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Former US vice president Kamala Harris said it was “recklessness” to let Joe Biden run for a second term as president, in an excerpt released Wednesday from her upcoming memoir.Harris, who replaced Biden as the 2024 Democratic presidential candidate but lost to Donald Trump, admitted that the then-81-year-old got “tired” and was prone to stumbles that showed his age.The 60-year-old also accused Biden’s team in the White House of failing to support her while she was his deputy, and at times of actively hindering her.Harris said in the in the first extract from “107 Days”, published by The Atlantic magazine, that she was a “loyal person” but asked whether during the “months of growing panic, should I have told Joe to consider not running?””‘It’s Joe and Jill’s decision.’ We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotized. Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness,” Harris wrote, referring to Biden and his wife Jill.”The stakes were simply too high. This wasn’t a choice that should have been left to an individual’s ego, an individual’s ambition. It should have been more than a personal decision.”Biden stunned the world by dropping out of the race in July 2024 after a disastrous debate with Trump sparked questions about his age and mental acuity.Harris denied that there had been any conspiracy to hide Biden’s condition but said it was clear there were issues with his age.”On his worst day, he was more deeply knowledgeable, more capable of exercising judgment, and far more compassionate than Donald Trump on his best,” she wrote. “But at 81, Joe got tired. That’s when his age showed in physical and verbal stumbles.”- ‘Knocked down’ -Harris also lashed out at White House staff whom she said failed to support her when she was vice president, saying that Biden’s team did not want her to outshine her boss.”When the stories were unfair or inaccurate, the president’s inner circle seemed fine with it. Indeed, it seemed as if they decided I should be knocked down a little bit more,” Harris wrote.She added that she had “shouldered the blame” for Biden’s border immigration policy, which Trump capitalized on in the election.Harris also pointed to a March 2024 speech in which she criticized the humanitarian situation resulting from Israel’s war in Gaza, breaking ranks with Biden’s administration.”It went viral, and the West Wing was displeased. I was castigated for, apparently, delivering it too well,” Harris said.”Their thinking was zero-sum: If she’s shining, he’s dimmed.”Harris also appeared hurt that Biden barely referred to her in his televised Oval Office address after dropping out of the race and anointing her as his successor as Democratic nominee.”It was almost nine minutes into the 11-minute address before he mentioned me,” she said.Harris went on to lose comprehensively to Republican Trump after the shortest presidential campaign in modern US history, lasting just over three months — the 107 days in the title of her memoir.

Colorful, speckled rocks found on the surface of Mars have offered among the most encouraging evidence yet of ancient life on our neighboring planet, scientists at NASA announced Wednesday.The Perseverance Mars rover collected the “Sapphire Canyon” rock samples in July 2024 from what’s thought to be an ancient lakebed, and its poppyseed and leopard-esque spots pointed to potential chemical reactions that piqued the interest of researchers.If the features resulted from microbial activity that created minerals in the way they do on Earth — well, that might point to life on Mars.It’s far too soon for scientists to say that definitively, but the findings, which were detailed in research published in the journal Nature, are alluring.”We put it out to our scientific friends to pressure test it, to analyze it, and go, did we get this right? Do we think this is signs of ancient life on Mars?” NASA’s Acting Administrator Sean Duffy said at a news conference.”They said, ‘Listen, we can’t find another explanation.’ So this very well could be the clearest sign of life that we’ve ever found on Mars.””It’s kind of the equivalent of seeing like leftover fossils, leftovers from a meal, and maybe that meal has been excreted by a microbe,” Nicky Fox, administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, told journalists.When those kinds of mineral and textured features form in sediment on Earth, it’s frequently the product of reactions from mud and organic matter, explained the study’s lead author Joel Hurowitz — a potential “biosignature,” or sign of life.Specifically, Perserverance’s instruments identified the minerals vivianite and greigite. On Earth, vivianite is often found in sediments, peat bogs, and around decaying organic matter. Some forms of microbial life on Earth can produce greigite.”But there are non-biological ways to make these features that we cannot completely rule out on the basis of the data that we collected,” Hurowitz said.Still, the findings are “exciting,” he told journalists, explaining that researchers would need to analyze the sample in person to better understand if microbial activity had created the “fantastic textures” and colors including blue and green.- ‘Are we alone in universe?’ -That’s no small feat, particularly in light of President Donald Trump administration’s plans to cancel the Mars Sample Return program — a robotic mission planned for the 2030s to bring Perseverance’s samples back to Earth.Asked by journalists if that was still the plan, Duffy was non-committal, hinting the samples might be brought back by a future crewed mission instead.”We care about resources, we care about the timeframe, we believe there’s a better way to do this, a faster way to get these samples back. And so that is the analysis that we’ve gone through. Can we do it faster? Can we do it cheaper? And we think we can,” he said.There are several rovers ambling across Mars — Perseverance has been there since 2021 — seeking signs of life that could have existed millions to billions of years ago, when the planet was thought to have been more habitable.Evidence that ancient rivers and lakes carved into the planet’s surface would indicate that water once flowed there.And the latest discovery, said Fox, brought researchers “one step closer” to answering the burning question: “Are we truly alone in the universe?”

