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June 4 (Asia Today) — South Korea’s National Election Commission has failed to clearly explain an unprecedented ballot paper shortage in the June 3 local elections, leaving two Seoul ballot boxes uncounted and delaying the formal confirmation of the Seoul mayoral winner.

The commission said Thursday it would establish a fact-finding committee to investigate the ballot paper shortage that occurred during voting. The committee will be composed mainly of outside experts and will examine the cause of the problem, identify responsibility and recommend measures to prevent a recurrence, the commission said.

The controversy has continued because the commission has not provided a detailed explanation of how the shortage occurred or how many voters were affected.

More than a day after voting ended, the Seoul mayoral race had still not been formally completed. People Power Party candidate Oh Se-hoon’s victory was effectively confirmed around 9:30 a.m. Thursday, but the vote count remained stalled at 99% for hours because two ballot boxes from Jamsil 7-dong’s second polling station in Songpa district had not been moved to the counting center amid protests by residents.

Under Article 191 of the Public Official Election Act, the winner of a local government chief election is the candidate who receives the largest number of valid votes. The law does not clearly state how to handle a case in which vote counting has not been completed because ballot boxes remain uncounted.

The Seoul Election Commission said no decision had been made on formal confirmation of the winner. Winners in other Seoul races, except for the Seoul mayoral race and Songpa district, had already been confirmed.

Critics said the commission’s poor management and lack of clear public explanation deepened public distrust and prolonged the standoff at the polling station.

The National Election Commission held an emergency public apology briefing at 9 p.m. Wednesday. At the briefing, it said voter turnout at some polling stations had exceeded expectations, leading to the shortage of ballot papers. But it did not provide detailed figures on the affected polling stations, the number of additional ballots delivered, delays in voting or the number of voters affected.

The commission repeated that it would disclose more information after confirming the facts.

Calls are also growing for National Election Commission Chairman Noh Tae-ak to take responsibility. Noh did not appear at the public apology briefing. Huh Chul-hoon, secretary-general of the commission, said he was the proper official to apologize because the chairman is a non-standing member and the secretary-general oversees election administration.

The commission was also found to have prepared ballot papers for the affected Songpa polling stations equal to only 50% of registered voters, reportedly because it had taken early voting turnout into account.

Some legal experts said the case exposes structural problems in the election commission, which has long been treated as an institution with limited democratic oversight.

Ji Sung-woo, a professor at Sungkyunkwan University Law School, said the facts should be confirmed first but added that the election commission faces weak oversight.

“The biggest problem with the National Election Commission is that it is the only institution with weak parliamentary control,” Ji said. “Because lawmakers are themselves candidates, parliamentary control is structurally weak.”

“No institution should be free from oversight,” he said. “Control by other institutions, such as the Board of Audit and Inspection or civic groups, needs to be strengthened.”

— Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.

Original Korean report: https://www.asiatoday.co.kr/kn/view.php?key=20260604010001582

May 26 (UPI) — Nine people remained missing Tuesday evening following an implosion at a paper manufacturing facility in Washington that killed one person and injured nine others, authorities said.

The incident at the Nippon Dynawave Packaging facility in Longview, Wash., occurred around 7:15 a.m. PDT. Officials told reporters during a Tuesday evening press conference that a 900,000-gallon tank containing a chemical used in the production of paper in what authorities described as an implosion.

Officials believe that the tank potentially contains up to 90,000 gallons of the chemical known as white liquor — a water solution of sodium sulfide and sodium hydroxide, according to the Environmental Protection Agency — posing a threat to responders and hampering recovery efforts.

“Crews are actively assessing the structural integrity of that tank and were working on plans to stabilize that tank before additional recovery operations can safely proceed,” Scott Goldstein, chief of the Cowlitz 2 Fire and Rescue, said.

Battalion Chief Matt Amos of the Longview Fire Department added that the recovery efforts would resume Wednesday morning if safe.

“Due to the instability of the site, some areas remain inaccessible at this time,” he said. “All impacted families have been notified.”

The officials said 10 people injured in the incident were transported to area hospitals, including one person who died. Of the nine injured, eight were employees of the plant and one was a firefighter who has since been released.

The severity of the injuries of those taken to the hospital was not made public, but Amos said several suffered “critical injuries.” Longview Fire earlier said several suffered chemical burns. The department also said the victims were transported to hospitals in Longview and Vancouver.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said she knows the public has many questions concerning about how the implosion occurred and that she will continue to apply pressure to get them answers.

“This community deserves that,” she said.

The Longview Fire Department said there was no immediate threat to the public.

