South Korean opposition parties said they had submitted a motion to impeach the president, Yoon Suk Yeol, over his short-lived declaration of martial law.

“We’ve submitted an impeachment motion prepared urgently,” representatives for six opposition parties including the main Democratic party said on Wednesday, adding they would discuss when to put it to a vote, but it could come as soon as Friday.

Earlier on Wednesday, Yoon faced calls to quit immediately or face impeachment after an attempt to bring in martial law triggered protests and political condemnation. The liberal opposition Democratic party, which holds a majority in the 300-seat parliament, said its lawmakers had decided to call on Yoon to stand down straight away or they would take steps to impeach him.

“President Yoon Suk Yeol’s martial law declaration was a clear violation of the constitution. It didn’t abide by any requirements to declare it,” the Democratic party said in a statement. “His martial law declaration was originally invalid and a grave violation of the constitution. It was a grave act of rebellion and provides perfect grounds for his impeachment.”

In a further development on Wednesday evening, defence minister Kim Yong-hyun offered his resignation, while simultaneously facing an impeachment motion from the Democratic party. If Yoon accepts Kim’s resignation before parliament votes, the defence minister would no longer be subject to the impeachment process.

Yoon’s shock bid to impose South Korea’s first state of martial law in over four decades plunged the country into the deepest turmoil in its modern democratic history and caught its close allies around the world off guard.

The US – which stations nearly 30,000 troops in South Korea to protect it from the nuclear-armed North – voiced deep concern at the declaration, then relief that martial law was over.

The US indefinitely postponed meetings of the nuclear consultative group (NCG), a signature Yoon effort aimed at having South Korea play a greater role in allied planning for potential nuclear war on the peninsula.

The martial law declaration also cast doubt on a possible visit next week by the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin.

The dramatic developments have left the future of Yoon – a conservative politician and former star public prosecutor who was elected president in 2022 – in serious jeopardy.

South Korea’s main opposition party – whose lawmakers jumped fences and tussled with security forces so they could vote to overturn the law – earlier called Yoon’s move an attempted “insurrection”.

The nation’s largest umbrella labour union also called an “indefinite general strike” until Yoon resigned. Meanwhile, the leader of Yoon’s own ruling People Power party, Han Dong-hoon, described the attempt as “tragic” while calling for those involved to be held accountable.

Opposition parties together control 192 seats in the 300-seat parliament, so would need lawmakers from Yoon’s own party to join them to attain the required two-thirds majority in the legislature for impeachment.

If the national assembly votes to impeach Yoon, the decision must then be upheld by at least six out of nine judges in the constitutional court. If he is removed from office, Yoon would become only the second president of South Korea since it became a democracy to have met that fate.

The other was Park Geun-hye, who was removed in 2017. Ironically, Yoon, the then prosecutor general, led the corruption case that precipitated Park’s downfall.

Candlelight vigils were being held in major cities nationwide on Wednesday evening, echoing the massive protests that led to Park’s impeachment in 2016-17.

Yoon backed down on martial law early on Wednesday after lawmakers voted to oppose the declaration, which he made on Tuesday night citing the threat of North Korea and “anti-state forces”.

“Just a moment ago, there was a demand from the national assembly to lift the state of emergency, and we have withdrawn the military that was deployed for martial law operations,” Yoon said in a televised address about 4.30am.

“We will accept the national assembly’s request and lift the martial law through the cabinet meeting.”

Yonhap news agency then reported that Yoon’s cabinet had approved the motion to lift the order.

The U-turn prompted jubilation among protesters outside parliament who had braved freezing temperatures to keep vigil through the night in defiance of Yoon’s martial law order. Demonstrators who had been waving South Korean flags and chanting “Arrest Yoon Suk Yeol” outside the national assembly erupted in cheers.

On the streets of Seoul there was bafflement, while newspapers across the political spectrum published scathing editorials about Yoon’s actions.

The left-leaning Hankyoreh’s editorial framed Yoon’s martial law declaration as a “betrayal of the people”.

Yoon had given a range of reasons for declaring martial law – South Korea’s first in more than 40 years.

“To safeguard a liberal South Korea from the threats posed by North Korea’s communist forces and to eliminate anti-state elements plundering people’s freedom and happiness, I hereby declare emergency martial law,” Yoon said in a televised address.

Yoon did not give details of the North’s threats, but the South remains technically at war with nuclear-armed Pyongyang.

“Our national assembly has become a haven for criminals, a den of legislative dictatorship that seeks to paralyse the judicial and administrative systems and overturn our liberal democratic order,” Yoon said.

The president labelled the main opposition Democratic party, which holds a majority in parliament, “anti-state forces intent on overthrowing the regime”.

Yoon and his People Power party are also bitterly at odds with the opposition over next year’s budget. Opposition MPs last week approved a significantly downsized budget plan through a parliamentary committee.

The imposition of emergency martial law came after Yoon’s approval rating dropped to 19% in the latest Gallup poll last week, with many expressing dissatisfaction over his handling of the economy and controversies involving his wife, Kim Keon Hee.

