FirstFT: Biden seeks to reassure Ukraine after Congress jettisons $6bn in aid

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Good morning. US president Joe Biden said America would “not walk away” from Ukraine after Congress jettisoned $6bn in aid to avert a government shutdown, even as Republicans tied further funding to the contentious issue of border security.

During a fraught weekend on Capitol Hill, lawmakers omitted additional money for Ukraine from the bipartisan bill that will fund the US government until November 17, in a surprise eleventh-hour compromise accepted by the White House.

Ukraine aid has been a flashpoint in US politics for months, but the move to strip it from the deal nonetheless shocked many of Kyiv’s allies.

Nils Schmid, a spokesman for Germany’s governing Social Democrats, warned that “Ukraine is at risk of becoming a victim of radical Republicans”. Read the full story.

• Related: Anti-Ukraine former prime minister Robert Fico won the largest share of votes in Slovakia’s elections, putting himself on track to try to form a coalition government that could undermine western unity in helping Kyiv in its war against Russia.

Here’s what else I’m keeping tabs on today:

• China’s Golden Week: Financial markets are closed this week for the country’s longest holiday break of the year. Officials are predicting record tourist travel that they hope will help to lift an economy struggling to emerge from its post-pandemic doldrums.

• Japan: Minutes from the Bank of Japan’s last rate-setting meeting will be published.

• Economic data: S&P Global/Cips manufacturing purchasing managers’ index data will be released for Canada, EU, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK and US.

Five more top stories

1. Venture capitalists are advising start-ups to postpone plans to go public in the US until interest rates have plateaued, after choppy debuts for Arm and Instacart damped hopes for a rush of new tech listings. Bright starts on the public markets from those companies were dimmed by the Federal Reserve indicating on September 20 that it would support another interest rate rise this year and fewer cuts than expected in 2024. Here’s what VCs are saying.

2. Tensions are rising between Bangladesh and the west as the US pressures prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s authoritarian government to ensure the integrity of elections expected by January. The US last month imposed visa restrictions on an unspecified number of Bangladeshis for “undermining the democratic election process”, while Bangladesh’s foreign minister AK Abdul Momen dismissed criticism of the election build-up as “false propaganda on Bangladesh”. Here’s how tensions could spill into regional geopolitics.

3. A suicide bombing struck a government building in the Turkish capital Ankara on Sunday, injuring two police officers on the day the country’s parliament reconvened from its summer recess. The ‘Immortals Battalion’, a unit of the Kurdistan Worker’s party, later took responsibility for the attack, according to ANF News, a media outlet with ties to the separatist group. The FT’s Adam Samson and Ayla Jean Yackley report from Turkey.

• More news from Turkey: Sweden must take further “concrete steps” against terrorism to clinch Ankara’s support for its Nato bid, Turkey’s vice-president said as the Turkish parliament prepares to take up the Nordic country’s accession request.

4. UBS has settled with the government of Mozambique over Credit Suisse’s involvement in a £2bn alleged “tuna bond” fraud that wrecked the country’s finances, just before a trial was due to start in London. The loans were ostensibly to fund projects including a state tuna fishery but later collapsed into default over the alleged looting of hundreds of millions of dollars.

5. Korea Zinc, the world’s largest zinc smelter by output, is expanding its nickel business and embracing battery materials to drive growth as it aims to capitalise on US efforts to reduce dependence on China in the global electric vehicle supply chain. “This China decoupling momentum is creating great opportunities for us and Korea as a whole,” Park Ki-deok, the chief executive of the South Korean company, told the FT. Read the full interview.

The Big Read

A growing body of work challenges the long-held view that artificial sweeteners offer a way to satisfy sugar cravings while avoiding its well-documented risks. But it also underlines how far scientists are from fully understanding the physiological impacts of the multiple kinds of sweetener that have become ubiquitous in the foods and drinks on supermarket shelves.

We’re also reading . . . 

• Russia-North Korea ties: By dangling the threat of military co-operation, the two states are probably warning Seoul not to arm Ukraine, writes Andrei Lankov.

• Sleeping in: Getting up to exercise at 4am like Jamie Dimon and other CEOs isn’t all it’s cracked up to be — the real health benefits are for later risers, writes Isabel Berwick.

• Mindful politics: It’s easy to mock mindfulness practices but it could help politicians be less reactive, act with more conviction and disagree better, writes Jemima Kelly.

Chart of the day

Afghanistan’s currency was the best-performing in the world in the third quarter of this year, as foreign aid inflows and strict capital controls helped the afghani recover from the historic lows it reached after the Taliban’s takeover two years ago.

Take a break from the news 

Kuranosuke is the first child born in the small community of Ichinono, Japan for more than two decades. The one-year-old boy is cherished by a cooing, tribute-bearing platoon of surrogate grandparents from around the village. His existence has made him a hero — and focused minds on Japan’s demographic crisis.