WORLD BRIEFING: April 24, 2024

The US Senate has approved a $95bn (£76bn) foreign aid package that includes military support for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. President Joe Biden is expected to sign the legislation into law on Wednesday. The Senate on Tuesday evening backed the measure passed by the US House of Representatives on Saturday. It includes $61bn in military aid for Ukraine, which the Pentagon says can start being delivered to the war-torn nation "within days". It passed in a bipartisan vote of 79-18. - BBC

The Pentagon is poised to send $1 billion in new military aid to Ukraine, U.S. officials said Tuesday as the Senate moved ahead on long-awaited legislation to fund the weapons Kyiv desperately needs to stall gains being made by Russian forces in the war. The decision comes after months of frustration, as bitterly divided members of Congress deadlocked over the funding, forcing House Speaker Mike Johnson to cobble together a bipartisan coalition to pass the bill. The $95 billion foreign aid package, including billions for Israel and Taiwan, passed the House on Saturday, and the Senate approval was expected either Tuesday or Wednesday. The votes are the result of weeks of high-voltage debate, including threats from Johnson’s hard-right faction to oust him as speaker. About $61 billion of the aid is for Ukraine. The package includes an array of ammunition, including air defense munitions and large amounts of artillery rounds that are much in demand by Ukrainian forces, as well as armored vehicles and other weapons. The U.S. officials said some of the weapons will be delivered very quickly to the battlefront — at times within days — but it could take longer for other items to arrive. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the aid had not yet been publicly announced.

Columbia University canceled in-person classes, dozens of protesters were arrested at New York University and Yale, and the gates to Harvard Yard were closed to the public Monday as some of the most prestigious U.S. universities sought to defuse campus tensions over Israel’s war with Hamas. More than 100 pro-Palestinian demonstrators who had camped out on Columbia’s green were arrested last week, and similar encampments have sprouted up at universities around the country as schools struggle with where to draw the line between allowing free expression while maintaining safe and inclusive campuses. At New York University, an encampment set up by students swelled to hundreds of protesters throughout the day Monday. The school said it warned the crowd to leave, then called in the police after the scene became disorderly and the university said it learned of reports of “intimidating chants and several antisemitic incidents.” Shortly after 8:30 p.m., officers began making arrests. The protests have pitted students against one another, with pro-Palestinian students demanding that their schools condemn Israel’s assault on Gaza and divest from companies that sell weapons to Israel. Some Jewish students, meanwhile, say much of the criticism of Israel has veered into antisemitism and made them feel unsafe, and they point out that Hamas is still holding hostages taken during the group’s Oct. 7 invasion. - AP

The Russian Embassy in Turkey has urged citizens to avoid flying Turkish Airlines due to a recent uptick in passengers being denied boarding on connecting flights from Istanbul to Latin American destinations. “We’re compelled to advise our citizens to carefully weigh the advisability of using the services of this airline,” the embassy said in a statement Monday. It accused Turkish Airlines of turning away Russian passengers from boarding flights to Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Panama and other Latin American countries without explanation in recent weeks. “The issue exists and it’s a serious one. And it’s unclear to us to what extent the Turkish authorities realize its seriousness,” the Russian embassy said, adding that the Turkish foreign ministry has provided “no clear reaction” to its written and verbal complaints. - Moscow Times

Israel has not provided evidence to support its accusation that a "significant" number of employees of the U.N. relief agency for Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip are members of terrorist organizations, according to an independent review commissioned by the United Nations.

Google has fired an additional 20 workers that it says were involved in protests last week over the company’s cloud-computing contract with the Israeli government, bringing the total number of workers fired to 50, according to the group organizing the demonstrations. No Tech for Apartheid, the organizers of the protest at Google offices last Tuesday, said in a statement Monday evening that Google had fired an additional 20 workers, on top of the 30 workers terminated last week.