Billionaire Elon Musk is at risk of losing his title of world’s wealthiest person to Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, whose software giant stands poised for massive AI riches.Ellison, 81, amassed more than $100 billion in additional wealth Wednesday as Oracle shares skyrocketed after the nearly 50-year old company forecast massive revenue growth amid the artificial intelligence investment boom.That rise lifted Ellison’s overall wealth to about $406 billion compared with Musk’s roughly $440 billion, according to a Forbes real-time billionaire’s index.A Bloomberg wealth index placed Ellison’s bounty slightly ahead of Musk’s, designating the Oracle chief number one at the moment. The difference in the tallies relates to how some of their huge holdings are estimated.Musk’s most easily estimated holding is Tesla, whose shares have fallen in 2025 amid languishing sales attributed partly to Musk’s embrace of far-right political figures.Tesla earlier this month unveiled a compensation proposal for Musk that could top $1 trillion through 2035 if the company hits ambitious targets. Shareholders will vote on the plan in November.Ellison, a longtime supporter of President Donald Trump, holds more than 1.1 billion shares of Oracle, accounting for more than 40 percent of equity, according to S&P Capital IQ.Oracle CEO Safra Catz called the just-finished quarter “astonishing” as the company signed “four multi-billion-dollar contracts with three different customers.”Oracle projected that its cloud business revenues would grow 77 percent in the current fiscal year to $18 billion. In subsequent years, revenues are expected to rise to $32 billion, $73 billion, $114 billion, and $144 billion.Near 1630 GMT, Oracle shares were up about 40 percent at $338.00, translating into a market value of around $950 billion. 

Francisco Arriaga offers a weekly dinner in the basement of his Chicago church — but he doesn’t put out many tables these days as worshippers stay away, fearful of anti-migrant sweeps.”Everyone is scared, not just the undocumented,” said Arriaga, music director of St Paul’s Catholic Church in the city’s Pilsen neighborhood, a hub for Latinos.”I’d normally have double the amount of tables set up, but only three people showed up at our last meeting,” he told AFP.Foot traffic on Cermak Road, the neighborhood’s main artery and home to businesses and restaurants, has slumped in recent weeks as President Donald Trump vows raids and threatens to send in National Guard troops.”If people think it will stop with the immigrant community, it will allow the Trump regime to normalize this, and anybody can be next,” said Byron Sigcho-Lopez, a local alderman.Any major operation in Chicago will echo Trump’s action in Los Angeles and Washington as the president pushes ahead with his election-winning vow to deport illegal migrants.Sigcho-Lopez said arrests in Chicago by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have been scattered so far, but people are waiting and wondering how to react.”Trump is instigating, that’s his play. We tell people that it’s important to stay calm and record it on their phones, to document what is happening,” said Sigcho-Lopez.Chicago’s population of 2.7 million includes more than 800,000 who identified as Hispanic or Latino in the 2020 census and it is estimated that 150,000 people in the city are undocumented, making up about eight percent of households.- Fears of violence -Brothers Eric Ruiz, 45, and Jessie Ruiz, 50, are Pilsen residents since childhood, and are US citizens like their father — but they still fear arbitrary arrest.”It’s constantly in the back of my head. I worry for the sake of my father, who is in his 70s,” Eric said.Jessie Ruiz added “we grew up here and this is not something we ever had to deal with,” and he predicted pushback from Chicago residents.”The city won’t take kindly to having ICE conduct raids here and that will be (Trump’s) excuse to send in the National Guard.”Mike Oboza, a nightclub singer, recently witnessed an ICE arrest in Pilsen and said he had been left badly shaken.”I didn’t know what to do. I was just frozen,” Oboza said. “I don’t know when or if I’ll be able to sing again.”Robert Pape, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago who has studied political violence for decades, fears the city could be a “powder keg.””I’ve been stressing the need for the community to publicly, vocally repeat the non-violence message,” he told AFP, added that troops might be welcomed by some.”There is often the honeymoon period,” Pape said citing federal forces deployed in Portland, Oregon, in the summer of 2020, but explaining that occupations usually end up exacerbating widespread civil unrest and political violence.”People don’t like crime, but they don’t like military occupations even more, and they certainly won’t like a police state if it goes on for months and months.”