongest voice opposing a long extension as the talks stretched from early evening to early Thursday morning.

With backing from Belgium, Austria and some smaller EU states, he pushed to limit the delay to only few weeks and demanded guarantees that London would not interfere in EU business during that time.

But most leaders backed the longer plan, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and the French had to settle a review of the delay at a pre-planned EU summit on June 20 and 21.

Macron said afterwards this was the “best possible compromise”, which “made it possible to preserve the unity” of the other 27 EU states.

“The October 31 deadline protects us” because it is “a key date, before the installation of a new European Commission”, he said.

May left the group after giving what one official said was a “solid” presentation of her case, but was kept up to date by Tusk, who met her before, during and after the discussions.

The pound briefly edged up against the dollar and euro after the extension was announced, but gains were limited and sterling later slid back.

US President Donald Trump responded to the postponement by saying the EU was being hard on Britain.

“Too bad that the European Union is being so tough on the United Kingdom and Brexit,” he tweeted.

– ‘As soon as possible’ –

May is under intense pressure from hardline Brexit supporters in her Conservative party not to compromise in her talks with the opposition Labour party.

Addressing MPs back home, who have rejected her withdrawal text three times, she said after the summit: “The choices we now face are stark and the timetable is clear.

“So we must now press on at pace with our efforts to reach a consensus on a deal that is in the national interest.”

May had originally asked for a delay until June 30, but EU leaders have already agreed one delay from March 29 to April 12, and Tusk had warned there is “little reason to believe” that MPs would ratify the Brexit deal within three months.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn wants Britain to commit to remaining within the EU customs union, an idea that May has previous rejected — but which many in Europe would be keen to accommodate.

“We would be generous in negotiating that, understanding that the UK couldn’t be a silent partner in such an arrangement — it would have to have a say in decisions being made,” Irish premier Leo Varadkar said.

There had been speculation about conditions imposed on any extension, amid concerns a semi-detached Britain might leverage in Brexit talks by intervening in choosing the next head of the European Commission or the next multi-year EU budget.

The summit conclusions make clear Britain was a full member of the EU until it left, but noted the “commitment by the United Kingdom to act in a constructive and responsible manner throughout the extension”.

    One eighth of the world’s population — roughly 900 million people — are eligible to vote over April and May in the largest democracy on the planet.

It is a logistical undertaking unrivalled in scale.

Ballots will be cast at a million voting booths across the world’s second-most populous nation, from the Himalayas in the snowy north to the tropical coasts more than 3,000 kilometres (1,860 miles) away to the south.

    Here’s what you need to know about the biggest election in history:

– Who votes? –

All Indians over 18 years of age are eligible to vote.

That is roughly 900 million of India’s 1.3 billion people, according to the Election Commission, the body tasked with overseeing the monumental endeavour.

Eighty-four million first-time voters were added to the electoral roll since the last poll in 2014.

A little less than half of the eligible voters are women, while 300 million are illiterate. Some 39,000 identify as transgender.

Since 2010, Indian citizens abroad have also been allowed to vote.

– Who contests? – 

There are close to 2,300 political parties registered in India — but only seven are recognised at a national level and 59 at a state level.

In the last election, several hundred parties fielded more than 8,000 candidates for the lower house of parliament, where 543 seats are up for grabs.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and the opposition Congress party of his main rival Rahul Gandhi, dominate the political landscape.

But minor parties play a critical role in the event of a hung parliament, as the major players seek coalitions to form government.

Winners are decided by a first past the post system, so the candidate with the most votes in each seat is elected.

– Mammoth task –

The election stretches nearly six weeks, with voting held in seven different phases to ensure all polling booths are prepared and security is in place.

Around 10 million officials will enforce the election rules, including that no voter has to travel more than two kilometres to cast their ballot.

This creates some near absurd scenarios. This year, a nearly 20-strong team of election and police officials will trek into the jungle to set up a polling booth for a single voter in India’s remote Arunachal Pradesh state.

– How to vote? –

Votes are cast via electronic voting machines, first trialled in India in 1982.

This year millions of machines will be deployed — some taken by camel and helicopter — to hard-to-reach electorates.

