Rescuers suspend search for 2 miners believed trapped in flooded cave in Laos
Rescue teams continue water pumping and search operations for the remaining two missing individuals inside a flooded cave on June 3, 2026 in Xaisomboun, Laos. (Photo by the Laos Rescue Volunteers for People via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — International rescuers have indefinitely suspended the search for two gold miners believed trapped in a cave in Laos, nearly three weeks after they were reported missing with five others who were rescued, officials said.
International dive teams that converged on the country’s Xaisomboun province, where monsoon flood waters trapped the miners last month, were heading back home on Sunday, a search coordinator told ABC News.
The cave system, according to the coordinator, has become too unstable to safely carry on with the search. The rescue coordinator said the hope of finding the two remaining miners is now very low.
While water in the flooded subterranean labyrinth has been pumped out and lowered to a manageable level, the coordinator said the entrance to the cave has become too unstable for rescuers to safely proceed with the operation.
A local rescue team will keep pumping water from the cave in hopes of a miracle, the coordinator said.
The operation was halted after rescuers explored a newly discovered 196-foot-deep shaft they had hoped would lead them to a chamber where they suspected the two miners might be. But no sign of the miners was reported.
A group of seven illegal gold miners entered the cave on May 19 and became trapped when monsoon rains flooded the cave’s entrance, rescuers said.
The rescue team was able to pump enough water out of the system for four miners to crawl out of the muddy abyss on May 30, authorities said. A day earlier, a fifth miner was able to crawl and swim out of the cave after he was taught how to scuba dive, rescuers said.
In an interview with ABC News last week, Josh Richards, an Australian diver who was part of the rescue operation, said the two remaining missing miners could be in a sixth chamber, past the one where the five other miners were located.
But Richards said some of the rescued miners told officials that there were only six of them trapped in the cave, including one who managed to extract himself at the outset of the emergency and alert authorities.
Richards said that one possible theory is that eight miners entered the cave and three got out on their own and went into hiding because their mining activities are illegal in Laos and subject to prosecution.
South Korean President Lee Jae-myung takes an oath during his inauguration at the National Assembly on June 04, 2025 in Seoul, South Korea. (Photo by Anthony Wallace – Pool/Getty Images)
(SEOUL, South Korea) — South Korea’s ruling Democratic Party swept nationwide local elections Wednesday, tightening President Lee Jae Myung’s grip on power one year into his term, though the conservative opposition captured Seoul’s mayor’s office.
The vote drew 61% turnout, the highest for a local election in three decades.
Lee enters his second year Thursday with approval ratings around 60%, according to South Korea’s major pollsters. That is the second-highest at the one-year mark since 1987, behind only former President Moon Jae-in.
When South Koreans elected Lee a year ago, they did so in the wreckage of a constitutional crisis after then-President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law on Dec. 3, 2024, vowing to “eradicate the anti-state forces.”
He sent troops toward the National Assembly to stop lawmakers from voting it down. The attempt failed within hours, and Yoon was impeached and removed by the Constitutional Court four months later, triggering the snap election that made Lee president.
Governing out loud
Lee has made the presidency unusually public. He live-streams weekly cabinet meetings, a first in Korean history, and his office briefs on camera far more than its predecessor.
Lee also uses social media to announce policy, rebut coverage he disputes, take questions and air his opinions — often without the vetting a formal statement would get. Aides call it a deliberate effort to reach citizens directly rather than through the traditional layers of staff that usually filter a president.
“Unlike politicians before him, he’s citizen-friendly — clearly distinct,” said Park Myoung-ho, a political science professor at Dongguk University.
His style has drawn criticism, however. In May, Lee used social media to attack Starbucks Korea over a promotion that critics linked to a 1980 massacre of pro-democracy protesters, branding the company “low-grade profiteers” guilty of “gutter-level behavior.”
“Given how much power a president holds, it’s too direct and too unfiltered,” said Lee Hyun-woo, who teaches political process at Sogang University and warned that the president’s posts are often misread because Koreans are used to presidents speaking in measured, formal language.
A record-breaking market
The benchmark KOSPI, which bottomed out near 2,300 in April 2025 after President Donald Trump’s tariffs, has surged to a record high above 8,700, blowing past Lee’s campaign pledge to reach 5,000. The rally has been catalyzed by a global boom in semiconductors and AI infrastructure that has lifted companies like Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix.
But rising share prices have not reached many ordinary households across the country and home prices around Seoul are starting to climbing again and is testing one of Lee’s central promises.
Walking the line between Washington and Beijing
Lee’s central foreign-policy bet has been that South Korea no longer has to choose between its U.S. alliance and its largest trading partner, China — an approach his government calls “national-interest-centered pragmatism” — and within seven months of taking office, he had held summits with the leaders of the United States, China and Japan.
