World
Key moments in life of Shinzo Abe, former Japanese leader
Shinzo Abe was born into a prominent political family and became Japan’s longest-serving prime minister. He was credited with instilling political and economic stability though he angered Japan’s neighbors South Korea and China — along with many Japanese — with his nationalistic rhetoric and calls to revise the country’s pacifist constitution.
Abe, 67, was shot to death Friday at a campaign event in western Japan. Here is a look at key moments in his life and career:
— Sept. 21, 1954: Abe is born in Tokyo, the son of Shintaro Abe, who served as Japan’s foreign minister, and grandson of Nobusuke Kishi, a former prime minister.
— 1977: Graduates from Seikei University in Tokyo with a degree in political science, after which he moves to the U.S. to study public policy at the University of Southern California for three semesters.
— 1979: Begins working at Kobe Steel as the firm was expanding its presence abroad.
— 1982: Leaves the company to pursue new positions at the Foreign Ministry and with the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.
— 1993: First elected as an LDP legislator representing the southwestern prefecture of Yamaguchi. Abe, already viewed as a conservative, becomes a member of and eventually leads the party’s largest faction, Seiwakai, that had once been headed by his father, who died in 1991.
— 2005: Abe is appointed chief cabinet secretary under Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, during which he leads negotiations to return Japanese citizens abducted to North Korea. The same year, he is elected head of the LDP, putting him in line to take over as prime minister.
— Sept. 26, 2006: Abe becomes Japan’s prime minister for the first time, overseeing economic reforms while taking a hard line on North Korea and seeking to engage with South Korea and China.
— 2007: Following electoral defeats that saw the LDP lose control of the legislature for the first time in 52 years, Abe resigns as prime minister, citing health reasons. Abe has been suffering from ulcerative colitis but was able to control it with medication.
— 2012: After again being elected LDP president, Abe becomes prime minister for the second time.
— 2013: Seeking to boost growth, Abe launches his “Abenomics” policies featuring easy lending and structural reforms. Japan’s relations with China undergo a particularly rough patch but begin to improve after Abe meets with Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the APEC summit in Beijing.
— 2014-2020: Reelected LDP leader, he serves two additional terms as prime minister for a total of four, during which he develops close relations with then-president Donald Trump, holding summits and golfing together.
Read: Japan ex-leader Shinzo Abe assassinated while giving speech
— Aug. 28, 2020: Announces he will step down as prime minister, again citing health reasons, after his ulcerative colitis flares up again. By that point, Abe had already become Japan’s longest-serving prime minister.
— Nov. 30, 2021: Despite leaving office, Abe shows he can still rile up Beijing with comments on Taiwan, the self-governing island China claims as its own territory and threatens to attack. In a speech, Abe warned that “military adventure would lead to economic suicide.”
Abe’s complicated legacy looms large for current Japan PM
Assassinated former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was perhaps the most divisive leader in recent Japanese history, infuriating liberals with his revisionist views of history and his dreams of military expansion. He was also the longest serving and, by many estimations, the most influential.
For current Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, this complicated legacy will loom large as he considers taking up his mentor’s unachieved policy goals after a big win for their ruling Liberal Democratic Party in parliamentary elections Sunday, just days after Abe’s death.
Kishida has gained considerable political strength, riding a surge of emotion and vows of resilience from voters after the assassination, but he’s also lost the most powerful force in his party — Abe.
“Kishida now faces an increasingly murky political situation,” the liberal-leaning Asahi newspaper said in an editorial. “The death of Abe, who headed the largest LDP wing, will certainly change the party’s power balance.”
Kishida made his immediate priorities clear after the election: “Party unity is more important than anything else.”
Also read: Abe’s killing haunts Japan with questions on handmade guns
But he must also make quick progress on growing worries over rising prices and a stagnant economy even as he tries to figure out how to boost Japan’s defense in the face of an aggressive China, Russia and North Korea.
And then there’s Abe’s polarizing nationalistic agenda, much of which was left unfinished, including his attempts to boost patriotism in schools, to revoke the apologies made in the 1990s over Japanese aggression during the war and the controversial and divisive plan to revise Japan’s war-renouncing constitution to give the military more power.
