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Trump directs Pentagon to ‘use all available funds’ to pay troops during shutdown
Donald Trump is directing US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth to pay military personnel despite the federal government shutdown.
The president said on Saturday that Hegseth must make sure troops do not miss out on their regular paycheque, scheduled for Wednesday. The directive comes as other government employees have already had some pay withheld and others are being laid off.
“I will not allow the Democrats to hold our Military, and the entire Security of our Nation, HOSTAGE, with their dangerous Government Shutdown,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.
The Republican and Democratic parties blame each other for failing to agree on a spending plan to reopen the government.
Trump’s message asks Hegseth to “use all available funds to get our Troops PAID” on 15 October, when military personnel would see their pay withheld for the first time since the shutdown began on 1 October.
Many US military employees are considered “essential”, meaning they must still show up for duty without pay. Some 750,000 other federal employees – about 40% – have been furloughed, or sent home, also without pay.
Furloughed employees are legally supposed to receive back-pay after a shutdown ends and they return to work, but the Trump administration has insinuated this might not happen.
“The Radical Left Democrats should OPEN THE GOVERNMENT, and then we can work together to address Healthcare, and many other things that they want to destroy,” Trump posted on Saturday.
Democrats have refused to vote for a Republican spending plan that would reopen the government after nearly 12 days shut down, saying any resolution must preserve expiring tax credits that reduce health insurance costs for millions of Americans and reverse Trump’s cuts to Medicaid, the healthcare program for elderly and low-income people.
Republicans accuse Democrats of unnecessarily bringing the government to a halt, and blame them for the knock-on effects caused by the federal work stoppage.
Finding a way to pay for military salaries could help reduce some of the political risk for congressional leaders if the shutdown drags on.
In an effort to pressure Democrats, the Trump administration has also begun laying off thousands of government workers, an unprecedented move during a shutdown.
“The RIFs have begun,” White House Office of Management Director Russell Vought announced in a post on X on Friday morning, referring to an acronym for “reductions in force”.
The administration disclosed later on Friday that seven agencies had started firing more than 4,000 people, making good on the president’s repeated threats to use the shutdown to further his long-held goal of reducing the federal workforce.
The reductions included dozens of employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), according to the BBC’s US partner CBS news, citing sources familiar with the situation.
The agency’s entire Washington DC office was laid off, the sources told CBS, adding that among the laid-off employees were those working on the CDC’s Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report, the agency’s Ebola response and immunisations. There were also reductions in the human resources department, they said.
Andrew Nixon, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, told CBS that the let-go workers were not essential, and that “HHS continues to close wasteful and duplicative entities, including those that are at odds with the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again agenda”.
Employees at the Treasury Department and in the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in the Department of Homeland Security were also among those laid off on Friday, those agencies confirmed.
The American Federation of Government Employees and AFL-CIO, two major unions representing federal workers, have filed a lawsuit in northern California, asking a judge to temporarily block the layoff orders.
“It is disgraceful that the Trump administration has used the government shutdown as an excuse to illegally fire thousands of workers who provide critical services to communities across the country,” AFGE president Everett Kelley said.
A spokesman from the White House budget office told the BBC on Saturday that the layoffs were just the beginning.
“These RIF numbers from the court filing are just a snapshot in time,” he said. “More RIFs are coming.”
In a court filing opposing the unions’ request for a temporary restraining order, the justice department revealed that agencies such as the Departments of Education, Housing and Urban Development, Commerce and Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency could also see staff cuts.
The government lawyers said the labour unions had failed to establish that their members would be irreparably harmed by the layoffs, which is needed for the judge to grant the restraining order. But they said a restraining order would “irreparably harm the government”.
[BBC]
Rescue teams and volunteers have been struggling to assist millions of people affected by floods and landslides in parts of Asia, as the official death toll from the ongoing climate-fuelled disaster has climbed to more than 1,750 people in the worst-affected countries of Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand.
In Indonesia, at least 908 people were confirmed dead and 410 were still missing, according to the latest data on Saturday from the island of Sumatra, where more than 800,000 people have also been displaced.
In Sri Lanka, the government has confirmed 607 deaths, with another 214 people missing and feared dead, in what President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has called the country’s most challenging natural disaster.
The floods also caused at least 276 deaths in Thailand, while two people were killed in Malaysia and two people died in Vietnam after heavy rains triggered more than a dozen landslides, according to state media.
On Indonesia’s Sumatra, many survivors were still struggling to recover from the flash floods and landslides that hit last week as Indonesia’s meteorological agency warned Aceh could see “very heavy rain” through Saturday, with North and West Sumatra also at risk.
