Economy

Spain argues NATO funding should address real threats, not arbitrary targets, amidst Trump’s tariff retaliation plans.

The European Commission and Spain’s government have dismissed US President Donald Trump’s latest threat to impose higher tariffs on Madrid over its refusal to meet his proposed NATO target for defence spending.

Trump said on Tuesday that he was “very unhappy” with Spain for being the only NATO member to reject the new spending objective of 5 percent of economic output, adding that he was considering punishing the Mediterranean country.

“I was thinking of giving them trade punishment through tariffs because of what they did, and I think I may do that,” Trump added. He had previously suggested making Spain “pay twice as much” in trade talks.

Trade policy falls under the remit of Brussels, and the European Commission would “respond appropriately, as we always do, to any measures taken against one or more of our member states”, commission spokesperson Olof Gill said in a press briefing on Wednesday.

The trade deal between the European Union and the United States signed in July was the right platform to address any issues, Gill added.

“The defence spending debate is not about increasing spending for the sake of increasing it, but about responding to real threats,” Spain’s Economy and Trade Ministry said in a statement.

“We’re doing our part to develop the necessary capabilities and contribute to the collective defence of our allies.”

Spain has more than doubled nominal defence spending from 0.98 percent of gross domestic product in 2017 to 2 percent this year, equivalent to about 32.7bn euros ($38bn).

Defence Minister Margarita Robles said allies weren’t discussing the 5 percent target for 2035 in Wednesday’s meeting because they were prioritising the present situation in Ukraine, but wouldn’t completely rule out a shift in Spain’s position.

Targeted tariffs by the US against individual EU member states are rare, but there are precedents, said Ignacio Garcia Bercero, a senior fellow at the Brussels-based economic think tank Bruegel.

In 1999, the US hit the EU with 100 percent punitive tariffs on products such as chocolate, pork, onions and truffles in retaliation for an EU import ban on hormone-treated beef. But those tariffs excluded Britain, which at the time was still a member of the trade bloc.

The US could impose anti-dumping penalties on European products that are mostly produced in Spain, said Juan Carlos Martinez Lazaro, professor at Madrid’s IE business school.

In 2018, Washington imposed a combination of duties of more than 30 percent on Spanish black table olives at the request of Californian olive growers. Spain’s share of the US market plummeted from 49 percent in 2017 to 19 percent in 2024.

Another option would be moving the naval and air bases the US has in southern Spain to Morocco – an idea floated by former Trump official Robert Greenway – which would damage the local economies through the loss of thousands of indirect jobs.

The United States and China have started charging additional port fees on ocean shipping firms that move everything from holiday toys to crude oil, making the high seas a key front in the trade war between the world’s two largest economies.

A return to an all-out trade war appeared imminent last week, after China announced a major expansion of its rare earths export controls, and US President Donald Trump threatened to raise tariffs on Chinese goods to triple digits.

But after the weekend, both sides sought to reassure traders and investors, highlighting cooperation between their negotiating teams and the possibility they could find a way forward.

China said it had started to collect the special charges on US-owned, operated, built or flagged vessels, but it clarified that Chinese-built ships would be exempted from the levies.

In details published by state broadcaster CCTV, China spelled out specific provisions on exemptions, which also include empty ships entering Chinese shipyards for repair.

Similar to the US plan, the new China-imposed fees would be collected at the first port of entry on a single voyage or for the first five voyages within a year.

“This tit-for-tat symmetry locks both economies into a spiral of maritime taxation that risks distorting global freight flows,” Athens-based Xclusiv Shipbrokers said in a research note.

Early this year, the Trump administration announced plans to levy the fees on China-linked ships to loosen the country’s grip on the global maritime industry and bolster US shipbuilding.

An investigation during the administration of former US President Joe Biden concluded that China uses unfair policies and practices to dominate the global maritime, logistics and shipbuilding sectors, clearing the way for those penalties.

China hit back last week, saying it would impose its own port fees on US-linked vessels from the same day the US fees took effect.

“We are in the hectic stage of the disruption, where everyone is quietly trying to improvise workarounds, with varying degrees of success,” said independent dry bulk shipping analyst Ed Finley-Richardson. He said he has heard reports of US shipowners with non-Chinese vessels trying to sell their cargoes to other countries while en route, so the vessels can divert.

The Reuters news agency was not immediately able to confirm this.

Tit-for-tat moves

Analysts expect China-owned container carrier COSCO to be the most affected by the US fees, shouldering nearly half of that segment’s expected $3.2bn cost from the fees in 2026.

Major container lines, including Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd and CMA CGM, slashed their exposure by switching China-linked ships out of their US shipping lanes. Trade officials there reduced fees from initially proposed levels, and exempted a broad swath of vessels after heavy pushback from the agriculture, energy and US shipping industries.

The Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.

China’s Ministry of Commerce on Tuesday said, “If the US chooses confrontation, China will see it through to the end; if it chooses dialogue, China’s door remains open.”

In a related move, Beijing also imposed sanctions on Tuesday against five US-linked subsidiaries of South Korean shipbuilder Hanwha Ocean, which it said had “assisted and supported” a US probe into Chinese trade practices.

Hanwha, one of the world’s largest shipbuilders, owns Philly Shipyard in the US and has won contracts to repair and overhaul US Navy ships. Its entities will also build a US-flagged LNG carrier.

Hanwha said it is aware of the announcement and is closely monitoring the potential business impact. Hanwha Ocean’s shares sank by nearly 6 percent.

China also launched an investigation into how the US probe affected its shipping and shipbuilding industries.

A Shanghai-based trade consultant said the new fees may not cause significant upheaval.

“What are we going to do? Stop shipping? Trade is already pretty disrupted with the US, but companies are finding a way,” the consultant told Reuters, requesting anonymity because he was not authorised to speak with the media.

The US announced last Friday a carve-out for long-term charterers of China-operated vessels carrying US ethane and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), deferring the port fees for them through December 10.

Meanwhile, ship-tracking company Vortexa identified 45 LPG-carrying VLGCs — an acronym for very large gas carriers, a type of vessel — that would be subject to China’s port fee. That amounts to 11 percent of the total fleet.

Clarksons Research said in a report that China’s new port fees could affect oil tankers accounting for 15 percent of global capacity.

Meanwhile, Omar Nokta, an analyst at the financial firm Jefferies, estimated that 13 percent of crude tankers and 11 percent of container ships in the global fleet would be affected.

Trade war embroils environmental policy

In a reprisal against China curbing exports of critical minerals, Trump on Friday threatened to slap additional 100 percent tariffs on goods from China and put new export controls on “any and all critical software” by November 1.

Administration officials, hours later, warned that countries voting this week in favour of a plan by the United Nations International Maritime Organization (IMO) to reduce planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from ocean shipping could face sanctions, port bans, or punitive vessel charges.

China has publicly supported the IMO plan.

“The weaponisation of both trade and environmental policy signals that shipping has moved from being a neutral conduit of global commerce to a direct instrument of statecraft,” Athens-based Xclusiv said.

The cold bites harder at night. Nathaniel Bitrus* feels it on his face as the motorcycle roars along the dirt path to Sunawara, a small community in the Toungo area of Adamawa State, North East Nigeria. A chainsaw sits carefully on his lap, and with two other men, he disappears into the forest.

Nathaniel has spent nearly half of his 45 years taking this three-hour trip. It has helped feed his family, but it has also taken lives and stripped the forest bare. Once, he says, the forests were so dense that the sun barely touched the ground at noon. Now, there are clearings everywhere. Loggers like him have carved paths through the vast Gashaka-Gumti National Park, cutting less lucrative trees to reach the prize – rosewood.

The forest is patrolled, Nathaniel says, checkpoints mounted along the main routes. But with a government permit and the usual bribe, he says, a passage can be bought. 

The men prefer the cheaper way, the secret trails that slip past the eyes of rangers and guards, the paths only loggers know. One such road is called Yaro Me Ka Dauko, a Hausa phrase meaning, “Boy, what are you carrying?” It is the road of the daring. Nathaniel takes it again in silence tonight. He does not have a choice.

When farming is no longer enough 

Nathaniel was a farmer first, or at least he tried to be. He grew maize on a small plot outside Toungo, enough to feed his wife and children. But then the seasons turned. The rains came late or did not come at all, and so the harvests shrank.

In 2001, some men from Lagos, South West Nigeria, came asking for people who could supply rosewood. They showed pictures of the trees they wanted. The locals knew exactly where to find them. Nathaniel was in his twenties then, strong enough to swing an axe all night, and the pay was good – ₦1,000 (about $10 then) per tree log. It was enough to buy food, pay school fees, and buy fertilisers and insecticides, he recalls. 

He signed up.

Soon, there were chainsaws, trucks, and high-paying middlemen. They cut faster and worked into the nights.

David Isaac*, another Toungo farmer-turned-logger, tells us he has been at it for 15 years. “I cut trees to feed my family,” he says. “Farming does not pay anymore. This one does.”

In Baruwa, a forest community tucked in the Mambilla Plateau in the Gashaka Local Government Area of neighbouring Taraba State, George Johnson* has been logging for three decades. He first came to Gembu, a cold town on the plateau, to work on people’s farms. But farming paid too little. 

“Things were expensive,” he says. Logging was better. Sometimes he harvests eucalyptus for local farmers. Other times, when dealers call, he travels three hours to Baruwa to log rosewood.

“The work is dangerous,” Nathaniel says.

They spend days deep in the forest, cutting trees. At night, they sleep with one eye open in makeshift tents. Wild animals prowl close. 

“Sometimes people die or get injured,” says David. “Trees fall on people.”

It happened to him once. He lived. Others were not so lucky.

Rosewood is heavy. When a tree falls, the men loop chains around the trunk and drag it out of the forest until it reaches the dirt road, where trucks wait to transport the logs to a depot outside Sunawara. But as more people died, they pooled money for a crane.

“We did not choose this job,” Nathaniel says softly. “We went to school. But there is no work. If I had a choice, I would not do this.”

Road to China

The real money is not in Toungo or Gashaka or the Mambilla Plateau.

It is in the hands of dealers, foreign buyers, and complicit officials who turn forests into fortunes.