How Kishida deals with Abe’s still considerable political presence may determine his success as leader.
At the heart of Abe’s lingering influence — he left the top job in 2020 — is a paradox.
He alienated many in Japan, as well as war victims China and the Koreas, with his hawkish foreign and security policies, as well as his ultraconservative — sometimes revisionist — stance on the so-called history issues related to Japan’s wartime actions.
Abe pushed back against post-World War II treaties and the verdicts of the tribunal that judged Japanese war criminals and was a driving force in efforts to whitewash military atrocities and end apologies over the war.
The Japanese electorate, however, carried him to power in six elections. And his work to strengthen the alliance with the United States and to unify like-minded democracies as a counterweight to China’s assertiveness endeared him to U.S. and European elites.
His long grip on power even amid criticism over his more extreme views can be explained by voters’ desire for stability and an improved economy, Abe’s stranglehold on the conservative wing of his party and the haplessness of the opposition.
His first period as prime minister, which began in 2006, ended in failure after a year, partly because of a backlash to his nationalist policy goals.
After three years of opposition rule, a rare interruption in decades of LDP dominance, Abe returned to power with a landslide victory in 2012.
“After his first stint failed, he learned that his nationalistic agenda of building a ‘beautiful nation’ cannot move forward unless he has another agenda to balance it out, like two wheels of a cart,” said Koichi Nakano, a Sophia University professor of international politics.
While still chipping away at enacting his nationalist policies, Nakano said, Abe also began championing economic revitalization and compromised on issues such as promoting women’s advancement and accepting unskilled foreign labor to help boost a dwindling workforce — moves that allowed him to be seen as a realist.
He understood in his second term that “he needed to improve his narrative and policy focus on the economy. He convinced much of the public that ‘Abenomics’ was a necessary reform path,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul. Abe also “exercised institutional discipline over the government bureaucracy and his political party in ways that no opposition leader has yet been able to match.”
Abe was the grandson of rightwing former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, which helped him win support from rightwing groups. He also was favored by younger people, experts say, many of whom are more conservative than their counterparts in other parts of the world because of their deep interest in a steady economy so they can get work at major companies.
“It seems that voters preferred the stability Abe promised over the disorganized leadership that the (opposition party) provided” during its three years in power, said Jeffrey Hall, a professor at Kanda University of International Studies specializing in Japanese politics and nationalism. “To international observers, Abe’s support for historical revisionism looms larger than it did for domestic voters.”
While Abe’s eagerness to boost Japan’s military power was more than most Japanese citizens wanted, according to Easley, “he was right about Tokyo having to adjust to a challenging security environment that includes China, Russia and North Korea.”
Kishida enjoys something of a political mandate after Sunday’s election, and will likely be in office until scheduled elections in 2025. He has said he wants to explore ways to make more progress on Abe’s push for constitutional revision, but there’s no detail now about what, exactly, that means or how he’ll try to do it.
Changing the constitution is a top party platform that Kishida will not want to risk, according to Ryosuke Nishida, a sociology professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, so he may delay the effort until he can forge a compromise with rightwing party members on the best way to proceed.
“Abe was one of the strongest voices for constitutional revision and a more proactive security policy. Now that he is gone, others will try to fill his shoes, but it will be difficult,” Hall said.
Judges rule on state abortion restrictions, shape Roe impact
A Utah judge on Monday granted a request from Planned Parenthood to delay implementing the state’s trigger law banning most abortions, as implications of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade reverberate nationwide.
With the decision, abortion remains legal up to 18 weeks in Utah, which is among a group of states where abortion rights have been thrown into limbo amid the legal and political challenges shaping the post-Roe landscape with states now holding the power to restrict abortion.
“What I’m really doing is saying we have serious things to talk about,” Judge Andrew Stone said after granting an injunction delaying the trigger law.
He said the status quo should remain in effect until a challenge from the state’s Planned Parenthood affiliate can be heard fully.
Meanwhile, a Minnesota judge declared most of that state’s restrictions on abortion unconstitutional. In Michigan, a campaign turned in a record-breaking number of signatures so voters can be asked on the November ballot whether to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.