EVMs are battery powered and resemble a briefcase. Despite allegations of hacking, India’s Election Commission says there is no proof of tampering in the past.

This year, a receipt will be printed every time a voter casts a ballot, and the slips collected in a sealed box.

Each voter’s index finger on the left hand is then marked with an indelible blue ink — manufactured in a single Indian city in the country’s south — to ensure they don’t vote twice.

– Victory day –

The final day of voting is May 19, with the results declared four days later once counting for all 543 constituencies is complete.

There could be a slight delay, as the Supreme Court has ordered a random inspection of EVM results against the paper receipts collected from some polling stations.

In the case of a clear mandate, the results can be determined by noon. But if no one party gets a majority, it could take days for a new government to take shape.

In 2014, the BJP won 282 seats, 10 above what is needed, to form the first majority government in three decades.

The image of a dark core encircled by a flame-orange halo of white-hot plasma looks like any number of artists’ renderings over the last 30 years.

But this time, it’s the real deal.

“The history of science will be divided into the time before the image, and the time after the image,” said Michael Kramer, director at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy.

Carlos Moedas, European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation called the feat a “huge breakthrough for humanity.”

The supermassive black hole immortalised by a far-flung network of radio telescopes is 50 million lightyears away at the centre of a galaxy known as M87.

“It’s a distance that we could have barely imagined,” Frederic Gueth, an astronomer at France’s National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and co-author of studies detailing the findings, told AFP.

Most speculation had centred on the other candidate targeted by the Event Horizon Telescope: Sagittarius A*, a closer but smaller black hole at the centre of our own galaxy, the Milky Way.

Locking down an image of M87’s supermassive black hole at such distance is comparable to photographing a pebble on the Moon, the scientists said.

It was also very much a team effort.

“Instead of constructing a giant telescope that would collapse under its own weight, we combined many observatories,” Michael Bremer, an astronomer at the Institute for Millimetric Radio Astronomy (IRAM) in Grenoble, told AFP.

 Earth in a thimble

Over several days in April 2017, eight radio telescopes in Hawaii, Arizona, Spain, Mexico, Chile, and the South Pole zeroed in on Sag A* and M87.

Knitted together, they formed a virtual observatory some 12,000 kilometres across — roughly the diameter of Earth.

“The data is like an incomplete puzzle set,” said team member Monika Moscibrodzka, an astronomer at Radboud University. “We only see pieces of the real true image, and then we have to fill in the gaps of the missing pieces.”

In the end, M87 was more photogenic. Like a fidgety child, Sag A* was too “active” to capture a clear picture, the scientists said.

“What we see in the image is the shadow of the black hole’s rim — known as the event horizon, or the point of no return — set against the luminous accretion disk,” Gueth told AFP.

The unprecedented image — so often imagined in science and science fiction — has been analysed in six studies co-authored by 200 experts from 60-odd institutions and published Wednesday in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

“I never thought that I would see a real one in my lifetime,” said CNRS astrophysicist Jean-Pierre Luminet, author in 1979 of the first digital simulation of a black hole.

Coined in the mid-60s by US physicist John Archibald Wheeler, the term “black hole” refers to a point in space where matter is so compressed as to create a gravity field from which even light cannot escape.

The more mass, the bigger the hole. At the same scale of compression, Earth would fit inside a thimble.

A successful outcome depended in part on the vagaries of weather during the April 2017 observation period.

“For everything to work, we needed to have clear visibility at every (telescope) location worldwide”, said IRAM scientist Pablo Torne, recalling collective tension, fatigue and, finally, relief.

‘Hell of a Christmas present’ 

Torne was at the controls of the Pico Veleta telescope in Spain’s Sierra Madre mountains.

After that, is was eight months of nail-biting while scientists at MIT Haystack Observatory in Massachusetts and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn crunched the data.

The Universe is filled with electromagnetic “noise”, and there was no guarantee M87’s faint signals could be extracted from a mountain of data so voluminous it could not be delivered via the Internet.

There was at least one glitch.

“We were desperately waiting for the data from the South Pole Telescope, which — due to extreme weather conditions during the southern hemisphere winter — didn’t arrive until six months later,” recalled Helger Rottmann from the Max Planck Institute.

