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TAIPEI, TAIWAN — South Korean opposition leader and former presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung was stabbed in the neck by a man pretending to be a supporter, during a visit to the southeastern port city of Busan on Tuesday. Lee was meeting with reporters at the construction site of a new airport when a man approached, asking for an autograph, according to media reports. Videos posted online showed Lee smiling shortly before the man plunged a large knife into the left side of his neck. His condition is unknown. Pictures showed him lying on the ground, with his eyes closed and mouth open, while those around him applied pressure to the wound. South Korean media report that Lee was conscious while being transported to the hospital. A male suspect was arrested at the scene, according to reports. There is no word on a motive. Lee is the head of South Korea’s main opposition Democratic Party. A liberal, Lee narrowly lost a 2022 presidential vote to conservative South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol. Lee, 59, is a polarizing figure in South Korean politics. In September, he ended a 24-day hunger strike to protest what he saw as the failed policies of his rival, Yoon. Last year, South Korean prosecutors indicted Lee on corruption-related charges, including those related to a property development scandal. He avoided jail after a court rejected a warrant for his arrest. Lee is known for his populist policies. As a former mayor of Gyeonggi, South Korea’s most populous province that surrounds Seoul, Lee advocated a form of universal basic income, in which citizens were to receive regular payments of money from the government. In a statement, Yoon’s office expressed “deep concern” about Lee’s safety and called for a quick investigation into the incident. He also said South Korean society should not tolerate such violent acts. Political violence in South Korea has been rare in recent decades, though attacks have occasionally occurred. In 2022, Song Young-gil, then Democratic Party leader, was attacked by an elderly man with a hammer while campaigning just two days before the election. In 2006, former conservative party leader Park Geun-hye, who would later become president, was attacked by a man with a box cutter at a rally in Seoul.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

NEW YORK — Access to a busy terminal at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport was restricted Monday as pro-Palestinian protesters converged on the airport for the second time in a week. Videos posted online show heavy traffic and a slow-moving line of cars, some flying Palestinian flags and featuring text on the windows such as “Stop the genocide.” Police directed a line of cars around a checkpoint. Protesters also had planned to arrive at the airport in Queens, New York, by public transportation. The New Year's Day action was the latest in a series of protests around the nation calling for a cease-fire since the Israel-Hamas war began on Oct. 7. Last Wednesday, activists brought traffic to a standstill on an expressway leading up to JFK for about 20 minutes. Protesters shut down a major thoroughfare leading to the Los Angeles International Airport on the same day. Entry into JFK's Terminal 4 was temporarily restricted Monday afternoon to ticketed passengers, employees and people with what authorities consider a valid reason to be there, such as passenger pickups, according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the region's airports.  Similarly, AirTrain access was temporarily restricted to ticketed passengers and employees. “The Port Authority, in coordination with our local, state, and federal partners, has deployed safety and security measures to help ensure an uninterrupted travel experience at JFK,” port authority spokesperson Seth Stein said in an email. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey didn’t report any arrests. City officials had warned people flying out of JFK on Monday, a busy travel day, to get to the airport early because of the protests. Police said the caravan of cars was later headed to protest outside LaGuardia Airport, which is also in Queens.   

pasadena, california — Floral floats, marching bands and equestrian units took to the streets under a sunny California sky as the 135th Rose Parade drew hundreds of thousands of spectators on New Year's Day. The Pasadena tradition on Monday featured Broadway legend Audra McDonald as grand marshal and the theme "Celebrating a World of Music: The Universal Language." After recent rains and gray skies, there was plenty of sun for the 8 a.m. start of the spectacle with a military flyover of a B-2 stealth bomber. Among the fanciful floats was Kaiser Permanente's colorful "Symphony of You," which featured 8,000 roses and received the President Award for most outstanding use and presentation of flowers. The top prize, the 2024 Sweepstakes Trophy, went to the San Diego Zoo for the 16.8-meter float "It All Started With a Roar," depicting its mascot Rex the Lion and celebrating wildlife conservation. Huge crowds lined the 8.8-kilometer parade route. Many camped out on sidewalks overnight, staking out their spots in the afternoon on New Year's Eve. The parade was briefly interrupted by about 50 pro-Palestinian protesters carrying a banner demanding a cease-fire in the war between Israel and Hamas. They blocked the route before peacefully dispersing under police orders, said city spokesperson Lisa Derderian. McDonald was set to toss the coin before the 110th Rose Bowl college football game between Alabama and Michigan.