Federally, the Biden administration’s Department of Health and Human Services said Monday that hospitals “must” provide abortion services if the life of the mother is at risk, saying federal law on emergency treatment guidelines preempts state laws in jurisdictions that now ban the procedure without any exceptions. Currently, even states with the most stringent abortion bans allow exceptions when the health of a mother is at risk, though the threat of prosecution has created confusion for some doctors.
Last month’s Dobbs v. Jackson ruling overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that found the right to abortion was protected by the U.S. Constitution. The issue reverted to the states, setting off new court battles and ballot initiatives as many states act to curtail or ban abortions.
Utah is among more than a dozen states with trigger laws designed to limit abortion upon the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The decision on Monday comes two weeks after the court put a temporary hold on the law, which bans most abortions with exceptions for rape, incest or maternal health. Stone, who was appointed by a Republican governor, blocked its enforcement for 14 days after the state’s branch of Planned Parenthood sued. His decision effectively extends the temporarily hold placed on the law and allows Planned Parenthood clinics to continue providing abortions until the case is resolved.
Attorneys for Utah argued language in the state constitution allowed for abortions to be banned and said delaying the implementation of the trigger law would amount to overruling the will of Legislature and Utah voters. Julie Murray, Planned Parenthood’s attorney, said not delaying the implementation of the law could open its staff to criminal charges and hurt roughly 200 patients with scheduled appointments in the month ahead.
Stone granted a preliminary injunction, which would let Planned Parenthood clinics continue to provide abortion care — up to 18 weeks of pregnancy under another recently passed limit — until the court rules on the constitutional questions.
Read: Post-Roe, states struggle with conflicting abortion bans
The judge in Minnesota declared most of the state’s restrictions on abortion unconstitutional, including a 24-hour waiting period and a requirement that both parents be notified before a minor can get an abortion. Ramsey County District Judge Thomas Gilligan also struck down requirements that only physicians can perform abortions and that abortions after the first trimester must be performed in hospitals. His order took effect immediately, meaning the limits can’t be enforced.
Gender Justice and other abortion rights groups argued the restrictions were unconstitutional under a 1995 Minnesota Supreme Court holding that the state constitution protects abortion rights. The judge called that case “significant and historic” and said it’s unaffected by the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
“These abortion laws violate the right to privacy because they infringe upon the fundamental right under the Minnesota Constitution to access abortion care and do not withstand strict scrutiny,” Gilligan wrote.
The ruling is expected to benefit patients from restrictive states who could go to Minnesota for reproductive health care. Providers have been preparing for a surge in patients from neighboring upper Midwest states, and even farther away.
Opponents of abortion rights condemned the decision. Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life said the laws challenged in the case are “common sense measures that support and empower pregnant women” and striking them down blocks residents from “enacting reasonable protections for unborn children and their mothers.” A Republican attorney general candidate called on the Democratic attorney general to appeal.
In a Louisiana state court Monday, legal efforts to stave off the permanent closure of the state’s three abortion clinics were renewed. A New Orleans judge refused last week to extend a temporary restraining order blocking enforcement of the state’s abortion ban, saying the case belonged in Baton Rouge.
Attorneys for a north Louisiana clinic and an abortion rights group are now seeking a new restraining order from a Baton Rouge judge. Attorney General Jeff Landry’s office says a temporary restraining order cannot be renewed once it has expired.
In Arizona, a federal judge on Monday blocked a 2021 “personhood” law that gives all legal rights to unborn children. Abortion providers argued the law can lead to criminal charges such as assault or child abuse and say it is unconstitutionally vague. Judge Douglas Rayes agreed in his ruling.
All abortions in Arizona stopped last month, but they could restart in at least one county following the ruling.
Alongside lawsuits to challenge bans, abortion rights supporters are trying to add ballot questions to enshrine abortion rights in state constitutions.
More than 750,000 signatures were turned in by the campaign in Michigan on Monday — close to double the number needed. The Democratic governor and attorney general in the battleground state have both made abortion rights a centerpiece of their reelection campaigns.