- Staying home -For now, residents, especially those in the Latino community, are doing their best to go about their lives and to speak up for others.That’s what Vanessa Escobar, an 18-year-old student at Roosevelt University, said she was doing Monday night at a downtown Chicago protest against ICE, six miles from Pilsen.”I’m Mexican-American and it’s important for my community to have our voices heard. I’m here for the others who are too afraid to come out. What Trump has been doing is terrifying,” Escobar said.While many others are staying home and curtailing their daily movements, a morale booster came with the announcement that El Grito, a Mexican Independence Day celebration that was postponed because of increased ICE activity, is back on.It is now to take place at St Paul Catholic Church next week. Arriaga said while he thinks some Latinos will still skip the festival, this year the church may attract a new audience.”There may be more non-Latinos — allies, and that’s a good thing.”

The United States said Wednesday that it welcomed investment from South Korea, which dispatched a plane to repatriate hundreds of workers arrested in an immigration raid that shocked the close US ally.South Koreans made up the majority of 475 people arrested at a Hyundai-LG battery plant under construction in the US state of Georgia last week, according to immigration agents. The operation was the largest single-site raid conducted under US President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, according to an investigating agent. Foreign Minister Cho Hyun flew to Washington where Secretary of State Marco Rubio met him behind closed doors and issued a statement saluting the endurance of the alliance with the South, formally known as the Republic of Korea.Rubio said the United States “welcomes ROK investment into the United States and stated his interest in deepening cooperation on this front,” State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said.Cho has called the mass detention of South Koreans a “grave situation” and pledged to secure the workers’ swift return “in good health.”Before departing, Cho told South Korean MPs that “a tentative agreement” had been reached with US authorities to ensure the detained workers would not face penalties, such as a five-year ban on re-entry.A Korean Air Boeing 747-8I, which seats over 350 passengers, left Seoul Wednesday, a company representative told AFP.While no official time has been given for the return flight, South Korean officials said Wednesday it had been delayed “due to circumstances on the US side”,  without giving details.Local media had reposted it would leave Wednesday, US time.”We are maintaining close consultations with the US authorities to secure the earliest possible departure,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.”I feel a great responsibility that our citizens have been arrested in this manner,” Cho said during a meeting with South Korean business leaders in Washington on Tuesday. Diplomatic officials had been dispatched to Georgia to mount a “full-front response,” he added, with the consulate general in Atlanta in contact with local authorities.In addition to being a key US security ally, South Korea is Asia’s fourth-biggest economy and a major automaker and electronics producer, and its companies have multiple plants in the United States.Seoul also heeded Washington’s repeated call during tariff negotiations for global investment in the United States.The site of the raid is a $4.3 billion joint venture between two South Korean firms –- Hyundai and LG Energy Solution –- to build a battery cell manufacturing facility in Georgia.Experts said most of the detained South Korean workers were likely to hold visas that do not allow for hands-on construction work.The case could provide momentum for Seoul officials to push for a special visa act tailored to South Koreans, said US-licensed attorney Yum Seung-yul.”Using this as a case in point, officials here could strongly push for the Partner with Korea Act in Washington,” he said, referring to a proposal that would create a quota of 15,000 visas for skilled professionals.