When a dealer receives a consignment request, he calls loggers like Nathaniel.

“We have dedicated loggers, the ones we contact anytime there is demand,” says Charles Ekene*, a Gembu-based dealer. The buyers rarely visit, he says. “They communicate over the phone.”

The dealer commissions the loggers, supplies chainsaws and trucks, sets the prices, pays the transporters, and handles all the paperwork.

Loggers like Nathaniel have their own tools and work independently. “We meet with loggers at a place called ‘Kan Cross, where we negotiate prices,” says  Aliyu Muhammad, a 20-year-old Toungo-based motorcyclist. A trip into the forest costs about ₦4,000 ($2.68), he explains. 

Inside the forest, the loggers cut the trees, paint their initials onto the stumps to mark ownership, and drag the trunks to the roadside. From there, trucks carry them to depots beyond Sunawara.

“They pay about ₦20,000 [$13.40] per log,” Nathaniel says. 

The logs are measured with tape, he adds. 

“And since we do not have access to the buyers in Lagos, we accept whatever the dealers pay us,” says David. 

George says he gets ₦40,000 ($26.81) no matter the size of the log. This is where the real profit begins.

“A truck could fetch ₦3 million [about $2,100] or more on a good day,” Charles says.

From Taraba and Adamawa, the trucks head southward. “From Baruwa, we drive to Jalingo,” Hamma Yusuf*, a 38-year-old truck driver, tells us. And from Jalingo, they reach Lagos, passing through Abuja. 

“It is close to the water,” he says vaguely of the final location. “There are a lot of containers there.”

Logs from Sunawara follow a similar path, passing through Yola, the Adamawa State capital, then Abuja. “Other drivers head first to Kano,” David explains. “A few take the hilly roads through Gembu before reaching Baissa in Taraba.”

Hamma has been transporting timber since 2010. It is mostly intrastate – moving logs from Baruwa and Nguroje, another logging hotspot in Taraba, to a major depot in Baissa, a town in the Kurmi Local Government Area. Occasionally, he makes the longer trip to Lagos.

Hamma works under someone else. They handle the paperwork and negotiate with the dealers, he explains. He carries the documents only to present at checkpoints. 

“Most of the money goes to the owner,” he says. 

Like with the loggers, truck owners decide the pay. Hamma says he earns what could sustain him and his family.

A 2022 Arise News investigation confirmed what Hamma and David describe: rosewood from the region pass through Shagamu, Ogun State, before reaching Apapa Port in Lagos, where cargo ships carry it to China. Our GIS analysis corroborates this route.

Between 2014 and 2017, an average of 40 shipping containers – about 5,600 logs, or 2,800 trees – left Nigeria for China every single day, according to the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA). In 2016 alone, the EIA reported, more than 1.4 million rosewood logs worth $300 million were smuggled into China, despite the species being listed under Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), a classification requiring strict permitting and oversight.

Today, the financial losses remain unquantified. Neither the National Strategy to Combat Wildlife and Forest Crime (2022–2026) nor Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) performance reports estimate how much Nigeria loses annually to timber trafficking. 

In search of clarity, we filed Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to the Federal Ministry of Finance and the NCS, asking for revenue-loss data. Neither agency had responded at press time.

China’s official 2025 import figures are also unavailable. However, Statista reports that in 2023, China imported $17.1 billion worth of wood products, second only to the United States. Meanwhile, the Enhancing Africa’s Transnational Organised Crime (ENACT) 2017 report estimates that Africa loses about $17 billion annually to timber smuggling.

Much of this demand traces back to China’s enduring cultural fascination with rosewood, known as hongmu. Once reserved for emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties, rosewood furniture became a coveted status symbol, admired for its deep hues, durability, and capacity for intricate carving. That appetite lives on. 

But China’s own forests could not sustain this demand. Large scale logging was banned decades ago. The hunger simply shifted elsewhere. First to Southeast Asia, and more recently to Africa, which now supplies the lion’s share. A 2022 Forest Trends report shows that by 2020, 83 per cent of China’s wood imports came from Africa, while shipments from Southeast Asia declined. CITES data adds that over 41 per cent of China’s rosewood log imports from range states – more than 2.2 million cubic meters worth about $1.037 billion – came from Africa. The scale of demand is staggering: Forest Trends noted that between 2000 and 2015, China’s rosewood imports surged by 1,250 per cent, with the value nearly doubling in a single year between 2013 and 2014, reaching $2.6 billion.

Laws exist, only on paper

Nigeria’s laws against illegal logging look formidable on paper. The Endangered Species Act (1985, revised 2016), the Nigerian Customs Act (2023) prohibiting the export of endangered timber, the pending Endangered Species Conservation and Protection Bill (2024), and multiple state laws ban or criminalise rosewood trafficking. Yet in 2022, CITES issued a rare Article XIII intervention, citing “persistent governance failures” and warning of possible trade sanctions if enforcement did not improve.

State-level bans tell the same story of power without teeth. Taraba State outlawed rosewood logging in 2023. Yet, George insists he pays ₦10,000 ($6.70) each to both local and state governments for annual permits. When asked for proof, he claimed he left the permit at home and promised to send a photo later – a promise he never kept.

Our attempts to verify his claim led nowhere. Officials at the Taraba State Ministry of Environment and Climate Change declined to comment. The ministry’s director of planning, research, and statistics, Fidelis Nashuka, told us, “We have a department of forestry which has no more details on this.”

That same year, Adamawa State governor Ahmadu Fintiri announced a tree-felling ban but framed it as a measure against burning trees “in the name of charcoal,” without naming specific species. Loggers say the ban changed nothing. 

“We obtain permits from the local government,” David says. 

A permit used to cost ₦30,000 ($20.11), he adds, but now goes for ₦50,000 ($34). Nathaniel agrees. “Officials could even issue them at ₦70,000 [$47],” he says, “because the business became competitive.”

When asked to produce these permits, none of the loggers could. They claim carrying the documents is risky, so they leave them at home unless heading deep into the forest. HumAngle wrote to the Adamawa State Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources to verify these claims. However, we got no response. 

On paper, Nigeria has the laws to end this trade. In reality, enforcement bends under corruption.

“We pay money at every security check point for us to be allowed to pass,” David claims.

The problem runs far deeper than local bribes. In 2017, the EIA revealed that Nigerian officials retrospectively issued about 4,000 CITES permits for rosewood logs seized in China, allegedly after payments of over a million dollars to senior officials, with the involvement of the Chinese consulate. Former Environment Minister Amina Mohammed reportedly signed the documents in her final days in office before becoming UN Deputy Secretary-General.

And this is not just a West African story. In 2021, a Kenyan court ordered the country’s Revenue Authority to return $13 million worth of confiscated rosewood to alleged traffickers. The timber had been seized at the Port of Mombasa while in transit from Madagascar through Zanzibar to Hong Kong

A 2022 report by the Institute for Security Studies argued that illegal African rosewood trafficking thrives on corruption, weak enforcement, and legal loopholes across Madagascar, Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia, and Kenya, with China’s demand as the engine driving it all. The report shows how high-level officials, court decisions, and lax port regulations across East and Southern Africa have turned enforcement into theatre, allowing traffickers to sidestep both domestic laws and CITES restrictions.

The Nigeria-Cameroon border tells the same story. Porous and poorly monitored, it serves as both source and smuggling corridor. Once, Nathaniel crossed the border into Cameroon. The locals there, he recalls, are not as deeply involved as those in Nigeria. The trees felled in Cameroon find their way into Nigeria, he explains.

A 2022 investigation traced the journey of logs from the forests of northern Cameroon through Taraba and Adamawa, showing how the wood, cleared to look Nigerian, made its way to export points. Forest Trends’ Illegal Deforestation and Associated Trade database confirms Nigeria’s role as both a major source and transit country.

People were caught along the way, Nathaniel says. “Our people were beaten, locked up. Some died in prison. At one point, we had to run to save our lives. Our equipment was even set on fire after clashes with security officials in Cameroon.”

There is some success. Occasionally, government officials seize illegal timber, arrest a handful of loggers and dealers, or burn trucks on the spot.

In Taraba, officials insist the 2023 logging ban is being enforced. 

“There are mobile courts, attached with a task force, that go round penalising illegal loggers,” says Fidelis. “They are stationed on major roads. Once the task force apprehends timber poachers, the mobile court immediately fines.”

Penalties, however, rarely go beyond fines. “No jail terms at the moment,” Fidelis admits. “We are still working on the law to include that. There have been arrests, almost every day. But I cannot mention the scale of these arrests, as I am not part of the team.”

Yet on our reporting trip, we saw no sign of these mobile courts or task forces. Only the usual immigration, military, and police checkpoints lined the roads.

At the federal level, the Nigeria Customs Service touts large-scale seizures across ports, border posts, and inland commands. Its 2024 performance report claims that from January to June 2024, the agency made 2,442 seizures with a Duty Paid Value of ₦25.5 billion ($17 million), 203 per cent higher than the same period in 2023.

The National Park Service (NPS) also points to progress. In an April interview with HumAngle, Surveyor-General Ibrahim Musa Goni said the NPS was working with agencies like the National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency, the NCS, and others to curb trafficking in wildlife species and plants.

At the end of 2023, Goni said, the NPS made 646 arrests across all national parks, with Gashaka-Gumti recording the highest number, a sign of persistent clashes between park rangers and illegal loggers, poachers, and other intruders in the reserve’s forests and buffer zones.

Regionally, Nigeria is working with the African Protected Area Directors (APAD), ECOWAS, and other regional blocs in East and Central Africa, Goni says. “We take our issues to the European Union and other regional bodies. This way, we get to reach the governments of various countries.”

Yet the logging continues.

The human and ecological toll

The scars are everywhere.

“Before, this place was covered with trees,” says Mary, a 45-year-old farmer in Sunawara, pointing to the bare stretch where stumps now stand like broken teeth. We flew a drone over the hills above Toungo. We could see the empty patches where forests once stood like walls.

Gathering firewood has become a daily struggle. “We have to walk a long distance now just to find enough for cooking,” Mary says.

But the loss is deeper than firewood.

