WASHINGTON: A handful of Senate Republicans broke ranks with US President Donald Trump on Wednesday, joining Democrats to pass a measure that would block his tariffs on Canadian imports.
The resolution, supported by four Republicans and all of the chamber’s Democrats, has virtually no chance of becoming law.
But it marks a rare, albeit symbolic defeat for Trump on Capitol Hill, where his Republican Party controls both chambers and he has seen little pushback to his rampaging first months in office.
The Senate voted 51-48 to overturn the national emergency at the border which Trump declared earlier this year, which he has used to justify saddling Canadian imports with 25 percent tariffs.
But it was a purely symbolic dissent, as House Speaker Mike Johnson, a close Trump ally, is expected to block any vote on the resolution.
Trump took to his Truth Social media platform to slam the legislation as a Democratic “ploy” and make clear it is dead on arrival in the House.
“The House will never approve it and I, as your President, will never sign it,” he posted.
The four Republican senators who voted to pass the measure were Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine — viewed as the two most-centrist party members — as well as Kentucky’s two senators, Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul.
Republicans have a 53-47 majority in the Senate.
The Senate vote occurred shortly after Trump rolled out his plans to slap fresh import tariffs on products from countries around the globe, an announcement that sent stock markets tumbling.
In a symbolic rebuke, US Senate votes to block Trump tariffs on Canada
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In a symbolic rebuke, US Senate votes to block Trump tariffs on Canada
- The Senate voted 51-48 to overturn the national emergency at the border, with 4 Republicans joining all of the chamber’s Democrats
- But it was a purely symbolic dissent, as House Speaker Mike Johnson, a close Trump ally, is expected to block any vote on the resolution
Spike in wounded as fighting intensifies in parts of Somalia
- Military operations continue in Bari in Puntland, while confrontations often occur in Sool and Sanaag regions in the north, the organization said
MOGADISHU: Hospitals in parts of Somalia are struggling with rising numbers of wounded after a sharp increase in fighting since the beginning of the year, the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Friday.
Recent attacks, including a roadside blast narrowly missing the president’s convoy last month, are heightening fears of a resurgence by terrorists, despite gains by the Somali government and international partners.
After 15 years of fighting federal troops, Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabab had been forced onto the defensive in 2022 and 2023 by Somali forces backed by Africa Union-led peacekeepers.
“Several regions of Somalia have seen a sharp escalation of hostilities, and hospitals near active front lines are struggling to meet a surge in needs,” the ICRC said in a statement.
“We have seen a significant increase of weapon-wounded patients treated in the medical facilities we support since the beginning of the year.” In Mogadishu, Madina Hospital supported by the ICRC, has admitted 203 wounded — a 26-percent increase from the previous three months.
The ICRC said the Middle and Lower Shabelle regions in the south had seen a significant increase in fighting since March, with displacements and civilian casualties.
Military operations continue in Bari in Puntland, while confrontations often occur in Sool and Sanaag regions in the north, the organization said.
The surge in fighting across Somalia has also forced more than 100,000 to flee their homes, the ICRC said.
Earlier this month, Al-Shabab militants fired multiple rockets near Mogadishu’s airport, disrupting international flights.
The group has seized key locations in Middle and Lower Shabelle, coastal regions on either side of the capital.
A bomb blast narrowly missed the convoy of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud on March 18, showing the group once again poses a significant threat to the capital.
Thousands of children subject to sexual violence in eastern Congo, UNICEF says
GENEVA: Children including toddlers represent more than a third of victims in nearly 10,000 cases of rape and other forms of sexual violence committed in eastern Congo in the first two months of the year, the UN children’s agency said on Friday.
M23 rebels seized parts of eastern Congo earlier this year as part of a rapid offensive that left thousands dead, including children, and forced hundreds of thousands from their homes.
UNICEF spokesperson James Elder told a Geneva press briefing that the rapes and other forms of sexual violence were being used as “a weapon of war” and were taking place once every 30 minutes on average, with toddlers also among the victims.
FASTFACT
UNICEF spokesperson James Elder says that the rapes and other forms of sexual violence are being used as ‘a weapon of war’ and are taking place once every 30 minutes on average, with toddlers also among the victims.
“We are not talking about isolated incidents; we are talking about a systemic crisis,” he said, citing a database collected by organizations on the ground working on sexual violence, which showed that between 35-45 percent of the total were under-18s.
“It is a weapon of war and a deliberate tactic of terror.”
Elder, who spoke via video link from Goma, said that funding shortages were affecting the ability to treat survivors of sexual attacks. In a hospital he visited this week 127 rape survivors had no access to medical kits which can prevent an HIV infection in the immediate aftermath.
“The gaps in funding are life-threatening,” he said.
Elder did not elaborate on the reasons for the funding shortages in Congo, although deep cuts by top donors in the US to foreign aid have hit humanitarian programs elsewhere.
