Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said Wednesday that a deal has been reached for Indonesia to send home a Filipino death-row drug convict who was nearly executed by firing squad but got a reprieve due to years of pleadings from Manila.

Marcos thanked Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto and his government for granting a longstanding Philippine request for Mary Jane Veloso to be brought back home to serve her sentence in her country.

“Mary Jane Veloso is coming home,” Marcos said in a statement. “Arrested in 2010 on drug trafficking charges and sentenced to death, Mary Jane’s case has been a long and difficult journey.”

It was not immediately clear when Veloso would be flown back to the Philippines, but Marcos said he looked forward to welcoming her home.

Indonesia’s Coordinating Minister for Law, Human Rights and Immigration, Yusril Ihza Mahendra, confirmed that Subianto has given his approval for Veloso’s return to the Philippines. That may happen in December, as long as conditions were met, including her continued detention in her country as part of the Indonesian court’s sentence.

Philippine Foreign Undersecretary Eduardo de Vega said at a news conference in Manila that Filipino authorities would discuss the legal terms of Veloso’s transfer with their Indonesian counterparts.

The Indonesian government has asked the Department of Justice in Manila to formally request Veloso’s transfer back to the Philippines, Justice Department spokesperson Mico Clavano said.

The decision, Marcos said, “is a reflection of the depth our nation’s partnership with Indonesia — united in a shared commitment to justice and compassion.”

Veloso’s transfer would remove the possibility of her facing an execution because the Philippines, Asia’s largest Roman Catholic nation, has long abolished the death penalty.

In 2015, Indonesian authorities moved Veloso to an island prison where she and eight other drug convicts were scheduled to be executed by firing squad despite objections from the convicts’ home countries, including Australia, Brazil, France, Ghana and Nigeria.

Indonesia executed the eight other convicts.

Veloso’s case has caused a public outcry in the Philippines, where her family and supporters contend she is innocent and was unaware that 2.6 kilograms (5.7 pounds) of heroin was concealed in her suitcase. The drugs were discovered when she entered Indonesia.

Veloso traveled to Indonesia in 2010 where her godsister reportedly told her a job as a domestic worker awaited her. Her godsister also allegedly provided the suitcase where the prohibited drugs were found.

Philippine authorities had filed criminal complaints, including for human trafficking, against illegal Filipino recruiters who arranged for Veloso to work in Indonesia, Clavano said. She added that she would serve as a crucial witness in the trial of the suspects when she returns.

That Philippine case helped convince Indonesian authorities to delay Veloso’s execution and eventually consider her transfer back to her country, Clavano said.

Marcos said Veloso’s story resonated with many in the Philippines, as “a mother trapped by the grip of poverty, who made one desperate choice that altered the course of her life.”

“While she was held accountable under Indonesian law, she remains a victim of her circumstances,” Marcos said.

The Philippines has been a global source of manual labor, including many impoverished women who abandon their families for higher-paying jobs and better opportunities abroad. Alarming abuse, especially of Filipina house helpers, has prompted Philippine authorities to impose restrictions and safeguards but many continue to be exploited.

At least 59 Filipinos around the world face the death penalty mostly for drug and murder convictions, the Department of Foreign Affairs in Manila said.

A vital humanitarian organization said it will suspend activities in Haiti’s capital on Wednesday following a “series of threats” by local police, in a move that threatens to bring a further deterioration of conditions in the Caribbean nation that has struggled for years with gang warfare and political turmoil.

Doctors Without Borders, also known as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), accused authorities of repeatedly stopping its vehicles and threatening its staff with violence, including death and rape.

Following that attack, the organization said it faced four additional encounters with police.

“This series of incidents have left us with no choice but to suspend our activities in Port-au-Prince,” MSF said in a statement.

In recent years, police, civilian vigilante groups and even rival gangs in the lawless capital have been repeatedly accused by doctors and medical staff of breaking into health care facilities where they suspect wounded gang members to be seeking treatment.

“As MSF, we accept working in conditions of insecurity, but when even law enforcement becomes a direct threat, we have no choice but to suspend admissions of patients in Port-au-Prince until the conditions are met for us to resume,” MSF head of mission Christophe Garnier said.

MSF said it will stop admitting and transferring patients to its five medical facilities in the Haitian capital from Wednesday, impacting thousands of people in need of treatment.

“MSF provides care to everyone on the basis of medical needs alone. Each week on average in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area, MSF provides care to more than 1,100 patients on an outpatient basis, 54 children with emergency conditions, and more than 80 new survivors of sexual and gender-based violence,” the organization said in a statement.

Brutal gang violence in the capital has resulted in the kidnappings of hundreds of people, and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Haitians from their homes.

MSF is the latest international group to halt operations in the Caribbean nation.