Washington State Department of Ecology spokeswoman Anna Izenman told The Seattle Times that spill responders were on site evaluating any potential environmental impacts from the incident. She said white liquor cannot be collected and cleaned up in the same manner as oil; it can only “self-neutralize” with water over time.

May 26 (UPI) — An implosion at a manufacturing facility in Washington killed multiple people and injured 10 others, including a firefighter, local authorities said Tuesday.

The implosion at the Nippon Dynawave Packaging facility in Longview, Wash., happened around 7:20 a.m. The facility is a pulp and paper mill, and the implosion involved a vat of a chemical used in paper treatment called white liquor.

White liquor is made of sodium hydroxide, sodium sulfide and disodium carbonate, Cowlitz County fire chief Scott Goldstein told NBC News.

The Longview Fire Department said there was no immediate threat to the public, but the implosion killed multiple people and caused chemical burns and other injuries to others. Officials transported multiple people — including one firefighter — to hospitals in Longview and Vancouver.

Officials haven’t specified how many were among the dead. The Seattle Times reported that emergency responders were also searching for potentially missing people.

Goldstein said some of the injuries were minor while others were more critical.

Washington State Department of Ecology spokeswoman Anna Izenman told The Times that spill responders were on site evaluating any potential environmental impacts from the incident. She said white liquor can’t be collected and cleaned up in the same manner as oil; it can only “self-neutralize” with water over time.

A mile from the Manhattan jail where convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in 2019, an unassuming Tribeca gallery at 101 Reade Street has been transformed into a physical archive of the disgraced financier’s many cases.

More than 3.5 million pages of law enforcement documents published by the United States Department of Justice have been printed, bound and stacked across 3,437 volumes to line the walls of a room from floor to ceiling.

The exhibition, titled “The Donald J Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room”, was organised by the Institute for Primary Facts, a nonprofit that says it focuses on transparency and anti-corruption initiatives.

Epstein was arrested on sex trafficking charges in July 2017 before hanging himself in his New York jail cell a month later, denying victims a chance at justice. The “reading room” is an attempt to shed light on the many cases connected to Epstein that never went to trial.

The shelves hold documents released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, alongside timelines, handwritten visitor notes, and a memorial space dedicated to survivors and victims.

Since opening two weeks ago, the gallery has drawn a steady stream of visitors, including survivors of a string of offences linked to Epstein.

Lara Blume McGee, who was only 17 when she was abused by Epstein, visited the reading room last week.

“I found something brutally human in the Trump-Epstein reading room,” Blume McGee told Al Jazeera. “Proof that our lives mattered enough to be gathered, cataloged, and finally seen.”

She described entering the room as walking into a “paper city”, with three and a half million pages on display, a sight that hit her “like a physical blow”. What she remembers most vividly is the silence.

“The silence was thick with memory,” she said. “Row after row, each bound volume a life, a name, a day that should never have happened if the US government had acted when he was reported to the FBI in 1996.”

The overwhelming scale of the archive is intentional. Organisers say the physicality of the documents forces visitors to confront not only the extent of Epstein’s crimes, but also the number of lives affected by them.

Thousands of victims have been identified in connection with Epstein’s abuse network. One of the most prominent survivors, Virginia Giuffre, died by suicide in April 2025.

David Garrett, a co-founder of the exhibition, said the project was built around survivors from the outset.

“We are centred around the victims and survivors more than anything,” Garrett said. “The biggest thing is transparency and accountability.”

Garrett described the exhibition as part of a broader effort to create “real-life pop-up museums” aimed at generating public pressure around corruption and institutional failure.

“Our goal is how can we drive public outrage in order to put pressure on Congress and the Department of Justice to get full and real transparency and hopefully eventually accountability,” he said.

The process of assembling the archive was itself chaotic. Garrett said organisers downloaded the files from the Department of Justice in March, believing they had received properly redacted documents. Only after printing the collection did they discover that many survivors’ names remained visible in the files.

“What seems to have happened is the Department of Justice modified its search function instead of actually redacting the names,” Garrett said. “The names of survivors were left unredacted while the names of witnesses and co-conspirators were hidden. They brazenly broke the law.”

Finding a venue also proved difficult. Garrett said several locations backed out after initially agreeing to host the exhibit, fearing controversy or retaliation. The Tribeca gallery ultimately became the fifth venue that organisers approached.

Despite these challenges, survivors and advocates quickly embraced the project.

On Tuesday, the gallery became the site of a 24-hour livestream reading of the files led by survivors, advocates and supporters.