US envoy Witkoff holds talks with Putin about Ukraine as Trump tells Moscow to ‘get moving’
- Putin greeted Steven Witkoff in St. Petersburg at the start of the negotiations
- Trump posts on Truth Social that Russia has to get moving as too many people are dying in Ukraine
MOSCOW: US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff held talks with President Vladimir Putin on Friday in St. Petersburg about the search for a peace deal on Ukraine as Trump told Russia to “get moving.”
Putin was shown on state TV greeting Witkoff in St. Petersburg’s presidential library at the start of the negotiations. The Izvestia news outlet earlier released video of Witkoff leaving a hotel in the city, accompanied by Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s investment envoy.
Witkoff has emerged as a key figure in the on-off rapprochement between Moscow and Washington amid talk on the Russian side of potential joint investments in the Arctic and in Russian rare earth minerals.
However, the talks come at a time when US-Russia dialogue aimed at agreeing a ceasefire ahead of a possible peace deal to end the war in Ukraine appears to have stalled over disagreements around conditions for a full pause in hostilities.
Trump, who has shown signs of losing patience, has spoken of imposing secondary sanctions on countries that buy Russian oil if he feels Moscow is dragging its feet on a Ukrainian deal.
On Friday, he said in a post on Truth Social: “Russia has to get moving. Too many people (are) DYING, thousands a week, in a terrible and senseless war — A war that should have never happened, and wouldn’t have happened, if I were President!!!“
Putin has said he is ready in principle to agree a full ceasefire, but has said that many crucial conditions have yet to be agreed about how it would work and has said that what he calls the root causes of the war have yet to be addressed.
Specifically, he has said that Ukraine should not join NATO, that the size of its army needs to be limited, and that Russia should get the entirety of the territory of the four Ukrainian regions it claims as its own despite not fully controlling any of them.
With Moscow controlling just under 20 percent of Ukraine and Russian forces continuing to advance on the battlefield, the Kremlin believes Russia is in a strong position when it comes to negotiations and that Ukraine should make concessions.
Kyiv says Russia’s terms would amount to a capitulation.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin and Witkoff might discuss the possibility of the Russian leader meeting Trump face-to-face.
Putin and Trump have spoken by phone but have yet to meet in person since the US leader returned to the White House in January for a second four-year term.
However, Peskov played down the Witkoff-Putin talks, telling Russian state media before they started that the US envoy’s visit would not be “momentous” and no breakthroughs were expected.
He said the meeting would be a chance for Russia to express its “concerns.” Moscow and Kyiv have repeatedly accused each other of violating a moratorium on striking each other’s energy infrastructure.
The meeting, the third this year between Putin and Witkoff, comes at a time when US tensions with Iran and China, both close allies of Moscow, have been heightened by Tehran’s nuclear program and a burgeoning trade war with Beijing.
Witkoff, who visited a synagogue in St. Petersburg earlier on Friday, is due in Oman on Saturday for talks with Iran over its nuclear program. Trump has threatened Tehran with military action if it does not agree to a deal. Moscow has repeatedly offered its help in trying to clinch a diplomatic settlement.
US and Russian officials said they had made progress during talks in Istanbul on Thursday toward normalizing the work of their diplomatic missions as they begin to rebuild ties.
A February meeting between Witkoff and Putin culminated with the US envoy flying home with Marc Fogel, an American teacher whom Washington had said was wrongfully detained by Russia.
A Russian-American spa worker Ksenia Karelina, who had been sentenced to 12 years in prison in Russia, was exchanged on Thursday for Arthur Petrov, whom the US had accused of forming a global smuggling ring to transfer sensitive electronics to Russia’s military.
India’s ‘drone sisters’ navigate change in farming and social roles
- ‘Drone Didi’ program equips women-led self-help groups with drones for agricultural services
- Women say they earn about $150 a month by drone-spraying fertilizer and pesticide on farms
NEW DELHI: Rajveer Kaur enjoys the attention she receives whenever she goes out to the fields to operate her drone. Once a housewife and mother, the 29-year-old is now an independent woman, known in her region as a “drone didi” or “drone sister,” helping fertilize farmland and protect it from pests.
Kaur was working with a self-help group in her village in Faridkot district of Punjab when she was selected to join a government program providing women with drone technology for agricultural services.
“Then the central government gave us drones after giving training for a few weeks. It’s now almost a year since it has happened. I get good responses from the farmers. I also got the name of a woman operating a drone in the field,” she told Arab News.
“I was a housewife before becoming a drone pilot. My husband supports me, and it feels really good that a woman who has been a housewife can now step out and become a productive force.”
She also gets a sense of financial independence and can contribute to her household’s budget, earning on average $150 a month.
“There’s also a message in this — that a woman, even while being a housewife, can earn and become independent. She can show that she can be a pilot too — even if it means a drone pilot,” Kaur said.