“The number of signatures showed that here in Michigan we trust women. We trust people. We trust doctors, not politicians, to make decisions about our body, our pregnancy and parenthood,” Reproductive Freedom for All spokesperson Shanay Watson-Whittaker said during a news conference in Lansing.
The signatures still must be verified and validated. A judge has temporarily blocked a 1931 Michigan law that would make abortion a felony except when “necessary to preserve the life of such woman.”
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has said that the law is invalid under the due process and equal protection clauses of the state constitution. The injunction, which stems from a Planned Parenthood lawsuit, could be revoked at any time.
Last week, backers of a last-minute effort to enshrine abortion rights in the Arizona Constitution failed to collect enough signatures to make the November ballot. In California, voters will decide in November whether to guarantee the right to an abortion in their constitution. Democrats who control the government in California fear the state’s abortion laws could be vulnerable to legal challenges.
White House: Iran set to deliver armed drones to Russia
The White House on Monday said it believes Russia is turning to Iran to provide it with “hundreds” of unmanned aerial vehicles, including weapons-capable drones, for use in its ongoing war in Ukraine.
U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said it was unclear whether Iran had already provided any of the unmanned systems to Russia, but said the U.S. has “information” that indicates Iran is preparing to train Russian forces to use them as soon as this month.
“Our information indicates that the Iranian government is preparing to provide Russia with up to several hundred UAVs, including weapons-capable UAVs on an expedited timeline,” he told reporters Monday.
Sullivan said it was proof the Russia’s overwhelming bombardments in Ukraine, which have led it to consolidate gains in the country’s east in recent weeks, was “coming at a cost to the sustainment of its own weapons.”
Read: Ukraine official says Russia strikes ‘absolute terrorism’
Sullivan’s revelation comes on the eve of President Joe Biden’s trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia, where Iran’s nuclear program and malign activities in the region will be a key subject of discussion.
The U.S. decision to publicly reveal that the two countries’ chief regional rival was helping to rearm Russia comes as both Israel and Saudi Arabia have resisted joining global efforts to punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine due to their domestic interests.
Sullivan also noted that Iran has provided similar unmanned aerial vehicles to Yemen’s Houthi rebels to attack Saudi Arabia before a ceasefire was reached earlier this year.
Military analyst Samuel Bendett of the CNA think tank said Russia’s choice of Iran as a source for drones is logical because “for the last 20 years or more Iran has been refining its drone combat force. Their drones have been in more combat than the Russians’.” They are pioneers of so-called loitering munitions, the “kamikaze” drones like the Switchblade that the U.S. has provided Ukraine.
Iran has “a proven track record of flying drones for hundreds of miles and hitting their targets,” Bendett added, including penetrating American-supplied air defenses and striking Saudi oil refineries. He said the Iranian drones could be very effective at striking Ukrainian power stations, refineries and other critical infrastructure.
Bendett noted that before the Ukraine war, Russia had licensed drone technology for its Forpost UAV from a proven supplier: Israel. The Jewish state has remained neutral in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, so that source is no longer available to Moscow.
Biden admin: Docs must offer abortion if mom’s life at risk
The Biden administration on Monday told hospitals that they “must” provide abortion services if the life of the mother is at risk, saying federal law on emergency treatment guidelines preempts state laws in jurisdictions that now ban the procedure without any exceptions following the Supreme Court’s decision to end a constitutional right to abortion.
The Department of Health and Human Services cited requirements on medical facilities in the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA. The law requires medical facilities to determine whether a person seeking treatment may be in labor or whether they face an emergency health situation — or one that could develop into an emergency — and to provide treatment.
“If a physician believes that a pregnant patient presenting at an emergency department is experiencing an emergency medical condition as defined by EMTALA, and that abortion is the stabilizing treatment necessary to resolve that condition, the physician must provide that treatment,” the agency’s guidance states. “When a state law prohibits abortion and does not include an exception for the life of the pregnant person — or draws the exception more narrowly than EMTALA’s emergency medical condition definition — that state law is preempted.”