South Korea is a major democratic ally for the US in Asia, but Washington said it was not given advance notice of Yoon’s plan to impose martial law.

“We are relieved President Yoon has reversed course on his concerning declaration of martial law and respected the ROK national assembly’s vote to end it,” a US national security council spokesperson said in a statement, using the acronym for South Korea’s official name.

China, a key ally of North Korea, had urged its nationals in the South to stay calm and exercise caution, while Britain said it was “closely monitoring developments”.

The Japanese prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, said: “We are monitoring [the South Korea situation] with particular and grave interest.” A lawmaker group on Korean affairs, led by Japan’s former PM Yoshihide Suga, cancelled a Seoul visit slated for mid-December, multiple Japanese outlets reported.

With Agence France-Presse

The mood outside South Korea’s parliament was a mix of anger and bewilderment on Wednesday afternoon, hours after President Yoon Suk Yeol’s shocking, albeit thwarted, declaration of martial law.

The pre-dawn events caught many South Koreans off guard. Those who had slept through it awoke to the news that their democracy had faced its gravest challenge since the 1980s.

Yet, under the clear winter sky, hundreds of defiant citizens gathered on the steps of the national assembly to voice their outrage. Across the capital, other rallies were held demanding Yoon step down.

“I couldn’t sleep last night, watching the situation unfold in real-time. My heart was pounding with worry,” says Son Jung-hee, who rushed to the national assembly building from Gyeonggi province, an hour’s drive from Seoul.

She says she felt compelled to come as an “ordinary citizen” to protect parliament, which she sees as the “last line of defence”. In her hand she was clutching a handmade pink placard demanding Yoon’s impeachment.

“I feel ashamed. We thought Korean democracy had matured, but something this absurd happened,” she says. Gesturing at other citizens who had gathered, she adds: “Look at this precious daily life people are living – how could a president act against the will of his people like this?”

The previous night, the national assembly was surrounded by hundreds of police officers, troops entered the building, and military helicopters circled overhead, creating a scene that felt more like a dramatic film than real life.

For Cho Tae-ik, who is in his 60s, the events of the past half day brought back painful memories.

“I witnessed the Gwangju Democratic Movement from start to finish,” he says, referring to the pivotal 1980 pro-democracy movement that was brutally suppressed by military forces, killing hundreds.

“Democracy isn’t supposed to work like this. Trust between the people and the government is essential, but this administration has none of that,” he says.

President Yoon had justified his declaration of martial law as necessary to “protect the free Republic of Korea from the threat of North Korean communist forces” and to “eradicate pro-North Korean anti-state elements”.

His language echoed the fearmongering tactics of the past and rhetoric of South Korea’s controversial National Security Act, which bans actions deemed “anti-government” – a vague term historically used to silence critics under the guise of combating a North Korean threat.

While provocations from North Korea are a real concern and tensions have remained since the Korean war, the idea of a significant “pro-North” movement within South Korea is considered, at best, a tenuous claim.

‘National embarrassment’

Yoon’s declaration prompted scathing criticism across South Korea’s political spectrum. The conservative Chosun Ilbo newspaper, typically sympathetic to Yoon’s administration, published a searing editorial saying he had “severely crossed the line” and called it a “national embarrassment” for a top 10 democracy.

One university student from Seoul who declined to be named, says: “This was like a coup d’état, I only thought these things were textbook history … I could have never imagined [this] … It’s humiliating.”

But the crisis did not come without warning. In September, the opposition Democratic party lawmaker Kim Min-seok and others raised the alarm about Yoon’s systematic appointment of his high-school classmates to key security positions, including in the defence ministry and defence counterintelligence command.

They warned these moves, combined with Yoon’s increasing use of “anti-state forces” rhetoric against his critics, suggested a preparation for martial law. At the time, his warning was dismissed as alarmist.

Min Hee Go, associate professor of political science at Ewha Womans University, called the situation a “very poor, nonsensical decision”.

“The president doesn’t seem to understand the representative nature of the parties nor the national assembly,” she says. “The nation will once again experience a huge turmoil. Calls for resignation, or impeachment are in order.”

While opposition parties are calling for impeachment, the path forward is complicated. They would need at least eight members of Yoon’s own party to reach the required two-thirds majority in parliament. Even then, the constitutional court, now operating with just six justices instead of the usual nine, lacks the minimum seven judges required to hear such a case.

Yoon’s administration has faced persistent scandals, including allegations that his wife, Kim Keon Hee, accepted a 3m won (£1,675) Dior bag as a gift from a pastor.. Yoon and his supporters dismissed the claims as part of a political smear campaign.

International observers have noted democratic backsliding under Yoon’s leadership, with the V-Dem Institute recently ranking South Korea 47th globally for liberal democracy, down from 28th last year and 17th in 2021.

Civicus, a global civil society alliance, has warned of eroding civic freedoms since Yoon took office, particularly citing actions to stifle media freedom and target trade unions.

“I don’t think the president knows how to address these pressures by political means – by deliberation, persuasion and communication,” says Prof Go.

