More than 5,000 people were evacuated at one time

International News via Reuters:

Heavy rains pounded South Korea for a third day on Friday in a deluge that has killed at least four people, forced thousands of people to evacuate their homes and destroyed property and infrastructure.

Warnings of torrential rain remained in effect for most of the country’s western and southern regions and the weather service advised extreme caution with landslides and flooding possible through Saturday.

More than 5,000 people were evacuated at one time, but the number of people in shelters had fallen to 3,297 as of 11 a.m. (0200 GMT), the Interior and Safety Ministry said.

Rainfall of more than 400 millimetres (16 inches) hit some southern regions, including the city of Gwangju, in the 24 hours to early Friday, the ministry said. Thursday’s downpour in Gwangju was the highest daily total for 86 years.

Four people have died in the rains and two were missing, the ministry said. Two were trapped in cars on flooded roads and another died in a basement under flood water in the central South Chungcheong province, it said. 

A driver was killed after a 10-metre-high (33 ft) roadside wall collapsed on top of a moving vehicle on Wednesday in Osan, some 44 kilometres (27 miles) south of Seoul, fire agency officials said. 

President Lee Jae Myung has called for a stronger government role in disaster prevention and response, saying that while natural disasters are hard to prevent, more can be done to anticipate damage and warn the public.

“I see there were cases where casualties occurred because of a poor response when the situation was reasonably predictable,” he said at an emergency meeting on the weather on Friday, calling for all available resources to be deployed.

Reporting by Jack Kim and Joyce Lee; Editing by Ed Davies and Frances Kerry

Wells Fargo has suspended all travel to China after the incident

International News via Reuters:

Fears that employees of foreign firms risk entanglement with Chinese authorities have resurfaced after news that an employee of U.S. bank Wells Fargo has been banned from leaving the country.

Business groups, diplomats and overseas executives say the incident is part of a long-term trend that had appeared to ease off as Beijing pushed to promote its appeal to foreign commerce to bolster its slowing economy.

“Such stories can raise concerns of foreign businesses regarding travel to China,” said Jens Eskelund, president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China.

“At a time when China is proactively trying to attract foreign investment it sends something of a mixed signal.”

Wells Fargo has suspended all travel to China after the incident, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Shanghai-born Chenyue Mao, who spearheads the bank’s international factoring business, was subjected to the ban after she entered China in recent weeks, the Wall Street Journal reported. She is a U.S. citizen, a source told Reuters.

An emailed request for comment sent to Mao received an automated response saying she was “travelling international on business”.

China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian told a press briefing on Friday that he was not aware of the Wells Fargo matter, adding that China was committed to providing a welcoming environment for foreign companies to do business.

The U.S. embassy in Beijing said it could not comment on the specifics of the case due to privacy and other reasons.

“We have raised our concern with Chinese authorities about the impact arbitrary exit bans on U.S. citizens have on our bilateral relations and urged them to immediately allow impacted U.S. citizens to return home,” a spokesperson for the embassy added.

The United States does not provide an official figure for how many citizens are detained abroad, but The Dui Hua Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for the release of political prisoners in China, estimates there are more than 200 Americans in China alone who are wrongfully detained or facing coercive measures, such as exit bans.

The U.S. State Department updated its travel advisory for mainland China in November 2024 saying visitors should “exercise increased caution” due to “arbitrary enforcement of local laws, including in relation to exit bans.”

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In a survey conducted by the EU Chamber of Commerce in China of its members last year, 9% of respondents reported challenges attracting foreign nationals to work in China due to concerns related to personal safety and/or civil and criminal liability such as company raids, arbitrary arrests or exit bans.

Of the 128 respondents, 4% said business travel from China to their company’s headquarters had been negatively impacted due to employees being unable to leave China due to exit bans.

There is no official data in China on the number of individuals subject to exit bans.

But non-profit organisation Safeguard Defenders estimates bans have shot up over the past decade and that “tens of thousands” of people – the vast majority Chinese nationals – face such bans at any one time, citing court data on civil and criminal cases.

