US senators declined on Thursday to block the sale of F-16s to Turkey, despite voicing deep disdain for Ankara's conduct as an ally.
They were upholding an unofficial bargain that Turkey would get the fighter jets if it stopped blocking Sweden's accession to Nato.
“A deal's a deal,” said Idaho's Jim Risch, the ranking Republican on the Senate foreign relations committee.
Kentucky Republican Rand Paul, who introduced the resolution to try to block the sale, told fellow senators: “Call it quid pro quo. That sounds better than extortion.”
The Senate voted 13 to 79 to reject Mr Paul's proposal.
Along with the Democratic committee chairman, Ben Cardin of Maryland, Mr Risch took the Senate floor before the vote to acknowledge some of the many US objections to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government.
They include its attacks on America's Kurdish allies in Syria, its backing for offensives by Azerbaijan on the ethnic Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, and Turkey's deal with Russia to buy its S400 missile defence system and other matters.
But the Republican and Democratic senior foreign policy leaders said adding Sweden to Nato was too important to the overall strategic interests of the western military alliance.
Sweden, along with Finland, sought to join Nato after Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
The US and the majority of other Nato allies supported the accession, saying the two countries' militaries, industries and locations near or bordering Russia would strengthen the alliance.
Finland joined Nato last year after Mr Erdogan lifted initial objections to that country as well.
His objections to Sweden included it offering refuge to Turkish critics in exile.
But he also publicly linked his objections to hopes of overcoming US reluctance to sell Turkey new models of the advanced fighter jet.
“I’m not here to defend Turkey or the other things that they do,” Mr Risch said. “What I am here to do is defend the importance of Nato.”
Mr Paul said before the vote that continuing to withhold the advanced fighter jets was the best thing the US had to influence Turkey's behaviour as an ally.
“What will Turkey do next time they want something?” he asked.
The State Department notified Congress of its approval of the $23 billion F-16 sale to Turkey in January, along with a companion $8.6 billion sale of advanced F-35 fighter jets to Greece.
The State Department agreement came hours after Turkey deposited its “instrument of ratification” for Sweden’s accession to Nato with Washington, which is the repository for alliance documents, and after several key members of Congress lifted their objections.
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Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
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- Mastery of audio-visual content creation.
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Studying addiction
This month, Dubai Medical College launched the Middle East’s first master's programme in addiction science.
Together with the Erada Centre for Treatment and Rehabilitation, the college offers a two-year master’s course as well as a one-year diploma in the same subject.
The move was announced earlier this year and is part of a new drive to combat drug abuse and increase the region’s capacity for treating drug addiction.