“Given his background as the prosecutor general, he must have been surrounded by an extremely homogeneous group of people and worked his way up in a very rigid hierarchy. A very persecutory, black-and-white culture that vilifies and punishes dissent.”

For many South Koreans, the brief martial law attempt has confirmed their worst fears about authoritarian tendencies in Yoon’s administration.

Outside the national assembly, protester Son reflected on the road ahead.

“No one imagined this could happen again… But here we are, under the warm sunlight, having to defend our democracy once again.”

For Yoon Suk Yeol, it appears, the tables have turned.

In 2017 the then prosecutor general led the legal action to remove then-president Park Geun-hye from office after she was convicted of abuse of power.

Now, in the most bizarre, chaotic, few hours in recent South Korean political history, Yoon himself is facing the music.

It took just hours for Yoon’s position as president to go from precarious to untenable on Tuesday. Two years after he was sworn in after a bitterly divisive election, it is hard to see how Yoon, an arch conservative, can survive Tuesday’s disastrous attempt to impose martial law.

Opposition parties are mustering their forces – which potentially include members of Yoon’s own People Power party – in anticipation of an impeachment vote in the same national assembly that voted to immediately lift martial law around six hours after it was imposed.

While Asia’s fourth-largest economy – and neighbour to a hostile nuclear-armed North Korea – reels from the political turmoil Yoon fomented – it appears that only his resignation will halt attempts to make him the second South Korean president to be forced from office since the country became a democracy less than four decades ago.

While Yoon beat his Democratic party challenger, Lee Jae-myung, in their March 2022 presidential election, the momentum is now with Lee, who led the challenge to martial law in the early hours of Wednesday.

Yoon had attempted to justify the imposition of martial law by referencing the presence in South Korea of “shameless pro-North Korean, anti-state forces” determined to destroy [South Korea’s] democracy, although he did not offer any evidence for his claim.

It is far more likely that other, less fanciful, factors were behind his decision.

Yoon, a controversial figure who is rumoured to have consulted shamanistic healers before deciding not to move into the president’s official Blue House residence, vowed to take a hardline stance against North Korea, ending attempts by his liberal predecessor, Moon Jae-in, to engage with the regime through summits with its leader, Kim Jong-un.

Yoon owed his election victory to support from young male voters who said they had been alienated by the country’s rush to embrace women’s empowerment, despite evidence of South Korea’s poor record on gender equality.

An avowed “anti-feminist”, he pledged to abolish the ministry for gender equality and family, claiming South Korean women did not suffer systemic discrimination. While the ministry remains, the post of minister has been vacant since February.

Born in Seoul in 1960, Yoon is a relative newcomer to politics, having spent 27 years as a prosecutor before running for the presidency. After studying law he went on to become an accomplished public prosecutor and crusader against corruption. In 2019, while South Korea’s prosecutor general, he burnished his credentials as a legal mastermind after indicting a senior aide of the outgoing president, Moon Jae-in, in a fraud and bribery case.

But Yoon’s approval ratings have plummeted since he took office in 2022 over a series of scandals and controversies that triggered calls for his impeachment before the events of Tuesday night.

Protests against his administration have grown in recent weeks, amid anger over his handling of the economy, rising prices and his failure to push policies through the opposition-controlled national assembly. Last week a Gallup Korea poll showed his approval rating had fallen to just 19%.

Allegations surrounding his wife, first lady Kim Keon Hee, have only added to his problems. Kim, whom Yoon married 12 years ago, initially won admirers for embracing her public role, using her status to promote Korean art, culture and fashion, and to oppose South Korea’s now-banned trade in dog meat.

But her love of designer handbags landed her – and her husband – in hot water when, early this year she was accused of accepting a 3m won (£1,675) Dior bag as a gift from a pastor. Anti-graft laws prohibit a public official’s spouse from receiving gifts worth more than 1m won in one sitting, but this must be “in connection with the duties of the public official”. Yoon and his supporters dismissed the claims as part of a political smear campaign.

Together, the opposition parties have 192 seats, just short of controlling the two-thirds of the national assembly’s 300 seats they need to impeach Yoon – a move that would then have to be upheld by at least six of the nine judges on the constitutional court.

But his dramatic move to invoke martial law, reportedly made without the prior knowledge of South Korea’s most important ally the US, managed to turn even members of his own party against him, with the People Power chair describing his actions as “unlawful”. In their pre-dawn vote, 10 of Yoon’s party members joined opposition MPs in rejecting martial law by 190 votes to zero.

While the world was wrongfooted by the turmoil, it was clear some time ago that Yoon was planning something extraordinary, according to Jamie Doucette and Jinsoo Lee, Korea experts at Manchester University.

Writing on the Jacobin website, they cited a warning over Yoon’s behaviour issued in September by the Democratic lawmaker Kim Min-seok, who noted that Yoon had promoted high school classmates and close associates to prominent positions in state administration and the military.

“To many people, this kind of premonition sounded shrill,” Doucette and Lee wrote. “But by early Wednesday, even Korea’s deeply conservative Chosun Ilbo [newspaper] declared that ‘Kim Min-seok was right.’”