Last week, US-based airlines suspended flights to Haiti after three of their jets were struck by bullets while flying over Port-au-Prince. Haiti’s transitional presidential council blamed armed gangs for the gunfire that struck one of the flights, accusing them of aiming “to isolate our country on the international stage.”

Last month, a United Nations helicopter was also hit by bullets while flying over Port-au-Prince. And in a separate incident in October, gangs targeted US Embassy vehicles with gunfire, later prompting the evacuation of 20 embassy staff.

In late February and early March, coordinated gang attacks forced the closure of both the airport and main seaport in the Haitian capital, choking off vital supplies of food and humanitarian aid to the Caribbean nation.

Multiple students were injured after a car crashed into people outside a primary school in central China on Tuesday morning, state news agency Xinhua reported.

It’s not clear how many people were injured in the incident, which took place in Hunan province’s Changde city. In a brief report, state broadcaster CCTV said “specific casualties were being investigated.”

Another showed multiple people, including adults, lying on the road, apparently injured. Police could be seen handcuffing a man in front of a vehicle.

The police have yet to release a report about the incident. Images circulating online of the incident were quickly wiped from social media platforms.

The country has been rocked by a recent spate of public attacks, which have rattled a population long used to low rates of violent crime and sent censors into overdrive removing videos on social media and moderating online discussion.

China saw its deadliest known attack in a decade last Monday, when 35 were killed after a man plowed his car into crowds exercising at an outdoor sports center in the southern city of Zhuhai. Days later, eight people were killed and 17 others injured in a stabbing attack on a college campus in eastern China.

Sudden episodes of violence in recent months targeting random members of the public – including school children – have surged across the country as economic growth stutters, with many online warning each other to be cautious as people are becoming more desperate and unstable.

In October, police arrested a 50-year-old man after a stabbing attack near an elementary school in Beijing injured five people, including three children.

In September, three people were killed and 15 others injured in a knife attack at a suburban supermarket in Shanghai.

Also in September, a bus crashed into a crowd of students and parents outside a school in Tai’an city in Shandong province, killing 11 people and injuring 13 others. The authorities did not reveal whether it was accidental or deliberate.

The decision by US President Joe Biden to allow Ukraine to use long-range American missiles in Russia follows a familiar pattern.

The White House refuses for months to grant a weapons request from Ukraine, fearing it would be escalatory. Kyiv loudly decries the refusal, and just when the request seems to have been parked, the Biden administration approves it.

Ukraine’s request for HIMARS, Abrams tanks, F16s – all followed a similar pattern of refuse and prevaricate, and then grant, almost at the moment when it is too late.

Is it too late for the US-made Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, to make a difference if it hits targets deep inside Russia?

The answer is complex and perhaps explains some of the reluctance of the Biden administration to grant permission.

Firstly, there is a limited supply of ATACMS that Ukraine can get its hands on. So even Kyiv being able to hit deep inside Russia – and the longer range of ATACMS is 100km or 62 miles – is not going to yield an overnight change in the battlefield.

Analysts have listed the volume of Russian targets that are in range of these missiles – with the Institute for the Study of War listing hundreds of targets – after the Biden administration apparently briefed that Russian airfields in ATACMS range had seen their attack aircraft evacuated deeper inside Russia.

But really, Ukraine will not get enough ATACMS to alter the course of the war.

Secondly, Ukraine has been able to penetrate deeper inside Russia using domestically manufactured and cheaper drones. The United States has agreed to help fund the development of these devices, which appear to have caused havoc around Moscow’s airports and across Russia’s energy infrastructure.

Thirdly, the permission to use US precision missiles to hit deeper inside Russia is, as it sounds, quite provocative.

It is true that Moscow is quite militarily weak now, and unlikely to seek full conflict with NATO or the US.

But at some point, the Kremlin will seek to restore its deterrence. Moscow’s intelligence services have been blamed for sabotage of civilian targets across Europe, including recent reports that explosive packages were planted on courier planes inside Europe.

The Biden administration was correct to weigh the practical utility of longer range strikes, against the potential for civilian collateral damage in NATO member states, if Russia felt obliged to somehow hit back.

So it was not as simple or obvious decision as some advocates in Kyiv claimed. The wider goal seems to have been to get the Biden administration to put more skin in the game of Ukraine’s war – to truly takes the gloves off.

Yet the White House is keen to stress the deployment of North Korean troops into Kursk fueled its decision – that this is the US’ response to Moscow’s escalation.

Western officials have noted the North Korean deployment represents the Ukraine conflict expanding and becoming something that the United States’ Indo-Pacific adversaries now have a role in; that it has made the war slightly more global for America.

In Biden’s eyes this is an escalation, in response to an escalation.

But the fact he delayed so long because of the extraordinary symbolism of granting this permission just adds to the potency of the decision he just took.

President-elect Donald Trump may think he can talk peace, but he will inherit a war where the stakes have just got significantly higher.