The two American TV journalists sentenced to prison in North Korea were given a "special pardon" by the country's leader Kim Jong Il on Tuesday, following a visit by former President Bill Clinton, according to reports.
CNN said the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported that the release of Laura Ling and Euna Lee is a sign of North Korea's ...
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Former The View star Lisa Ling, whose sister is one of two U.S. journalists sentenced to 12-year prison terms in North Korea, said the women are sorry for entering the country, and pleaded again for their release.
Ling spoke on Anderson Cooper 360 soon after North Korea's official news agency reported that the women, sentenced to the country's notoriously brutal labor camps, had confessed to entering the country illegally. The agency said they had "extremely rude political motives to stifle and insult our nation's images."
The country hasn't made Laura Ling, 32, and Euna Lee, 36, both reporters for Current TV, available to their families or anyone else to confirm or deny that account.
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U.S. journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling, sister of former View co-host Lisa Ling, have been sentenced to 12 years in a labor prison by North Korea's Central Court.
The reporters, who were working for Current TV, a company co-founded by Al Gore, were convicted of a "grave crime they committed against the Korean nation and their illegal border crossing," the Korean Central News Agency said.
Claiming suspicion of "hostile acts," North Korean authorities detained Lee and Ling along the China-North Korea border on March 17. The two were on assignment reporting on the plight of North Korean refugees.
"We are deeply concerned by the reported sentencing of the two American citizen journalists by North Korean authorities, and we are engaged through all possible channels to secure their release," U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelley said in a statement. "We once again urge North Korea to grant ...
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Oprah Winfrey dedicated Friday's show to her beloved and recently deceased cocker spaniel, Sophie. After watching Lisa Ling's story about the cruel and unthinkable conditions at puppy mills, she proclaimed, "I am a changed woman." Oprah added that she would never get a pet through a store or breeder again, and would only adopt.Winfrey's producers played a moving tribute to Sophie at the top of the show, reducing the host to tears as she cut away to commercial. A billboard in her neighborhood that begged Oprah to please do a show on puppy mills was the true catalyst behind the heart-tugging episode. Bill Smith of Main Line Animal Rescue in Pennsylvania teamed up with Ling to bring awful mill conditions to light.Some of the unbearable facts: 99 percent of pet stores get their dogs from puppy mills. Most female puppies spend their whole lives in cramped wire cages breeding twice a year for as many as eight years. (And some never get to walk on grass or touch the grounds they live on.) ...
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Lisa Ling, correspondent for the National Geographic Channel and the Oprah Winfrey Show was married over the weekend in Los Angeles.Ling's new husband, Paul Song, 41 is an oncologist from Chicago, according to People.com.The couple met last year through friends and became engaged at Christmas.
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