Yoon was instrumental in Park Geun-hye’s political demise; now he appears to be the architect of his own downfall.

In attempting to declare martial law, South Korea’s president, Yoon Suk Yeol, sought to awaken ghosts that the rest of the country thought had been laid to rest for good.

The last time martial law was declared, in 1980, hundreds of people were killed by the military dictator Chun Doo-hwan, who sent protesters to a concentration camp for “purificatory education”.

In the course of his meteoric rise to power from prosecutor to president, Yoon outraged much of the country by making complimentary remarks about Chun, claiming three years ago that many people thought the general had done well in politics apart from his coup and the crushing of protests.

Yoon, a lawyer and political neophyte, was forced to issue an apology and visited the memorial in Gwangju to the biggest massacre of the Chun era, but many of his critics were sceptical about the sincerity of his retraction.

They were also alarmed by Yoon’s promotion to senior positions of members of the country’s New Right Movement, which combines a commitment to free market economics with a revisionist view of the Japanese colonial era and its earlier periods of dictatorship.

Yoon’s short-lived declaration of martial law appears to have been a desperate gamble in the face of rock-bottom public popularity – with positive ratings barely over 10% – in the midst of a doctors’ strike and staunch political opposition, increasingly including his own People Power party, whose leader, Han Dong-hoon, said the move was a “wrong move”.

Yoon may have thought that his nostalgia for authoritarianism would resonate with at least some of the South Korean political spectrum, but the unanimous vote in the national assembly to overturn his declaration, including by his own party, suggests he miscalculated. Within hours, he was forced to back down, and martial law was formally lifted after a cabinet meeting.

John Nilsson-Wright, the head of Cambridge University’s Japan and Koreas programme, said: “The fact that he’s acted this way I don’t think really reflects any strong nostalgia on the part of the right for the authoritarian style of leadership. I think it’s a reflection of Yoon’s personality.

“The political momentum was already seeping away from the president, which may be why he decided to act in this way. But it was a foolhardy and deeply misguided decision, and I suspect it will have backfired, if the early indicators are anything to go by.”

The unknown quantity is the military. After forces were sent in to the assembly, there were reports on Tuesday that at least some of those troops were being withdrawn, though the military leadership reportedly announced that it would maintain martial law until it was told otherwise.

The army chief of staff, Gen Park An-su, declared a ban on all political activities and the imposition of military control on “all news media and publications”, but those declarations were entirely ignored. The national assembly was in ferment, the streets filled with protesters and Korea’s robust news organisations continued to report events as they unfolded.

It is unclear whether Park’s initial pronouncements arose from sheer uncertainty about the constitutional legality of such an unprecedented situation or genuine enthusiasm for a coup. In his late night address, Yoon said that troops would return to their barracks, but historically, armies that have tasted political power are rarely entirely cured of the bug.

Yoon’s invocation of a foreign threat, in the form of “North Korean communist forces” and their supposed sympathisers in the South, appear flimsy in the extreme, but carried with it the risk of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In Pyongyang, Kim Jong-un is enjoying a resurgence, rescued from complete isolation by Vladimir Putin’s desperate need for military aid in Ukraine. It seems highly likely that he will seek to exploit Seoul’s hour of weakness. Any aggressive move from the North could provide retrospective justification for Yoon and the military.

“For a president who has focused so much on South Korea’s international reputation, this makes South Korea look very unstable,” Mason Richey, a professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul told Reuters. “This will have a negative effect on financial and currency markets and South Korea’s diplomatic place in the world.”

Operatives said to be behind a billion-dollar Russian money-laundering network – used by drug dealers, financial criminals and foreign spies – have been sanctioned and arrested in a coordinated international investigation led by the National Crime Agency.

The UK law enforcement body, which tackles serious and organised crime, said the actions constituted the “most significant money laundering operation” it had undertaken in the past few years. The operation involved America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation, France’s Direction Centrale de la Police Judiciaire and Ireland’s Garda.

The networks are said to have laundered cash and cryptocurrencies for serious and organised crime gangs in the UK and across the west; Russian hacking groups, which extract ransom payments from corporations after disabling their computer networks; as well as “Russian elites seeking to bypass sanctions”, including in the UK.

The agency added that the scheme had serious real-life implications, as it was directly linked to laundering drug money made on the streets of the UK.

In total, Operation Destabilise identified the alleged heads of the laundering networks and resulted in the arrest of 84 people plus the seizing of more than £20m in cash and cryptocurrency, the NCA said.

It was unveiled as the US Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) announced sanctions against a series of Russian-speaking men and women heading the money laundering network.

Rob Jones, the NCA’s director general of operations, said: “Operation Destabilise has exposed billion-dollar money laundering networks operating in a way previously unknown to international law enforcement or regulators.

“For the first time, we have been able to map out a link between Russian elites, crypto-rich cyber criminals, and drugs gangs on the streets of the UK. The thread that tied them together – the combined force of [alleged money laundering groups] Smart and TGR – was invisible until now.”