“On foreign policy, he’s done better than expected,” said Shin Yul, a political science and diplomacy professor at Myongji University.
But the results have been mixed. Lee repaired ties with Japan, but his January state visit to Beijing largely fell flat.
His pragmatism faced a major test in February when the war between Iran and a U.S.-Israeli coalition threatened the Strait of Hormuz, the route for much of South Korea’s oil imports.
Lee’s government leaned on national reserves, increased purchases of U.S. crude and secured replacement supplies from outside the region. A senior presidential official said the effort, together with the market’s resilience, helped keep Lee’s approval ratings steady through the spring.
Two presidents, two reckonings
In February, a Seoul court sentenced former President Yoon to life in prison for the martial-law attempt; his former defense minister got 30 years. To Lee’s supporters it was accountability for an assault on democracy. To Yoon’s base, it felt like political revenge.
But Lee carries his own legal shadow. He took office facing five criminal trials, including corruption, subornation of perjury and illegal fund transfers to North Korea, which were all frozen once he became president.
His Democratic Party then went further by pushing a special counsel that could cancel the charges against him outright — a move Lee declined to endorse or oppose publicly.
To Shin, the silence was strategic. Lee’s side, he said, “will try to get the charges dropped,” likely using the special counsel “to pursue cancellation of the cases against him.”
The push drew public backlash and many analysts read the local-election result as a warning from voters wary of a governing party clearing its own leader.
“This may be President Lee’s Achilles’ heel,” said Park. “I suspect he himself feels a real burden over it.”
For Lee Hyun-woo, the principle is simple: “Serving well and being remembered as a great president, and paying for crimes committed in the past, are entirely separate matters.”
ABC News’ Hakyung Kate Lee contributed to this report.
Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Contributor/Getty Images)
(LONDON) — Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to visit Beijing this week for talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Putin is scheduled to be welcomed at the airport upon landing in Beijing on Tuesday, according to the Kremlin, which said he will be greeted by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
Then on Wednesday, talks between Putin and Xi are set to occur at the Grand Hall of the People, followed by a formal reception, according to the Kremlin.
The two leaders “will discuss China-Russia relations, cooperation in various fields and international and regional issues of mutual interest,” the spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
The state visit marks Putin’s 25th trip to China, according to the spokesperson.
The two discussed the U.S. war in Iran and the Strait of Hormuz, fentanyl and increasing Chinese purchases of American farm products, according to a White House official.
Xi also warned that if the issue of Taiwan is handled “improperly,” the two nations could “come into conflict,” according to China’s official state broadcaster Xinhua.
A plume of smoke rises after an explosion on February 28, 2026 in Tehran, Iran. (Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Dozens of students at an Iranian all-girls elementary school were among those killed during the U.S. and Israeli military strikes throughout the country Saturday morning, officials in Iran claimed.
The country’s leaders and state TV said 85 people who were at the Shajare Tayyiba Elementary School were dead, as of 10:40 a.m. ET, after the school in Minab was attacked.
At least 92 injuries related to the school attack were reported, according to Iran’s Tasnim News Agency, which cited the local governor.
Iranian officials have not immediately said how many of the dead and wounded are children. Earlier in the morning, Iran’s state broadcaster, IRIB, reported shortly after that the death toll had risen to 57 school girls, with another 60 injured.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian blasted the United States and Israeli governments for the deaths and injuries in a statement Saturday carried by the IRGC-affiliated Fars News Agency.
“This barbaric act is another black page in the record of countless crimes committed by the aggressors against this land that will never be erased from the historical memory of our nation,” he said.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in an X post that the school was “bombed in broad daylight, when packed with young pupils.”
A spokesman for U.S. Central Command said in a statement that it would look into the reports about the school being bombed but emphasized, “Unlike Iran, we have never — and will never — target civilians.”
“We take these reports seriously and are looking into them,” Capt. Tim Hawkins, a CENTCOM spokesman, said in a statement. “The protection of civilians is of utmost importance, and we will continue to take all precautions available to minimize the risk of unintended harm.”
International law prohibits the deliberate targeting of schools and universities during armed conflicts.
The U.S. military has a rigorous targeting process using different forms of intelligence to ensure that any targets to be struck by bombs or missiles are, in fact, enemy targets and will not harm civilians or strike civilian targets.
Claims of civilian casualties are investigated as much as possible, although it may not be possible to do so in areas controlled by hostile forces.
The Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack, a non-profit that tracks military attacks on academic institutions, documented more than 6,000 attacks on schools, universities, students and education personnel worldwide between 2022 and 2023.
The group’s global research found that 10,000 students and education personnel were killed, injured, abducted or otherwise harmed during that time period.