Montreal — Women's ice hockey kicked off 2024 with the launch of a new professional league that debuted Monday with a match between the Toronto and New York teams. The Professional Women's Hockey League "rings in the New Year with the very first regular season game in league history," the PWHL said in a press release. Toronto earned the first victory in the new league, beating New York 4-0 in Toronto. The regular season includes more than 20 games and runs until May, and will be followed by playoffs. The league has six teams: Boston, Minnesota and New York on the American side, and Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto on the Canadian side. Ice hockey is Canada's national winter sport but remains largely dominated by men. The National Hockey League (NHL), the men's equivalent, was founded in 1917 in Montreal and has 32 teams spread across the two countries.

ISLAMABAD — Human rights groups and independent monitors in Pakistan cast aspersions Monday on the integrity and credibility of the February 8 parliamentary elections, citing a military-backed government crackdown on a mainstream political party and increased media censorship. The crackdown is targeted at jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or PTI, rated as the country's largest political party, according to public polls.  "At this point, there is little evidence to show that the upcoming elections will be free, fair or credible," Munizae Jahangir, the co-chairperson of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, told a news conference in Islamabad. "Foremost is the blatant manipulation of the electoral landscape in which one political party, among others, has been singled out for systematic dismemberment," she stated while referring to what she denounced as the unlawful crackdown on the PTI.  "I think that there is no doubt in anybody's mind that the strings of this country are being pulled by the military," Jahangir said when asked to explain whether the powerful Pakistani military was influencing the electoral process in the run up to the polls.   The caretaker government of Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar, required to ensure transparency and fairness in the upcoming elections, is being consistently accused of working in favor of pro-military political parties.  Murtaza Solangi, the Pakistani information minister, rejected the charges Monday, saying his government was committed to assisting the country's independent election commission in transparently organizing the polls.  Jahangir also criticized election authorities for rejecting the candidacies of Khan and most of his party members on "flimsy grounds" and denounced "the unlawful" crackdown against the PTI. "This has assumed a familiar pattern, including arrests of party workers and supporters, lack of transparency concerning the charges involved, crackdowns on party workers' right to peaceful assembly, enforced disappearances, obvious signs of pressure on party leaders to resign or exit politics altogether and, most recently, the large-scale rejection of candidates' nomination papers," Jahangir noted.  Several other political parties have also been "subjected to similar tactics to varying degrees," and the "clampdown on dissent has further constricted civic spaces" in Pakistan when people need to express their views before the elections freely, she stressed.  The state-run media quoted Solangi as claiming that the government "had nothing to do with the acceptance or rejection of the nomination papers" of PTI candidates, calling the process in line with the constitution.  Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at Washington's Wilson Center, cautioned against eliminating or limiting PTI's participation in the elections, saying it would not lead to political stability in Pakistan.  "After all, PTI enjoys mass support and is likely Pakistan's most popular political party. Sidelining it from the polls would not appease a highly aggrieved public," Kugelman told VOA in written comments.  "For the international community, including the West, the expectation and desire is for an election that is relatively stable and free of violence," Kugelman told VOA. "Inclusivity is not necessarily an electoral condition that it will insist on. This suggests that elections, minus PTI, would be acceptable to the international community so long as they don't result in unrest," he said.  An opposition-led parliamentary no-confidence motion removed cricket star-turned-Prime Minister Khan from office in April 2022. He rejected the move as illegal, alleging the military orchestrated it at the behest of the United States to topple his government. Washington and Islamabad deny the charges. The deposed 71-year-old Pakistani leader has since faced dozens of charges, including graft, murder and leaking state secrets. Khan was convicted and sentenced to three years for corruption last August.  He rejects all the charges, saying the military has fabricated them to block his return to power and undermine his party's popularity. Khan and his party also face an unannounced ban on mainstream Pakistani TV news channels.  Elections officials declined Khan's nomination papers last week, saying laws bar a convicted person from running for public office.  "Fears that next month's general elections will be reduced to an undemocratic farce have gained traction with the seemingly wholesale rejection of PTI candidates at the scrutiny stage," the English-language Dawn newspaper said in an editorial Monday.  "Canceling a mainstream party through arrests and intimidation, and now technicalities at the pre-poll stage, flies in the face of democracy," the paper wrote.  Nonprofit Free and Fair Election Network, or FAFEN, which promotes good governance and fair elections in Pakistan, urged the election commission to publicly release its objections and eventual rejections of candidates' nomination papers to help strengthen electoral transparency. "This measure will not only reinforce the transparency of the electoral process but also serve as a safeguard to its credibility against the proliferation of misinformation and disinformation that often stems from incomplete information," said a FAFEN statement Monday. The military denies it interferes with the election process or political matters, but critics dismiss it as mere claims. The security institute has ruled Pakistan for more than three decades after ousting elected governments in military coups. The interventions have weakened democratic practices in Pakistan and allowed generals to influence decision-making even when not in power, say former prime ministers and independent observers. 

