BANGKOK (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will pay a brief condolence visit to Japan next week following the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the State Department said Sunday.

Blinken will travel to Tokyo on Monday to pay his respects to the former leader and meet with senior Japanese officials before returning to Washington from an Asian tour that he is now wrapping up.

“Secretary Blinken will travel to Tokyo, Japan, to offer condolences to the Japanese people on the death of former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo and to meet with senior Japanese officials,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement. “The U.S.-Japan Alliance is the cornerstone of peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific and has never been stronger.”

Blinken is in Thailand on a pre-scheduled visit and had been in Indonesia on Friday attending a Group of 20 nations’ foreign ministers meeting in Bali when Abe was shot and killed. He will be the most senior U.S. official to visit Japan in the aftermath of Abe’s death.

On Saturday in Bali, Blinken said Abe’s killing was a “tragedy” for the world and, like many other current and former U.S. officials, lauded the former prime minister for his vision.

“Prime Minister Abe was a transformative leader, a statesman, someone of truly global stature,” Blinken told reporters. He added that Abe’s death had shaken the G-20 meeting with many of his foreign minister colleagues expressing shock and distress at the news.

Shortly after Abe was pronounced dead, Blinken met in Bali with Japanese Foreign Minister Hayashi Yoshimasa and South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin to review strategy mainly related to North Korea. In that meeting and again on Saturday, Blinken underscored the importance of the U.S.-Japan relationship.

“The alliance between Japan and the United States has been a cornerstone of our foreign policy for decades and as I said yesterday, Prime Minister Abe really brought that partnership to new heights,” he said.

“The friendship between the Japanese and American people is likewise unshakable,” Blinken said. “So we’re standing with the people of Japan, with the prime minister’s family, in the aftermath of a truly, truly appalling act of violence.”

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Sri Lanka’s prime minister said late last month that the island nation’s debt-laden economy had “collapsed” as it runs out of money to pay for food and fuel. Short of cash to pay for imports of such necessities and already defaulting on its debt, it is seeking help from neighboring India and China and from the International Monetary Fund.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who took office in May, was emphasizing the monumental task he faced in turning around an economy he said was heading for “rock bottom.” On Saturday both he and President Gotabaya Rajapaksa agreed to resign amid mounting pressure from protesters who stormed both their residences and set fire to one of them.

Sri Lankans are skipping meals as they endure shortages and lining up for hours to try to buy scarce fuel. It’s a harsh reality for a country whose economy had been growing quickly, with a growing and comfortable middle class, until the latest crisis deepened.

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HOW SERIOUS IS THIS CRISIS?

The government owes $51 billion and is unable to make interest payments on its loans, let alone put a dent in the amount borrowed. Tourism, an important engine of economic growth, has sputtered because of the pandemic and concerns about safety after terror attacks in 2019. And its currency has collapsed by 80%, making imports more expensive and worsening inflation that is already out of control, with food costs rising 57%, according to official data.

The result is a country hurtling towards bankruptcy, with hardly any money to import gasoline, milk, cooking gas and toilet paper.

Political corruption is also a problem; not only did it play a role in the country squandering its wealth, but it also complicates any financial rescue for Sri Lanka.

Anit Mukherjee, a policy fellow and economist at the Center for Global Development in Washington, said any assistance from the IMF or World Bank should come with strict conditions to make sure the aid isn’t mismanaged.

Still, Mukherjee noted that Sri Lanka sits in one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, so letting a country of such strategic significance collapse is not an option.

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HOW IS IT AFFECTING REAL PEOPLE?

Tropical Sri Lanka normally is not lacking for food, but people are going hungry. The U.N. World Food Program says nearly nine of 10 families are skipping meals or otherwise skimping to stretch out their food, while 3 million are receiving emergency humanitarian aid.

Doctors have resorted to social media to try to get critical supplies of equipment and medicine. Growing numbers of Sri Lankans are seeking passports to go overseas in search of work. Government workers have been given an extra day off for three months to allow them time to grow their own food.

In short, people are suffering and desperate for things to improve.

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WHY IS THE ECONOMY IN SUCH DIRE STRAITS?

Economists say the crisis stems from domestic factors such as years of mismanagement and corruption.

Much of the public’s ire has focused on President Rajapaksa and his brother, former Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa. The latter resigned in May after weeks of anti-government protests that eventually turned violent.

