SEOUL: Leading contenders began to throw their hats in the ring on Tuesday as South Korea officially set June 3 for a snap presidential election triggered by last week’s removal from office of impeached leader Yoon Suk Yeol.
The power vacuum at the top of government has impeded Seoul’s efforts to negotiate with the administration of US President Donald Trump at a time of spiralling US tariffs and slowing growth in Asia’s fourth-largest economy.
Yoon was removed on Friday over his short-lived declaration of martial law in December that plunged the key US ally into crisis, triggering a new election that could reshape its foreign and domestic policy.
“The government intends to designate June 3 as the 21st presidential election day,” Acting President Han Duck-soo told a cabinet meeting, citing factors such as the time political parties need to prepare for the event.
Yoon’s labor minister Kim Moon-soo is among a handful of hopefuls who have signalled their intention to run, resigning his post on Tuesday and saying he would launch his campaign.
While not officially a member of Yoon’s People Power Party at the moment, Kim has been polling better than other conservative contenders.
“I tendered my resignation and decided to run because the people want it, people I know want it, and I feel a sense of responsibility to solve national difficulties,” Kim told reporters.
Economic conditions during a “severe national crisis” are hurting people’s livelihoods, he said.
“I thought that all politicians and people should unite to overcome the crisis and work together to help the country develop further,” Kim said.
Ahn Cheol-soo, a PPP lawmaker who was its first to vote for Yoon’s impeachment, also declared his intention to run on Tuesday, saying he was a “cleaner candidate than anyone else.”
He also vowed to secure new economic growth engines including artificial intelligence, to counter Trump’s trade policies.
Ahn fought the last three presidential elections, winning more than 21 percent of the popular vote in 2017, but dropping out and endorsing other candidates in the other two. He is not polling high enough to be included in most recent surveys.
Kim and Ahn will join a wide open field of conservative candidates trying to overcome their party’s second impeachment in as many presidencies.
Conservative Park Geun-hye was impeached, removed from office, and imprisoned in 2017 over a corruption scandal.
Lee Jae-myung, the populist leader of the liberal Democratic Party who lost to Yoon by a razor-thin margin in 2022, is a clear front-runner, but faces legal challenges of his own.
These include multiple trials for charges such as violating the election law and bribery.
Nevertheless, he is expected to step down as DP leader and declare his candidacy as soon as this week.
A Gallup poll published on Friday showed 34 percent of respondents supported Lee as the next leader, while 9 percent backed Kim, 5 percent opted for former PPP leader Han Dong-hoon, 4 percent chose Daegu mayor Hong Joon-pyo, and 2 percent plumped for Seoul mayor Oh Se-hoon.
Yoon was removed by the Constitutional Court for violating his official duty by issuing a martial law decree on December 3 and mobilizing troops in a bid to halt parliamentary proceedings.
The law requires a new presidential election to be held within 60 days if the position becomes vacant.
Yoon still faces criminal insurrection charges, with arguments in his trial to begin on April 14.
South Korea has faced months of political turmoil since Yoon stunned the country by declaring martial law, triggering his impeachment by parliament and the impeachment of acting leader Han.
Han’s impeachment was later overturned by the Constitutional Court and he will stay in the role of acting president until the election.
South Korea sets snap presidential election for June 3, drawing out contenders
https://arab.news/cr5kf
South Korea sets snap presidential election for June 3, drawing out contenders
- President Yoon ousted last week after December martial law
- Multiple candidates emerge amid political turmoil
UK’s Starmer, under pressure from Farage, tightens migration rules
LONDON: Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced a new salvo of measures to toughen up Britain’s migration system on Sunday, saying many immigrants would have to wait longer before getting the status they need to claim welfare.
Starmer’s government — which is due to publish plans for new legislation to reduce immigration on Monday — is under pressure to counter the rise in popularity of Nigel Farage’s right-wing, anti-immigration Reform UK party.
Over the weekend, interior minister Yvette Cooper announced plans to restrict skilled worker visas to graduate-level applicants, prevent care sector firms from recruiting abroad and require businesses to increase training for local workers.
“Every area of the immigration system, including work, family and study, will be tightened up so we have more control,” Starmer said in a statement. “Enforcement will be tougher than ever and migration numbers will fall.”