The NCA said that Ekaterina Zhdanova, who was sanctioned last year by OFAC for allegedly helping ransomware groups receive and launder illicit funds, headed Smart. She is said to have worked alongside the TGR boss, George Rossi, whose location is unknown to the international law enforcement coalition. Rossi’s second-in-command is Elena Chirkinyan.

The NCA outlined how Smart and TGR laundered cash for transnational crime groups such as the Kinahans, the family-run crime syndicate said to be responsible for trafficking drugs and firearms into the UK and internationally, who were sanctioned by the US in 2022.

From late 2022 to summer 2023, the Smart network was used to fund unspecified Russian espionage operations, the NCA said, while the money launderers also helped Russian clients avoid UK sanctions.

Connections to funds being moved into the UK that originated from the Russia Today (RT) television network were also unearthed by the investigators. RT’s owner is sanctioned in the UK.

The money-laundering scheme is said to have worked by passing funds through a sequence of layers. Russian criminals would exchange millions in cryptocurrencies – made from running a series of ransomware attacks – for cash derived from a range of illicit transactions in western economies, including UK drug deals.

This gave the Russian criminals hard currency that could be laundered and the value returned to them. It also handed western crime bosses millions in cryptocurrency, allowing them to buy large consignments of drugs from South America while bypassing the international banking system.

The NCA added: “TGR and Smart coordinated their activity, with members of the TGR group receiving large volumes of cash on behalf of Zhdanova and facilitating the conversion, making the equivalent value available in cryptocurrency.

“One cash courier network investigated conducted cash handovers in 55 different locations across England, Scotland, Wales and the Channel Islands, over a four-month period. They did so on behalf of at least 22 suspected criminal groups operating in the UK.”

Asked if the actions would close the network – or if key money launderers would simply be replaced – the NCA’s Jones added: “Of course, there is always somebody in the wings. We really understand this system now. As people fill this void we’ll get after them.”

Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s embattled nominee for secretary of defense, shared an impassioned post saying he will “never back down” amid a flurry of rumors that the president-elect is contemplating replacing him with Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis.

“I’m doing this for the warfighters, not the warmongers. The Left is afraid of disrupters and change agents. They are afraid of [Donald Trump] – and me. So they smear w/ fake, anonymous sources & BS stories. They don’t want truth. Our warriors never back down, & neither will I,” Hegseth wrote on X on Wednesday morning.

The post went viral in the aftermath of reports on Tuesday night that Trump may swap out Hegseth with DeSantis. One source told NBC News that DeSantis is “very much in contention” while another said: “Trump talked to the governor and wants him to do it.” The Wall Street Journal and CBS News also reported the rumours, citing unnamed sources.

Despite the rumours, Hegseth, 44, told reporters on Wednesday morning that Trump encouraged him to “keep fighting”.

“I spoke to the president-elect this morning. He said, keep going, keep fighting,” he said. “Why would I back down? I’ve always been a fighter.”

Hegseth has been embroiled with controversy since he was named. Earlier this week, the New Yorker reported whistleblower accusations that he was forced out of leadership roles in two military veteran organisations following allegations of financial mismanagement, aggressive drunkenness and sexist behaviour.

The former Fox News host told reporters on Tuesday, in response as to whether he has an alcohol problem, that he wouldn’t “dignify that with a response”.

Last week, a 2018 email from Penelope Hegseth, Hegseth’s mother, obtained by the New York Times made headlines as it saw Penelope accusing her son of routinely mistreating women and displaying a lack of character.

“You are an abuser of women – that is the ugly truth and I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego,” she wrote.

Penelope Hegseth walked back the remarks she made six years ago and also made a plea for Hegseth’s supporters to stand by his side in a Wednesday morning interview with Fox & Friends.

“We all believe in him. We really believe that he is not that man he was seven years ago. I’m not that mother and I hope people will hear that story today and truth of that story,” she told viewers.

She continued: “I am here to tell the truth. To tell the truth to the American people and tell the truth to senators on the Hill, especially female senators. I really hope that you will not listen to the media and you will listen to Pete.”

Penelope emphasized that who she and her son were in her 2018 email are “not the people we are today”.

“They were going through – Pete, and his wife – were going through a difficult divorce, a very emotional time and I’m sure many of you across the country understand how difficult divorce is on a family. There is emotion. We say things and I wrote that in haste, with deep emotion, as a parent,” she explained.

She added: “Pete and I are both very passionate people. I wrote that out of love, two hours later I retracted it with an apology and nobody has seen that. It was a difficult time.”

JD Vance, the vice-president-elect, also came to Hegseth’s defense on Wednesday morning, noting Penelope Hegseth’s appearance on Fox & Friends and telling followers on X that “the media never talks about the apology because they’re trying to destroy him, not tell the truth”. At press time, multiple news outlets had reported on her apology.

Democrat Adam Gray captured California’s 13th congressional district on Tuesday, unseating Republican John Duarte in the final US House contest to be decided in the 2024 elections.