Canada’s record-breaking 2023 wildfires exposed more than 350 million people in North America and Europe to air pollution that likely contributed to tens of thousands of deaths, according to new estimates published Wednesday.The findings “underscored that severe wildfires do not have only local consequences” but can inflict real harm a continent away, said the scientists behind the world-first research.Extreme fire conditions, supercharged by climate change, fanned thousands of blazes across Canada between May and September 2023 that torched around 18 million hectares (44 million acres) — an area larger than England.The five-month wildfires were unprecedented in size and scale, releasing massive plumes of acrid smoke that turned skies yellow and triggered health warnings across North America.But the smoke drifted as far as Europe, causing spikes in harmful PM2.5 pollutants and a measurable decline in air quality thousands of miles from the heat and flames in Canada.In North America and Europe, an estimated 354 million people were exposed to levels of PM2.5 above the World Health Organization’s (WHO) safe limit, concluded a new study into the long-range impact of the wildfires, published in the journal Nature.This contributed to nearly 70,000 premature deaths on both continents — most from breathing polluted air over months and a smaller number from acute exposure to wildfire smoke.The findings were “striking” and surprised even the research team behind them, said Qiang Zhang, a professor of atmospheric chemistry at Tsinghua University in Beijing who led the study.”While we anticipated large impacts from the record-breaking 2023 Canadian fires, the magnitude of the population exposure and related attributable mortalities are higher than expected,” he told AFP.”These results underscore that such extreme wildfires are no longer just a regional environmental issue and they have become a global public health concern.”PM2.5 pollutants are fine, airborne particles small enough to enter the bloodstream through the lungs, and are linked to higher rates of chronic bronchitis, lung cancer and heart disease.- Widespread -The team separated acute and chronic premature deaths due to PM2.5 exposure because they represented two very different types of health impacts from wildfire smoke exposure, Qiang Zhang said.Acute deaths, he said, captured the short-term health impacts during “smoke days” when daily PM2.5 levels spiked “well above” WHO guidelines and could immediately trigger fatal events, such as heart attacks or respiratory failures.Some 4,100 acute deaths were estimated in the United States, downwind from the wildfires, and another 1,300 in Canada itself.Chronic deaths reflected the health burden of longer-term exposure, which increases the risks of cardiovascular and respiratory diseases and leads to premature death over time.The study found that chronic health impacts from five months of breathing wildfire smoke were “substantial and widespread”, with 41,900 deaths estimated in North America and 22,400 in Europe.Such estimates were a first, Qiang Zhang said.But that created limitations for researchers who lacked earlier references on the specific impact of wildfires on health, he said, forcing them to use broader evidence to base their estimates on.The computer model they built, using satellite observations and machine learning, also could not account for the health impact of various pollutants in wildfire smoke, he added.The authors said more research into this “underexplored” cost would be crucial as climate change made wildfires bigger, fiercer and more frequent.

US producer prices unexpectedly fell in August, government data showed Wednesday, driven in part by a pullback in energy and trade — and prompting President Donald Trump to renew calls for lower interest rates.The producer price index (PPI) dipped 0.1 percent on a month-on-month basis, according to Department of Labor data — when analysts had expected a 0.3-percent increase.The last such monthly decrease was seen in April, and compared with a year ago, PPI was up 2.6 percent, cooling from July’s figure as well.”Just out: No Inflation!!!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform shortly after the data was published.He reiterated his calls for Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to lower rates “right now,” calling the central bank chief “a total disaster.”The numbers come as policymakers try to gauge the effects of Trump’s sweeping tariffs on prices, and were reported just a week before the Fed is set to hold its next policy meeting on interest rates.Stubbornly elevated inflation could make it tougher for the Fed to cut rates.But relatively benign inflation, alongside a weakening labor market, has meant that traders widely expect the central bank to adopt a cut of 25 basis points this month.In recent months, Trump has been ramping up pressure on the independent central bank to slash rates, taking aim at Powell repeatedly for not doing so more quickly.A decline in services prices was a key factor behind the PPI drop in August, with margins for trade services in particular falling, said the Labor Department.Excluding food, energy and trade services, PPI rose 0.3 percent from a month ago, and 2.8 percent from a year ago — the largest 12-month advance since March.”The latest PPI data pose no obstacle to a Fed rate cut next week,” said Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics.He added that the August PPI report “paints a much less scary picture of prices of goods ‘in the pipeline’ than the July report.”Looking ahead, analysts will be eyeing the key consumer price index report due on Thursday.Matthew Martin, senior US economist at Oxford Economics, warned that underlying goods inflation “is likely to push higher from here.””The balance between willingness and ability of businesses to absorb tariff costs versus their ability to pass along these increases to their customers will be an important dynamic in the coming months,” he added.Since returning to the presidency in January, Trump has imposed a 10-percent tariff on goods from almost all trading partners, alongside varying higher levels hitting dozens of economies.He has also slapped separate, steeper duties on sector-specific imports such as steel, aluminum and autos, and analysts warn it could take time for the cumulative effects to filter through to consumers.

