Foreign News
Who is Usha Vance, future US second-lady?
When Usha Vance took to the stage at the Republican National Convention, she introduced the crowd to the “most determined person I know” – her husband JD Vance, the newly selected vice-presidential candidate.
“That JD and I could meet at all, let alone fall in love and marry, is a testament to this great country,” she told the crowd over the summer.
Mrs Vance humanised the Ohio senator and soon-to-be vice-president to Donald Trump by calling him a man who longed for a “tight-knit family”.
She also said her husband was a “meat and potatoes kind of guy” – but one who had adapted to her vegetarian diet and even learned how to cook Indian food for her mother.
While she does not seek out the political spotlight, Mrs Vance, 38, wields considerable influence over her husband’s career, Vance has said before.
Mrs Vance – née Chilukuri, the child of Indian immigrants – was born and raised in the suburbs of San Diego, California.
The two met as students at Yale Law School in 2013, when they joined a discussion group on “social decline in white America”, according to the New York Times.
The content influenced Mr Vance’s best selling 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy, about his childhood in the white working-class Rust Belt, which became a 2020 movie directed by Ron Howard.
Whilst her husband regularly rails about “woke” ideas he says are pushed by Democrats, Mrs Vance was formerly a registered Democrat and is now a corporate litigator at a San Francisco law firm which proudly touts its reputation for being “radically progressive”.
Mrs Vance previously graduated with a BA in history from Yale University and was also a Gates Scholar at Cambridge University, where she came away with an MPhil in early modern history, according to her LinkedIn profile.
She once clerked for Brett Kavanaugh, now a Supreme Court justice, on the District of Columbia court of appeals. Then she clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. Both men are part of the highest court’s conservative majority.
And it is this stellar CV that leaves Vance feeling “humbled” he has said.
“Usha definitely brings me back to Earth a little bit,” Vance told the Megyn Kelly Show podcast in 2020. “And if I maybe get a little bit too cocky or a little too proud I just remind myself that she is way more accomplished than I am.”
“People don’t realise just how brilliant she is,” he added, saying she is able to digest a 1,000-page book in only a few hours.
She is the “powerful female voice on his left shoulder”, giving him guidance, he said.
The couple wed in 2014 and have three children: two sons, Ewan and Vivek, and a daughter, Mirabel.
As Vance took the stage at the Republican convention, he echoed previous praise of his wife being an “incredible lawyer and a better mom”.
In an interview on Fox News over the summer, she said: “I believe in JD, and I really love him, and so we’ll just sort of see what happens with our life.”
“Neither JD nor I expected to find ourselves in this position,” she said at the RNC.
And since then she has firmly defended her husband, particularly against recent attacks for controversial remarks he made in 2021 about Kamala Harris and other Democrats being “childless cat ladies”.
Vance argued that those without children should not lead the country and that women who do not have kids are “miserable”.
His wife called the remarks a “quip” and said people were not looking at the large context of the comments.
[BBC]
Rescue workers are racing to find dozens of people still missing following a landslide at a landfill site in the central Philippines that occurred earlier this week, an official has said.
Mayor Nestor Archival said on Saturday that signs of life had been detected at the site in Cebu City, two days after the incident.
Four people have been confirmed dead so far, Archival said, while 12 others have been taken to hospital.
Conditions for emergency services working at the site were challenging, the mayor added, with unstable debris posing a hazard and crew waiting for better equipment to arrive.
The privately-owned Binaliw landfill collapsed on Thursday while 110 workers were on site, officials said.
Archival said in a Facebook post on Saturday morning: “Authorities confirmed the presence of detected signs of life in specific areas, requiring continued careful excavation and the deployment of a more advanced 50-ton crane.”
Relatives of those missing have been waiting anxiously for any news of their whereabouts. More than 30 people, all workers at the landfill, are thought to be missing.
“We are just hoping that we can get someone alive… We are racing against time, that’s why our deployment is 24/7,” Cebu City councillor Dave Tumulak, chairman of the city’s disaster council, told news agency AFP.
Jerahmey Espinoza, whose husband is missing, told news agency Reuters at the site on Saturday: “They haven’t seen him or located him ever since the disaster happened. We’re still hopeful that he’s alive.”
The cause of the collapse remains unclear, but Cebu City councillor Joel Garganera previously said it was likely the result of poor waste management practices.
Operators had been cutting into the mountain, digging the soil out and then piling garbage to form another mountain of waste, Garganera told local newspaper The Freeman on Friday.
The Binaliw landfill covers an area of about 15 hectares (37 acres).
Landfills are common in major Philippine cities like Cebu, which is the trading centre and transportation gateway of the Visayas, the archipelago nation’s central islands.
[BBC]
US President Donald Trump has asked for at least $100bn (£75bn) in oil industry spending for Venezuela, but received a lukewarm response at the White House as one executive warned the South American country was currently “uninvestable”.
Bosses of the biggest US oil firms who attended the meeting acknowledged that Venezuela, sitting on vast energy reserves, represented an enticing opportunity.
But they said significant changes would be needed to make the region an attractive investment. No major financial commitments were immediately forthcoming.
Trump has said he will unleash the South American nation’s oil after US forces seized its leader Nicolas Maduro in a 3 January raid on its capital.
“One of the things the United States gets out of this will be even lower energy prices,” Trump said in Friday’s meeting at the White House.
But the oil bosses present expressed caution.
Exxon’s chief executive Darren Woods said: “We have had our assets seized there twice and so you can imagine to re-enter a third time would require some pretty significant changes from what we’ve historically seen and what is currently the state.”
“Today it’s uninvestable.”