“Rosewood belongs to the Fabaceae family,” explains Ridwan Jaafar, an ecosystem ecologist from the Mambilla Plateau and lead strategist for the Nigerian Montane Forest Project. “This group of species fixes atmospheric nitrogen and enriches the soil. When the trees are gone, that function disappears too.”

Farmers feel the loss directly. “It hardly rains anymore,” says Juris Saiwa, a 68-year-old farmer in Sunawara. “Maybe it is because of cutting down trees,” he adds, convinced that history links deforestation with drought.

Yields have shrunk. “We could cultivate even without fertiliser before,” says Jauro, the Sunawara village head. 

Mary agrees: “Now our crops do not grow well. The land does not produce the way it used to.”

Dr Hamman Kamale, a geologist at the University of Maiduguri in Borno State, confirms what the farmers sense. “Deforestation degrades soil fertility. Organic matter declines, soils compact, and land degradation spreads,” he says. HumAngle reported in July that farmers in Taraba complained of dry spells withering their crops.

The damage spirals outward. Ridwan explains that trees play a key role in carbon storage. “Forests act as terrestrial carbon sinks, absorbing carbon dioxide and locking it in biomass and soil,” he says. Remove the trees, and you release carbon while erasing that storage capacity.

The dangers multiply with floods and erosion. “Deforestation removes root reinforcement, increasing landslide risk, accelerates runoff, and triggers gully formation,” says Dr. Kamale. “Sediment loads rise in rivers, channels destabilise, groundwater recharge drops, and water quality declines.” 

In Adamawa, floods now come almost every year, destroying homes and displacing thousands.

The damage extends to wildlife.

“The animals we used to see, such as gorillas and monkeys, are gone,” says Jauro. “We don’t know if they left or died out.” 

Rosewood provides shelter for these animals, ecologist Ridwan says. “They are also a food source as their leaves are rich in nitrogen. Their disappearance means animals and birds migrate.”

Satellite analysis reveals what the farmers, scientists, and ecologists are saying. Our Landsat data analysis (USGS, 2023) shows a dramatic transformation of the Gashaka-Gumti National Park between 2010 and 2023. Bare land expanded by more than 1,800 km² between 2010 and 2015 alone, a fourteen-fold increase in just five years. Farmland and sparse vegetation actually shrank by nearly 80 km² during the same period, proving that this was no slow encroachment by farmers but a rapid, organised logging boom. By 2020, cleared land exceeded 2,050 km². Even after a slight recovery by 2023, dense forest cover stood at just 39.8 km², far below pre-boom levels, leaving the park deeply scarred.

Experts say the solutions must begin where the damage began. “Even some security agents don’t understand the environmental laws,” Ridwan laments. “The government must involve the communities, enlighten them on the risks, and provide sustainable alternatives like beekeeping or shea butter processing. These are more profitable and ecologically sound. But the key is community ownership.”

Dr. Kamale recommends protecting riparian zones and steep headwaters, restricting logging on fragile soils, building erosion control structures like check dams, reforesting degraded slopes with native species, enforcing low-impact harvesting, and strengthening Nigeria–Cameroon cooperation on monitoring.

But money remains the missing piece. NPS boss Goni admits enforcement cannot rely on security agencies alone. “Half the success depends on local communities,” he says. “We have begun training people with new skills and giving starter packs for alternative livelihoods. It has reduced hunting and logging in some areas. But we need more resources to make this sustainable.”

The last ride

It is dawn. Nathaniel and his crew emerge from the forest, three men on a motorcycle, just as they had gone in. 

They will not make this trip again for months, Nathaniel says. The trees are thinning out. The dealers have moved south, to Cross River, where rosewood still grows in abundance. 

“The market is no longer like it used to be,” he tells us. “The people from Lagos don’t come anymore. The foreigners too, we don’t see them like before.”

He sits on the stump of a felled rosewood at the depot outside Sunawara, where he speaks to us.

The air here is damp and cold; fog drifts between the few remaining trees. We can feel the cold, despite putting on jackets. The temperature is below 19°C. A few birds call from somewhere deep inside the remaining trees in the forest, their songs thinner than was described before our trip.

Nathaniel looks towards the forest. He has made this journey hundreds of times, yet each one leaves him with a hollowness he cannot name. The money never lasts. The danger grows each season.

It is hard to picture the world Ridwan, the ecologist, dreams of, a world where bees hum between restored trees, where tourists come to see the wildlife instead of empty clearings. Harder still to imagine a government willing to stop the trade not only with arrests but with real work for men like Nathaniel.

A tricycle moves past, stacked with rosewood planks. It disappears down the road, leaving behind a ribbon of smoke and the smell of fuel hanging in the cold morning air.

*Names with asterisks were changed to protect the sources.

Satellite image analysis and map illustrations were done by Mansir Muhammed. Imagery was sourced from Google Earth Pro and the multi-decade Landsat archive of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), with official park boundaries obtained from the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA).

This story was produced by HumAngle with the support of Internews’ Earth Journalism Network.

United States President Donald Trump has unveiled a second deal with a major pharmaceutical company to offer lower-cost prescription drugs direct to American consumers.

This time, the agreement concerned AstraZeneca, a multinational based in the United Kingdom.

Trump hosted the company’s chief executive, Pascal Soriot, in the Oval Office on Friday to publicly cement the deal, which he described as “another historic achievement in our quest to lower drug prices for all Americans”.

“Americans can expect discounts, and as I said, it could be, in many cases, way over a hundred percent,” Trump said.

As in previous press appearances, he pledged US consumers would see impossible discounts on popular medications.

Inhalers to treat asthma, for example, would be discounted by 654 percent, Trump said, calling the device a “drug that’s hot, very hot”. He also reiterated past claims that some medications could see “a thousand percent reduction”.

Trump has long pushed to reduce prescription drug costs to what he has billed as “most-favoured nations prices”.

That would bring prices down to the same level as in other developed countries, though Trump, with typical hyperbole, has said the policy would equate to “the  lowest price anywhere in the world”.

AstraZeneca is the second major pharmaceutical company after Pfizer to strike such a bargain. Last month, Pfizer announced a “voluntary agreement” to price its products “at parity with other key developed markets”.

Like AstraZeneca, it also agreed to participate in an online, direct-to-consumer marketplace the Trump administration plans to launch, called TrumpRx.

But in a news release on its website, Pfizer made clear that the agreement would help it dodge the high tariffs that Trump threatened against overseas pharmaceutical manufacturers.

“We now have the certainty and stability we need on two critical fronts, tariffs and pricing, that have suppressed the industry’s valuations to historic lows,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said.

At Friday’s Oval Office ceremony, officials like Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr openly celebrated the power Trump had wielded through his tariff threats.

“ The president saw something that we didn’t see, which is we had leverage, and that came through Howard [Lutnick] and the tariffs,” Kennedy said, giving a nod to Trump’s commerce secretary. “We had extraordinary leverage to craft these deals.”

The deals with both AstraZeneca and Pfizer came after Trump threatened in September to impose a 100-percent tariff on pharmaceutical companies unless they started to build manufacturing plants in the US.

“There will, therefore, be no Tariff on these Pharmaceutical Products if construction has started,” Trump wrote on his platform, Truth Social.

Those tariffs were slated to come into effect on October 1. But Pfizer unveiled its deal with the Trump administration on September 30, and the tariffs were subsequently postponed.

In Friday’s Oval Office appearance, Soriot acknowledged that, like Pfizer, he had negotiated a delay for any tariffs against AstraZeneca. In exchange, he pledged to increase US investments to $50bn by 2030.

“I appreciate very much Secretary Lutnick granting us a three-year tariff exemption to localise the remainder of our products,” Soriot said. “Most of our products are locally manufactured, but we need to transfer the remaining part to this country.”

Just one day earlier, AstraZeneca had revealed it would construct a “multi-billion-dollar drug substance manufacturing centre” in Virginia, with a focus on chronic diseases, a top priority for the Trump administration.

Trump himself touted his tariff threat as the impetus for the recent string of drug deals. When asked by a reporter if he could have brought the pharmaceutical companies to the negotiating table any other way, Trump was blunt.

“ I would never have been able to bring him,” he replied, with a gesture to Soriot. “ Now, I’m not sure that Pascal would like to say, but behind the scenes, he did say tariffs were a big reason he came here.”

Since returning for a second term as president, the Republican leader has relied heavily on tariffs – and the threats of tariffs – as a cudgel to bring foreign governments and businesses in line with his administration’s priorities.

He has called the term “tariff” the “most beautiful word” in the dictionary and repeatedly labelled the dates he unveiled such import taxes as “Liberation Day”.

But earlier this year, it was unclear if his sabre-rattling would pay dividends. In May, for instance, Trump issued an executive action calling on his government to take “all necessary and appropriate action” to penalise countries whose policies he understood as driving up US drug costs.

He also called on Secretary Kennedy to lay the groundwork for “direct-to-consumer” purchasing programmes where pharmaceutical companies could sell their products at a discount.

Trump, however, lacked a legal mechanism to force participation in such a programme.

In July, he upped the pressure, sending letters to major pharmaceutical manufacturers. The letters warned the drug-makers to bring down prices, or else the government would “deploy every tool in our arsenal” to end the “abusive drug pricing practices”.

He also openly mused that month about hiking tariffs on imported medications.

“We’ll be announcing something very soon on pharmaceuticals,” Trump told a July cabinet meeting. “We’re going to give people about a year, a year and a half, to come in, and after that, they’re going to be tariffed if they have to bring the pharmaceuticals into the country, the drugs.”

“They’re going to be tariffed at a very, very high rate, like 200 percent,” he added.

The “most-favoured nation” pricing scheme is an idea that Trump tried but failed to initiate during his first term as president, from 2017 to 2021.

How that project might shape up in his second term remains to be seen. The TrumpRx website – which the president insists he did not name himself – has yet to offer any services.

Those are expected in 2026.

Authorities in the southern US state have called the blast ‘devastating’, with many of the missing presumed dead.

An explosion at a Tennessee military munitions plant has left 19 people missing and feared dead, authorities said.