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Shanghai, China — China's first domestically built cruise ship set sail on its maiden voyage from Shanghai on Monday, a sign of the nation's growing prowess in sophisticated construction as it seeks self-sufficiency in key technologies.  The Adora Magic City left port on its first commercial cruise in late afternoon, en route to South Korea and Japan.  Equipped with a mahjong lounge and hotpot restaurant, the luxury vessel is aimed squarely at China's expanding middle class and their appetite for international travel.  State media have hailed the 16-deck behemoth as a "major milestone for the country's shipbuilding industry" and a "crown jewel."  Its construction was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Lloyd's Register (LR), which provided marine services for the ship.   It is China's first foray into a sector dominated by European shipbuilders.  The country's first homegrown passenger jet, the C919, also made its debut outside mainland China last month.   The complex projects are key to Beijing's decades-long ambitions to compete with European and U.S. rivals and cut down China's reliance on foreign technology.  Many of Adora Magic City's components were provided by international suppliers.   But in the future, "China has the opportunity to build its own supply chain," Marco Scopaz, LR's on-site project manager, said in an article on Lloyd's website.  The Adora Magic City "marks the beginning of the country's inevitable and rapid development in cruise design and construction," he said. 

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Tunis, Tunisia — Tunisian judicial authorities on Monday ordered that prominent journalist Zeid El-Heni should be detained and tried on charges of defamation, days after he criticized the trade minister, his lawyer said. El-Heni will have his first court hearing on January 10 on the charge of "defaming others on social media," his lawyer Ayachi Hammami told reporters. Police first arrested him on Thursday after he made comments about the minister on local radio in an interview that was posted on Facebook, Tunisia's state news agency said. Tunisia's journalists union demanded his immediate release, calling his detention a "violation of legal provisions governing the trial of reporters." Freedom of speech and media were key gains for Tunisians after the 2011 revolution that ousted autocratic President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and triggered the "Arab Spring" protests. But activists and journalists say freedom of speech has been deteriorating since President Kais Saied seized wide powers in 2021. Saied has said his actions were needed to save Tunisia from chaos under what he calls a corrupt elite.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