“Sometimes farmers bargain, but generally I earn $4 for spraying one acre of land. It takes only five minutes. In the last eight months since I started working as a drone pilot, I’ve earned close to 100,000 rupees (around $1,160).”
She is one of the thousands of women in rural India who joined the government’s scheme to empower women-led self-help groups.
Launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in November 2023, the “Drone Didi” program aims to distribute 15,000 drones among the groups by the end of this year.
The 25–30 kg industrial drones are designed for agricultural use — to spray pesticides and fertilizers on farmland.
Kaur’s job involves filling the drones’ canisters with chemicals and then remotely navigating the devices over the fields to spray the crops, covering several hectares a day.
Farmers were initially reluctant, but they soon realized that the method works. Kaur’s neighbor, Manjinder Singh, was one of the first farmers to participate in the program when he sowed his field in December and had five and a half acres of land sprayed by drones.
“That was the first time I got my field sprayed by a drone. It was a new experience. It took less time, and it was very smooth,” he said.
“In terms of cost, I don’t see much difference, but it saved a lot of time and physical effort.”
What convinced farmers to rely on the services of the drone operators is that remote spraying uses much less water and is safer for the crops.
Drone operators do not walk through the fields and do not cause physical damage to the crops. They also reduce the probability of crops being infected.
“Bacterial illnesses do not get transferred from one field to another when you use a drone. You are not carrying the bacteria from one field to another because you’re not physically walking through the fields,” Roopendra Kaur, a 29-year-old drone pilot from Firozpur district, explained.
Her main job is in large fields during the sowing seasons. But in between the seasons, drone operators are active too, only their tasks are smaller — like spraying vegetable fields or chili plantations. Since getting her drone in March last year, she has earned about $1,200.
“We have got a sense of purpose in life and to be a drone didi is really a respectable profession. Farmers were initially hesitant, but they appreciate our work,” Kaur said.
“This was the first time I have stepped out of the house. I have been a housewife all my life and this is my first independent work.”
UN denounces army attacks in Myanmar despite post-quake truce
- Following reports of sporadic clashes even after the March 28 quake that so far is known to have killed at least 3,645 people
- The military air strikes on Pazi Gyi village on April 11 2023 killed at least 155 people, including many children
GENEVA: The United Nations rights office decried Friday attacks by Myanmar’s military despite a ceasefire declared following last month’s devastating earthquake, which killed more than 3,600 people.
“At a moment when the sole focus should be on ensuring humanitarian aid gets to disaster zones, the military is instead launching attacks,” spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said in a statement.
UN rights chief Volker Turk, she said, “calls on the military to remove any and all obstacles to the delivery of humanitarian assistance and to cease military operations.”
A multi-sided conflict has engulfed Myanmar since 2021, when Min Aung Hlaing’s military wrested power from the civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi.
Following reports of sporadic clashes even after the March 28 quake that so far is known to have killed at least 3,645 people, the junta joined its opponents last week in calling a temporary halt to hostilities for relief to be delivered.
But Shamdasani highlighted that since the earthquake, “military forces have reportedly carried out over 120 attacks.”
“More than half of them (were) after their declared ceasefire was due to have gone into effect on 2 April,” she said.
The UN rights office had determined that most of these involved aerial and artillery strikes, she said, “including in areas impacted by the earthquake.”
“Numerous strikes have been reported in populated areas, many of them appearing to amount to indiscriminate attacks and to breach the principle of proportionality in international humanitarian law.”
Shamdasani pointed out that areas at the epicenter of the quake in Sagaing, particularly those controlled by opponents of the military, “have had to rely on local community responses for search and rescue, and to meet basic needs.”
“Clearly these valiant efforts need to be further supported,” she said, calling for “common efforts to assist those in greatest need.”
“In this spirit we call on the military to announce a full amnesty for detainees it has incarcerated since February 2021, including State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and President U Win Myint.”
The UN’s Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM) also decried the attacks.
“Even as rescue workers searched for survivors during the devastating earthquake last month, the military continued its air attacks in Mandalay, Sagaing and other regions, killing and injuring civilians,” it said in a statement.
Nicholas Koumjian, head of the investigative team, slammed “the systematic and escalating use of air strikes by the Myanmar military across the country,” which “caused widespread death, destruction and displacement, and has terrorized communities.”
He said Friday marked the two-year anniversary of military strikes in the now quake-hit Sagaing region, which constituted the deadliest single attack in Myanmar since the coup.
The military air strikes on Pazi Gyi village on April 11 2023 killed at least 155 people, including many children.
“Aerial bombardments, including the use of drones and alleged use of chemical weapons, are a grim hallmark of the Myanmar conflict and have increased in frequency since the Pazi Gyi attack,” the IIMM statement said.