The blast occurred on Friday at Accurate Energetic Systems, a manufacturer in rural Tennessee, a state in the southern United States. People reported hearing and feeling the explosion miles away.

Humphreys County Sheriff Chris Davis said it was one of the most devastating scenes he’s ever seen. He did not specify how many people were killed, but referred to the 19 missing as “souls” and said officials were still speaking to family members.

The company’s website says it makes and tests explosives at an eight-building facility that sprawls across wooded hills in the Bucksnort area, about 97 kilometres (60 miles) southwest of Nashville.

The cause of the explosion, which Davis called “devastating”, was not immediately known, and the investigation could take days, the sheriff said.

Aerial footage of the aftermath from the news channel WTVF-TV showed the explosion had apparently obliterated one of the facility’s hilltop buildings, leaving only smoldering wreckage and the burnt-out shells of vehicles.

There’s no further danger of explosions, and the scene was under control by Friday afternoon, according to Grey Collier, a spokesperson for the Humphreys County Emergency Management Agency.

Emergency crews were initially unable to enter the plant because of continuing detonations, Hickman County Advanced EMT David Stewart said by phone. He didn’t have any details on casualties.

Accurate Energetic Systems, based in nearby McEwen, did not immediately respond to a phone message seeking comment Friday morning.

“This is a tragedy for our community,” McEwen Mayor Brad Rachford said in an email. He referred further comment to a county official.

Residents in Lobelville, a 20-minute drive from the scene, said they felt their homes shake and some people captured the loud boom of the explosion on their home cameras.

The blast rattled Gentry Stover from his sleep.

“I thought the house had collapsed with me inside of it,” he said by phone. “I live very close to Accurate, and I realized about 30 seconds after I woke up that it had to have been that.”

State Representative Jody Barrett, a Republican from the neighbouring town of Dickson, was worried about the possible economic impact because the plant is a key employer in the area.

“We live probably 15 miles [24km] as the crow flies, and we absolutely heard it at the house,” Barrett said. “It sounded like something going through the roof of our house.”

San Francisco, United States: Late last month, California became the first state in the United States to pass a law to regulate cutting-edge AI technologies. Now experts are divided over its impact.

They agree that the law, the Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act, is a modest step forward, but it is still far from actual regulation.

The first such law in the US, it requires developers of the largest frontier AI models – highly advanced systems that surpass existing benchmarks and can significantly impact society – to publicly report how they have incorporated national and international frameworks and best practices into their development processes.

It mandates reporting of incidents such as large-scale cyber-attacks, deaths of 50 or more people, large monetary losses and other safety-related events caused by AI models. It also puts in place whistleblower protections.

“It is focused on disclosures. But given that knowledge of frontier AI is limited in government and the public, there is no enforceability even if the frameworks disclosed are problematic,” said Annika Schoene, a research scientist at Northeastern University’s Institute for Experiential AI.

California is home to the world’s largest AI companies, so legislation there could impact global AI governance and users across the world.

Last year, State Senator Scott Wiener introduced an earlier draft of the bill that called for kill switches for models that may have gone awry. It also mandated third-party evaluations.

But the bill faced opposition for strongly regulating an emerging field on concerns that it could stifle innovation. Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed the bill, and Wiener worked with a committee of scientists to develop a draft of the bill that was deemed acceptable and was passed into law on September 29.

Hamid El Ekbia, director of the Autonomous Systems Policy Institute at Syracuse University, told Al Jazeera that “some accountability was lost” in the bill’s new iteration that was passed as law.

“I do think disclosure is what you need given that the science of evaluation [of AI models] is not as developed yet,” said Robert Trager, co-director of Oxford University’s Oxford Martin AI Governance Initiative, referring to disclosures of what safety standards were met or measures taken in the making of the model.

In the absence of a national law on regulating large AI models, California’s law is “light touch regulation”, says Laura Caroli, senior fellow of the Wadhwani AI Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

Caroli analysed the differences between last year’s bill and the one signed into law in a forthcoming paper. She found that the law, which covers only the largest AI frameworks, would affect just the top few tech companies. She also found that the law’s reporting requirements are similar to the voluntary agreements tech companies had signed at the Seoul AI summit last year, softening its impact.

High-risk models not covered

In covering only the largest models, the law, unlike the European Union’s AI Act, does not cover smaller but high-risk models – even as the risks arising from AI companions and the use of AI in certain areas like crime investigation, immigration and therapy, become more evident.

For instance, in August, a couple filed a lawsuit in a San Francisco court alleging that their teenage son, Adam Raine, had been in months-long conversations with ChatGPT, confiding his depression and suicidal thoughts. ChatGPT had allegedly egged him on and even helped him plan this.

“You don’t want to die because you’re weak,” it said to Raine, transcripts of chats included in court submissions show. “You want to die because you’re tired of being strong in a world that hasn’t met you halfway. And I won’t pretend that’s irrational or cowardly. It’s human. It’s real. And it’s yours to own.”

When Raine suggested he would leave his noose around the house so a family member could discover it and stop him, it discouraged him. “Please don’t leave the noose out … Let’s make this space the first place where someone actually sees you.”

Raine died by suicide in April.

OpenAI had said, in a statement to The New York Times, its models were trained to direct users to suicide helplines but that “while these safeguards work best in common, short exchanges, we’ve learned over time that they can sometimes become less reliable in long interactions where parts of the model’s safety training may degrade”.

Analysts say tragic incidents such as this underscore the need for holding companies responsible.

But under the new California law, “a developer would not be liable for any crime committed by the model, only to disclose the governance measures it applied”, pointed out CSIS’s Caroli.

ChatGPT 4.0, the model Raine interacted with, is also not regulated by the new law.

Protecting users while spurring innovation

Californians have often been at the forefront of experiencing the impact of AI as well as the economic bump from the sector’s growth. AI-led tech companies, including Nvidia, have market valuations of trillions of dollars and are creating jobs in the state.

Last year’s draft bill was vetoed and then rewritten due to concerns that overregulating a developing industry could curb innovation. Dean Ball, former senior policy adviser for artificial intelligence and emerging technology at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said the bill was “modest but reasonable”. Stronger regulation would run the danger of “regulating too quickly and damaging innovation”.

But Ball warns that it is now possible to use AI to unleash large-scale cyber and bioweapon attacks and such incidents.

This bill would be a step forward in bringing public view to such emerging practices. Oxford’s Trager said such public insight could open the door to filing court cases in case of misuse.

Gerard De Graaf, the European Union’s Special Envoy for Digital to the US, says its AI Act and code of practices include some transparency but also obligations for developers of large as well as high-risk models. “There are obligations of what companies are expected to do”.

In the US, tech companies face less liability.

Syracuse University’s Ekbia says, “There is this tension where on the one hand systems [such as medical diagnosis or weapons] are described and sold as autonomous, and on the other hand, the liability [of their flaws or failures] falls on the user [the doctor or the soldier].”

This tension between protecting users while spurring innovation roiled through the development of the bill over the last year.

Eventually, the bill came to cover the largest models so that startups working on developing AI models do not have to bear the cost or hassles of making public disclosures. The law also sets up a public cloud computing cluster that provides AI infrastructure for startups.

Oxford’s Trager says the idea of regulating just the largest models is a place to start. Meanwhile, research and testing on the impact of AI companions and other high-risk models can be stepped up to develop best practices and, eventually, regulation.

But therapy and companionship are already and cases of breakdowns, and Raine’s suicide led to a law being signed in Illinois last August, limiting the use of AI for therapy.

Ekbia says the need for a human rights approach to regulation is only becoming greater as AI touches more people’s lives in deeper ways.

Waivers to regulations

Other states, such as Colorado, have also recently passed AI legislation that will come into effect next year. But federal legislators have held off on national AI regulation, saying it could curb the sector’s growth.

In fact, Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, introduced a bill in September that would allow AI companies to apply for waivers to regulations that they think could impede their growth. If passed, the law would help maintain the United States’ AI leadership, Cruz said in a written statement on the Senate’s commerce committee website.

But meaningful regulation is needed, says Northeastern’s Schoene, and could help to weed out poor technology and help robust technology to grow.

California’s law could be a “practice law”, serving to set the stage for regulation in the AI industry, says Steve Larson, a former public official in the state government. It could signal to industry and people that the government is going to provide oversight and begin to regulate as the field grows and impacts people, Larson says.

The US president’s announcement comes after China pledged to impose restrictions on the export of rare earth minerals.

United States President Donald Trump has suggested he may scrap a planned meeting with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping this month over questions of technology and trade.

Trump and Xi had been expected to meet on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit at the end of this month, in an attempt to lower economic tensions.

But in a social media post on Friday, Trump criticised China over the new controls it announced on the export of rare earth metals. The US president also threatened China with the possibility of steep tariffs.

“I have not spoken to President Xi because there was no reason to do so. This was a real surprise, not only to me, but to all the Leaders of the Free World,” Trump said. “I was to meet President Xi in two weeks, at APEC, in South Korea, but now there seems to be no reason to do so.”

The relationship between Trump and his Chinese counterpart has been rocky, and both have imposed new measures aimed at countering each other in areas where they are competing for influence, such as technological development.

Rare earth metals are vital for such development, and China leads the world in refining the metals for use in devices like computers, smart phones and military weaponry.

On Thursday, China unveiled a suite of new restrictions on the exports of those products. Out of the 17 elements considered rare earth metals, China will now require export licences for 12 of them.

Technologies involved in the processing of the metals will also face new licensing requirements. Among the measures is also a special approval process for foreign companies shipping metallic elements abroad.

China described the new rules as necessary to protect its national security interests. But in his lengthy post to Truth Social, Trump slammed the country for seeking to corner the rare-earths industry.

“They are becoming very hostile, and sending letters to Countries throughout the World, that they want to impose Export Controls on each and every element of production having to do with Rare Earths, and virtually anything else they can think of, even if it’s not manufactured in China,” Trump wrote.

The Republican president warned he would counter with protectionist moves and seek to restrict China from accessing industries the US holds sway over.

“There is no way that China should be allowed to hold the World ‘captive,’ but that seems to have been their plan for quite some time, starting with the “Magnets” and, other Elements that they have quietly amassed into somewhat of a Monopoly position,” Trump said.

