Iran: reformist Pezeshkian and conservative Jalili heading for run-off

Today's news: Outgoing Prime Minister Oyun-Erdene Luvsannamsrai wins but loses many votes in early elections in Mongolia; Vietnam's economy runs dragged by microchip exports; A Chinese attendant dies defending two Japanese in school bus attack a few days ago in Suzhou; Busan is the first metropolis in South Korea at risk of extinction due to the demographic crisis.

IRAN

With counting still in progress, a runoff is looming in the presidential elections in Iran. The reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian is leading by about 1 million votes over the conservative Saeed Jalili, but far from the 50% of the votes needed to be elected. Despite the extension in the opening of six polling stations until midnight the turnout was low, around 40%. The runoff is scheduled for Friday, 5 July.

MONGOLIA

The ruling party won the early parliamentary elections in Mongolia, but by a much narrower margin over the opposition. Prime Minister Oyun-Erdene Luvsannamsrai told the media that the Mongolian People's Party won between 68 and 70 of the 126 seats up for grabs. Despite the victory, it was a setback for Luvsannamsrai and his party, which had won 62 of the then 76 seats in Parliament in 2020.

VIETNAM

Vietnam's economy is growing faster than expected: in the second quarter of 2024, GDP is expected to increase by 6.93% year-on-year. Exports in the fields of electronics and fish products are driving the result, boosted by the race for diversification in microchip supply chains.

CHINA-JAPAN

China and Japan yesterday paid tribute to a school bus attendant in the eastern Chinese city of Suzhou who died of stab wounds suffered after defending a Japanese mother and child in a knife attack on 24 June. "Hu Youping will be honoured for her heroic deeds," the state-run Xinhua news agency quoted local authorities as saying. The attention for her heroic deed came as authorities tried to defuse anti-Japanese sentiment on Chinese social media platforms and as Japan warned its citizens living in China to take extra precautions to protect themselves from similar attacks.

SOUTH KOREA

Busan, South Korea's second largest city, has been classified as an endangered metropolitan area in research published by the Korea Employment Information Service. The extinction risk is a rate calculated by ratioing the female population between the ages of 20 and 39 to the elderly population over the age of 65. Busan is the first metropolitan area in South Korea to fall in this index to 0.49, i.e. below the 0.50 threshold indicated as the extinction risk. The current national average for this figure in South Korea is 0.61. Busan had a population of 3.88 million in 1995, last year 3.3 million.

RUSSIA

More than 30,000 migrants who have obtained Russian citizenship have refused to be inducted into military service, and are currently being held in places of detention, the head of the Russian Investigative Committee, Aleksandr Bastrykin, has announced, to prevent them from secretly leaving the country, while 10,000 have been sent to the front in Ukraine.

KYRGYZSTAN

At the Žogorku Keneš, the parliament of Kyrgyzstan, the law on the rehabilitation of citizens who suffered repression for their political or religious views between 1918 and 1953, the years of the Stalinist revolution and dictatorship, was definitively approved, including persecution by all Soviet organisations, even trade unions and cooperatives.

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