 The US Senate is discussing a fresh bill which ties military funding to Ukraine and Israel to stricter border security policies, what are the proposals in the bill? COP28 ended and the reception has been kind of underwhelming. What came out of this summit and what does it mean for global health specifically? This is the daily debrief. These are your stories for the day. And before we go any further, if you're watching this on YouTube, please hit the subscribe button. The Joe Biden administration and Senate leaders are in frantic negotiations for a $110 billion proposal that earmarks funding for Ukraine and Israel's military funding. Republicans, though, have tied this to a stricter border security policy whose impact will be felt by immigrants and asylum seekers. Clearly for the US, fuelling never-ending wars globally is more important than addressing the issues of the poor who land up at its doorstep. We go to Anish for the details. Anish, thank you so much for joining us. So an earlier version of this bill did not make it through. So could you maybe first tell us a bit about what this bill is, what are the provisions and what is really the bone of contention? Well, the bill would actually deal with three things, which two would be basically military aid to Ukraine and Israel. And this third factor would be funding for border security and immigration policy, basically. So that is also considered as part of the extended part of US defense and military budget. This will be a supplemental bill because the main NDA has been passed already and it will be signed into law by next week anyway. So that won't be an issue. But in the previous one, the major contention that the Republicans raised was A, positive money, but B, which was the biggest contention of that, which was that the border policy was not stringent enough under the Biden administration. So they pretty much use the funding for Ukraine and Israel, which are pretty much at this point cornerstones of US foreign policy right now, as you know, held it hostage and use that to bargain for a massive right to worship when it comes to border policy. And that is pretty much back on the table from whatever reports that we are seeing, the Biden administration is ready to make significant compromises just so that he can send billions and billions of dollars to these two essentially war zones. And you know, prolong and continue the wars there rather than actually, you know, deal with more humane, have a more humane policy for asylum seekers. And this is pretty much the kind of situation that we're in where, you know, obviously the issue should be something else, the fact that there is a continuous war being waged that there has been already more than $110 billion being spent on Ukraine so far, since the beginning of the war, and nothing has been gained out of it. You know, even, you know, the territories gained are pretty much just very minimal and has no strategic value so far. And so at this point in time, the fact that the US government wants to add another $40 billion into the war clearly shows that their priorities are quite off at this point in time. Anish, moving to the border security aspect, what are the Republicans really demanding at this point? So there are a couple of demands, but basically they want to make it far more difficult for asylum seekers to actually gain any kind of asylum, basically, or even, you know, apply for asylum to begin with. They want to make it significantly more difficult than it was under Trump. We must remember that Biden did reverse some of the provisions under the Trump era, border security policies, especially, you know, when it comes to separation of children. There has been some reforms. It was not a complete rollback, but there has been some changes. But what we're seeing right now is that Biden is most likely to move back to that very Trump era policy. There is a provision being asked and which is also a bigger contention for some of the so-called progressives within the Democrats, which is a safe country or a third safe country provision whereby if you pass through that country, you are most likely to be not eligible for asylum in the United States, and you will be sent back to that country, obviously. And this is definitely going to be a bigger problem because obviously that means you'll have to also deal with, you know, sovereignty issues of another country to begin with. Nevertheless, these are some of the very essential, very Trump era policies that the Republicans have pretty much taken on as, you know, a very sort of ideological policy structure framework for them with the coming election season next year. So this is definitely something that they are going to push for and they will be holding the funding for, you know, essentially what a perpetual was at this point in time to make way for it. So Biden has pretty much been using his foreign policy matters and including Ukraine as, you know, the cornerstone for their, you know, to show that U.S. has been projecting more military power to the electorate and considering his failing popularity in recent months. This is going to be a situation where Biden is probably going to make more compromises and probably revert back to the Trump era policy, even if it means alienating a good section of the Democrats themselves. So we'll have to wait and see for the next week, but these are kind of what the indication that we can see right now the direction that the U.S. government is choosing to go for. They would rather go for wars than actually take in and help asylum seekers who desperately need asylum because of what they have created in these countries as well. So that is the situation that the priorities are completely off, obviously, but for them, obviously, that makes complete sense. Thank you so much, Anish, for talking to us. The 28th edition of the Conference of Parties, the