Gray’s win in the farm belt seat that cuts through five counties means Republicans won 220 House seats this election cycle, with Democrats holding 215 seats.

Gray won by a margin of fewer than 200 votes, with election officials reporting on Tuesday that all ballots had been counted.

Duarte captured the seat in 2022 when he defeated Gray by one of the closest margins in the country, 564 votes. He was often listed among the most vulnerable House Republicans given that narrow margin of victory in a district with a Democratic tilt – about 11 points over registered Republicans.

Gray said in an earlier statement: “We always knew that this race would be as close as they come, and we’re expecting a photo-finish this year, too.”

Duarte told the Turlock Journal he had called Gray to concede, adding “That’s how it goes.”

“I’m a citizen legislator, and I didn’t plan on being in Congress forever,” Duarte told the newspaper, though he didn’t rule out a possible future campaign.

In a tough year for Democrats nationally, the party picked up three GOP-held House seats in California.

Both Gray and Duarte stressed bipartisan credentials during the campaign.

Gray, a former legislator, was critical of state water management and put water and agriculture at the top of his issues list. He also said he wants improvements in infrastructure, renewable energy and education.

Duarte, a businessman and major grape and almond farmer, said his priorities included curbing inflation, crime rates and obtaining adequate water supplies for farmers in the drought-prone state.

There is a large Latino population in the district, similar to other Central Valley seats, but the most likely voters statewide tend to be white, older, more affluent homeowners. Working-class voters, including many Latinos, are less consistent in getting to the polls.

The CEO of UnitedHealthcare, one of the the US’s largest health insurers, was reportedly fatally shot in the chest on Wednesday in midtown Manhattan, according to multiple reports.

Brian Thompson, 50, was reportedly shot outside the Hilton Hotel just after 6.45am after arriving early for the annual UnitedHealthcare investor conference. A man wearing a mask approached him and fired at him repeatedly, according to the New York Post. He was rushed to hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.

Police told the New York Times that they believe that Thompson was targeted in the attack. The outlet also noted that the gunman reportedly knew which door Thompson was going to enter and shot him several times from mere feet away, then fled.

UnitedHealthcare did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Guardian.

The UnitedHealth Group was scheduled to host its annual investor conference for analysts and institutional investors in New York City on Wednesday, beginning at 8.00am local time.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the New York Hilton Midtown told the Guardian: “We are deeply saddened by this morning’s events in the area and our thoughts are with all affected by the tragedy” and directed any further questions the New York police department.

Officials have said that no arrests have been made yet and that the investigation is ongoing. Police are searching for the gunman, who fled the scene on foot before jumping on a bicycle and pedaling away, according to the New York Times. The gunman was reportedly wearing a cream-colored jacket, a black face mask and a gray backpack.

Thompson was named chief executive officer for UnitedHealthcare in April 2021, according to the company. Prior to this role, he served as CEO of UnitedHealthcare government programs including medicare and retirement and community and state. Before leading government programs, Thompson served as CEO of UnitedHealthcare medicare and retirement.

Thompson, who lives in Minnesota, joined UnitedHealth Group in 2004.

Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, called the shooting “horrifying news and a terrible loss for the business and health care community in Minnesota” in a statement on Wednesday.

“Minnesota is sending our prayers to Brian’s family and the UnitedHealthcare team” Walz added.

Iran has released the Nobel peace laureate Narges Mohammadi, jailed since November 2021, for three weeks on medical grounds, her lawyer posted on social media.

“Based on the advice of the examining doctor, the public prosecutor suspended the jail sentence against Narges Mohammadi for three weeks and she was released from prison,” Mostafa Nili said on X.

Mohammadi walked out of Tehran’s Evin prison on Wednesday morning chanting the protest slogan ‘Woman Life Freedom,’ her husband said.

“She came out in a good state of mind, a combative state despite her very fragile state of health,” Taghi Rahmani told reporters.

Family and supporters of the 2023 Nobel winner called her temporary release “inadequate”.

“A 21-day suspension of Narges Mohammadi’s sentence is inadequate. We demand Narges Mohammadi’s immediate and unconditional release or at least an extension of her leave to three months,” they said in a statement, describing the measure as “too little, too late”.

Mohammadi has been imprisoned since November 2021 for convictions in relation to her campaigning against capital punishment and the obligatory hijab in Iran.

Weeks after the 2023 peace prize ceremony in Oslo, where Mohammadi’s children collected the prize on her behalf, a revolutionary court in Iran sentenced her to an additional 15 months, accusing of spreading propaganda against the state while in prison.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee joined calls for her to be permanently freed. “We demand, as we have done before, that she is not only released from prison for 21 days for medical treatment, but released forever,” the head of the Nobel committee, Jorgen Watne Frydnes, told AFP.

“It’s our hope that the regime and the pressure from the outside world, including the Norwegian Nobel Committee, will result in her release one day,” Frydnes said.

He said “her condition is severe, most likely cancer.”

“The issue is, of course, that these 21 days are most likely not enough for adequate treatment,” he added.

Despite the repercussions, Mohammadi, a leading figure of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, has remained dedicated to her activism.