The department said emergency conditions include “ectopic pregnancy, complications of pregnancy loss, or emergent hypertensive disorders, such as preeclampsia with severe features.”
Currently, even the states with the most stringent bans on abortion do allow exceptions when the health of a mother is at risk, though the threat of prosecution has created confusion for some doctors.
In a letter to health care providers, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra wrote, “It is critical that providers know that a physician or other qualified medical personnel’s professional and legal duty to provide stabilizing medical treatment to a patient who presents to the emergency department and is found to have an emergency medical condition preempts any directly conflicting state law or mandate that might otherwise prohibit such treatment.”
The department says its guidance doesn’t reflect new policy, but merely reminds doctors and providers of their existing obligations under federal law.
“Under federal law, providers in emergency situations are required to provide stabilizing care to someone with an emergency medical condition, including abortion care if necessary, regardless of the state where they live,” said Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure. “CMS will do everything within our authority to ensure that patients get the care they need.”
Mississippi’s trigger law, which went into effect Thursday, says abortion will be legal only if the woman’s life is in danger or if a pregnancy is caused by a rape reported to law enforcement. It does not have an exception for pregnancies caused by incest.
When asked about the Biden administration’s new guidance, Michelle Williams, chief of staff to Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, pointed to the existing exception in Mississippi’s abortion law.
Read: Post-Roe, states struggle with conflicting abortion bans
“Mississippi’s law already makes an exception for preservation of the mother’s life,” Williams told The Associated Press on Monday. “The Biden Administration’s statement of existing law today is about nothing more than maintaining the false narrative that women’s lives are in danger in order to appease his base.”
Far out: NASA space telescope’s 1st cosmic view goes deep
Our view of the universe just expanded: The first image from NASA’s new space telescope unveiled Monday is brimming with galaxies and offers the deepest look of the cosmos ever captured.
The first image from the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope is the farthest humanity has ever seen in both time and distance, closer to the dawn of time and the edge of the universe. That image will be followed Tuesday by the release of four more galactic beauty shots from the telescope’s initial outward gazes.
Watch Biden reveal the first image from NASA's new space telescope.
The “deep field” image released at during a brief White House event is filled with lots of stars, with massive galaxies in the foreground and faint and extremely distant galaxies peeking through here and there. Part of the image is light from not too long after the Big Bang, which was 13.8 billion years ago.
President Joe Biden marveled at the image that he said showed “the oldest documented light in the history of the universe from over 13 billion -- let me say that again -- 13 billion years ago. It’s hard to fathom.”
The busy image with hundreds of specks, streaks, spirals and swirls of white, yellow, orange and red is only “one little speck of the universe,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said.
“What we saw today is the early universe,” Harvard astronomer Dimitar Sasselov said in a phone interview after the reveal.
Read: SpaceX launches 4 astronauts for NASA after private flight
Sasselov said he and his colleague Charles Alcock first thought “we’ve seen this before.” Then they looked closer at the image and pronounced the result not only beautiful but “worth all that waiting” for the much-delayed project.
And even more is coming Tuesday. The pictures on tap include a view of a giant gaseous planet outside our solar system, two images of a nebula where stars are born and die in spectacular beauty and an update of a classic image of five tightly clustered galaxies that dance around each other.
The world’s biggest and most powerful space telescope rocketed away last December from French Guiana in South America. It reached its lookout point 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth in January. Then the lengthy process began to align the mirrors, get the infrared detectors cold enough to operate and calibrate the science instruments, all protected by a sunshade the size of a tennis court that keeps the telescope cool.
The plan is to use the telescope to peer back so far that scientists will get a glimpse of the early days of the universe about 13.7 billion years ago and zoom in on closer cosmic objects, even our own solar system, with sharper focus.
How far back past 13 billion years did that first image look? NASA didn’t provide any estimate Monday. Outside scientists said those calculations will take time, but they are fairly certain somewhere in the busy image is a galaxy older than humanity has ever seen, probably back to 500 million or 600 million years after the Big Bang.
“It takes a little bit of time to dig out those galaxies,” University of California, Santa Cruz, astrophysicist Garth Illingworth said. “It’s the things you almost can’t see here, the tiniest little red dots.”
