Foreign News
Senate’s $95bn for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan faces uphill battle in House
The US Senate has approved a $95bn (£75.2bn) aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan after months of political wrangling.
While Democrats were in favour of passing the bill, Republicans were divided and previously voted it down. The package includes $60bn for Kyiv, $14bn for Israel’s war against Hamas and $10bn for humanitarian aid in conflict zones, including in Gaza.
The bill will now go to the House, where its fate is uncertain.
The package, which also includes more than $4bn in funds for Indo-Pacific allies, passed the Senate despite criticism from Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson and former President Donald Trump. Lawmakers voted 70 to 29 to approve the package. Twenty-two Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, joined most Democrats to vote for the legislation.
“History settles every account,” Mr McConnell, a Kentucky senator, said in a statement following the vote. “And today, on the value of American leadership and strength, history will record that the Senate did not blink.”
Ukraine’s leader said he was “grateful” to senators. “For us in Ukraine, continued US assistance helps to save human lives from Russian terror. It means that life will continue in our cities and will triumph over war,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
The vote came after an all-night Senate session during which several Republican opponents made speeches in a bid to slow down the process. “Shouldn’t we try to fix our own country first?” Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky said on Monday. Some left-wing lawmakers, including Democrat Jeff Merkley of Oregon and independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont, also voted against the bill, citing concerns about supporting Israel’s bombing of Gaza.
The aid package is a stripped-down version of a $118bn package that Senate Republicans voted down last week.
Republicans had initially demanded that any foreign aid be tied to more security measures at the southern border. But after Mr Trump came out against the border provisions, Republicans were divided on the package. Some lawmakers suggested border measures could be added back into the current version of the legislation.
Mr Johnson suggested in a statement on Monday night the new bill would not pass the Republican-controlled House of Representatives without such provisions. “House Republicans were crystal clear from the very beginning of discussions that any so-called national security supplemental legislation must recognise that national security begins at our own border,” he said.
The Louisiana congressman said lawmakers “should have gone back to the drawing board” with the legislation to focus on border security.
With Senate passage of the aid bill stripped of immigration measures, Mr Johnson and the House Republican leadership will have to decide whether to bring the package to a vote in that chamber, attempt to amend it and send it back to the Senate, or to ignore it entirely.
That last option could prompt those House Republicans who support Ukraine military assistance to join Democrats in filing a discharge petition. This is a rare parliamentary procedure that would circumvent Mr Johnson and force a vote.
Some on the left may baulk at the military aid for Israel in the package, however, making such a manoeuvre – which requires the support of a majority of the House – more difficult.
After the Senate vote, Mr Johnson said his chamber “will have to continue to work its own will on these important matters”. He could divide the different pieces of aid into separate components, or add conservative US immigration reforms. Mr Johnson will be hard-pressed to convince his narrow House majority, which is sharply divided on aid to Ukraine, to follow his lead, however.
Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, meanwhile, hailed the passage of the bill on Tuesday. He said the Senate was “telling Putin he will regret the day he questioned America’s resolve”.
President Joe Biden applauded the measure, too, saying it would allow the US “to stand up for Ukraine’s freedom and support its ability to defend itself against Russia’s aggression”.
The US is one of the largest providers of aid to Ukraine. The White House asked Congress months ago to pass a bill that included foreign aid.
This could be Congress’s last shot at passing Ukraine aid for the foreseeable future, and Ukraine has warned it may not be able to successfully defend itself against Russia without Washington’s backing.
(BBC)
Australian teen Bianca Jones has become the fourth tourist to have died in a suspected mass poisoning in Laos.
The 19-year-old’s family confirmed her death to the media on Thursday. Hours earlier, the US State Department told the media that an American man died in the tourist town of Vang Vieng.
Two Danish women, aged 19 and 20, also died last week in Laos, Danish authorities confirmed, declining to share more due to confidentiality concerns.
The deaths remain under police investigation, but news reports and testimonies online from other tourists suggest they may have consumed drinks laced with methanol, a deadly substance often found in bootleg alcohol.
Jones’s friend Holly Bowles is in hospital on life support, while a British woman is also reportedly in hospital.
New Zealand’s foreign ministry told local media on Thursday that one of its citizens was also unwell from suspected methanol poisoning. It is unclear how many more people have fallen ill.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the department of foreign affairs had confirmed Jones’s death.
“Our first thoughts in this moment are with her family and friends who are grieving a terrible and cruel loss,” Albanese said on Thursday afternoon.
“This is every parent’s very worst fear and a nightmare that no one should have to endure.”
He said he hoped Ms Bowles, who is currently at Bangkok Hospital, would recover well.
The US State Department said it was “closely monitoring” the situation with regards to the American victim, adding that it was up to local authorities to determine the cause of death.
Australian, New Zealand and UK authorities have each warned their citizens to be careful of methanol poisoning when consuming alcohol in Laos.
Nana Backpacker Hostel, where the two Australian women stayed in Vang Vieng, told the BBC that it was closed for police investigation.
The hostel’s manager told the Associated Press that the two women were among more than 100 guests who received free shots of Lao vodka from the hostel. The pair then headed out for the night, he said, adding that no other guests reported health issues.
The manager said he hoped the investigation would clear the hostel’s name, but said they have stopped giving free shots for now.
In a statement to Australian newspaper the Herald Sun, Jones’s family expressed their “deepest gratitude for the overwhelming support, love, and prayers we’ve received from across Australia”.
