With his signature healthcare reforms package potentially lying in tatters around him, US president Donald Trump has set out a new and politically risky plan for the nation’s health.
Despite being already besieged on many fronts including alleged collusion with Russian elements before the 2016 election, Mr Trump’s latest bold move is to let the current system, dubbed Obamacare, fail, regardless of the personal consequences for millions of Americans.
“I'm not going to own it,” the president told reporters, referring to his predecessor’s health care system which expanded health insurance coverage and tried to reduce costs. “I can tell you the Republicans are not going to own it.”
Mr Trump and the party that he is notionally the leader of, but with which he has fought since assuming office in January 2017, saw a Senate vote to repeal Obamacare fail on Monday.
The party has just a four-seat majority in the 100-member upper chamber, which meant that after three Republican senators refused to back the vote, the majority evaporated in the face of rock-solid Democratic opposition.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said that the Republicans were "playing a dangerous game" with the US healthcare system.
"[They are] actively, actively trying to undermine the healthcare system in this country using millions of Americans as political pawns in a cynical game", Mr Schumer said on Tuesday.
Few imagine that the latest attempt to enforce a settlement will work out for the president. The BBC’s Anthony Zurcher referred to it as “Mr Trump's ‘Joker’ option for Obamacare repeal. Do nothing, and watch the world burn.
Like with the cartoon villain, “explaining how your dastardly plan will go down seldom works [in the movies] and it may not be the best strategy for presidents either,” Zurcher wrote for BBC News.
“By telling Americans he's going to let the US healthcare system collapse in order to rally support for an eventual fix, he's essentially taking responsibility for anything bad that happens in the coming days.”
Meanwhile, in other developments swirling around the president, the congressional panel looking into links between the Trump campaign and Moscow has indicated it wants to interview his son, Donald Trump Jr.
Reports of a meeting between campaign staff and Russian nationals have led to claims that there was foreign intervention in last year’s presidential campaign to aid the Republican nominee - a claim denied by both the Russians and Mr Trump.
Last week, Mr Trump Jr released emails which he had sent to a Russian government lawyer who it had been suggested could supply damaging information about Democratic election rival Hillary Clinton as part of Moscow's official support for his father's campaign.
That meeting now looks set to form the crux of any investigation into alleged collusion.
Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Republican Senator Richard Burr told reporters: “Any intelligence out there that suggests that somebody is of interest to us, we have to pursue it. We've now got an email chain that makes that (the meeting) a very important aspect to get into.”
Who has been sanctioned?
Daniella Weiss and Nachala
Described as 'the grandmother of the settler movement', she has encouraged the expansion of settlements for decades. The 79 year old leads radical settler movement Nachala, whose aim is for Israel to annex Gaza and the occupied West Bank, where it helps settlers built outposts.
Harel Libi & Libi Construction and Infrastructure
Libi has been involved in threatening and perpetuating acts of aggression and violence against Palestinians. His firm has provided logistical and financial support for the establishment of illegal outposts.
Zohar Sabah
Runs a settler outpost named Zohar’s Farm and has previously faced charges of violence against Palestinians. He was indicted by Israel’s State Attorney’s Office in September for allegedly participating in a violent attack against Palestinians and activists in the West Bank village of Muarrajat.
Coco’s Farm and Neria’s Farm
These are illegal outposts in the West Bank, which are at the vanguard of the settler movement. According to the UK, they are associated with people who have been involved in enabling, inciting, promoting or providing support for activities that amount to “serious abuse”.
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
Six large-scale objects on show
- Concrete wall and windows from the now demolished Robin Hood Gardens housing estate in Poplar
- The 17th Century Agra Colonnade, from the bathhouse of the fort of Agra in India
- A stagecloth for The Ballet Russes that is 10m high – the largest Picasso in the world
- Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1930s Kaufmann Office
- A full-scale Frankfurt Kitchen designed by Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, which transformed kitchen design in the 20th century
- Torrijos Palace dome
Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
LILO & STITCH
Starring: Sydney Elizebeth Agudong, Maia Kealoha, Chris Sanders
Director: Dean Fleischer Camp
Rating: 4.5/5