It arrived, to be precise, on December 23, 2017.

“When, a few hours later, we saw that everything was there, it was one hell of a Christmas present,” Rottmann said.

It would take another year, however, to piece together the data into an image.

“To be absolutely sure, we did the work four times with four different teams,” said Gueth.

Team scientists presenting the findings at a news conference in Brussels were visibly moved.

“We are looking at a region we have never looked at before, that we cannot really imagine being there,” said Heino Falcke, chair of the EHT Science Council.

“It feels like looking at the gates of hell, at the end of space and time –- the event horizon, the point of no return.”

The Event Horizon Telescope provides the first ever photograph of a black hole and its fiery halo. Photo/European Southeastern OBservatory/AFP

    “His Holiness is doing much better, but he is still undergoing treatment at a hospital and we hope in few days he will be discharged,” Tenzin Taklha, the Dalai Lama’s personal spokesman, told AFP.

Another aide told AFP the 83-year-old Buddhist monk flew to the Indian capital early Tuesday for a doctor’s visit at Max hospital after he experienced a “light cough.”

“The doctor said there’s nothing to worry about. It’s not that serious,” said Ngodup Tsering, the Dalai Lama’s representative in the United States.

    “He’s taking a few days’ rest.”

Kangra police superintendent Santosh Patial told The Indian Express that the Dalai Lama, who is based in Dharamshala and has been in permanent exile in India for some 60 years, took a regular morning flight Tuesday and was not airlifted.

A spokeswoman for Max hospital in Delhi said they would not comment on the condition of the Dalai Lama’s health due to patient confidentiality.

Although the exiled leader remains a hugely popular speaker, he has cut back on his global engagements and has not met a world leader since 2016 — while governments have been wary of extending invitations to him for fear of angering Beijing.

The Dalai Lama has sought to pre-empt any attempt by Beijing, which has effectively wiped out any organized opposition to its rule in Tibet, to name his reincarnated successor, even announcing in 2011 that he may be the last in the lineage.

The Tibetan spiritual leader enjoys wide support across the partisan divide in Washington, where a senator raised the issue of his succession at a hearing Tuesday.

Senator Cory Gardner, the Republican who heads the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Asia, said that the United States should follow the Dalai Lama’s lead on how to choose his successor.

“Let me be very clear — the United States Congress will never recognise a Dalai Lama that is selected by the Chinese,” Gardner said.

But even India, which offered asylum to the Dalai Lama in 1959 when he made a daring escape across the Himalayas dressed as a soldier, has turned its back, with the government reportedly warning officials against attending events featuring him, citing diplomatic sensitivities.

Their itinerary included a stopover at Addis Ababa, where they were to board Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET302 on March 10 to Nairobi. However, they missed this connection because their flight from Bangkok was delayed.

Though initially frustrated, the two later counted their blessings because flight ET302 crashed shortly after taking off, killing all 157 people on board.

The teachers recently returned from Kenya to share their story. Tudu’s wife Nola, and friend Joy Kuttappan relate their story for Nation Online readers:

When Tudu and Guirguis were planning a university promotion trip to Kenya, they never suspected that a “miracle of grace” awaited them.

Indian national Tudu is the AIU’s vice president for finance and development, while Egypt’s Guirguis is a lecturer in AIU’s Faculty of Religious Studies.

Their journey began from Suvarnabhumi Airport at 1.15am on March 10, when they boarded an Ethiopian Airline flight to Addis Ababa. From Addis Ababa, they were scheduled to take flight ET302 at 8.15am to Nairobi, Kenya.

However, their plans did not go as expected. On March 9, Tudu received a message on his phone from Ethiopian Airlines saying: “Dear customer, your Ethiopian flight ET0629, from Bangkok to Addis Ababa on March 10 at 1.15am has changed. The flight will now depart at 3.45am on March 10.”

Upon receiving this message, Tudu and Guirguis felt a frustrated at the prospect of missing their morning flight at Addis Ababa. Tudu said: “We tried to call the airline office, but were not able to make any contact. We did not know if there was another flight and we did not want to be stranded in Addis Ababa.”