When her father died earlier this year, she was not allowed to offer condolences to her family in Iran or attend his funeral.

Moscow has condemned “external forces” seeking to escalate violence in Syria, despite reports from Ukrainian military intelligence that Russia is to send mercenaries to support flagging troops allied to Damascus.

The Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova blamed outside actors for instigating a recent sweeping insurgent offensive, after Islamist militants spearheaded by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) took control of the city of Aleppo at the weekend in a shock advance.

Zakharova emphasised Moscow’s support for a counter-attack by Damascus, despite reports that Russia has begun removing ships from its naval base in Tartus. Militia forces spearheaded by HTS are engaged in fierce confrontations with Syrian army forces 50 miles away outside the provincial capital of Hama.

The ministry of defence in Damascus said major reinforcements had been dispatched to Hama city to bolster troops on the frontlines, while insurgents claimed increasing control of towns in the Hama countryside north-west of the city as a second front pushed sound towards Hama.

Fighting also continued in eastern Syria, where forces loyal to Damascus supported by Iranian and Iran-backed militias are fighting Arab-majority rebel militias from the city of Deir Ezzour. The Pentagon said it destroyed rocket launchers, a tank and mortars that presented a “clear and imminent threat” to US and supporting forces near the Euphrates river, the second such pre-emptive strike in the area in under a week.

The Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, has relied heavily on support from Moscow and Tehran as well as Iranian-backed Iraqi militias to keep control of the fractured country, which spiralled rapidly into a proxy-war following a popular uprising against his rule in 2011.

The insurgents’ sudden sweeping takeover of territory in the north-west, which Zakharova described as “an audacious act,” marked the largest challenge to Assad’s rule in years, and the first time in over a decade of civil war in Syria that the entire city of Aleppo is apparently under full opposition control.

Ukraine’s military intelligence agency (HUR) said planned rotations of Russian troops from Syria had been suspended, while morale among Russian military personnel fighting in Syria is low due to the surprise insurgent advance. Both the Syrian army and backup units from Russia have sustained “significant losses”, it said, including what it described as a “chaotic” retreat from their positions as troops left behind military equipment and weapons.

Moscow will bolster forces in Syria using private military companies expected to arrive in Syria, according to HUR. It anticipated these forces are likely to be drawn from Russia’s Africa Corps, a mercenary force that is a rebranded version of the state-funded Wagner group militia.

The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, is expected to meet with his counterparts from Iran and Turkey in Qatar in the coming days for urgent consultations on Syria. Ankara has supported rebel groups in north-western Syria, while President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, in a phone call that Damascus should engage in political consultations to end the civil war.

Turkey “is doing its utmost to restore calm in Syria”, he added.

According to a readout from the Kremlin, Putin “stressed the urgent need” to stop the insurgency, advocating for Ankara to play a role in what he termed Damascus’s efforts “to restore stability and constitutional order across the country”.

The head of Syria’s civil defence rescue service, known as the White Helmets, told the UN security council that Russian airstrikes on the rebel-held enclave of Idlib earlier this week had put four hospitals in the city out of service.

“As the map of military control has changed, brutal attacks launched by the Syrian regime, Russia, and Iranian cross-border militias on Syrians have escalated especially in areas outside their control in north-west Syria,” he said. The White Helmets have responded to 275 attacks that killed 100 civilians and wounded 360, he added.

Cuba’s national electrical system collapsed early on Wednesday morning after the country’s largest power plant failed, the government said, the latest of several such failures as the island’s grid falls into disarray amid fuel shortages, natural disaster and economic crisis.

The country’s energy and mines ministry said the Antonio Guiteras power plant in Matanzas, the island’s top electricity producer, had shut down at about 2am, prompting the grid collapse.

Cuba’s oil-fired power plants, already obsolete and struggling to keep the lights on, reached a full crisis this year as oil imports from Venezuela, Russia and Mexico dwindled, contributing to multiple nationwide blackouts in the last two months.

The system failure on Wednesday morning left the capital, Havana, almost completely in the dark, according to a Reuters witness. Before sunrise, lights could be seen only in a handful of large hotels and government buildings on the city’s skyline.

Reports on social media of blackouts elsewhere in Cuba suggested the entire island of more than 10 million people was without power, though the government had yet to confirm the extent of the outage.

The energy and mines ministry said it was working to reconnect the electrical system.

Cuba’s grid collapsed multiple times in October as fuel supplies dwindled and Hurricane Oscar struck the far-eastern end of the island, then again in November with the passage of Hurricane Rafael.

The Chinese government has said it will ban exports to the US of some key components in making semiconductors, escalating trade tensions a day after Washington announced curbs targeting China’s ability to make advanced chips.

Among the materials banned from export were the metals gallium, antimony and germanium, China’s commerce ministry said in a statement that cited “national security” concerns.

Exports of graphite, another component in semiconductors, would be subject to “stricter reviews of end-users and end-uses”, the ministry said. The curbs strengthen enforcement of existing limits on critical minerals exports that Beijing began rolling out last year, but apply only to the US market.