lviv, ukraine — Russian drones attacked a university and a museum linked to two of the most prominent 20th-century defenders of Ukrainian national identity on Monday, leaving locals vowing to repair the damage. The first smashed windows and much of the roof at the National Agrarian University, outside the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, where Stepan Bandera — a hero in Ukraine but a villain according to the Kremlin —studied. It hit on what would have been Bandera's 115th birthday. The second ravaged a nearby museum devoted to Roman Shukhevych. Both men were key figures in nationalist resistance to Soviet rule and were associated with the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which fought Soviet forces in World War II. "This is the building in which Stepan Bandera attended classes. There's a memorial plaque dedicated to Bandera, and the statue, too," 82-year-old Sofia Zdorovyk said as people cleared up the rubble around her. "Everything that's been going on in our country, for so many years, do they [Russia] feel better because of it? Don't they have enough land? Natural resources? What is it that they need?" Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi described the strike on the museum as a symbolic act. "We will restore it after our victory," he said. Bandera was the most prominent figure in a group associated with the UPA, whose ranks swelled to 100,000 by 1944, according to historical accounts, and continued fighting Moscow's rule until the mid-1950s. Shukhevych was the UPA's supreme commander. Moscow still invokes Bandera's name to underpin its assertions that it invaded Ukraine in February 2022 to "denazify" the country, pointing to the fact that some nationalists initially cooperated with German forces in their battle against the Russians — though they later also fought the Nazis. "Just hearing the name Bandera scares them [the Russians]. It causes rage and hatred," Vasyl Lapushniak, president of the Lviv National Agrarian University, said. "They did not scare us with this. It only united us once more and showed our strength." The honor of "Hero of Ukraine" was bestowed on both men in the post-Soviet period. Soldiers from the UPA's ranks were declared "veterans" alongside Soviet Red Army soldiers. The nationalist army's activity has long been clouded by allegations that it carried out massacres of tens of thousands of ethnic Poles in western Ukraine's Volyn region — part of an area that was under Polish rule between the two world wars. Poland and Ukraine have taken measures to honor those deaths and seal a reconciliation between the two neighbors.

WASHINGTON — After months of extra duty at sea providing protection for Israel, the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier strike group will be heading home, the Navy announced on Monday.  The Ford and its accompanying warships will be replaced by the amphibious assault ship the USS Bataan and its accompanying warships, the USS Mesa Verde and the USS Carter Hall. The three vessels had been in the Red Sea and have been transiting toward the Eastern Mediterranean over the last few days.  The Ford will sail for home "in the coming days," the U.S. 6th Fleet, the European-based U.S. naval command that's responsible for ships sailing in the Mediterranean, said in a statement.  The Ford was sent to the Eastern Mediterranean to be within striking distance of Israel since the day after Hamas' October 7 attacks. The carrier stayed in the Eastern Mediterranean while its accompanying warships had sailed into the Red Sea, where they repeatedly intercepted incoming ballistic missiles and attack drones fired from Houthi-controlled Yemen. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin visited the Ford last month.  Since it was extended in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Ford and the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier have been part of a two-carrier presence bracketing the Israel-Hamas war, underscoring U.S. concerns that the conflict will widen. The Eisenhower has recently patrolled near the Gulf of Aden, at the mouth of the Red Sea waterway, where so many commercial vessels have come under attack in recent weeks.  On Sunday, helicopters from the Eisenhower and its destroyer the USS Gravely responded to a distress call from the container ship Maersk Hangzhou, which was under attack by four Iranian-backed Houthi small boats. As the helicopters responded, the boats fired at them with crew-served weapons and small arms and the helicopters returned fire, sinking three of the four boats and killing their crews, the U.S. Central Command said.  The incessant attacks on the commercial ships have led some companies to suspend transits through the narrow Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which connects the Gulf of Aden to the southern Red Sea and then the Suez Canal.  The Bataan's accompanying warship, the Mesa Verde, is a transport dock ship carrying approximately 2,000 Marines from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit. Those Marines provide "forces capable of supporting a wide range of missions," the U.S. 6th Fleet said.  The Carter Hall is a dock landing ship, which carries amphibious landing craft and their crews. Both vessels and the Bataan can support rotary aircraft; the Bataan can also carry and support Marine Corps' F-35 vertical takeoff fighter aircraft. 

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.