When they arrived at Suvarnabhumi, they looked for an Ethiopian Airlines office but were unsuccessful. They called the head office in Bangkok, but it was closed.

“The answering machine gave us a few numbers that work 24 hours a day. Each time we tried to call a number, it lacked a digit. We were unable to get through. We wondered why the numbers were not working. All of these attempts were to make sure that we would not miss the Ethiopian flight ET302 from Addis Ababa to Nairobi,” Guirguis said.

The flight from Bangkok took off at 4am and by 9am they were flying in circles over Ethiopia for an hour before the flight could land.

“We thought that the pilot was showing us the country,” Guirguis laughed.

Tudu and Guirguis landed in Addis Ababa at 10.30am on March 10 and were disappointed to find they had missed their flight.

They boarded their flight to Kenya at 1pm and were surprised at the commotion on the plane. When they inquired, they were told that Ethiopian Airlines flight ET302 had crashed six minutes after takeoff. That was the very plane the two teachers were scheduled to board, but had missed it due to their twohour delay.

“The fact that the plane crashed shortly after leaving the Ethiopian capital, killing all 157 people on board, left us in a state of shock,” Guirguis recounted.

“We were experiencing grief and counting our blessings at the same time. Instead of wasting time to grasp the reality, we prayed and tried to comfort the crew members who were weeping over the loss of eight of their colleagues,” Guirguis said.

The 25 passengers on their flight to Nairobi were asked to disembark. It took two hours for them to find their bags, and as a result the flight was further delayed.

At that time, their families and colleagues in Thailand and elsewhere, as well as those waiting to welcome them at the Adventist University of Africa in Kenya, had no idea if they were alive or not.

Finally, after completing their work in Kenya, Tudu and Guirguis returned to Thailand safely on March 25. Now, Tudu said, people always say “God saved your life” when they see him and his fellow teacher.

Guirguis’s son, Benjamin, a grade 5 student, said: “If my father was on the plan that crashed, I would not have been able to take a flight for ages.”

However, his father still asks: “Why did God spare our lives? Why did God delay the flight from Bangkok to Addis Ababa? What is so special about us?”  So far, the only conclusion is they were saved by a miracle.

The team was invited to descend into a waterlogged pit in the Son Doong cave in central Vietnam that has never been explored and is believed to connect to nearby chambers.

They were forced back at 77 meters (252 feet) because they did not have enough oxygen to push further, but they think the tunnels could be 120 meters deep.

If the tunnel connects to another cave, it would make Son Doong “easily the largest cave in the world and it would never be overtaken,” British cave expert Howard Limbert, who helped organise the dive, said Tuesday at a press conference announcing the find.

The three divers — Rick Stanton, Jason Mallinson and Chris Jewell — were part of the daring rescue to save 12 Thai footballers and their coach who were trapped in a cave for eighteen days last year.

Stanton — who found the boys on a ledge — said the painstaking task of safely leading the group out of the tunnel alive helped to prepare for the mission in Vietnam.

“Our planning and preparation is without parallel,” he said.

The team plans to return to Vietnam next year to try to link the tunnel to another cave near Son Doong, which is so big that it has its own ecosystem and weather patterns.

The cave in central Quang Binh province was first found by a local forager in 1991, but was not re-discovered for another 19 years because its entrance was hidden by thick surrounding jungle.

Only 30 percent of Vietnam’s Phong Nha national park — where Son Doong and a network of adjacent caves are located — has so far been explored.

Son Doong is the world’s largest cave by volume, big enough to house a New York city block — including 40-storey skyscrapers — according to Oxalis, which runs tours into the caves.

Proposed plans to build a cable car in the area have sparked anger among the Vietnamese public who fear it will harm the area’s wildlife and pristine views.

An official said Tuesday there were no plans to move ahead with the project despite offers from several companies.

“That is only in theory, in truth, to build a cable car there is no such project yet,” the vice chairman of Quang Binh province Tran Thien Dung said Tuesday.

Vietnam’s tourism industry is booming among domestic and foreign travellers alike, but the communist country has come under fire for failing to preserve landscapes as it rapidly expands the sector.