Aceh Governor Muzakir Manaf said response teams were still searching for bodies in “waist-deep” mud.
However, starvation was one of the gravest threats now hanging over remote and inaccessible villages, he said.
“Many people need basic necessities. Many areas remain untouched in the remote areas of Aceh,” he told reporters.
“People are not dying from the flood, but from starvation. That’s how it is.”
Entire villages had been washed away in the rainforest-cloaked Aceh Tamiang region, Muzakir said.
“The Aceh Tamiang region is completely destroyed from the top to the bottom, down to the roads and down to the sea.
“Many villages and sub-districts are now just names,” he said.
In Sri Lanka, where more than two million people – nearly 10 percent of the population- have been affected, officials warned on Friday of continuing heavy rains causing new landslide risks.
Sri Lanka’s Disaster Management Centre (DMC) said more than 71,000 homes were damaged, including nearly 5,000 that were destroyed by last week’s floods and landslides.
The DMC said on Friday that more rain was expected in many parts of the country, including the worst-affected central region, triggering fears of more landslides, hampering cleanup operations.
Last week’s flood came as two typhoons and a cyclone swept through the region at the same time, causing heavy rains, which experts told Aljazeera are becoming more likely due to climate change.
Illegal logging, often linked to the global demand for palm oil, also contributed to the severity of the disaster in Sumatra, where photographs of the aftermath showed many tree logs washed downstream. Indonesia is among the countries with the largest annual forest loss due to mining, plantations and fires, and has seen the clearance of large tracts of its lush rainforest in recent decades.
Indonesia’s Forestry Minister Raja Juli Antoni said on Friday that his office was revoking the logging licences of 20 companies, covering an area of 750,000 hectares (1.8m acres), including in flood-affected areas in Sumatra, Indonesia’s Antara news agency reported.
Environment Minister Hanif Faisol Nurofiq also “immediately” halted the activities of palm oil, mining, and power plant companies operating upstream of the disaster-hit areas in northern Sumatra on Saturday, according to Antara.
The Batang Toru and Garoga watersheds are strategic areas with ecological and social functions that must not be compromised,” Hanif said.
Febi Dwirahmadi, Indonesian programme coordinator for the Centre for Environment and Population Health at Griffith University in Australia, told Al Jazeera that rainforest cover “acts like a sponge” absorbing water during heavy rainfall.
Following deforestation, which is also contributing to making climate change worse, there is nothing to slow down the heavy rainfall as it enters waterways, Dwirahmadi said.
[Aljazeera]
Twenty five people have been killed in a fire at a popular nightclub in the coastal region of Goa, India, local officials say.
The majority of victims are believed to be staff at the club in Arpora, North Goa, while tourists are also among the dead.
Police believe a gas cylinder exploded in the club’s kitchen, causing a blaze to rip through the venue on Saturday at midnight local time.
On Sunday morning, officials said the death toll had risen from an earlier figure of 23. Six more people are in a stable condition in hospital.
The BBC has spoken to witnesses at the scene who described scenes of panic in the bustling nightlife area.
“The fire was mainly concentrated around the kitchen area on the ground floor,” said Alok Kumar, Goa’s Director General of Police.”The fire occurred around midnight. It has now been brought under control.” Most of the bodies were found around the kitchen “suggesting that the victims were employed at the club,” Alok Kumar added.
Goa’s chief minister Pramod Sawant told journalists three people died from burn injuries, while others died by suffocating. He said “three to four” tourists had died but did not provide their ages or nationalities.
The Indian Express reports the fire broke out at a club called Birch by Romeo Lane at Baga, located at the one of the coastal region’s most popular beaches.
The area where the fire occurred is lined with similar nightlife hotspots, where tourists and partygoers can be seen pouring out of the bustling clubs.
A chef who works at a nearby venue told the BBC he knew some of the workers at the Birch club. “People from all over the country and also from Nepal work in different clubs in Goa,” he said. “I am really worried for some people who I knew at the club. Their phones are off.”
Rescue efforts were still ongoing in the early hours of Sunday morning. Crews were combing through the charred wreckage to determine the cause of the blaze.
A heavy security presence remained at the scene on Sunday morning, with the doors to the nightclub shut and no one allowed inside.
The BBC saw what appeared to be charred and melted remains of chairs, tables and plants in one corner of the club.
One eyewitness said that it was a usual Saturday night and holidaymakers were enjoying themselves. He said: “I was outside the club when I heard screams, I didn’t initially understand what was going on. “In a bit, it became clear that a massive fire had broken out. Nobody could do much. The scenes were just horrific.”
Rescue workers have taken the bodies of the victims to Goa Medical College in Panaji.