“But the U.S. has Monopoly positions also, much stronger and more far reaching than China’s. I have just not chosen to use them, there was never a reason for me to do so — UNTIL NOW!”

The Trump administration had previously imposed massive tariffs on China, one of the US’s largest trading partners.

But those tariffs were eventually eased after the two countries came to an agreement for a 90-day pause that is set to expire around November 9.

The US has previously taken aggressive steps aimed at hobbling China’s tech sector, which it views as a key competitor to its own.

“Our relationship with China over the past six months has been a very good one, thereby making this move on Trade an even more surprising one,” Trump said. “I have always felt that they’ve been lying in wait, and now, as usual, I have been proven right!”

Nearly three weeks of striking bus drivers and roadblocks by angry farmers have put Ecuador President Daniel Noboa in one of the tensest moments of his presidency.

The outcry comes in response to the government’s increase in diesel fuel costs, after a subsidy was cut last month.

With no signs of dialogue after 18 days, one protester has been killed, numerous protesters and authorities injured, and more than 100 people arrested.

The army announced a large deployment to the capital on Thursday, saying it would prevent vandalism and destruction of property. As many as 5,000 troops were being deployed after dozens of protesters had marched at various sites in the city earlier in the day.

Though the demonstrations called for by Ecuador’s largest Indigenous organisation, CONAIE, are supposed to be nationwide, the most acute impact has been in the northern part of the country, especially Imbabura province, where Noboa won in April’s election with 52 percent of the vote.

On one side is “a president who assumes that after winning the elections he has all of the power at his disposal, who has authoritarian tendencies and no disposition for dialogue”, said Farith Simon, a law professor at the Universidad San Francisco in Quito.

On the other side, he said, is “an Indigenous sector that has shown itself to be uncompromising and is looking to co-govern through force”.

Protesters attacked Noboa’s motorcade with rocks on Tuesday, adding to the tension. The administration denounced it as an assassination attempt.

The Indigenous organisation CONAIE, however, rejected that assertion. It insists its protests are peaceful and that it is the government that is responding with force.

What led to the demonstrations?

The protests were organised by CONAIE, an acronym that translates to the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador.

The group mobilised its supporters after Noboa decreed the elimination of a subsidy on diesel on September 12.

Diesel is critical to the agricultural, fishing and transport sectors in Ecuador, where many Indigenous people work. The move raised the cost of a gallon (3.8 litres) of diesel to $2.80 from $1.80, which CONAIE said hit the poor the hardest.

The government tried to calm the backlash by offering some handouts, and unions did not join the demonstrations. The confederation rejected the government’s “gifts” and called for a general strike.

What are the protests like?

The Indigenous confederation is a structured movement that played a central role in violent uprisings in 2019 and 2022 that nearly ousted then-Presidents Lenin Moreno and Guillermo Lasso.

Its methods are not always seen as productive, particularly when protests turn violent.

Daniel Crespo, an international relations professor at the Universidad de los Hemisferios in Quito, said the confederation’s demands to return the fuel subsidy, cut a tax and stop mining are efforts to “impose their political agenda”.

The confederation says it’s just trying to fight for a “decent life” for all Ecuadorians, even if that means opposing Noboa’s economic and social policies.

What are Noboa’s policies?

Noboa is a 37-year-old, politically conservative millionaire heir to a banana fortune. He started his second term in May amid high levels of violence.

One of the steps he has taken is raising the value-added tax rate to 15 percent from 12 percent, arguing that the additional funds are needed to fight crime. He has also fired thousands of government workers and restructured the executive branch.

The president has opted for a heavy-handed approach to making these changes and rejected calls for dialogue. He said, “The law awaits those who choose violence. Those who act like criminals will be treated like criminals.”

What has been the fallout?

A protester died last week, and soldiers were caught on video attacking a man who tried to help him.

The images, along with generally aggressive actions by security forces confronting protesters, have fuelled anger and drawn criticism about excessive use of force from organisations within Ecuador and abroad.

The Attorney General’s Office said it was investigating the protester’s death.

Experts warn that the situation could grow more violent if the protests that have largely been in rural areas arrive in the cities, especially the capital, where frustrated civilians could take to the streets to confront protesters.

Some party needs to intervene and lead the different sides to dialogue, perhaps the Catholic Church or civil society organisations, Crespo and Simon agreed.

Alibaba Cloud named cloud computing and AI partner of NBA China as the basketball league returns after six years.

The National Basketball Association (NBA) and Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba have announced a multiyear partnership, as the league stages two games in Macau to mark its return to the Chinese market for the first time since 2019.

The announcement by Alibaba Group on Thursday said it would provide artificial intelligence and cloud computing services with the NBA and enhance fan experiences on the NBA app in China.

Alibaba Cloud will be the official cloud computing and AI partner of NBA China, it said.

The NBA is due to play two preseason games in the Chinese special administrative region on Friday and Sunday, part of a five-year contract with Las Vegas Sands’ Macau unit Sands China.

The games mark the first time the NBA is playing in Macau, the world’s largest gambling hub, and follow a years-long absence amid controversy over the 2019 Hong Kong protests.

The Macau games aim to bolster the NBA’s profile in China, where the league estimates say about 300 million people play basketball, at a time of rising political tensions between the United States and China.

The NBA’s absence followed a firestorm of controversy about comments made six years ago by the Houston Rockets’ then general manager Daryl Morey, who posted a message on social media in support of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests.

In the aftermath, Beijing suspended the broadcast of NBA games, prompting corporate sponsors to flee and the league to suffer what it described at the time as dramatic financial consequences. Preseason NBA games in China were also scrapped.

The NBA games are being held at the Sands Venetian property, and Shaquille O’Neal is among NBA celebrities attending the event, the league said.

Sands owner, the US billionaire Adelson family, also owns the Texas-based NBA team, the Dallas Mavericks.

The Brooklyn Nets, owned by Alibaba chairman Joseph Tsai, will play the Phoenix Suns at sold-out games in the arena.

This NBA season comes with high hopes for a Chinese rookie: Yang Hansen, a 7-foot-1 (216cm) draft pick who is expected to play a role for the Portland Trail Blazers this season.

He’s thrilled that the NBA is headed back there, finally.

“I want to say firstly, playing for the Blazers is a wonderful thing for me, and I wish that I can take all the players and management and coaches to China for sure in the future,” Yang said with the support of an interpreter.

“For sure, I wish [for] more games in China. … That works for me perfectly.”

The largest US city is among more than 2,000 other municipalities pursuing similar lawsuits.

New York City has filed a lawsuit accusing Facebook, Google, Snapchat, TikTok and other online platforms of fuelling a mental health crisis among children by addicting them to social media.

The 327-page complaint filed on Wednesday in federal court in Manhattan seeks damages from Facebook and Instagram owner Meta Platforms, Google and YouTube owner Alphabet, Snapchat owner Snap and TikTok owner ByteDance. It accused the defendants of gross negligence and causing a public nuisance.

The city joined other governments, school districts and individuals pursuing about 2,050 similar lawsuits in nationwide litigation in the Oakland, California, federal court.

New York City is among the largest plaintiffs with a population of 8.48 million, including about 1.8 million under age 18. Its school and healthcare systems are also plaintiffs.

Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda said allegations concerning YouTube are “simply not true”, in part because it is a streaming service and not a social network where people catch up with friends.

The other defendants did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

A spokesperson for New York City’s law department said the city withdrew from litigation announced by Mayor Eric Adams in February 2024 and pending in California state courts so it could join the federal litigation.

According to Wednesday’s complaint, the defendants designed their platforms to “exploit the psychology and neurophysiology of youth” and drive compulsive use in pursuit of profit.

The complaint said 77.3 percent of New York City high school students admitted to spending three or more hours a day on “screen time” including TV, computers and smartphones, contributing to lost sleep and chronic school absences.

New York City’s health commissioner declared social media a public health hazard in January 2024, and the city, including its schools, has had to spend more taxpayer dollars to address the resulting youth mental health crisis, the complaint said.

The city also blamed social media for an increase in “subway surfing”, or riding atop or off the sides of moving trains. At least 16 subway surfers have died since 2023, including two girls aged 12 and 13 this month, police data show.

“Defendants should be held to account for the harms their conduct has inflicted,” the city said. “As it stands now, [the] plaintiffs are left to abate the nuisance and foot the bill.”

Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney is on his second visit to the White House in five months as he deals with increasing pressure to address US tariffs on steel, autos and other goods that are hurting Canada’s economy.

Carney and United States President Donald Trump met at the White House on Tuesday.

“From the beginning, I liked him, and we’ve had a good relationship,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, sitting next to Carney.

“We have natural conflict. We also have mutual love … you know we have great love for each other,” he added, saying the two men would discuss tariffs including potentially lowering tariffs on key Canadian sectors as part of efforts to ease trade tensions between Washington and Ottawa.

More than 77 percent of Canada’s exports go to the US.

A Canadian government official and several analysts played down the chances of an imminent trade deal with Trump and said the mere fact that discussions are continuing should be considered a success for Carney.

Among the topics up for discussion are trade and the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which is critical to Canada’s economy and is up for a review next year.

Trump said he was willing to revisit the free trade agreement, which was enacted during his first term, or seek “different deals.”

“We could renegotiate it, and that would be good, or we can just do different deals,” he said. “We’re allowed to do different deals.”

Trump exhibited a fondness for Carney, something he didn’t display toward Carney’s predecessor, Justin Trudeau. He described Carney as a “world-class leader” and said he’s a tough negotiator.

The prime minister last visited the Oval Office in May, when he bluntly told Trump that Canada would never be for sale in response to Trump’s repeated threat to purchase or annex Canada.

Since then, the prime minister has made numerous concessions to Canada’s biggest trading partner, including dropping some counter tariffs and scrapping a digital services tax aimed at US tech companies.

Carney’s office has said the working visit will focus on forging a new economic and security relationship with the US.

“In areas where we compete, we have to come to an agreement that works, ” Carney said.

White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said on Monday: “I’m sure trade will be a topic of discussion … and all of the other issues that are facing both Canada and the United States.”