    Thousands were also reported by the United Nations to be fleeing the capital city in the face of Haftar’s surprise assault which has left dozens dead.

French President Emmanuel Macron held a telephone interview with Fayez al-Sarraj, head of the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord.

The internationally recognised GNA said Macron had spoken of his “total opposition to the offensive against the capital and the endangering of civilian lives”.

    The French presidency confirmed the call took place, without releasing details of the discussion.

The EU’s foreign policy chief added her voice to those urging Haftar to stop his offensive, after calls for restraint by the UN Security Council and the United States.

“I make a very strong appeal to Libyan leaders and in particular to Haftar to stop all military activities… and to return to the negotiation table”, Federica Mogherini said after talks with EU foreign ministers.

Haftar’s self-styled Libyan National Army claimed Monday’s air strike against Mitiga airport, east of the capital.

LNA spokesman Ahmad al-Mesmari said the strike targeted a MiG-23 military plane and a helicopter.

A security source at the airport said the strike hit a runway without causing casualties.

The UN’s envoy to Libya, Ghassan Salame, denounced the strike.

“This attack constitutes a serious violation of international humanitarian law which prohibits attacks against civilian infrastructure,” Salame said.

A spokesman for national carrier Libyan Airlines said the civil aviation authority decided “to suspend aerial traffic until further notice”.

An airport source, who did want to be named, confirmed the suspension.

– ‘Immediate halt’ –

The oil-rich northern African country has been rocked by violent power struggles between an array of armed groups since the NATO-backed overthrow of dictator Moamer Kadhafi in 2011.

Haftar, a former Kadhafi military chief, has emerged as a major player.

His LNA backs an administration in the country’s east in opposition to the UN-backed GNA.

Having seized control of much of eastern Libya — and buoyed by a series of victories in the desert south — Haftar turned his sights on Tripoli, vowing to “cleanse” it of “terrorists and mercenaries”.

After a pause overnight, fighting resumed Monday morning around the capital’s destroyed main airport, some 30 kilometres (18 miles) south of Tripoli, and the rural area of Wadi Rabi further east.

World powers have expressed alarm at the violence, saying it threatens to further destabilise Libya and derail UN-led efforts to find a political solution to the country’s woes.

The US has appealed for an “immediate halt” to combat operations and the UN Security Council has called on Haftar’s forces to stop their advance.

On Sunday Russia blocked proposals for the council to adopt a formal statement, instead insisting that all Libyan forces be urged to stop fighting, diplomats said.

Moscow is a key supporter of Haftar, along with Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.

But the Kremlin on Monday urged “all sides to reject actions that could provoke bloodshed in battle and the deaths of civilians”.

Fierce clashes Sunday near Tripoli saw Haftar’s fighters and other powerful western Libyan armed groups exchanging fire including air strikes.

Forces backing the Tripoli-based GNA on Sunday announced a counteroffensive dubbed “Volcano of Anger”.

Spokesman Colonel Mohamed Gnounou said it was aimed at “purging all Libyan cities of aggressor and illegitimate forces”, in reference to Haftar’s fighters.

– Civil war fears –

Unity government health minister A’hmid Omar told Libya’s Al-Ahrar television station late Sunday that around 50 people had been wounded along with those killed.

His ministry on Monday put the death toll at 35.

Haftar’s forces have said 14 of their fighters have died.

The UN said on Monday that the fighting has displaced some 3,400 people, up from an earlier estimate of 2,800.

“Clashes with heavy weapons are affecting residential areas, and an unknown number of civilians are unable to flee these locations,”  UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters in New York.

“We have no positive news to report on our call for a humanitarian truce.”

Haftar’s offensive has threatened to plunge the country into a full-blown civil war and once again thwart diplomatic efforts to find a solution to Libya’s woes.

It was launched just days ahead of a planned UN conference aimed at uniting Libya’s rivals and paving the way for elections.

The UN’s Salame has insisted the international community is “determined” to go ahead with the April 14-16 conference.

The UN mission in Libya said on Twitter that Salame met Monday with Sarraj in Tripoli to discuss how to “assist at this critical and difficult juncture”.