Under the changes, automatic settlement and citizenship for people who move to Britain will apply after 10 years, up from five years now, although highly skilled workers — such as nurses, doctors, engineers and AI experts — would be fast-tracked.
Migrants who are in the UK on visas are typically ineligible for welfare benefits and social housing.
The government also said it plans to raise English language requirements to include all adult dependents who will have to show a basic understanding of English. It said the change would help integration and reduce the risks of exploitation.
“This is a clean break from the past and will ensure settlement in this country is a privilege that must be earned, not a right,” Starmer said.
“And when people come to our country, they should also commit to integration and to learning our language,” he said.
The number of European Union migrants to Britain fell sharply after Brexit but new visa rules, a rise in people arriving from Ukraine and Hong Kong and higher net numbers of foreign students led to an overall surge in recent years.
Net migration — the number of people coming to Britain minus the number leaving — hit a record 906,000 in the year to June 2023, up from 184,000 who arrived in the same period during 2019, when Britain was still in the EU.
Employers’ groups are worried that tightening the rules on foreign workers will make it harder for companies to fill vacancies.
“This major intervention in the labor market will leave many employers fearful that in tackling concerns about immigration, government goes after the wrong target,” Neil Carberry, chief executive of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC), said.
Being open to skilled workers was essential for Britain “but so is a controlled, affordable and responsive immigration system that keeps investment flowing to the UK,” Carberry said.
Poland accuses Russia of ordering major fire in Warsaw last year
- The fire in May 2024 has completely destroyed a large shopping center in the capital of Warsaw
WARSAW: Polish authorities accused Russian intelligence services on Sunday of orchestrating a fire that destroyed a large shopping center last year in the capital of Warsaw.
Since Russia’s February 2022 offensive against Ukraine, Poland — a loyal ally of Kyiv — claims to be the target of sabotage attempts which they blame on Russia.
In May 2024, a fire completely destroyed a large shopping center in Warsaw and the 1,400 small businesses it housed, most of them owned by members of the Vietnamese community.
Authorities immediately launched an investigation but had until now refrained from blaming Moscow.
“We now know for sure that the great fire of the Marywilska shopping center in Warsaw was caused by arson ordered by the Russian special services,” said Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on X.
The justice and interior ministries said in a separate, joint statement Sunday that some of the alleged perpetrators were already in custody, while others had been identified but still at large.
“Their actions were organized and directed by a specific person residing in the Russian Federation,” the two ministries said, adding that they were cooperating with Lithuania, “where some of the perpetrators also carried out acts of diversion.”
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Poland has detained and convicted several individuals suspected of sabotage on behalf of Russian intelligence services, accused of assaults, arson or attempted arson.
In May 2024, Poland imposed restrictions on the movements of Russian diplomats on its soil, due to Moscow’s “involvement” in a “hybrid war.”
Five months later, Warsaw ordered the closure of the Russian consulate in Poznan, in western Poland, accusing Moscow of orchestrating “sabotage attempts.”
In December, Polish diplomacy said it was willing to close all Russian consulates in Poland if acts of “terrorism” continued.
Russia closed in January the Polish consulate in Saint Petersburg in retaliation.
Bordering Ukraine, Poland — a NATO and European Union member — is one of the main countries through which Western nations supply weapons and ammunition to Kyiv to help Ukraine fight Russian troops.
First white South Africans board plane for US under Trump refugee plan
- Trump’s offer of asylum to white South Africans coincides with heightened racial tensions over land and jobs
- Trump said descendants of mostly Dutch early settlers, the Afrikaners, were 'victims of unjust racial discrimination'
The first white South Africans granted refugee status under a program initiated by US President Donald Trump boarded a plane to leave from the country’s main international airport in Johannesburg on Sunday.
A queue of white citizens with airport trolleys full of luggage, much of it wrapped in theft-proof cellophane, waited to have their passports stamped, a Reuters reporter saw, before they entered the departure lounge for their charter flight.
“One of the conditions of the permit was to ensure that they were vetted in case one of them has a criminal issue pending,” South African transport department spokesperson Collen Msibi told Reuters, adding that 49 passengers had been cleared.
Journalists were not granted access to those headed to the US Msibi said they were due to fly to Dulles Airport just outside Washington, D.C., and then on to Texas. They had boarded the plane but not yet left as 18:30 GMT.