Conditions have been deteriorating for the past several years. In 2019, Easter suicide bombings at churches and hotels killed more than 260 people. That devastated tourism, a key source of foreign exchange.

The government needed to boost its revenues as foreign debt for big infrastructure projects soared, but instead Rajapaksa pushed through the largest tax cuts in Sri Lankan history. The tax cuts were recently were reversed, but only after creditors downgraded Sri Lanka’s ratings, blocking it from borrowing more money as its foreign reserves sank. Then tourism flatlined again during the pandemic.

In April 2021, Rajapaksa suddenly banned imports of chemical fertilizers. The push for organic farming caught farmers by surprise and decimated staple rice crops, driving prices higher. To save on foreign exchange, imports of other items deemed to be luxuries also were banned. Meanwhile, the Ukraine war has pushed prices of food and oil higher. Inflation was near 40% and food prices were up nearly 60% in May.

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WHY DID THE PRIME MINISTER SAY THE ECONOMY HAS COLLAPSED?

The stark declaration in June by Wickremesinghe, who is in his sixth term as prime minister, threatened to undermine any confidence in the state of the economy and didn’t reflect any specific new development. The prime minister appeared to be underscoring the challenges facing his government as it seeks help from the IMF and confronts criticism over the lack of improvement since he took office weeks earlier. The comment might have been intended to try to buy more time and support as he tries to get the economy back on track.

The Finance Ministry said Sri Lanka had only $25 million in usable foreign reserves. That has left it without the wherewithal to pay for imports, let alone repay billions in debt.

Meanwhile the Sri Lankan rupee has weakened in value to about 360 to the U.S. dollar. That makes costs of imports even more prohibitive. Sri Lanka has suspended repayment of about $7 billion in foreign loans due this year out of $25 billion to be repaid by 2026.

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WHAT IS THE GOVERNMENT DOING ABOUT THE CRISIS?

So far Sri Lanka has been muddling through, mainly supported by $4 billion in credit lines from India. An Indian delegation came to the capital, Colombo, in June for talks on more assistance, but Wickremesinghe warned against expecting India to keep Sri Lanka afloat for long.

“Sri Lanka pins last hopes on IMF,” read a June headline in the Colombo Times. The government is in negotiations with the IMF on a bailout plan, and Wickremesinghe has said he expected to have a preliminary agreement later this summer.

Sri Lanka has also sought more help from China. Other governments like the U.S., Japan and Australia have provided a few hundred million dollars in support.

Earlier in June, the United Nations launched a worldwide public appeal for assistance. So far, projected funding barely scratches the surface of the $6 billion the country needs to stay afloat over the next six months.

To counter Sri Lanka’s fuel shortage, Wickremesinghe told The Associated Press in a recent interview that he would consider buying more steeply discounted oil from Russia.

BERLIN (AP) — German police are investigating after several women reported feeling unwell following an event hosted by the parliamentary group of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s party.

Berlin police said Saturday that the investigation was triggered by a 21-year-old woman, who felt dizzy and unwell several hours into Wednesday’s summer party for the Social Democrats and then was unable to remember the evening the following day. She went to a hospital for checks, and police ordered a blood test for an analysis of possible toxic substances.

The woman ate and drank at the event, but didn’t consume any alcohol, police said. By Saturday morning, another four cases in which people reported similar symptoms had emerged. German media reported that they apparently were victims of so-called “knockout drops,” which can be mixed into drinks or food. Police said they were awaiting test results.

Police opened an investigation of persons unknown on suspicion of bodily harm. Both they and the center-left Social Democrats said they weren’t aware of any offenses beyond that.

The Social Democrats’ co-leader, Lars Klingbeil, told Welt television he was “furious that something like this could happen at an event” organized by the party. He said the parliamentary group’s leadership is cooperating with authorities and he hopes “that the perpetrator or perpetrators can be caught and then brought to account.”

About 1,000 people attended the annual party on Wednesday, including the chancellor, party lawmakers and their employees.

The U.S. is again dipping into its own military supply to ship another round of weapons and ammunition to Ukraine to use in their four-month-old battle against invading Russian forces. On Friday, President Biden authorized shipping up to $400 million in additional military equipment to help Kyiv as it contends with new Russian advances in the fiercely contested Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.

Included in the latest transfer are four M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) and 1,000 rounds of precision-guided 155 mm artillery rounds that a senior defense official said would allow Ukrainian units to hit specific targets without being forced to expend a large number of shells.