“We kindly ask for privacy as we navigate through our grief and begin to heal,” the statement said.
Unlike ethanol, the key component of alcoholic beverages, methanol is toxic to humans. Bootleg liquor producers sometimes add it to their drinks, however, as a cheap way to increase alcohol content.
Earlier this year, at least 57 people in India died after consuming methanol-laced liquor. Similar cases of mass poisoning have also been reported across the world, from the Philippines to Peru.
Vang Vieng is a small riverside town in central Laos, and a hub for backpackers in Southeast Asia.
[BBC]
The humanitarian medical organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has suspended its operations in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, following a violent attack on its staff and the alleged killing of two patients they were treating by Haitian police officers.
The incident took place last week as violence continued to worsen in the country.
An estimated 25 people were killed in Port-au-Prince on Tuesday alone in what police say was a foiled attempt at a gang invasion of a wealthy neighbourhood.
Politically, the situation also remains critical with interim Prime Minister Garry Conille fired this month by the country’s ruling council – less than six months after he took office.
MSF says that on 11 November one of its ambulances carrying three young men with gunshot wounds was stopped by Haitian law enforcement officers.
Apparently supported by a paramilitary self-defence group, the men attacked the vehicle, removed two of the patients, took them outside hospital grounds and executed them.
The humanitarian group denounced the violence in a strongly worded statement last week, saying their personnel had been tear-gassed and held against their will for several hours.
While that incident appears to have been the final straw for MSF in Port-au-Prince, at least for the time being, it was not the only recent example of extreme aggression against their staff.
The announcement comes amid a worsening climate of violence in Haiti with some 25 suspected gang members killed in the capital on Tuesday.
The police say that residents helped officers to fight off an attempted attack on the upscale suburb of Pétion-Ville.
The neighbourhood was cordoned off after residents barricaded streets, some armed with machetes and makeshift weapons, in an apparent effort to prevent a gang invasion.
[BBC]
Winter has come to Delhi and with it, a familiar sense of gloom. The sky here is grey and there is a thick, visible blanket of smog.
If you stay outdoors for more than a few minutes, you can almost taste ash. You will feel breathless within minutes if you try to run or even walk at a brisk pace in the smog.
Newspapers are back to using words like toxic, deadly and poisonous in their main headlines.
Most schools have been shut and people have been advised to stay indoors – though those whose livelihoods depend on working outdoors can’t afford to do so.
Delhi’s air quality score was somewhere between 1,200 and 1,500 on Monday and Tuesday, according to different monitoring agencies. The acceptable limit is less than 100.
These scores measure the levels of particulate matter – called PM 2.5 and PM10 – in the air. These tiny particles can enter the lungs and cause a host of diseases.
On social media, people have been expressing shock, disappointment and anguish that it’s all happening again.
Along with the gloom, there is a strong sense of déjà vu – like we have seen this all many times before in the past 15 years.
Covering this story feels like watching (and being in) the same dystopian film every year – following the same characters, plot and script. The outcome is always the same – nothing changes.
The parks are empty again – people, particularly children and the elderly, have been told to stay indoors.
Those who must work – daily-wage labourers, rickshaw pullers, delivery riders – are coughing but still going out.
Hospitals are seeing an increasing number of people coming in with respiratory problems.
And amid all this, we are back to the same question again – why does nothing change?
The simple answer is that solving Delhi’s air problem requires monumental efforts and coordination.
The sources of the problem are many. One of them is the practice of farmers burning crop remains to clear their fields quickly to sow seeds for the next yield.
This mostly happens in the neighbouring states of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. The smoke from the farm fires engulfs Delhi every winter and hangs low in the atmosphere as wind speeds reduce during winter months.
But farmers can’t be entirely blamed for this because this is the cheapest way of clearing fields.
Different governments have talked about providing machines and financial incentives to stop crop burning, but very little has happened on the ground.
Delhi itself produces a huge chunk of the pollution – emission from vehicles, construction and factories.
Every year, in the winter months, people get angry, journalists write and produce reports, politicians blame each other and courts fume – until we do it all over again the next year.
A public health emergency like this would spark mass protests in most democracies. But the anger in Delhi is mostly limited to social media.
Activists say the reason is that pollution doesn’t cause immediate problems for most people. Ingesting high levels of PM2.5 deteriorates health slowly. A Lancet study found that pollution led to more than 2.3 million premature deaths in India in 2019.
And then there is the class divide. People who can afford to temporarily leave the city do that, those who can buy air purifiers do that, and those who can vent on social media do that.
The rest, who don’t have these options, just go about their lives.
The collective angst has so far not resulted in a massive protest and, as the Supreme Court once observed, politicians just “pass the buck” and wait for the season to get over.
Experts say governments at the federal level and in different states need to leave their party politics behind and work together to solve this problem. They need to focus on long-term solutions.
And citizens need to hold politicians accountable and courts have to pass decisive orders months before the pollution worsens.
This year, we are again in the thick of the season and temporary measures have been announced, like banning construction work.
But can these bring Delhi’s elusive blue skies back? The evidence from the past few years doesn’t give much hope.
[BBC]
Speech delivered by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake at the inauguration of the first session of the Tenth Parliament
Heavy showers above 100 mm are likely at some places in Western, Sabaragamuwa, Central and Southern provinces.
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