“This is absolutely spectacular, absolutely amazing,” he added. “This is everything we’ve dreamed of in a telescope like this.”
Webb is considered the successor to the highly successful, but aging Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble has stared as far back as 13.4 billion years. It found the light wave signature of an extremely bright galaxy in 2016. Astronomers measure how far back they look in light-years with one light-year being 5.8 trillion miles (9.3 trillion kilometers).
“Webb can see backwards in time to just after the Big Bang by looking for galaxies that are so far away that the light has taken many billions of years to get from those galaxies to our telescopes,” said Jonathan Gardner, Webb’s deputy project scientist said during a June media briefing.
The deepest view of the cosmos “is not a record that will stand for very long,” project scientist Klaus Pontoppidan said during the briefing, since scientists are expected to use the Webb telescope to go even deeper.
At 21 feet (6.4 meters), Webb’s gold-plated, flower-shaped mirror is the biggest and most sensitive ever sent into space. It’s comprised of 18 segments, one of which was smacked by a bigger than anticipated micrometeoroid in May. Four previous micrometeoroid strikes to the mirror were smaller. Despite the impacts, the telescope has continued to exceed mission requirements, with barely any data loss, according to NASA.
NASA is collaborating on Webb with the European and Canadian space agencies.
“I’m now really excited as this dramatic progress augurs well for reaching the ultimate prize for many astronomers like myself: pinpointing “Cosmic Dawn” — the moment when the universe was first bathed in starlight,” Richard Ellis, professor of astrophysics at University College London, said by email.
Sri Lanka’s political chaos persists as crisis talks go on
A weekend of political chaos in Sri Lanka stretched into Monday, with opposition leaders yet to agree on replacements for embattled President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his prime minister, whose residences remain occupied by protesters angered by the country’s economic collapse.
Crowds of demonstrators overran Rajapaksa’s home, his seaside office and the official residence of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe on Saturday and demanded they step down in the most dramatic day of the three-month crisis. Leaders of two opposition parties held talks Monday but could not agree on their choices for president and prime minister.
Corruption and mismanagement has left the island nation laden with debt, unable to pay for imports of food, fuel, medicine and other necessities, causing widespread shortages and despair among its 22 million people. The country is seeking help from neighboring India, China and the International Monetary Fund.
Rajapaksa has said he will step down on Wednesday, according to the speaker of parliament. The protesters have vowed to stay until the resignations are official.
In a video statement Monday, the first since the weekend protests, Wickremesinghe reiterated he will stay on until a new government is in place because he wants to work within the constitution.
“A government has to function according to the law. I am here to protect the constitution and through it fulfill the people’s demands,” Wickremesinghe said. “What we need today is an all-party government and we will take steps to establish that.”
The president hasn’t been seen or heard publicly since Saturday and his location is unknown. But his office said Sunday he ordered the immediate distribution of a cooking gas consignment to the public, indicating he was still at work.
Months of demonstrations have all but dismantled the Rajapaksa political dynasty, which has ruled Sri Lanka for most of the past two decades.
Wickremesinghe also explained the sequence of events that led to the burning of his private residence on Saturday. He said the protesters gathered around his house after a lawmaker, in what Wickremesinghe said was an inaccurate tweet, stated he had refused to resign at a meeting of parliamentary party leaders.
Police charged with batons and fired tear gas, he said, adding: “The last option was to shoot. We did not shoot but they came and burnt the house.”
A group of nine Cabinet ministers said Monday they will quit immediately to make way for an all-party government, outgoing Justice Minister Wijayadasa Rajapakshe said. Wickremesinghe’s office said another group that met with him decided to stay on until a new government is formed.
The talks by opposition party leaders to form an alternative unity government is an urgent requirement of a bankrupt nation to continue discussions with the IMF.
Lawmaker Udaya Gammanpila said the main opposition United People’s Front and lawmakers who have defected Rajapaksa’s ruling coalition have agreed to work together. Main opposition leader Sajith Premadasa and Dullas Alahapperuma, who was a minister under Rajapaksa, have been proposed to take over as president and prime minister and had been asked to decide on how to share the positions before a meeting with the parliamentary speaker Monday, but they did not reach an agreement.
