WORLD BRIEFING: April 9, 2024

UK foreign secretary David Cameron has held talks in Florida with Donald Trump, as London pushes to win support from the former president’s Republican allies in Congress for more Ukraine aid. Cameron’s talks with Trump, the presidential candidate, comes before he is due in Washington for meetings starting on Tuesday with Biden administration officials and Republican and Democratic lawmakers. He said before the trip he would urge Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, a Trump ally, to pass Ukraine funding, although there are no plans for the two to meet, according to people familiar with the matter. Johnson has refused to use his powers to call a vote in the lower chamber of Congress on new security funds, including $60 billion in aid for Ukraine, after pressure from Trump and lawmakers on the far-right flank of the Republican party. The Republican block on new funding from the US comes amid fears that Russia’s invading forces will capitalize on Ukraine’s diminishing firepower and slower supplies of Western ammunition to capture more territory. Johnson has been searching for a politically viable path to move the funds through Congress without inflaming far-right Trump allies and other Republicans who have taken a more isolationist stance on US foreign policy. Cameron had already indicated that he would lobby Johnson on the Ukraine funds – but securing Trump’s support first will be crucial. – FT

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday an undisclosed date for a ground invasion of the southern Gaza city of Rafah has been set, even as the White House said its negotiators in Cairo had handed Hamas militants a proposal for a cease-fire and hostage-release deal. “Today, I received a detailed report on the talks in Cairo,” the Israeli leader said in Jerusalem. “We are constantly working to achieve our goals, first and foremost the release of all our hostages and achieving a complete victory over Hamas. “This victory requires entry into Rafah and the elimination of the terrorist battalions there. It will happen. There is a date,” he said. The US immediately rebuked Netanyahu. A Pentagon spokeswoman said, “We've been very clear that we don't support operations into Rafah…We want to see a credible plan for how they would conduct any operations there” given “substantial” humanitarian concerns about more than a million Palestinian civilians sheltering there, said deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh. “We have not seen their official plan put forward.” – VOA

The United Nations Security Council president has referred the Palestinian Authority’s (PA’s) application for Palestine to become a full member of the world body to its membership committee. The 15-member committee is expected to make a decision about Palestine’s status this month, said Vanessa Frazier, Malta’s UN ambassador, who also proposed that the committee meet on Monday to consider the application. – Al Jazeera

Based on a story broken by Kyiv Post – Ukraine's military intelligence – carried out a special operation that damaged a Russian warship docked off the exclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea, which, if true, would demonstrate Kyiv's increasing ability to hit Kremlin assets far beyond its borders. Meanwhile, Russian strikes on Ukraine's southern region of Zaporizhzhia killed at least three people and wounded three others on April 8, regional Governor Ivan Fedorov said, as Moscow stepped up its attacks on civilian infrastructure while Kyiv struggles to overcome a lack of air-defense systems and ammunition. – RFE/RL

For the 10th consecutive month, Earth in March set a new monthly record for global heat — with both air temperatures and the world's oceans hitting an all-time high for the month, the European Union climate agency Copernicus said. March 2024 averaged 14.14 degrees Celsius (57.9 degrees Fahrenheit), exceeding the previous record from 2016 by a tenth of a degree, according to Copernicus data. And it was 1.68 degrees C (3 degrees F) warmer than in the late 1800s, the base used for temperatures before the burning of fossil fuels began growing rapidly. Since last June, the globe has broken heat records each month, with marine heat waves across large areas of the globe's oceans contributing – NPR