A 2022 academic study found 128 cases of foreigners faced exit bans between 1995 and 2019, including 29 Americans and 44 Canadians. Around a third of the bans were business related.

James Zimmerman, a lawyer based in Beijing and former chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, said Chinese authorities routinely use exit bans to prevent witnesses or suspects viewed as flight risks from exiting mainland China.

“Most of the time, there is a legitimate legal basis for the exit ban, while there are indeed instances of misuse of the process by the government authorities, including for political reasons,” Zimmerman said

While there are procedures in place to have the ban lifted, a lack of transparency and absence of a workable bail system make it a time-consuming and challenging process, he added.

Other incidents of bans in recent years have embroiled executives from Japanese investment bank Nomura Holdings, U.S. risk advisory firm Kroll and Swiss wealth manager UBS.

Yet some professional advisors say travel to China has become safer than several years ago, said Benjamin Qiu, Co-Chair, Asian Affairs Committee at the New York City Bar Association.

Unless your company has been specifically targeted by the state or a state-owned entity, risks are low, said Qiu, adding that ethnic Chinese travellers do face heightened risk.

Other executives are hoping the Wells Fargo incident does not presage a wider crackdown.

“We do so much business in China and travel there so much, we can’t afford not to. I would hope this is just a one-off,” said a capital markets banker at a Western bank in Hong Kong, declining to be named as the person was not authorised to talk to the media.

Reporting by Antoni Slodkowski and Liz Lee in Beijing; Casey Hall in Shanghai, Scott Murdoch in Sydney and Hong Kong Newsroom; Writing by John Geddie; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan

Slovenia’s lawmakers approved the bill with 50 votes in favour, 34 against, and three abstentions

International News via Reuters:

Slovenia approved a law to allow assisted dying on Friday, joining an increasing number of countries giving terminally-ill adults the right to end their lives if they face unbearable suffering with no expectation of improvement.

Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and Belgium are among the countries to permit assisted dying, as well as some U.S. states. Last month, Britain’s parliament voted to legalise assisted dying, although the bill must still clear the upper chamber of parliament.

Slovenia’s lawmakers approved the bill with 50 votes in favour, 34 against, and three abstentions. The legislation follows a consultative referendum last year in which 55% of voters called for such a law.

Treatment options will have to be exhausted, and the right to assisted dying will not be available in the case of unbearable suffering resulting from mental illness, STA news agency reported.

A civil group that opposes the new law said on Friday it would try to gather enough public support to force a referendum on the new law. 

Reporting by Daria Sito-Sucic; Editing by Alexandra Hudson

The Commission two years ago opened an investigation into the possible infringement of EU merger rules, which could result in a hefty fine

International News via Reuters:

French media group Vivendi on Friday rejected charges by EU antitrust authorities that it possibly breached merger rules by closing the acquisition of French publisher Lagardere before receiving the green light for the deal.

“Vivendi denies the allegations put forward by the European Commission. It will thoroughly review the statement of objections and respond with detailed arguments, with the aim of being cleared of all allegations and securing the closure of the investigation,” Vivendi said in a statement.

The European Commission earlier on Friday said it had sent a statement of objections to Vivendi, which it said might have broken merger rules by implementing the acquisition of Lagardere before receiving approval for the deal.

The Commission two years ago opened an investigation into the possible infringement of EU merger rules, which could result in a hefty fine.

It said it had now informed Vivendi of its preliminary view that the company breached the notification requirement and the ‘standstill obligation’ set out in the EU Merger Regulation, as well as the conditions and obligations attached to the Commission’s June 2023 decision to clear the transaction.

“This document sets out the provisional findings of the European Commission’s investigation and merely marks the opening of the adversarial phase of the procedure. At this stage, it does not establish any infringement, nor does it entail any sanction,” Vivendi said.

The company risks a fine of as much as 10% of its global annual turnover if found guilty of breaching EU antitrust rules.

Reporting by Bart Meijer, Dominique Vidalon; Editing by Kirsten Donovan