Dani Bensky, an Epstein survivor, opened the broadcast Monday afternoon, standing at a podium inside the dimly lit gallery with one of the thick white volumes in her hands.

Her reading marked the beginning of a continuous public recitation of excerpts from the files – an attempt, organisers said, to ensure the documents are not quietly buried again.

Throughout the gallery, visitors have left flowers, handwritten notes, and messages of grief and anger.

Garrett recalled one woman who spent hours walking silently through the space before telling organisers she was herself a survivor of sexual abuse.

“She said this helped her realise that she felt seen,” Garrett said. “That meant a lot to us.”

For Blume McGee, that feeling of visibility carries both relief and frustration.

“For years we were told to be quiet, to accept settlements, to move on,” she told Al Jazeera. “Seeing our truths preserved in a public archive felt like a long-overdue acknowledgment of our pain, our abuse and our reality.”

But she warned that documentation alone is not justice.

“This exhibition gives real hope because the record is now undeniable,” Blume McGee said. “Finally, there is action: documentation, visibility, proof. But those same files map systemic failure — how many doors stayed shut, how many people escaped scrutiny.”

“Visibility without consequence only prolongs the wound,” she added. “We need both: the files on the table and the government to act — investigate, prosecute, reform — so that being ‘finally seen’ becomes finally safe.”

The Lee Jae Myung government has shifted its focus to a peaceful “two-state” coexistence with North Korea, rather than pressure and confrontation, the unification ministry’s white paper showed Monday, striking a markedly different tone from its predecessor.

The annual paper reflects the push by the Lee government, which took office in June last year, to repair the strained inter-Korean relationship based on building mutual trust.

The previous conservative Yoon Suk Yeol government sought to bring about change in North Korea through pressure and the influx of outside information.

The latest white paper laid out three key guiding principles: Seoul respects North Korea’s system, does not pursue unification by absorption and does not engage in hostile activities.

Built on these principles, the government has framed its overarching policy as one of “peaceful coexistence and mutual growth on the Korean Peninsula.”

In particular, regarding Pyongyang’s “two hostile states” policy, the document specified the ministry’s stance that highlights the need for a transition to a “peace-oriented two-state relationship” aimed at achieving unification.

At a year-end party meeting in December 2023, the North Korean leader declared inter-Korean relations as those between “two states hostile to each other” and has since pursued hostile policies toward Seoul.

“Considering the reality that the South and the North exist as two de facto states, we intend to develop inter-Korean relations into a relationship of peaceful coexistence while still aiming for unification,” the ministry said.

Critics said the ministry’s “peace-oriented two-state relationship” narrative runs counter to the long-held stance that inter-Korean ties are a “special relationship” tentatively formed in the process of seeking unification, not as state-to-state relations.

Among the measures cited is the Lee government’s decision to halt the sending of anti-Pyongyang leaflets to North Korea and stop loudspeaker broadcasts along the border as steps to ease military tension and rebuild trust.

The paper also outlines plans to revive the Sept. 19 inter-Korean military agreement, signed by former President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in 2018, and pursue a bilateral accord to establish a systematic foundation for peaceful coexistence.

The shift in policy priorities is visible in the paper’s language. References to “peace” and “peaceful coexistence” surged to 196 from 29 and mentions of “meeting” or “dialogue” rose to 58 from 16.

By contrast, the section on North Korean human rights has been significantly scaled back. The term “North Korea’s human rights” dropped to 26 from 156, and “freedom” fell to three from 43. Mentions of “North Korean defectors” plummeted to just 10 from 203.

In a foreword message for the paper, Unification Minister Chung Dong-young stated, “Peace on the Korean Peninsula is not a choice for us, but a lifeline.”

“As we practice peace through actions rather than words, I hope that the South and the North can sit down together once again as neighbors peacefully coexisting with each other,” he added.

Despite Seoul’s olive branch, inter-Korean relations remain virtually frozen. There has been no inter-Korean human exchange in five years and no economic exchange whatsoever, the paper showed.

Pyongyang, meanwhile, has doubled down on its two-state policy, revising its constitution to remove all references to unification and cutting off remaining ties with Seoul.

Copyright (c) Yonhap News Agency prohibits its content from being redistributed or reprinted without consent, and forbids the content from being learned and used by artificial intelligence systems.

Anyone with holidays planned needs to know the rules before they fly

Getting your boarding pass sorted is one of the first things to clear before jetting off on holiday, but some Brits risk being caught out at the check-in desk by overlooking a rule certain airlines have introduced. It is essential to know whether your documents need to be in a specific format to pass through the airport smoothly.