annual summit where we take stock of efforts to counter climate change concluded in Dubai on Wednesday. The responses have been quite underwhelming. While the final declaration did mention the need to transition from fossil fuels, there were lots of loopholes which will defeat the spirit of the announcement. The conference also saw a special reference to health in the context of climate change. To get a sense of these discussions, we go to Ana Vrachar. Ana, thank you so much for joining us. So first of all, COP 28 concluding, of course, what are the highlights? I mean, quite a lot of interesting debates around terminology and phrases that made it to the final discussion. So how would you see the last couple of days? Well, I think that for many, the meeting ended up with some disappointment or big disappointment, as you want to take it, because there was no actual concrete financial commitment to transition away from fossil fuels. So the absence of this phasing out of fossil fuels was what Manny said, was a highlight of the outcomes of the COP 28. And that essentially that left us in a very bad place because we have seen delegates claiming that they are still committed to achieving the 1.5 degree goal. And yet we are not seeing any concrete steps being taken towards the thing that can take us as close to that goal as we can get. And then that of course reflected also on many of the other side discussions that were going on, one of which was of course health. So as we talked about here before, COP 28 was actually the first COP where we saw health being explicitly put on the agenda as an important topic to address as we discuss the climate breakdown. And so it's also important because we know that this was the biggest COP. So I think it was the biggest COP overall, which we have seen with over 100,000 people attending and notably some 2400 fossil fuel lobbies being there in the room. So unsurprisingly also the health declaration, which the delegates ended up supporting was also marked by this absence of the commitment to the phasing out of fossil fuels. But then on the other hand, many have pointed out that having a health resolution adopted by so many countries over 100, close to 125 was a big thing because we didn't actually see this kind of commitment before. So what needs to be said is the declaration that they signed is not a binding document so they can choose to implement what they want. But on the other hand, it does state that climate change has severe impacts on health. So it does encourage some action that can lead us to better help. This includes changes to the food systems that we have in order to make healthy food more accessible, a closer choice to many people. It includes references to just transition and other health related measures. But of course then when it comes to the implementation, it needs to be seen what will happen. So the bet is that most countries, specifically high income countries which have stalled for so many years will actually not be taking any significant step when it comes to this. And that essentially the stalling that we have seen when it comes to the funding to offering support to the lower income countries which are dis-proportionate effect of climate change will be repeated here as well. Right and I've talked about this before but I think it's important to go back to it again because when you talk about climate change, we often think about the rising sea levels, the kind of natural disasters. But why is, you know, how do we sort of factor in the health aspect here? And what are the kind of impacts that we're looking at to health infrastructure to public health in general because of climate change? Well, there was a recent report in the UK which looks specifically at that. And, you know, what the report says is that we are actually already seeing the health impacts and that in the UK people can expect some major change coming up in the coming years because of climate change. So this spans a range of factors. Of course, you know, we have to talk about the increased danger of wildfires, of droughts, of floods that come hand in hand. And that these will also appear in places where we haven't seen them so much before including in the UK. Then of course, adding to that, one has to keep in mind that as temperatures rise, so essentially the place becomes more prone to the appearance of certain diseases. This includes vector-borne diseases. So one other danger that the people in the UK are facing is that they will be seeing diseases which are not there as of now. So this includes dengue, this includes the West Nile virus. So this is all likely to happen even if we do meet the 1.5 degree goal. Of course, if we talk about surpassing that goal, which seems to be the case considering the kind of progress that countries have made on this front for now, things will get much, much, much worse. And what the report also highlights, I think it's interesting to note that those who will anyway be the most exposed to the effects of climate change and to the adaptation that we have to factor in as climate change comes in, are those who are now in their working age. So those who will be retiring by 2050 when they speak of the effects is expected if keeping up with the 1.5 goal, but also the children who are being brought today. So it's important to think about that the children who are essentially, who haven't taken any part in the world until now, so they will be the ones who will be working at that point of time. And they will be forced to go through major adaptation to the lifestyle and to essentially dealing with this burden caused by climate change. Right. Thank you so much Anna for talking to us. And that's all we have in this episode of the Daily Debrief. We'll be back tomorrow. In the meantime, do visit our website peoplesdispatch.org and follow us on all the social media platforms.