Former US vice president Kamala Harris said it was “recklessness” to let Joe Biden run for a second term as president, in an excerpt released Wednesday from her upcoming memoir.Harris — who replaced Biden as the 2024 Democratic presidential candidate but lost to Donald Trump — admitted that the then-81-year-old got “tired” and was prone to stumbles that showed his age.She also lashed out at White House staff whom she accused of failing to support her — and sometimes actively hindering her — while she was Biden’s deputy, “‘It’s Joe and Jill’s decision.’ We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotized. Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness,” Harris said in the first extract from “107 Days”, published by The Atlantic magazine.”The stakes were simply too high. This wasn’t a choice that should have been left to an individual’s ego, an individual’s ambition. It should have been more than a personal decision.”Biden stunned the world by dropping out of the race in July 2024 after a disastrous debate with Trump sparked questions about his age and mental acuity.Harris denied that there had been any conspiracy to hide Biden’s condition but said it was clear there were issues with his age.”On his worst day, he was more deeply knowledgeable, more capable of exercising judgment, and far more compassionate than Donald Trump on his best,” she wrote. “But at 81, Joe got tired. That’s when his age showed in physical and verbal stumbles.”Harris also lashed out at White House staff whom she said failed to support her when she was vice president, saying that Biden’s team did not want her to outshine her boss.”When the stories were unfair or inaccurate, the president’s inner circle seemed fine with it. Indeed, it seemed as if they decided I should be knocked down a little bit more,” Harris wrote.She added that she had “shouldered the blame” for Biden’s border policy, which Trump capitalized on in the election.Harris lost comprehensively to Republican Trump after the shortest presidential campaign in modern US history lasting just over three months — the 107 days in the title of her memoir.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani and US President Donald Trump announced Tuesday the release of Israeli-Russian academic Elizabeth Tsurkov who was kidnapped in Baghdad in March 2023.While Iraq said a “group of outlaws” kidnapped Tsurkov, Trump announced she was released by the powerful pro-Iran Kataeb Hezbollah group.”As a culmination of extensive efforts exerted by our security services over the course of many months, we announce the release of the Russian citizen, Elizabeth Tsurkov,” Sudani said on X. Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that Tsurkov “was just released” by Kataeb Hezbollah “after being tortured for many months” and was now at the US embassy in Baghdad.Sabah al-Numan, the military spokesman for the Iraqi prime minister, said later in a statement that “following extensive and high-level security and intelligence efforts… authorities succeeded, on September 9, in locating and reaching the site of her detention.”Tsurkov was delivered to the US embassy to “facilitate her reunion with her sister, a US citizen,” he added. The former captive’s sister, Emma Tsurkov, thanked Trump, his special envoy Adam Boehler, the US embassy in Baghdad and the non-profit group Global Reach for their roles in securing the release.”My entire family is incredibly happy. We cannot wait to see Elizabeth and give her all the love we have been waiting to share for 903 days,” she posted on social media.Tsurkov, a doctoral student at Princeton University and fellow at the Washington-based New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, went missing in Iraq in March 2023.She had likely entered Iraq on her Russian passport and had travelled to the country as part of her doctoral studies.Her research focused on the Levant, and she worked extensively on Syria during its civil war as well as on Iraq. She speaks English, Russian, Hebrew and Arabic.Numan said Tsurkov was kidnapped by a “group of outlaws” without naming any party, and added that Iraq’s security forces “will continue to pursue all those involved in this crime and ensure they are held accountable.”- ‘Peace through strength’ -In a post on X, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio welcomed the release, saying US measures against hostage diplomacy played a key role.”Less than a week after @POTUS (Trump) signed an executive order to strengthen efforts against hostage diplomacy, Princeton student Elizabeth Tsurkov has been released,” Rubio wrote.”This is peace through strength in action,” he added, thanking Iraq’s Sudani for his support.Tsurkov was active on social media, with tens of thousands of followers on X. She describes herself as “passionate about human rights”.In Baghdad, she had focused on pro-Iran factions and the movement of Iraqi Shiite leader Moqtada Sadr as part of her research on the region.She was abducted as she was leaving a cafe in the Iraqi capital’s Karrada neighbourhood, an Iraqi intelligence source told AFP in 2023.Israeli authorities blamed Kataeb Hezbollah for her disappearance, but the group implied that it was not involved.