One of the firefighters at the scene told the BBC they are still identifying the victims and will then notify their families.
A formal inquiry into the cause of the fire has been launched, the chief minister said.
“Those found responsible will face most stringent action under the law – any negligence will be dealt with firmly,” Dr Sawant said. “I am deeply grieved and offer my heartfelt condolences to all the bereaved families in this hour of unimaginable loss.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi called the Goa fire “deeply saddening” in a post on social media.
Goa is former Portuguese colony on the Arabian Sea. Its nightlife, sandy beaches, and resorts attract millions of tourists annually.
About 5.5 million tourists visited Goa in the first half of the year, government data showed, with 270,000 visiting from abroad.
India has seen a number of deadly fires at entertainment venues in recent years.
A fire at a three-storey building killed 17 in the southern city of Hyderabad in May, while a hotel blaze in north-east Kolkata left 15 dead a month earlier.
Last year, 24 died at an amusement park arcade in the western state of Gujarat after visitors were trapped inside due to the collapse of a temporary structure at the entrance. An official review later found poor safety standards contributed to a higher death toll.
[BBC]
Latest News
Landslide RED warnings issued to the districts of Kandy, Kegalle, Kurunegala, Matale and Nuwara Eliya extended up to 1600 hrs today [07]
The Landslide Early Warning Center of the National Building Research Organisation [NBRO] has issued landslide early warnings to the districts of Badulla, Colombo, Galle, Gampaha, Kalutara, Kandy, Kegalle, Kurunegala, Matale, Matara, Monaragala, Nuwara Eliya and Ratnapura effective from 16:00 hrs on 06.12.2025 to 16:00 hrs on 07.12.2025.
Accordingly,
LEVEL III RED warnings have been issued to the Divisional Secretaries Divisions and surrounding areas of Pathadumbara, Kundasale, Pathahewaheta, Panvila, Medadumbara, Doluwa, Thumpane, Udunuwara, Deltota, Ganga Ihala Korale, Pasbage Korale, Yatinuwara, Hatharaliyadda, Ududumbara, Minipe, Udapalatha, Gangawata Korale, Akurana, Poojapitiya and Harispattuwa in the Kandy district, Thumpane, Udunuwara, Deltota, Ganga Ihala Korale, Pasbage Korale, Yatinuwara, Hatharaliyadda, Ududumbara, Minipe, Udapalatha, Gangawata Korale, Akurana, Poojapitiya and Harispattuwa in the Kegalle district, Alawwa, Rideegama, Polgahawela, Mallawapitiya and Mawathagama inthe Kurunegala district, Ukuwela, Naula, Yatawatta, Laggala Pallegama, Pallepola, Matale, Rattota, Ambanganga Korale and Wilgamuwa in the Matale district, and Hanguranketha, Mathurata, Nildandahinna and Walapane in the Nuwara Eliya district
LEVEL II AMBER warnings have been issued to the Divisional Secretaries Divisions and surrounding areas of Uva Paranagama, Badulla, Kandeketiya, Bandarawela, Soranathota, Hali_Ela, Meegahakivula, Ella, Welimada, Haputhale, Lunugala, Haldummulla and Passara in the Badulla district, Narammala in the Kurunegala district, Kothmale West, Norwood, Ambagamuwa Korale, Thalawakele, Kothmale East and Nuwara Eliya in the Nuwara Eliya district and Godakawela, Kahawaththa and Kolonna in the Ratnapura district.
LEVEL I YELLOW warnings have been issued to the Divisional Secretaries Divisions and surrounding areas of Seethawaka and Padukka in the Colonbo district, Elpitiya and Yakkalamulla in the Galle district, Mirigama, Divulapitiya and Attanagalla in the Gampaha district, Ingiriya, Bulathsinhala and Horana in the Kalutara district, Pasgoda and Athuraliya in the Matara district, Bibile and Medagama in the Monaragala district, and Kuruwita, Balangoda, Eheliyagoda, Pelmadulla, Kaltota, Kalawana, Openayake, Ayagama, Nivithigala, Imbulpe, Elapatha, Ratnapura and Kiriella in the Ratnapura district.
Heavy rains hamper recovery as death toll from floods in Asia exceeds 1,750
Staff and tourists among 25 killed in Goa nightclub fire
Landslide RED warnings issued to the districts of Kandy, Kegalle, Kurunegala, Matale and Nuwara Eliya extended up to 1600 hrs today [07]
Deadly attack on kindergarten reported in Sudan
618 dead, 209 missing as at 2000hrs on Saturday [06]
Showers will occur in the Northern, North-Central, Eastern Uva provinces and in Matale and Nuwara-Eliya districts.
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