Previously, most UK carriers left it up to passengers to choose between printing boarding passes at home or having them on smartphones at the airport. However, it’s important to understand what your airline now allows, as failing to do so could put your entire trip in trouble.

Paper boarding passes are steadily being phased out in favour of digital options. Most airlines now issue tickets via email, apps, or other methods rather than paper.

In many instances, travellers can still print their passes at home or at the airport. It’s advisable to verify your airline’s specific policies (both outbound and return) beforehand, according to the Express.

Ryanair

Budget airline Ryanair has switched entirely to digital as of November 2025. Passengers travelling with the carrier will receive their boarding pass electronically via the Ryanair app once check-in is complete.

On its website, the airline states that its digital boarding passes “get rid of 300 tonnes of paper annually” and contribute to “lower airport costs and fares for all Ryanair passengers”.

Discussing check-in, Ryanair say that all “passengers will still receive email reminders to check-in online 48 and 24 hrs pre-departure. If any passenger arrives at the airport but hasn’t checked in online (having ignored these reminders), they will still be required to pay the airport check-in fee.”

Ryanair added that “special assistance is available at all airports” for travellers requiring support with digital passes and check-in. Full details can be found here.

EasyJet and WizzAir

For most flights, airlines such as easyJet accept digital tickets. EasyJet does not accept PDF scans displayed on phones, and all digital tickets must be presented via the free EasyJet app. Certain non-UK airports continue to require printed passes.

As of 2026, 21 airports in the easyJet network do not currently accept mobile boarding passes. If you are returning to the UK from any of these locations, you will need to print your boarding pass on paper:

• Egypt: Hurghada (HRG), Luxor (LXR), Marsa Alam (RMF), Cairo Sphinx (SPX), Sharm El Sheikh (SSH)
• Morocco: Agadir (AGA), Essaouira (ESU), Marrakesh (RAK), Rabat (RBA), Tangier (TNG)
• Turkey: Izmir (ADB), Antalya (AYT), Bodrum (BJV)
• Tunisia: Djerba (DJE), Enfidha (NBE)
• Other Regions: Aqaba, Jordan (AQJ), Belgrade, Serbia (BEG), Pristina, Kosovo (PRN), Tirana, Albania (TIA), Ivalo, Finland (IVL) and Sitia, Greece (JSH)

A handful of airports that handle Wizz Air flights also do not support mobile passes, though there are just five such destinations, as of 2026:

• Agadir (AGA)
• Marrakesh (RAK)
• Cairo Sphinx (SPX)
• Zaragoza (ZAZ)
• Tirana (TIA)

What about other major UK airlines?

For those flying with other carriers, it is best to check your airline’s website to determine whether a specific policy applies. Rules are larely the same but may vary from location to location.

• British Airways: Allows printing at home or at airport kiosks. Digital passes are available via the BA app.
• Jet2: Supports both physical and digital tickets. You can print from “Manage My Booking” or use the Jet2 app.
• TUI: Both printed and digital passes are accepted.
• Virgin Airways: Although the airline “highly recommends” digital, printed copies are accepted, and kiosk printing remains available at major hubs like London Heathrow and Manchester.

Firefighters battled a fire Sunday that erupted in the early morning and remained active well into the afternoon at a downtown L.A. office supplies store.

Roughly 120 firefighters were called about 4 a.m. to the two-story building with a mezzanine at 1225 S. Hope St. near West Pico Boulevard. Upon arrival, firefighters encountered heavy smoke and flames. One firefighter suffered minor injuries in the battle and was hospitalized.

Firefighters transitioned from offensive to defensive mode and used a remote-suppression robot to enter the building, LAFD spokesperson Jennifer Middleton said. Arson and emergency air units also were requested.

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1. Firefighters battled a fire Sunday that erupted in the early morning and remained active well into the afternoon at a downtown L.A. office supplies store. (Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)

The blaze was initially contained by 5:52 a.m., but the building’s contents rekindled, said LAFD Battalion Chief Peter Hsiao.

About 10 a.m., firefighters were “trying to remove paper from the building to stop it from catching on fire,” Hsiao said.

By 10:30 a.m., the building’s roof had collapsed, according to Times photographer Kayla Bartkowski, who was at the scene. Thirty minutes later, the building was again engulfed in flames.

At 1:30 p.m., firefighters were trying to contain the blaze by using a forklift and heavy machinery to pull boxes of office supplies and pallets of paper out of the building, then spraying it all down with water.

Firefighters on the roof also were spraying the fire to prevent it from spreading, she added.