- Kataeb Hezbollah? -Kataeb Hezbollah did not claim in 2023 the abduction, but a source in the group told AFP Tuesday Tsurkov was released to spare Iraq any “conflicts”.She “was released according to conditions, the most important of which was to facilitate the withdrawal of US forces without a fight and to spare Iraq any conflicts or fighting,” the source said.”She was released and not liberated. No military operation was carried out to free her,” the source added.Like other armed groups trained by Iran during the war against the Islamic State group (IS), Kataeb Hezbollah were integrated into the regular security forces as part of the Hashed al-Shaabi or the Popular Mobilisation force (PMF).However, the faction has developed a reputation for sometimes acting on its own.The group and other Iran-backed Iraqi factions have been calling for the withdrawal of US troops deployed in Iraq at Baghdad’s invitation as part of the anti-IS coalition. US forces in Iraq and neighbouring Syria were repeatedly targeted by Kataeb Hezbollah and other pro-Iran groups following the outbreak of the Gaza war in October 2023.They have responded with heavy strikes on Tehran-linked targets, and the attacks have halted.The US and Iraq have announced that the anti-IS coalition would end its decade-long military mission in federal Iraq in 2025, and by September 2026 in the autonomous Kurdistan region in the country’s north.

A chartered plane left Seoul for the United States Wednesday to repatriate hundreds of South Korean workers detained in an immigration raid, flag carrier Korean Air told AFP.South Koreans made up the majority of 475 people arrested at a Hyundai-LG battery plant under construction in the US state of Georgia last week, according to immigration agents. The operation was the largest single-site raid conducted under US President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, according to an investigating agent. A Korean Air Boeing 747-8I, which seats over 350 passengers, left Seoul Wednesday, a company representative told AFP.While no official time has been given for the return flight, South Korean officials said Wednesday it had been delayed “due to circumstances on the US side”,  without giving details.Local media had repoted it would leave Wednesday, US time.”We are maintaining close consultations with the US authorities to secure the earliest possible departure,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.Seoul’s Foreign Minister Cho Hyun, who is now in Washington for talks on the issue, has called the mass detention of South Koreans a “grave situation” and pledging to secure the workers’ swift return “in good health”.Before departing, Cho told South Korean MPs that “a tentative agreement” had been reached with US authorities to ensure the detained workers would not face penalties, such as a five-year ban on re-entry.”I can tell you that negotiations are going well,” he said.- ‘Great responsibility’ -The South Korean government is reportedly seeking to have the detained workers leave the United States under voluntary departure rather than deportation. Minister Cho is expected to raise the issue during his meeting with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington on Wednesday morning local time.”I feel a great responsibility that our citizens have been arrested in this manner,” Cho said during a meeting with South Korean business leaders in Washington on Tuesday. Diplomatic officials had been dispatched to Georgia to mount a “full-front response”, he added, with the consulate general in Atlanta in contact with local authorities.In addition to being a key US security ally, South Korea is Asia’s fourth-biggest economy and a major automaker and electronics producer, and its companies have multiple plants in the United States.Seoul also heeded Washington’s repeated call during tariff negotiations for global investment in the United States.The site of the raid is a $4.3 billion joint venture between two South Korean firms –- Hyundai and LG Energy Solution –- to build a battery cell manufacturing facility in Georgia.Experts said most of the detained South Korean workers were likely to hold visas that do not allow for hands-on construction work.The case could provide momentum for Seoul officials to push for a special visa act tailored to South Koreans, said US-licensed attorney Yum Seung-yul.”Using this as a case in point, officials here could strongly push for the Partner with Korea Act in Washington,” he said, referring to a proposal that would create a quota of 15,000 visas for skilled professionals.