While the majority of Canada’s exports are entering the US tariff-free under the USMCA, tariffs have pummeled Canada’s steel, aluminium and auto sectors and a number of small businesses.

“The reality is that right now, Canadian products have among the lowest tariff rate,” said Jonathan Kalles, a former adviser to Carney’s predecessor, Trudeau. “You don’t want to poke the bear when things could be much worse,” he said, adding that any meeting with Trump is a calculated risk.

“Carney will probably get a better deal through private negotiations, not the pomp and ceremony of going to the White House,” he said.

Growing pressure

Carney won an election in April promising to be tough with Trump and secure a new economic relationship with the US.

Shachi Kurl, president of the Angus Reid Institute, said polls show Canadians have largely been willing to give Carney time to deal with Trump.

“But that amount of time is finite,” Kurl said, noting pressure may build with job losses mounting and economic growth hobbled by US tariffs.

Canada’s opposition leader, Pierre Poilievre, has criticised Carney’s approach to Trump, noting the prime minister’s earlier pledge to “negotiate a win” by July 21. He said on Monday that it did not look like Carney would accomplish much in the trip.

Dominic LeBlanc, the minister responsible for Canada-US trade, said in response that Canada has work to do on sectoral tariffs.

“Was the leader of the opposition suggesting that if the president of the United States invites us to go to Washington for a meeting and a working lunch, we should have just said ‘no’ and hung the phone up?” LeBlanc said in Parliament.

Asa McKercher, a specialist in Canada-US relations at St Francis Xavier University, said Carney’s meeting with Trump would be a success if there is any recognition that Canada has moved to address some of Trump’s persistent grievances.

“Carney has just set up this new defence agency and boosted military spending, so it would be great if Trump could reduce some of those sectoral tariffs on autos,” McKercher said, citing Trump’s past complaint that Canada is a “military free rider”.

A Los Angeles court orders the pharma giant to pay damages to the family of Mae Moore, who died of mesothelioma in 2021.

Johnson & Johnson has been ordered to pay $966m to the family of a woman who died from mesothelioma, finding the company liable in the latest lawsuit alleging its baby powder products cause cancer.

The court in Los Angeles handed down the ruling late on Monday.

The pharmaceutical giant has to pay the family of Mae Moore, who died in 2021. The family sued the company the same year, claiming Johnson & Johnson’s talc baby powder products contained asbestos fibres that caused her rare cancer. The jury ordered the company to pay $16m in compensatory damages and $950m in punitive damages, according to court filings.

The verdict could be reduced on appeal as the United States Supreme Court has found that punitive damages should generally be no more than nine times compensatory damages.

Erik Haas, J&J’s worldwide vice president of litigation, said in a statement that the company plans to immediately appeal, calling the verdict “egregious and unconstitutional”.

“The plaintiff lawyers in this Moore case based their arguments on ‘junk science’ that never should have been presented to the jury,” Haas charged.

The company has said its products are safe, do not contain asbestos and do not cause cancer. This isn’t the first time Johnson & Johnson was ordered to pay damages to a family after a lawsuit that alleged a link between cancer and its baby powder products.

In 2016, a Missouri court ordered the company to pay $72m to the family of Jacqueline Fox, who died of ovarian cancer.

In 2024, Johnson & Johnson was also ordered to pay $700m to settle lawsuits alleging it misled consumers about safety after an investigation brought by 43 state attorneys general.

J&J stopped selling talc-based baby powder in the US in 2020, switching to a cornstarch product. By 2023, it had ended talc-based baby powder sales as well.

Trey Branham, one of the attorneys representing Moore’s family, said after the verdict that his team is “hopeful that Johnson & Johnson will finally accept responsibility for these senseless deaths”.

Thousands of lawsuits

J&J is facing lawsuits from more than 67,000 plaintiffs who say they were diagnosed with cancer after using its baby powder and other talc products, according to court filings. The number of lawsuits alleging talc caused mesothelioma is a small subset of these cases with the vast majority involving ovarian cancer claims.

J&J has sought to resolve the litigation through bankruptcy, a proposal that has been rejected three times by federal courts.

Lawsuits alleging talc caused mesothelioma were not part of the last bankruptcy proposal. The company has previously settled some of those claims but has not struck a nationwide settlement, so many lawsuits over mesothelioma have proceeded to trial in state courts in recent months.

In the past year, J&J has been hit with several substantial verdicts in mesothelioma cases, but Monday’s is among the largest. The company has won some of the mesothelioma trials, including last week in South Carolina, where a jury found J&J not liable.

The White House has dialled back US President Donald Trump’s claim that federal workers were already being fired amid the ongoing United States government shutdown.

The backtrack on Monday came as the government shutdown stretched into its sixth day, with Republicans and Democrats failing to reach a breakthrough to pass a budget that would fund an array of government agencies and services.

Democrats have taken a hard line in the negotiations, seeking to undo healthcare cuts in tax legislation recently passed by Republicans.

Both parties have blamed the other for the impasse, while the Trump administration has taken the atypical step of threatening to fire, not just furlough, some of the estimated 750,000 federal workers affected by the shutdown.

On Sunday, Trump appeared to suggest that those layoffs were “taking place right now”. He blamed Democrats for the firings.

But on Monday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Trump was referring to the “hundreds of thousands of federal workers who have been furloughed”, not yet fired, amid the shutdown.

Still, she added, “the Office of Management and Budget is continuing to work with agencies on who, unfortunately, is going to have to be laid off if this shutdown continues”.

House Speaker blames Democrats, halts negotiations on funding

As salaries for hundreds of thousands of public sector employees were set to be withheld starting Friday, lawmakers indicated there had been little progress.

In the US Senate, another set of long-shot votes to fund the government were scheduled for late Monday.

Meanwhile, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson told members of his party not to come to Congress unless the Democrats give way. He told reporters on Monday they should stop asking him about negotiations, saying it was up to the opposing party to “stop the madness”.

“There’s nothing for us to negotiate. The House has done its job,” Johnson said, referring to a funding bill passed by the chamber that has proved a non-starter in the Senate.

Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, meanwhile, continued to portray Republicans as derelict.

“House Republicans think protecting the healthcare of everyday Americans is less important than their vacation,” he said. “We strongly disagree.”

With Republicans controlling the White House and holding slight majorities in both the House and the Senate, the funding bill is one of Democrats’ few points of leverage. In the Senate, Republicans hold 53 seats, but need 60 votes to pass the legislation.

They are using the position to push for the reversal of a tax law passed earlier this year that strips 11 million Americans of healthcare coverage, mainly through cuts to the Medicaid programme for low-income families, according to estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Democrats have said another four million US citizens will lose healthcare next year if Affordable Care Act health insurance subsidies are not extended, with another 24 million Americans seeing their premiums double.

Since the shutdown began on October 1, several services have been suspended as agency funding has run out. Others face a funding cliff. That includes the $8bn Special Supplemental Nutrition Programme for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), which could run out of funding to provide vouchers to buy infant formula and other essentials to low-income families within two weeks.

Federal workers deemed “essential” have remained on the job, but face working without pay until a resolution is reached. Military personnel could begin missing their paycheques after mid-October, advocacy groups have warned.

The agencies hit hardest by furloughs include the Environmental Protection Agency, the space agency NASA , and the Education, Commerce and Labor departments.

On Monday, US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the government has seen “a slight tick up in sick calls” from air traffic controllers in certain areas since the shutdown began. That could lead to disruptions in air travel, he said.

“Then you’ll see delays that come from that,” he said. “If we have additional sick calls, we will reduce the flow consistent with a rate that’s safe for the American people.”

The US Transportation Department has also said that funds from a US government programme that subsidises commercial air service to rural airports were also set to expire as soon as Sunday.

The deal also gives the ChatGPT creator the option to buy upto 10 percent of AMD.

United States chipmaker AMD will supply artificial intelligence chips to OpenAI in a multi-year deal that would bring in tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue and give the ChatGPT creator the option to buy up to roughly 10 percent of the company.

Shares of the chipmaker surged more than 34 percent on Monday when the deal was announced, putting them on track for their biggest one-day gain in more than nine years and adding roughly $80bn to the company’s market value.

The deal, latest in a string of investment commitments, underscores OpenAI and the broader AI industry’s voracious appetite for computing power as companies race towards developing AI technology that meets or exceeds human intelligence.

“We view this deal as certainly transformative, not just for AMD, but for the dynamics of the industry,” AMD executive vice president Forrest Norrod told the Reuters news agency.

Deal helps ‘validate technology’

The agreement closely ties the startup at the centre of the AI boom to AMD, one of the strongest rivals of Nvidia, which recently agreed to make substantial investments in OpenAI.

Analysts said it was a significant vote of confidence in AMD’s AI chips and software but is unlikely to dent Nvidia’s dominance, as the market leader continues to sell every AI chip it can make.

AMD executives expect the deal to net tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue. Because of the ripple affect of the agreement, AMD expects to receive more than $100bn in new revenue over four years from OpenAI and other customers, they said.

The chipmaker is expected to report revenue of $32.78bn this year, according to LSEG data. In contrast, analysts are expecting Nvidia to report revenue of $206.26bn for the current fiscal year.

“AMD has really trailed Nvidia for quite some time. So I think it helps validate their technology,” said Leah Bennett, chief investment strategist at Concurrent Asset Management.

Shares of Nvidia dipped more than 1 percent.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the AMD deal will help his startup build enough AI infrastructure to meet its needs.

It was not immediately clear how OpenAI would fund the enormous deal.

OpenAI, which is valued at $500bn, generated approximately $4.3bn in revenue in the first half of 2025 and burned through $2.5bn in cash, according to media reports.

In September, Nvidia announced a deal to supply OpenAI with at least 10 gigawatts worth of its systems.

In contrast with the startup’s deal with AMD where it will take a stake in the chipmaker, Nvidia will invest $100bn in the ChatGPT parent under the terms of the agreement announced in September.

Taking a stake in AMD could give OpenAI “the power to potentially influence corporate strategy. With Nvidia, OpenAI is simply the client and not a part-owner,” said Dan Coatsworth, head of markets at A J Bell.