Pentagon officials wouldn’t confirm if the 155 mm artillery shells are GPS-guided M982 Excalibur rounds that can be used in close-support operations or when there are civilians nearby.

HIMARS is a wheeled version of the Army’s Multiple Launch Rocket System. Ukraine currently has eight HIMARS weapons in the field, the Pentagon said.

“Ukraine is now successfully striking Russian locations … deeper behind the front lines and disrupting Russia’s ability to conduct artillery operations,” the Pentagon briefer said.

The drawdown also includes three tactical vehicles that can be used to recover damaged equipment on a battlefield, demolition munitions, counter-battery artillery systems and spare parts.

The Pentagon is pushing back against claims that Russian forces in Ukraine were able to knock out at least one HIMARS on the battlefield already. 

 Russia’s defense ministry said on Wednesday its armed forces had destroyed two of the rocket systems and their ammunition depots in eastern Ukraine, the Reuters news agency reported, a claim denied by Kyiv.

“Those that have been provided [to Ukraine] are fully accounted for. Ukraine is still using them in the fight,” the official said.

It’s shaping up to be a landmark economic summit, a potential showdown between warring countries, and a face-to-face confrontation of long-term international rivals all rolled into one.

And it’s likely to be among the most delicate geopolitical balancing acts President Biden has faced so far in his 18-month tenure.

November’s G-20 meeting in Indonesia, while still four months away, has already become a white-hot topic in Washington, Beijing, Moscow, Kyiv and Jakarta. With Russian President Vladimir Putin slated to attend and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also on the invite list, some foreign policy analysts say it’s possible that the forum could offer a  chance for the two nations to hash out a cease-fire agreement — assuming the conflict is still raging by November and the representatives from the two parties agree to talk to one another.

For Mr. Biden, it poses a dilemma over whether and how to deal with a Russian leader who he has said must be ousted for starting the war in Ukraine.

For the U.S. and its Western allies, early talk of boycotting the event to protest Mr. Putin’s inclusion appears to have fizzled out in favor of attending but perhaps sidelining and publicly chastising the Russian leader as much as possible. That strategy got an early test run this week when foreign ministers from participating nations, including U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, met in Bali as a precursor to the full G-20 meeting in November.

The preview wasn’t pretty.

Mr. Blinken met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi but had no such conversations with his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. In explaining why, the State Department tried to walk a fine line as it crafts a careful G-20 strategy that seeks to publicly bash Russia for its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine while still making progress on economics, energy, the COVID-19 response and other key global issues where the Kremlin plays an indispensable role.

“We have heard the international community speak out against Russia’s brutal, unprovoked war against Ukraine,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said this week. “I suspect you will hear members of the G-20 do that from Bali in the coming days. But we believe we can fulfill those twin imperatives, seeing the success of this G-20 summit without offering any semblance of business as usual with Russia.”

“The upcoming G2-0 will be an opportunity for us, for the international community to discuss what Russia and its invasion of Ukraine has wrought — what it has wrought in terms of rising energy and commodity prices, what it has wrought in terms of food insecurity as well,” he said.

Global outrage over Russia’s war in Ukraine and its impact on the worldwide economy has put pressure on summit organizers to keep Mr. Putin away from the meeting. But as a G-20 member, there are limited options if the Russian leader is determined to come. And Kremlin officials say that he is.

“For now, they have invited [Mr. Putin] to participate personally, but there is much time left. I hope that the pandemic situation will permit [the G-20] to hold this important forum face to face. I’d like to avoid guessing,” Yury Ushakov, an aide to Mr. Putin, said last month when asked about the upcoming G-20 summit.

The gathering of the G-20’s top diplomats proved to be a highly undiplomatic affair.

The U.S. and its G-7 partners reportedly refused to appear with Mr. Lavrov in the traditional “family portrait” photograph of G-20 foreign ministers Thursday, and a day later Mr. Lavrov staged a theatrical walkout of the summit just as German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock began to speak, according to wire service reports.

Before ditching the summit, Mr. Lavrov angrily rejected Western charges that Moscow was behind a global food crisis for choking off Ukrainian grain exports and said he saw little point in talking to countries that were actively arming and training Ukraine’s military to fight Russian forces.

“If the West doesn’t want talks to take place but wishes for Ukraine to defeat Russia on the battlefield – because both views have been expressed – then perhaps there is nothing to talk about with the West,” the veteran Russian diplomat said before departing.