Venezuela has had a complicated relationship with international oil firms since oil was discovered in its territory more than 100 years ago.
Chevron is the last remaining major American oil firm still operating in the country.
A handful of companies from other countries, including Spain’s Repsol and Italy’s Eni, both of which were represented at the White House meeting, are also active.
Trump said his administration would decide which firms would be allowed to operate.
“You’re dealing with us directly. You’re not dealing with Venezuela at all. We don’t want you to deal with Venezuela,” he said.
The White House has said it is working to “selectively” roll back US sanctions that have restricted sales of Venezuelan oil.
Officials say they have been coordinating with interim authorities in the country, which is currently led by Maduro’s former second-in-command, Vice-President Delcy Rodríguez.
But they have also made clear they intend to exert control over the sales, as a way to maintain leverage over Rodríguez’s government.
The US this week has seized several oil tankers carrying sanctioned crude. American officials have said they are working to set up a sales process, which would deposit money raised into US-controlled accounts.
“We are open for business,” Trump said.
On Friday, Trump signed an executive order that seeks to prohibit US courts from seizing revenue that the US collects from Venezuelan oil and holds in American Treasury accounts.
Any court attempt to access those funds would interfere with US foreign relations and international goodwill, the executive order states.
“President Trump is preventing the seizure of Venezuelan oil revenue that could undermine critical US efforts to ensure economic and political stability in Venezuela,” the White House wrote in a fact sheet about the order.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has called anti-government protesters “troublemakers” and “a bunch of vandals” just trying “to please the president of the US”.
He accused crowds of destroying buildings because Donald Trump said he “supports you”. Trump has warned Iran that if it kills protesters, the US would “hit” the country “very hard”.
The protests, in their 13th day, erupted over the economy and have grown into the largest in years – leading to calls for an end to the Islamic Republic and some urging the restoration of the monarchy.
At least 48 protesters and 14 security personnel, have been killed, according to human rights groups. An internet blackout is in place.
Khamenei remained defiant in a televised address on Friday.
“Let everyone know that the Islamic Republic came to power through the blood of several hundred thousand honourable people and it will not back down in the face of those who deny this,” the 86-year-old said.
Since protests began on 28 December, in addition to the 48 protesters killed, more than 2,277 individuals have also been arrested, the US-based Human Rights Activist News Agency (HRANA) said.
The Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO) said at least 51 protesters, including nine children, had been killed.
BBC Persian has spoken to the families of 22 of them and confirmed their identities. The BBC and most other international news organisations are barred from reporting inside Iran.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps issued a statement on Friday saying it would not tolerate the continuation of the current situation in the country.
Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s last shah who was overthrown by the 1979 Islamic revolution, called on Trump on Friday to “be prepared to intervene to help the people of Iran”.
Pahlavi, who lives close to Washington DC, had urged protesters to take to the streets on Thursday and Friday.
Protests have taken place across the country, with BBC Verify verifying videos from 67 locations.
On Friday, protesters amassed after weekly prayers in the south-eastern city of Zahedan, videos verified by BBC Persian and BBC Verify show. In one of the videos, people can be heard chanting “death to the dictator”, referencing Khamenei.
In another, protesters gather near a local mosque, when several loud bangs can be heard.
Another verified video from Thursday showed a fire at the office of the Young Journalists Club, a subsidiary of state broadcaster Irib, in the city of Isfahan. It is unclear what caused the fire and if anyone was injured.
Photos received by the BBC from Thursday night also show cars overturned and set alight at Tehran’s Kaaj roundabout.
The country has been under a near-total internet blackout since Thursday evening, with minor amounts of traffic returning on Friday, internet monitoring groups Cloudfare and Netblocks said. That means less information is emerging from Iran.
IHRNGO director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam said in a statement that “the extent of the government’s use of force against protesters has been increasing, and the risk of intensified violence and the widespread killing of protesters after the internet shutdown is very serious”.
Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi has warned of a possible “massacre” during the internet shutdown.
One person who was able to send a message to the BBC said he was in Shiraz, in southern Iran. He reported a run on supermarkets by residents trying to stock up on food and other essentials, expecting worse days to come.
(BBC)
National Communication Programme for Child Health Promotion (SBCC) has been launched. – PM
Level I landslide early warnings issued to the Districts of Badulla, Kandy, Matale and Nuwara-Eliya extended
Rescuers race to find dozens missing in deadly Philippines landfill collapse
Trump seeks $100bn for Venezuela oil, but Exxon boss says country ‘uninvestable’
US military strikes Islamic State group targets in Syria, officials say
Gardner and Wareham lead Giants to opening-game victory
‘Dates have the highest sugar content to fight Coronavirus’
Sunday Island 27 December – Headlines
#SundayIsland 17th December – Headlines
Sunday Island – 28th March
Sunday Island Headlines – 21 March
Sunday Island – 21st February – Headlines
-
News5 days agoInterception of SL fishing craft by Seychelles: Trawler owners demand international investigation
-
News5 days agoBroad support emerges for Faiszer’s sweeping proposals on long- delayed divorce and personal law reforms
-
Opinion2 days agoThe minstrel monk and Rafiki, the old mandrill in The Lion King – II
-
Features2 days agoThe Venezuela Model:The new ugly and dangerous world order
-
Latest News2 days agoRain washes out 2nd T20I in Dambulla
-
Business1 day agoSevalanka Foundation and The Coca-Cola Foundation support flood-affected communities in Biyagama, Sri Lanka
-
News7 hours agoSajith: Ashoka Chakra replaces Dharmachakra in Buddhism textbook
-
News4 days agoPrez seeks Harsha’s help to address CC’s concerns over appointment of AG