Trump’s offer of asylum to white South Africans, especially Afrikaners — the group with the longest history in South Africa and who make up the bulk of whites — has been divisive in both countries. In the United States, it comes as the Trump administration has blocked mostly non-white refugee admissions from the rest of the world. In South Africa, it coincides with heightened racial tensions over land and jobs that have dogged domestic politics since the end of white minority rule.
Despite a wider freeze on refugees, Trump called on the US to prioritize resettling Afrikaners, descendants of mostly Dutch early settlers, saying they were “victims of unjust racial discrimination.”
The granting of refugee status to white South Africans — who have remained by far the most privileged race since apartheid ended 30 years ago — has been met with a mixture of alarm and ridicule by South African authorities, who say the Trump administration has waded into a domestic political issue it does not understand.
Three decades since Nelson Mandela ushered democracy into South Africa, the white minority that ruled it has managed to retain most of the wealth that was amassed under colonialism and apartheid. Whites still own three quarters of private land and about 20 times the wealth of the Black majority, according to the Review of Political Economy, an international academic journal. Whites are also the race least affected by joblessness. Yet the claim that minority white South Africans face discrimination from the Black majority has been repeated so often in online chatrooms that is has become orthodoxy for the far right, and has been echoed by Trump’s white South African-born ally Elon Musk.
At least three die, including two children, in Libya-Italy crossing
- The migrants were intercepted on Saturday on a rubber boat floating adrift south of the Italian island of Lampedusa that had been spotted by a surveillance aircraft of the EU border agency Frontex
ROME: At least three people have died, including two children aged 3 and 4, in a Mediterranean sea crossing from Libya to Italy, a German sea rescue charity said on Sunday, adding that it had rescued 59 survivors.
The migrants were intercepted on Saturday on a rubber boat floating adrift south of the Italian island of Lampedusa that had been spotted by a surveillance aircraft of the EU border agency Frontex.
“By the time (we) reached the rubber boat at around 4.30pm (1430 GMT), it was too late to help some of the people,” the RESQSHIP charity said in a statement.
“Two bodies of infants aged 3 and 4 were handed over to us,” the charity quoted one of its paramedics identified only as Rania as saying. “They had died the day before, probably of thirst.”
A man was found unconscious and declared dead after attempts to resuscitate him were unsuccessful, RESQSHIP said, adding that it was told by survivors that another migrant had drowned on Friday after going overboard.
Many of the survivors, who were taken to Lampedusa, suffered chemical burns from salt water and fuel, the group said. Two children and four adults in critical condition were handed over to the Italian coast guard to be brought ashore more quickly.
The rubber boat had set off from the port of Zawiya in western Libya on Wednesday, but its engine failed after one day of navigation, leaving the migrants on board exposed to wind and weather, the NGO said.
Lampedusa lies between Tunisia, Malta and the larger Italian island of Sicily and is the first port of call for many migrants seeking to reach the EU from North Africa, in what has become one of the world’s deadliest sea crossings.
Almost 25,000 migrants have died or gone missing on this central Mediterranean route since 2014, according to the International Organization for Migration, including around 1,700 last year and 378 so far this year.
Passenger bus skids off a cliff in Sri Lanka, killing 21
- Deadly bus accidents are common in Sri Lanka, especially in the mountainous regions
COLOMBO: A passenger bus skidded off a cliff in Sri Lanka’s tea-growing hill country on Sunday, killing 21 people and injuring at least 14 others, an official said.
The accident occurred in the early hours of Sunday near the town of Kotmale, about 140 kilometers (86 miles) east of Colombo, the capital, in a mountainous area of central Sri Lanka, police said.
Deputy Minister of Transport and Highways Prasanna Gunasena told the media that 21 people died in the accident and 14 others are being treated in hospitals.
Local television showed the bus lying overturned at the bottom of a precipice while workers and others helped remove injured people from the rubble.
The driver was injured and among those admitted to the hospital for treatment. At the time of the accident, nearly 50 people were traveling on the bus.
The bus was operated by a state-run bus company, police said.
Deadly bus accidents are common in Sri Lanka, especially in the mountainous regions, often due to reckless driving and poorly maintained and narrow roads.