“We can’t be in an anarchical condition. We have to somehow reach a consensus today,” Gammanpila said.
Opposition parties also are concerned about military leaders making statements on public security in the absence of a civil administration.
Lawmakers discussed Chief of Defense Staff Gen. Shavendra Silva’s statement over the weekend urging public cooperation to maintain law and order, said Kavinda Makalanda, spokesperson for Premadasa.
“A civil administration is the need, not the military, in a democratic country,” Makalanda said.
If opposition parties fail to form a government by the time Rajapaksa resigns, Wickremesinghe as prime minister will become acting president under the constitution. In line with the protesters’ demands, however, opposition parties don’t want him even as acting president.
They said that Wickremesinghe should promptly resign and allow Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena to be acting president — the next in line under the constitution. The Bar Association of Sri Lanka, the country’s main lawyers’ body, has also endorsed that position.
Rajapaksa appointed Wickremesinghe as prime minister in May to try to resolve the shortages and start economic recovery. But delays in restoring even basic supplies has turned public anger against him, with protesters accusing him of protecting the president.
When Wickremesinghe took over as prime minister to salvage the economy, he said it would take at least a year to complete the initial steps needed for a full recovery.
Wickremesinghe had been part of crucial talks with the IMF for a bailout program and with the World Food Program to prepare for a predicted food crisis. The government must submit a plan on debt sustainability to the IMF in August before reaching an agreement.
Read: Sri Lanka in political vacuum as talks go on amid crisis
Sri Lanka is relying on aid from India and other nations until it is able to secure a deal in its negotiations with the IMF. Wickremesinghe said recently the talks were complex because Sri Lanka is now bankrupt.
Sri Lanka announced in April it was suspending repayment of foreign loans due to a foreign currency shortage. Its total foreign debt amounts to $51 billion, of which it must repay $28 billion by the end of 2027.
In describing the burning of his residence Saturday, Wickremesinghe said he lost what he called “my biggest treasure” — his library of 2,500 books, including those written during the Portuguese and Dutch colonial period from the 16th and 19th centuries. He said there were old books written on Buddhism, those signed by leaders like former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, historical paintings and Buddhist artifacts, which he had planned donating to his old school and a university after his death.
He said he also lost all of his collection of paintings except for one.
Sri Lanka's new president to be elected on July 20: speaker
Sri Lanka's speaker of parliament on Monday said political party leaders have decided to elect a new president on July 20 through a vote in parliament.
In a statement, Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena said that following a meeting with all political party leaders, it was decided to convene parliament sessions on July 15 and inform the parliament that there was a vacancy for the presidency.
Read: Sri Lanka in political vacuum as talks go on amid crisis
Nominations for the presidency will be called for on July 19 and a vote will be taken on July 20 to elect a new president, the speaker said.
Party leaders also decided to form an all-party government under the new president and take steps to continue the supply of essential services.
Sri Lanka's President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on Saturday said he will step down from the presidency on July 13 amid economic and political instability.
Biden celebration of new gun law clouded by latest shooting
President Joe Biden is hosting a “celebration” of a new bipartisan law meant to reduce gun violence that, after just 16 days in effect, already has been overshadowed by yet another mass shooting.
The bill, passed after recent gun rampages in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, incrementally toughens requirements for young people to buy guns, denies firearms to more domestic abusers, and helps local authorities temporarily take weapons from people judged to be dangerous.
But the South Lawn event on Monday morning comes a week after a gunman in Highland Park, Illinois, killed seven people at an Independence Day parade, a stark reminder of the limitations of the new law in addressing the American phenomenon of mass gun violence.
Biden on Saturday invited Americans to share with him via text — a new White House communications strategy — their stories of how they’ve been impacted by gun violence, tweeting that “I’m hosting a celebration of the passage of the Safer Communities Act.”
The law is the the most impactful firearms violence measure Congress has approved since enacting a now-expired assault weapons ban in 1993. Yet gun control advocates — and even White House officials — say it’s premature to declare victory.