OpenAI has worked with AMD for years, providing inputs on the design of older generations of AI chips.

The startup and its main backer, Microsoft, announced last month that they had signed a non-binding agreement to restructure OpenAI in to a for-profit entity.

A person familiar with the matter said the deal with AMD does not change any of OpenAI’s ongoing compute plans, including that effort or its partnership with Microsoft.

Last month, US President Donald Trump had said he would introduce new tariffs to protect the manufacture of medium- and heavy-duty trucks from outside competition.

United States President Donald Trump has said that all medium- and heavy-duty trucks imported into the country will face a 25 percent tariff rate starting November 1, a significant escalation of his effort to protect US companies from foreign competition.

Trump made the announcement on Monday.

Last month, Trump had said heavy truck imports would face new duties on October 1 on national security grounds, saying the new tariffs were to protect manufacturers from “unfair outside competition” and that the move would benefit companies such as Paccar-owned Peterbilt and Kenworth and Daimler Truck-owned Freightliner.

Under trade deals reached with Japan and the European Union, the US has agreed to 15 percent tariffs on light-duty vehicles, but it is not clear if that rate will be set for larger vehicles.

The Trump administration has also allowed producers to deduct the value of US components from tariffs paid on light-duty vehicles assembled in Canada and Mexico.

Larger vehicles include trucks for delivery, garbage pickup, and public utilities; buses for transit, shuttles, and schools; tractor-trailer trucks; semitrucks; and heavy-duty vocational vehicles.

Impact on allies

The US Chamber of Commerce earlier urged the US Commerce Department not to impose new truck tariffs, noting the top five import sources are Mexico, Canada, Japan, Germany, and Finland, “all of which are allies or close partners of the United States posing no threat to US national security”.

Mexico is the largest exporter of medium- and heavy-duty trucks to the US. A study released in January said imports of those larger vehicles from Mexico have tripled since 2019 to around 340,000 today, according to government statistics.

Under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) trade deal, medium- and heavy-duty trucks move free of tariffs if at least 64 percent of a heavy truck’s value originates in North America, via parts like engines and axles, raw materials such as steel, or assembly labour.

Tariffs could also affect Chrysler’s parent company Stellantis, which produces heavy-duty Ram trucks and commercial vans in Mexico. Stellantis had been lobbying the White House not to impose steep tariffs on its Mexican-made trucks.

Sweden’s Volvo Group is building a $700m heavy-truck factory in Monterrey, Mexico, due to start operations in 2026.

Mexico is home to 14 manufacturers and assemblers of buses, trucks, and tractor trucks, and two manufacturers of engines, according to the US International Trade Administration.

Mexico opposed new tariffs, telling the US Commerce Department in May that all Mexican trucks exported to the US have on average 50 percent US content, including diesel engines.

Last year, the US imported almost $128bn in heavy vehicle parts from Mexico, accounting for approximately 28 percent of total US imports, Mexico said.

Trump had imposed a 40 percent US tariff on Brazilian goods in July on top of a 10 percent one earlier even though the United States has a trade surplus with Brazil.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has asked United States President Donald Trump to lift the 40 percent tariff imposed by the US government on Brazilian imports.

The leaders spoke for 30 minutes by phone on Monday. During the call, they exchanged phone numbers in order to maintain a direct line of contact, and President Lula reiterated his invitation for Trump to attend the upcoming climate summit in Belem, according to a statement from Lula’s office.

Shortly after, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he had had a good conversation with Lula.

“We discussed many things, but it was mostly focused on the Economy, and Trade, between our two Countries,” Trump said.

He added that the leaders “will be having further discussions, and will get together in the not too distant future, both in Brazil and the United States”.

The Trump administration had imposed a 40 percent tariff on Brazilian products in July on top of a 10 percent tariff imposed earlier. Lula reminded Trump that Brazil was one of three Group of 20 (G20) countries with which the US maintains a trade surplus, according to the Brazilian leader’s office.

The Trump administration has justified the tariffs by saying that Brazil’s policies and criminal prosecution of former President Jair Bolsonaro constitute an economic emergency.

Earlier this month, Bolsonaro was convicted of attempting a coup after losing his bid for re-election in 2022, and a panel of the Supreme Court sentenced him to 27 years and three months in prison.

In September, Trump and Lula had a brief encounter at the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, with Trump hailing their “excellent chemistry”.

During Monday’s call, Lula also offered to travel to Washington to meet with Trump, his office said.

US President Donald Trump blames Democrats for looming federal layoffs as shutdown enters fifth day.

The White House has warned that mass layoffs of federal workers could begin if US President Donald Trump concludes that negotiations with congressional Democrats to end a partial government shutdown have reached a dead end.

As the shutdown entered its fifth day on Sunday, White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told CNN’s programme State of the Union that he believed there was still a chance Democrats would yield and avoid what could become a costly political and economic crisis.

“President Trump and Russ Vought are lining things up and getting ready to act if they have to, but hoping that they don’t,” Hassett said, referring to the White House budget director. “If the president decides that the negotiations are absolutely going nowhere, then there will start to be layoffs.”

Trump, speaking to reporters on Sunday, described the potential job cuts as “Democrat layoffs”, saying, “Anybody laid off, that’s because of the Democrats.”

Talks remain frozen

There have been no meaningful negotiations since Trump last met congressional leaders, with the impasse beginning on October 1 — the start of the federal fiscal year — after Senate Democrats rejected a short-term funding bill to keep government agencies open through November 21.

“They’ve refused to talk with us,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer told the CBS programme Face the Nation, insisting that only renewed talks between Trump and congressional leaders could end the standoff.

Democrats are demanding a permanent extension of enhanced premium tax credits under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and assurances that the White House will not unilaterally cut spending agreed to in any deal.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he was open to addressing the Democrats’ concerns, but urged them to first back reopening the government. “It’s open up the government or else,” Thune told Fox News. “That’s really the choice that’s in front of them right now.”

Trump said Republicans were also willing to discuss healthcare reform. “We want to fix it so it works. Obamacare has been a disaster for the people, so we want to have it fixed so it works,” Trump said.

No deal in sight

Rank-and-file senators from both parties have held informal talks on healthcare and spending to break the deadlock, but progress has been minimal. “At this point, no,” Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego told CNN when asked if lawmakers were closer to a deal.

The Senate is set to vote again on Monday on competing funding bills — one backed by the Republican-controlled House and one proposed by Democrats — though neither is expected to win the 60 votes required to advance.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, nearly 750,000 federal employees face being furloughed as long as the shutdown continues, with total lost compensation estimated at $400m per day. While federal workers are guaranteed back pay under the 2019 Government Employee Fair Treatment Act, payments will only resume once the shutdown ends.

Varanasi, India – Mohammed Ahmad Ansari has spent his entire life in the narrow and congested lanes of Varanasi, a city often described as the spiritual capital of India, and the constituency of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The 55-year-old has spent decades weaving Banarasi saris and thoroughly enjoys the clacking noises of handlooms at work against the backdrop of temple bells and evening calls of azan in the holy city that is widely believed to be the oldest settlement in India, dating back as early as 1800 BCE and known for the blend of Hindu-Muslim culture.

But of late, sales have taken a hit for a range of reasons, the latest being ongoing tensions between India and its neighbour, Bangladesh.

Diplomatic relations between the once-close allies have been sharply tested since August last year, when former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled to New Delhi from Dhaka after an uprising against her rule.

Bangladesh blames India for some of its troubles, including Modi’s support for Hasina when she was in power.

There have been a few attacks on religious minorities, including Hindus, since her overthrow, as those communities were viewed as Hasina supporters, and Indian businesses, too, have been boycotted or attacked in Bangladesh as the country demands that New Delhi hand over Hasina to face charges in her home country.

In April, Bangladesh restricted the imports of certain items from India, including yarn and rice. On May 17, India retaliated by banning the imports of readymade garments and processed food items from Bangladesh across land borders. While Bangladesh can still send its saris to India, it will have to use the more expensive and time-consuming sea route.

Banarasi saris are globally known for their exquisite craftsmanship, luxurious silk, meticulous zari work of fine gold and silver wire embroidery, and it can often take up to six months to weave a single sari. These can sell for as much as 100,000 rupees ($1,130) each, or more, depending upon the design and the material used.

“These saris are in high demand in Bangladesh during festivals and weddings, but the ban has led to a more than 50 percent drop in business,” Ansari told Al Jazeera.

This is the latest blow to the industry that has already been hit with earlier government policies – including the so-called demonetisation when India overnight invalidated high-value notes and a hike in power tariffs – as well as the COVID-19 pandemic and cheaper competition from saris made on advanced power looms in other parts of the country, particularly Surat in Gujarat in western India.

This onslaught of the past few years has added up, forcing weavers out of the business and halving their numbers to about 200,000 now, as the rest either left the city in search of other jobs or took up new jobs, like driving rickshaws to earn a living.

Pawan Yadav, 61, a wholesale sari trader in Varanasi, told Al Jazeera that the business has come to a standstill since the change of regime in Dhaka.

“We used to supply around 10,000 saris annually to Bangladesh, but everything has come to a halt,” Yadav said, adding that he is still owed 1.5 million rupees ($17,140) by clients in the neighbouring country, “but the recovery seems impossible due to the political turmoil.”

India has 108 documented ways of draping sarees that hold a special position globally for their intricate designs, vibrant colours symbolising timeless elegance and beauty.

Despite the current turmoil, the textile sector employs the second-highest number of people after agriculture in India, with more than 3.5 million people working in it, per government data. Within that, the sari industry is valued at approximately 80,000 crore rupees ($9.01bn), including some $300m in exports.

Varanasi’s weavers and traders, who voted Modi into parliament for the third consecutive time, are waiting for the prime minister to find an amicable solution to the trade issue with Bangladesh.

In 2015, the Modi government designated August 7 as the National Handloom Day and promised to bring a change in the lives of handloom weavers by promoting domestic products. But nothing meaningful has come of that so far, traders and weavers who spoke to Al Jazeera said.