The U.S. and its allies, he added, disregarded the agreed-upon G-20 agenda in Bali, and immediately after taking the floor, “started to castigate Russia in a frenzied manner over the situation in Ukraine.”

For her part, Ms. Baerbock said there were differing attitudes among the G-20 nations over the energy and other sanctions placed on Russia over Ukraine, but on the invasion itself it was “19 to 1” against Moscow.

Hosting rivals 

With his country set to host the high-stakes meeting, Indonesian President Joko Widodo visited both Ukraine and Russia in late June. His visits were in part to find a solution to the blockage of wheat and grain exports from Ukraine that have strained global food supplies and driven up prices.

But the visits also suggested that perhaps Mr. Widodo is poised to play a central role in facilitating peace talks between Russia and Ukraine. Analysts say that Mr. Widodo, like Mr. Biden, will have to walk a fine line during the summit and in the weeks leading up to it.

“Some have mooted a boycott should Putin attend. Indonesia could solve this problem and let the G-20 proceed as planned simply by contriving, through quiet diplomacy, a way to keep Putin away from the Bali summit,” said Yose Rizal Damuri, executive director of Indonesia’s Centre for Strategic and International Studies and Peter Drysdale, a public policy professor at the Australian National University.

“But domestic political optics now starkly color decision-making. With the United States and allies having staked out their position so publicly, by disinviting Russia the government would face accusations at home that it had caved to Western pressure,” they wrote in a recent piece for the East Asia Forum. 

“The attendance of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy offers a chance to ring-fence the Ukraine–Russia conflict at the G-20. Ukraine and Russia could deliberate on the sidelines of the summit, perhaps aided by the mediation of Turkey or another non-aligned G20 member,” they wrote. “Whatever it takes to keep the G-20 focused on the economic cooperation agenda is the priority.”

But the Russia-Ukraine war has exacerbated much broader global divisions, and they’ll be on full display at the G-20.

The expansion of NATO — which now appears all but certain after the alliance signed off on Sweden’s and Finland’s membership bids this week — has rankled officials in Beijing. Tensions between the U.S. and China were already high amid Beijing’s growing militarization of the South China Sea, its thinly veiled threats toward Taiwan, and on a host of other issues.

Ahead of the G-20 meeting, Chinese officials are pushing back hard on the U.S. and on NATO as a whole, disrupting the West’s efforts to enlist Beijing’s help to pressure Mr. Putin to end his war in Ukraine.

“In order to mislead the public, the U.S. has worked hand in glove with NATO to hype up competition with China and stoke group confrontation. The narratives and gambits that the U.S. employs are not so clever. They are rather unpopular, and will not succeed,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said this week. 

“The history of NATO is one of creating conflicts and waging wars. From Bosnia and Herzegovina to Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Ukraine, the self-claimed ‘defensive organization’ has been making advances into new areas and domains, arbitrarily launching wars and killing innocent civilians,” he said. “Even to this day, there is no sign of change.”

The rift between China and NATO grew deeper in recent weeks after the trans-Atlantic alliance for the first time singled out China as a global security threat in an official communique.

“The deepening strategic partnership between the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation and their mutually reinforcing attempts to undercut the rules-based international order run counter to our values and interests,” NATO said in a sweeping document released after its meeting in Madrid late last month.

Officials with NASA and the European Space Agency condemned Russia for using the International Space Station to show support for breakaway regions in Ukraine that have aligned with Moscow following its invasion of its neighbor.

In a rare public rebuke, NASA on Thursday accused its Russian partners of using the space station as a forum to back President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine, calling it “fundamentally inconsistent with the station’s primary function among the 15 international participating countries to advance science and develop technology for peaceful purposes,” according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

NASA issued the statement after Roskosmos, the Russian space agency, released photographs showing three of its cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) holding the flags of the self-described Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics.

The ESA joined NASA in condemning Russia for using the International Space Station to spread propaganda.

“It is unacceptable that the ISS becomes a platform to play out the political or humanitarian crises happening on the ground,” ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher said in a Twitter message. “The purpose of the ISS is to conduct research and prepare us for deeper exploration. It must remain a symbol of peace and inspiration.”

It wasn’t immediately clear if the controversy would affect future “seat swap” plans that would have Russian cosmonauts flying to the ISS on a NASA-sponsored rocket and NASA astronauts continuing to use a Russian Soyuz vehicle.