A blaze was reported at about 4 a.m. in downtown L.A. at 1225 South Hope St.

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

The address is associated with Bluebird Office Supplies. A voicemail left for a number listed for the business owner was not immediately returned.

No one was inside the building at the time of the blaze, Middleton said.

The cause of the fire is under investigation.

Most Angelenos know Frank Gehry as the rebel architect whose deconstructivist buildings reinvigorated L.A. amid its late-century identity crisis.

Fewer know him as the sentimental sculptor celebrated in Gagosian Beverly Hills’ upcoming “Frank Gehry” exhibition, the first to showcase Gehry’s work since his death in December. Curated by those who worked with and loved the famous architect, the show, scheduled to open May 14 and run through June 27, is equal parts tribute and art presentation. It will feature several of Gehry’s animal-themed sculptures, including a rarely seen stainless steel bear figure, on loan from the artist’s family.

The exhibition will also include the first public screening of Gehry’s entry in Gagosian Premieres, a series of videos by the gallery showcasing new art exhibitions through a mix of intimate artist interviews, studio visits and specialized musical performances.

By spotlighting Gehry’s artistic practice rather than his design ouevre — which includes Walt Disney Concert Hall, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and Fondation Louis Vuitton — the exhibition reveals a different side of the late visionary, said Deborah McLeod, senior director at Gagosian Beverly Hills.

“I wouldn’t say it’s a retrospective, but it is a chance to stand in the room and be with him,” McLeod said, adding that she “wouldn’t have the hubris to say this is going to offer anybody closure,” but that she hopes it will help people — especially those who worked closest with Gehry — to process his loss.

“Everybody is kind of raw and missing Frank, and it’s just a chance to come together and do this again as his team,” she said.

McLeod curated the exhibition alongside Meaghan Lloyd, chief of staff and partner at Gehry Partners, whom the director said “really speaks for Frank.” Gehry‘s studio will design the show, which was realized in collaboration with the artist’s family.

“We didn’t get a chance to put one in the gallery proper. Every time we’d make one, it would get sold,” Deborah McLeod said about Frank Gehry’s bear sculptures.

(© Frank O. Gehry. Photo: Benjamin Lee Ritchie Handler / Courtesy Gogosian)

The highlight of the Gagosian exhibition is an artist proof of “Bear with Us” (2014), which the gallery lifted out of Gehry’s wife Berta Aguilera’s garden with a crane. Another edition of the bear sculpture is on view at the New Orleans Museum of Art, but at Gagosian, the work for the first time will be on view as part of an exhibition.

The stainless steel figure has a crumpled appearance that many believe is the result of Gehry balling up a piece of paper and seeing the bear in the crumple, although McLeod said Gehry told her himself that wasn’t true. The director added that the bear’s form gives the illusion of something “coming into being or dissolving.” The sculpture will likely have the Gagosian’s north gallery completely to itself.

“We’re really going to give him his due,” McLeod said. It was only right for a piece that, to her, reads as Gehry’s “self-portrait.”

A handful of other animal-themed sculptures will populate the south gallery, including a glowing black crocodile, gouache-painted papier-mâché snake lamps, and “Fish on Fire” (2023), the last of Gehry’s fish sculptures to be rendered in copper. Illuminated within the darkened gallery, the pieces will have a “magical” flair, McLeod said.

The first fish sculptures Gehry made in the ’80s were contained, even still. But when he returned to the fish form 30 years later, Mcleod said, “they started to become actually Baroque, so that’s kind of neat to see that evolution.”

Rounding out the exhibition are a series of ink, watercolor and acrylic works on paper that “express the energetic motion of fish in networks of black line and clouds of color,” a news release said.

A portion of the pieces in the exhibition will be available for purchase, with a detailed checklist to come.

The first Frank Gehry Fish Lamps were exhibited in 1984 at Gagosian in Los Angeles.

(© Frank O. Gehry. Photo: Robert McKeever / Courtesy Gagosian)

Gehry’s designs breathed life into the city’s core, but he didn’t get to finish a number of his most exciting plans, including one to transform the 51-mile-long L.A. River.

And while his architecture was his great gift to his adoptive hometown — his art was his gift to himself.

“As one of the busiest architects in the world, imagine the math and the minutiae that you have to go through,” McLeod said, noting the enormous pressure from clients that Gehry must have felt in his daily practice.

“For him, just to make something the shape he wants to make it, plug it in … I know it was a huge relief for him,” she said. “I know how much he loved doing it, and I loved being a part of that part of his life.”