Biden seeks $47B for Ukraine, monkeypox, COVID-19, disasters
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is asking Congress to provide more than $47 billion in emergency aid that would go toward the war in Ukraine, the response to the COVID19 pandemic, the ongoing monkeypox outbreak and help for recent natural disasters in Kentucky and other states.
The request, which comes as lawmakers are preparing to return to Washington and fund the government, includes $13.7 billion related to Ukraine, including money for equipment, intelligence support and direct budgetary support.
Shalanda Young, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, said that more than three-fourths of the $40 billion approved by Congress earlier this year has already been disbursed or committed.
The White House request will play into congressional budget negotiations in the coming weeks as financing for federal agencies is set to run out Sept. 30.
Both parties will be seeking to avoid a government shutdown weeks before the midterm elections, but they will have to work out differences over issues such as the COVID-19 aid, which has been a sticking point for many months as the White House has said more money is needed for vaccines and testing and Republicans have pointed to the trillions that have already been approved and money that still has not been spent.
In Friday’s request, the White House is seeking $7.1 billion to procure additional vaccines and for replenishing personal protective equipment in the Strategic National Stockpile, among other measures. It is also seeking $2 billion to continue testing programs, including an initiative to distribute free at-home tests that ended Friday as the government says it is running short on funds.
Congress also has not moved forward on the president’s $22.5 billion request earlier this year for the COVID-19 response. And funding is drying up for many of the community groups that received millions of federal tax dollars to encourage vaccinations.
The administration is also asking for $4.5 billion to bolster its efforts to fight monkeypox. Officials said they have already depleted significant reserves from the national stockpile to provide over 1.1 million vials of vaccine.
The money would help ensure access to vaccinations, testing and treatment, and also help fund the global effort to fight the disease, administration officials said.
A court in Myanmar on Friday sentenced ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi to three years’ imprisonment with labor after finding her guilty of election fraud, adding more time to the 17 years she is serving for other offenses prosecuted by the military government.
The latest verdict also carries potentially significant political consequences for Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party by lending support to the government’s explicit threats to dissolve it before a new election the military has promised for 2023.
Suu Kyi’s party won the 2020 general election in a landslide, but the army seized power the following February and kept her from a second five-year term in office. The army contends it acted because of alleged widespread fraud in the
Myanmar verdict:
polls,t though independent election observers did not find any major irregularities.
The military’s seizure of power prompted widespread peaceful protests that were quashed with lethal force, triggering armed resistance that some U.N. experts now characterize as civil war.
Suu Kyi’s previous sentence involved charges of illegally importing and possessing walkie-talkies, violating coronavirus restrictions, sedition and five counts of corruption. Many top members of her party and government also have been jailed, while others are in hiding or have fled abroad.
Arms sale to Taiwan: The Biden administration on Friday announced a more than $1 billion arms sale to Taiwan as U.S.-China tensions escalate over the status of the island.
The $1.09 billion sale includes $355 million for Harpoon air-to-sea missiles and $85 million for Sidewinder
air-to-air missiles, the State Department said.
The largest portion of the sale, however, is a $655 million logistics support package for Taiwan’s surveillance radar program, which provides air defense warnings.
Early warning air defense systems have become more important as China has stepped up military drills near Taiwan, which it sees as a renegade province.
The State Department said the equipment is necessary for Taiwan to “maintain a sufficient self-defense capability.”
Pakistan floods: Planes carrying fresh supplies are surging across a humanitarian air bridge to floodravaged Pakistan as the death toll surged past 1,200, officials said Friday, with families and children at special risk of disease and homelessness.
The ninth flight from the United Arab Emirates and the first from Uzbekistan were the latest to land
in Islamabad overnight as a military-backed rescue operation elsewhere in the country reached more of the 3 million people affected by the disaster.
Two more planes with aid from the UAE and Qatar were set to arrive in Pakistan later Friday, and a Turkish train carrying relief goods for flood victims was on its way to the impoverished nation, according to the Foreign Ministry.
Multiple officials and experts have blamed the unusual monsoon and flooding on climate change, including U.N. SecretaryGeneral Antonio Guterres, who this week called on the world to stop “sleepwalking” through the deadly crisis.
India aircraft carrier: India commissioned its first home-built aircraft carrier Friday as it seeks to counter regional rival China’s much larger and growing fleet, and expand its own domestic shipbuilding capabilities.
The INS Vikrant is India’s
second operational aircraft carrier, joining the Soviet-era INS Vikramaditya that it purchased from Russia in 2004 to defend the Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal.
The new 860-foot carrier, designed by the Indian navy and built at the Cochin shipyard in southern India, was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as part of the country’s commemoration of 75 years of independence from British rule.
Atlantic hurricane: Tropical Storm Danielle strengthened into a hurricane Friday — the first of an unusually quiet storm season.
The storm’s maximum sustained winds were clocked at 75 mph, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center.
On Friday the storm was centered about 885 miles west of the Azores, drifting west at about 1 mph.
The hurricane center said the storm is expected to meander in the Atlantic over the next few days.