“There’s simply not much to celebrate here,” said Igor Volsky, director of the private group Guns Down America.
“It’s historic, but it’s also the very bare minimum of what Congress should do,” Volsky said. “And as we were reminded by the shooting on July 4, and there’s so many other gun deaths that have occurred since then, the crisis of of gun violence is just far more urgent.”
Volsky’s group, along with other gun violence advocacy groups, was set to host a news conference on Monday outside the White House calling on Biden to stand up a dedicated office at the White House to address gun violence with a greater sense of urgency.
Read: Facing pressure, Biden to sign order on abortion access
Biden has left gun control policy to his Domestic Policy Council, rather than establishing a dedicated office like he stood up to address climate change or the gender policy council he established to promote reproductive health access.
“We have a president who really hasn’t met the moment, who has chosen to act as a bystander on this issue,” Volsky said. “For some reason the administration absolutely refuses to have a senior official who can drive this issue across government.”
The president signed the bipartisan gun bill into law on June 25, calling it “a historic achievement” at the time.
“Time is of the essence. Lives will be saved,” Biden said in the Roosevelt Room during a hastily arranged signing ceremony before he flew to Europe. Referencing the families of shooting victims he has met, the president said: “Their message to us was, ‘Do something.’ How many times did we hear that? ‘Just do something. For God’s sake, just do something.’ Today we did.”
White House officials said Biden doesn’t see the passage of the bill as the finish line, but rather a foundation that needs to be built on. The Illinois shooting occurred nine days after the bill signing.
“I recently signed the first major bipartisan gun reform legislation in almost 30 years into law, which includes actions that will save lives,” Biden said after July 4th shooting. “But there is much more work to do, and I’m not going to give up fighting the epidemic of gun violence.”
On Friday, Biden responded to the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe by taking note of how the shooting had shocked people in Japan. The country has a strikingly low incidence of gun violence compared to the U.S., which has experienced thousands of gun deaths already this year.
Most of the new law’s $13 billion in spending would be used for bolstering mental health programs and for schools, which have been targeted by shooters in Newtown, Connecticut; Parkland, Florida; and many other gun massacres. It was the product of weeks of closed-door negotiations by a bipartisan group of senators who emerged with a compromise.
It does not include far tougher restrictions that Democrats and Biden have long championed, such as a ban on assault-type weapons and background checks for all gun transactions. Biden on Monday was expected to reiterate his call for those tougher measures, but prospects are slim for any further congressional action.
Looming Musk-Twitter legal battle hammers company shares
Shares of Twitter slid more than 6% at the opening bell Monday after billionaire Elon Musk said that he was abandoning his $44 billion bid for the company and the social media platform vowed to challenge Musk in court to uphold the agreement.
Musk alleged Friday that Twitter has failed to provide enough information about the number of fake accounts it has. However, Twitter said last month that it was making available to Musk a ″ fire hose ” of raw data on hundreds of millions of daily tweets when he raised the issue again after announcing that he would buy the social media platform.
Twitter has said for years in regulatory filings that it believes about 5% of the accounts on the platform are fake but on Monday Musk continued to taunt the company, using Twitter, over what he has described as a lack of data.
Musk agreed to a $1 billion breakup fee as part of the buyout agreement, though it appears Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and the company are settling in for a legal fight to force the sale.
Read: Elon Musk's $44 billion Twitter deal gets board endorsement
“For Twitter this fiasco is a nightmare scenario and will result in an Everest-like uphill climb for Parag & Co. to navigate the myriad challenges ahead around employee turnover/morale, advertising headwinds, investor credibility around the fake account/bot issues, and host of other issues abound,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, who follows the company, wrote Monday.
The sell-off in Twitter shares pushed prices below $35 each, far from the $54.20 that Musk agreed to pay for the company. That suggests, strongly, that Wall Street has serious doubts that the deal will go forward.
“This is going to be a long and ugly court battle (Twitter has already hired counsel) ahead in which the fake account/bot issue will be scrutinized for all to see and casts a dark cloud over Twitter’s head in the near term,” Ives said.