“To safeguard national security interests and fulfil international obligations such as non-proliferation, China has decided to strengthen export controls on relevant dual-use items to the United States,” the ministry said.

Gallium and germanium are used in semiconductors, while germanium is also used in infrared technology, fibre optic cables and solar cells. Antimony is used in bullets and other weaponry, while graphite is the largest component by volume of electric vehicle batteries.

There is concern that Beijing could next target other critical minerals, including those with even broader usage such as nickel and cobalt.

China accounts for 94% of the world’s production of gallium, and 83% of germanium.

Chinese customs data shows there were no shipments of wrought and unwrought germanium or gallium to the US this year through October, when a year earlier it was the fourth and fifth-largest market for the minerals.

Similarly, China’s overall October shipments of antimony products plunged by 97% from September after Beijing’s move to limit its exports took effect.

On Monday, Washington announced restrictions on sales to 140 companies including Chinese chip firms Piotech and SiCarrier, expanding efforts to curb exports of state-of-the-art chips to China that could be used in advanced weapons systems and artificial intelligence.

The new US rules include controls on two dozen types of chip-making equipment and three kinds of software tools for developing or producing semiconductors.

On Tuesday, China said the US had “politicised and weaponised economic, trade and technological issues” as it unveiled its own export curbs.

The Chinese move also restricts the export of “dual-use items to United States military users or for military purposes”, Beijing said.

“The move is clearly a retaliatory strike at the US,” said Dylan Loh, an assistant professor at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.

“It drives home an important point which is that China is not completely passive [and] there are some cards it can play and hit the US with as well with regards to chips.”

These “back and forth curbs” could create supply chain disruption, as well as inflationary pressures, should they affect trade for third parties, said Chong Ja Ian, an associate professor of political science from the National University of Singapore.

Brady Wang, associate director at technology market research firm Counterpoint, told AFP that while the metals played critical roles in hi-tech industries, they were upstream in the supply chain, meaning the immediate impact on production was limited. “As the US-China trade tensions have persisted for some time, many intermediary manufacturers in the supply chain have been stockpiling these materials.”

Chinese trade associations released similarly worded statements on Tuesday urging their members to seek local alternatives to US chips.

The Internet Society of China called on companies to “be cautious when procuring US chips, seek to expand cooperation with chip companies in other countries and regions, and actively use chips produced and manufactured in China by domestic and foreign enterprises”.

The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers accused Washington of having “arbitrarily amended the control rules, seriously affecting the stable supply of US chip products”.

“The Chinese auto industry’s trust and confidence in the procurement of US chip products is being shaken, and US auto chip products are no longer reliable and safe,” the association said.

With Agence France-Presse and Reuters

A court in Japan has sentenced an Australian woman to six years in prison after finding her guilty of smuggling methamphetamine into the country, ignoring her claims that she had been the victim of an online romance scam.

Donna Nelson, from Perth, was found guilty of smuggling 2kg of the drug concealed beneath a false bottom in her suitcase when she arrived at Narita airport near Tokyo from Laos in January 2023.

Prosecutors had demanded a 10-year sentence and a $30,000 fine.

The 58-year-old claimed she did not know the drugs had been hidden inside the suitcase, which she said had been given to her by the acquaintance of a second man who she met online in 2020 and was planning to marry.

Nelson said she had been instructed to take the suitcase to Japan and give it to the man she believed to be her online lover. The man, whom Nelson named only as “Kelly”, had told her he was the Nigerian owner of a fashion business. He reportedly paid for her flight to Japan but was not at Narita airport when she arrived.

The pair had reportedly sent each other numerous text messages and spoken multiple times on video chats during their online “romance”.

Prosecutors acknowledged that the case was linked to an online romance scam, but insisted Nelson knew what was inside the suitcase when she left Laos.

When she arrived in Japan, Nelson did not declare the bag as belonging to someone else, and wrote that she was in the country on business.

“If she had nothing to hide, why didn’t she just tell the truth, and why didn’t she tell customs that she was going to see her fiancé?,” prosecutor Ogata told the court, according to the ABC.

Her daughters have repeatedly protested her innocence and have been present at Chiba district court, east of Tokyo, during her trial.

One of Nelson’s daughters, Kristal Hilaire, told the court her mother was “a good person” during a hearing last month – the first time Hilaire and her sister had seen their mother since her arrest almost two years ago.

“She thought she was coming to Japan for her love story,” Hilaire said. “She didn’t have any other intentions other than that. And that’s what we need everyone to know and hear at the court this week.”

Nelson’s lawyer, Rie Nishida, claimed that the poor English-language ability of customs officials at Narita might have led to mistranslations and the allegation that Nelson knew she was carrying an illegal substance.

Nelson has attended court escorted by uniformed guards, who removed her handcuffs and a rope around her waist as she took her seat.

Her case has highlighted the slow pace of justice in Japan, where suspects can be detained for long periods without charge and face lengthy trials before being convicted or freed.

It was not immediately clear if Nelson’s legal team planned to appeal her sentence.