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UK aid cuts ‘reduce bilateral support to some African countries by 90%’

Critics say Foreign Office figures send ‘global message about the role the country wants to play on international stage’Labour’s foreign aid cuts mean reductions of as much as 90% in the bilateral support the UK will give to some African countries, Foreign Office figures show.The department’s annual report includes a long-awaited breakdown of how the reduction in the aid budget will affect individual countries for the next three years. Continue reading...

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'Betting on state secrets': Conservative warns Trump just found new way to rig economy

President Donald Trump's cryptocurrency dealings earned him a massive amounts of wealth — effectively rigging the whole industry in his favor as if it's one of his old casinos, conservative analyst and talk radio host Erick Erickson warned on Thursday.This comes after financial reports revealed Trump and his family have made over $1.4 billion from crypto assets alone under the new presidency, their single largest gain of assets."In gambling, they say never bet against the house," he wrote. "In crypto, President Trump has positioned himself as the house."Erickson, a committed conservative Republican who nonetheless criticizes the president on occasion, pointed out Trump has made more of a profit on cryptocurrency "than every single publicly traded U.S. cryptocurrency company," which all combined finished out the year half a billion down.The real problem, wrote Erickson, is so much of this money is flowing in from foreign sources."An Abu Dhabi state-backed fund chaired by the UAE’s national security adviser used $2 billion of World Liberty’s stablecoin to finance a deal — weeks before the White House cleared the UAE to buy advanced American AI chips," wrote Erickson. This is by no means the only foreign racket currently in progress, he said. "Jared Kushner’s private equity firm, Affinity Partners, manages more than $6 billion — 99% of it foreign, including $2 billion from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign fund — while Kushner serves as a peace envoy dealing with those very governments," wrote Erickson. All of this only scratches the surface of the problem, Erickson said.If the GOP "meant what they said" in 2016 when they vowed to "drain the swamp," wrote Erickson, "the test is simple, and it applies to their own side: no foreign money flowing to the president’s family while the government it deals with awaits a decision; no regulators dropping cases against companies the first family owns; no one betting on state secrets; real divestment, not divestment to one’s children.""Drain the swamp. Don’t just recycle the water for our side," he concluded.

Uganda calls for travel restrictions to be lifted after last Ebola patient discharged

Country begins 42-day countdown to outbreak being declared officially over, as numbers continue to rise in neighbouring Democratic Republic of the CongoUganda has started lobbying countries to lift Ebola-related travel restrictions after discharging its last confirmed Ebola patient from hospital.The discharge of a Congolese national from the Mulago national referral hospital’s isolation centre in Kampala on Thursday triggered the start of a 42-day countdown required by the World Health Organization before Uganda can officially be declared Ebola-free, provided no new infections are detected. Continue reading...

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More than 500 feared dead after reports of two shipwrecks off Myanmar, UN says

Vessels believed to have departed from Myanmar in late June, with mostly Muslim Rohingya minority onboardThe United Nations has said more than 500 people are feared dead after reports of two large shipwrecks off Myanmar since late June.The UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) and its refugee agency UNHCR voiced alarm in a joint statement at reports “that two boats carrying more than 500 people may have capsized off the coast of Myanmar in recent days”. Continue reading...

Trump-supporting pastor laments 'very difficult moment': 'Many feel betrayed'

A conservative Haitian pastor who helped marshal support for President Donald Trump spoke out on Wednesday, saying many people in the community are feeling betrayed by an administration that is trying to strip some of their right to live in the U.S., according to a new report. Rev. Daniel Ulysse, who leads the Haitian American Republican Caucus, spoke with Mother Jones about what life has been like for members of his group during the second Trump administration. Last year, the administration abruptly ended Temporary Protected Status for more than 300,000 Haitians, a move that the Supreme Court ruled was legal last week, even though it would force the people to return to a war-torn country.Ulysse told the outlet that it is a "very difficult moment" for his community, which has been compounded by the sense of betrayal they feel. “Nobody’s speaking for Haiti, so I have to devote most of my time, my energy, for Haiti,” Ulysse told Mother Jones."Many of them feel betrayed because they were expecting a better outcome from the Trump administration than Biden," he added. "Many of them voted for Trump. We supported him, and he pledged to help Haiti, to be Haiti’s greatest champion, and that never materialized."Ulysse added that many people in his community would return home if Haiti were stable. "They’re afraid. They are sad. They’re very angry. They wouldn’t mind going back to Haiti, but the place is a mess," Ulysse said. "It’s got worse. It gets worse because of the mercenaries. All they do is create problems, kill people, [and] make money. So it’s a total mess with the American administration right now, where big money makes the decision."