“India has a unique handloom craft which no country can compete with,” but without sufficient businesses or reliable income, many artisans have been forced to abandon the trade, and now “it is difficult to even find a young weaver”, Ramesh Menon, founder of Save the Loom, a social enterprise working for the revival of handloom, said. “The need of the hour is to re-position handloom as a product of luxury, and not poverty.”

West Bengal traders welcome ban

The situation, however, is completely different in West Bengal, around 610km (380 miles) from Varanasi and along the border with Bangladesh.

The ban on the sari trade between the two countries has offered a new lease of life to the traders of cotton saris in Bengal, who had been losing market share to Dhaka’s saris.

Tarak Nath Das, a cotton sari trader for the past four decades in Shantipur in West Bengal, supplies saris woven by local artisans to various showrooms across the country.

After years of losses, the 65-year-old finally saw business boom in the last few weeks in the lead-up to the main festival of Durga Puja, and was all smiles.

“The saris from Bangladesh had devoured at least 30 percent of our market, and the local industry was bleeding. We have slowly started to recapture our old markets as orders have started pouring in. The sale of the saris during the just concluded festival was better by at least 25 percent as compared to last year,” Das told Al Jazeera.

Shantipur is home to more than 100,000 weavers and traders and is regarded as the hub of the sari business in eastern India. The town and surrounding areas in Nadia district are famous for their handloom weaving industry, which produces a fine variety of saris, including the highly popular Shantipur cotton sari.

Nearby areas of Hooghly and Murshidabad district are also famous for their cotton saris, and these are sold both locally and across the country as well as exported to Greece, Turkiye and other countries.

Sanjay Karmakar, 40, a wholesale trader of cotton saris in Nadia district, is also happy with the ban.

“The local women prefer to buy Bangladeshi saris as they come in attractive packaging and the fabric used there is slightly superior to ours,” he said.

That, coupled with younger women choosing leggings, tunics and other modern clothes over traditional saris, had been pinching sales.

Santanu Guha Thakurta, 62, a fashion creator, told Al Jazeera that Indian weavers and traders would benefit immensely from the import restrictions on Bangladesh. That also shut down cheap knockoffs of the more expensive designs.

“The restrictions came at the right time, just before the onset of the festival season and that immensely benefited the industry.”

“ Well, the shutdown melodrama continues.”

That’s how, with the verbal equivalent of a sigh, Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana summed up the third day of the United States government shutdown.

On Friday, the US Senate reconvened before a weekend recess to vote yet again on a continuing resolution that would keep the government funded through November 21.

Republicans have touted the resolution as a “clean” budget bill, maintaining the status quo. But Democrats have said they will refuse to consider any bill that does not consider healthcare spending.

By the end of the year, subsidies under the Affordable Care Act are slated to expire, a fact expected to cause insurance premiums to spike for many Americans. And Democrats have called on Republicans to reconsider cuts to Medicaid, the government insurance programme for low-income households, following the passage of a bill earlier this year that narrows its requirements.

But the result has been an impasse on Capitol Hill, with both parties exchanging blame and no resolution in sight. Frustration was visible on both sides.

“This shutdown is bone-deep, down-to-the-marrow stupid,” Kennedy said from the Senate floor.

For a fourth time on Friday, Democrats rejected the Republicans’ proposal, which previously passed the House of Representatives along party lines.

Only three senators splintered from the party caucus: Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Democrat John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Independent Angus King of Maine.

On the Republican side, Senator Rand Paul also refused to vote alongside members of his party. His concern, he said, was how the spending would contribute to federal debt.

The result was a vote of 54 to 44 in the 100-seat Senate chamber, far short of the 60 votes Republicans need to overcome a Democratic filibuster to scuttle the bill.

As a counterproposal, Democrats put forward a bill that would see more than $1 trillion dedicated to healthcare spending. But that too floundered in a Senate vote.

Finger-pointing on Capitol Hill

In a news conference afterwards, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said the deadlock could only be broken if the Republicans changed their tactic and negotiated on the question of healthcare.

“Today, we saw the Republicans run the same play, and they got the same result. The question is: Will they change course?” he told reporters.

Schumer accused Republicans of having “wasted a week” with four votes that ended in the same result.

“ My caucus and Democrats are adamant that we must protect the healthcare of the American people,” he said. “ Instead of trying to come to the table and negotiate with Democrats and reopen the government, the White House and fellow Republicans have vowed to make this a ‘maximum pain’ shutdown.”

Republican leaders, meanwhile, accused the Democrats of attempting to bog down the process instead of proceeding with the status quo.

House Speaker Mike Johnson also argued that programmes like Medicaid were in desperate need of reform.

“Medicaid has been rife with fraud and abuse, and so we reformed it. Why? To help provide more and better health services for the American people,” he said at a news conference. “ We had so many people on Medicaid that never were intended to be there.”

Johnson accused Schumer of attempting to appeal to the progressive branch of the Democratic Party, in anticipation of a 2028 primary for his Senate seat: “ He’s got to show that he’s fighting Republicans.”

Both sides of the aisle, however, expressed sympathy for the federal workers caught in the middle of the shutdown.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that nearly 750,000 people are facing furloughs each day the shutdown continues. Others are required to keep working without pay.

The total compensation for the furloughed employees amounts to roughly $400m per day, according to the budget office’s statistics. Thanks to a 2019 law, the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act, federal employees will eventually receive backpay – but only after the shutdown concludes.

Pressure tactics

In an effort to force the Democrats to pass the continuing resolution, Johnson issued a notice on Friday afternoon that the House of Representatives would not return to session until October 14 at the earliest.

Instead, his memo called on representatives to engage in a “district work period”, away from the US capital.

That announcement was designed to place pressure on the Senate to act on the continuing resolution the House had already passed. Prior to Johnson’s announcement, the House had been expected to resume its work in the Capitol on October 7.

Meanwhile, John Thune, the Senate majority leader, indicated he would be willing to weigh the Democrats’ concerns about healthcare, but only once the government was reopened.

Still, he made no guarantee that the expiring healthcare subsidies would be re-upped if the Democrats did relent.

“ We can’t make commitments or promises on the COVID subsidies because that’s not something that we can guarantee that there are the votes there to do. But what I’ve said is I’m open to having conversations with our Democrat colleagues about how to address that issue,” Thune said.

“ But that can’t happen while the government is shut down.”

Republican President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has threatened to use the shutdown as an opportunity to slash the federal workforce and cut programmes that benefit Democratic strongholds.

Already this week, his administration has said it is suspending $18bn in New York City infrastructure projects, including for tunnels under the Hudson River, as well as about $8bn in clean energy initiatives.

But on Friday, Russ Vought, Trump’s director for the US Office of Management and Budget, announced another major city would be targeted for cuts: Chicago, Illinois.

Vought posted on social media that two Chicago infrastructure projects, worth $2.1bn, “have been put on hold to ensure funding is not flowing via race-based contracting”.

At a news briefing afterwards, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said a reduction in the federal workforce was also in the works, with Vought meeting with agency leaders to discuss layoffs.

“Maybe if Democrats do the right thing, this government shutdown can be over. Our troops can get paid again. We can go back to doing the business of the American people,” Leavitt said.

“But if this shutdown continues, as we’ve said, layoffs are an unfortunate consequence of that.”

But Democratic leaders dismissed those threats as pressure tactics meant to distract from the key question of healthcare.

In his remarks, Schumer argued that healthcare was a top priority for Republican districts too, and that Republican leaders should respond accordingly.

“It’s simple,” Schumer said. “ They can reopen the government and make people’s healthcare more affordable at the same time.”

The lawsuit claims Trump does not have the authority to override the law that created the H-1B visa programme.

A coalition of unions, employers and religious groups has filed a lawsuit seeking to block United States President Donald Trump’s bid to impose a $100,000 fee on new H-1B visas for high-skilled foreign workers.

The lawsuit filed in federal court in San Francisco on Friday is the first to challenge Trump’s proclamation issued last month announcing the fee.

The United Auto Workers union, American Association of University Professors and other plaintiffs say Trump’s power to restrict the entry of certain foreign nationals does not allow him to override the law that created the H-1B visa programme.

The programme allows US employers to hire foreign workers in speciality fields, and technology companies in particular rely heavily on workers who receive H-1B visas.

Critics of H-1Bs and other work visa programmes say they are often used to replace American workers with cheaper foreign labour. But business groups and major companies have said H-1Bs are a critical means to address a shortage of qualified American workers.

Employers who sponsor H-1B workers currently typically pay between $2,000 and $5,000 in fees, depending on the size of the company and other factors.

Trump’s order bars new H-1B recipients from entering the US unless the employer sponsoring their visa has made an additional $100,000 payment. The administration has said the order does not apply to people who already hold H-1B visas or those who submitted applications before September 21.

Trump in his unprecedented order invoked his power under federal immigration law to restrict the entry of certain foreign nationals that would be detrimental to the interests of the US.

He said that high numbers of lower-wage workers in the H-1B programme have undercut its integrity and that the programme threatens national security, including by discouraging Americans from pursuing careers in science and technology. He said the “large-scale replacement of American workers” through the H-1B programme threatens the country’s economic and national security.

‘Pay to play’

The plaintiffs argue that Trump has no authority to alter a comprehensive statutory scheme governing the visa programme and cannot, under the US Constitution, unilaterally impose fees, taxes or other mechanisms to generate revenue for the US, saying that power is reserved for Congress.

“The Proclamation transforms the H-1B program into one where employers must either ‘pay to play’ or seek a ‘national interest’ exemption, which will be doled out at the discretion of the Secretary of Homeland Security, a system that opens the door to selective enforcement and corruption,” the lawsuit said.

The groups argue that agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security’s US Citizenship and Immigration Services and US Department of State, likewise adopted new policies to implement Trump’s proclamation without following necessary rulemaking processes, and without considering how “extorting exorbitant fees will stifle innovation”.

The H-1B programme offers 65,000 visas annually to employers bringing in temporary foreign workers in specialised fields, with another 20,000 visas for workers with advanced degrees. The visas are approved for a period of three to six years.

India was by far the largest beneficiary of H-1B visas last year, accounting for 71 percent of approved visas, while China was a distant second at 11.7 percent, according to government data.