Foreign

Trump administration seeks legislative backing to terminate vaccine funding

Published

11 months ago

March 27, 2025

Admin

ADVERTISEMENT

The President Donald Trump administration plans to terminate the United States’ financial support for the Global Alliance for Vaccine and Immunisation, the organization that has helped purchase critical vaccines for children in developing countries.

Some other programs terminated is funding for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, which conducts surveillance for diseases that can be transmitted from animals to humans, including bird flu, in 49 countries. Some major programs to track and fight malaria, one of the world’s top killers of children, have also been ended.

Those decisions are included in a 281-page spreadsheet that the United States Agency for International Development sent to the US Congress, listing the foreign aid projects it plans to continue and to terminate.

The New York Times obtained a copy of the spreadsheet and other documents describing the plans.

For many years, developing countries have relied on GAVI support to combat malaria.

Gavi is estimated to have saved the lives of 19 million children since it was set up 25 years ago. The United States contributes 13 percent of its budget.

The terminated grant to Gavi was worth $2.6 billion through 2030.

By Gavi’s own estimate, the loss of U.S. support may mean 75 million children do not receive routine vaccinations in the next five years, with more than 1.2 million children dying as a result.

The U.S. has been among the top donors to the organization since its creation, and became the largest during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Gavi was counting on a pledge made last year by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. for its next funding cycle.

New vaccines with the promise to save millions of lives in low-income countries, such as one to protect children from severe malaria and another to protect teenage girls against the virus that causes cervical cancer, have recently become available, and Gavi was expanding the portfolio of support it could give those countries.

The loss of U.S. funds may set back the organization’s ability to continue to provide its basic range of services — such as immunization for measles and polio — to a growing population of children in the poorest countries, let alone expand to include new vaccines.

While European countries have historically provided significant funding, many are now reducing foreign aid spending as they grapple with the change in U.S. policy on Ukraine and the U.S. demand that they increase their defense spending.

Japan, another major Gavi donor, is struggling with a depreciating currency.

GAVI’s chief executive, Dr. Sania Nishtar said that she hoped the Trump administration would reconsider the decision to end its support. “Gavi’s work keeps people everywhere, including Americans, safe. In addition to protecting individual children, vaccination reduces the possibility of large outbreaks. The organization maintains global stockpiles for vaccines against diseases such as Ebola and cholera, deploying them in rapid response efforts for epidemics,” she said.

Gavi’s structure requires countries to pay part of the cost of vaccines, with their share growing as income levels rise; middle-income countries are weaned from support.

The Trump administration, according to the letter has decided to continue 898 U.S. Agency for International Development Awards and to end 5,341.

It says the remaining programs are worth up to $78 billion.

But only $8.3 billion of that is unobligated funds — money still available to disburse, because the amount covers awards that run several years into the future.

The figure shows a massive reduction in the $40 billion that U.S.A.I.D. used to spend annually.

The administration has decided to continue some key grants for medications to treat H.I.V. and tuberculosis, and food aid to countries facing civil wars and natural disasters.

The cover letter details the skeletal remains of U.S.A.I.D. after the cuts, with most of its funding eliminated, and only 869 of more than 6,000 employees still on active duty.

The memo says that 869 U.S.A.I.D. personnel were working as of last Friday, while 3,848 were on administrative leave and 1,602 are in the process of being laid off.

Of 300 probationary employees who were initially fired, 270 have returned to work following a court order prohibiting their dismissal.

A spokesperson for the State Department, which now runs what is left of U.S.A.I.D., confirmed the terminations on the list were accurate and said that “each award terminated was reviewed individually for alignment with agency and administration priorities, and terminations were executed where Secretary Rubio determined the award was inconsistent with the national interest or agency policy priorities.”

Although the administration has repeatedly said publicly that its foreign assistance review process has been concluded, the information in the documents suggests that there is still some fluidity in which programs will survive.

Staff members of one major malaria program that was terminated weeks ago, and which appears on the list of canceled projects sent to Congress, for example, were informed on Monday that it is being restored.

Nevertheless, cuts to malaria response are deep. While awards that fund the bulk purchase of bednets and malaria treatments have been preserved, many of the programs to deliver these and other malaria control efforts in individual countries such as Cameroon and Tanzania — among the most affected in the world — have been terminated.

Some organizations with awards that have not been officially canceled have received no funds for more than two months, and have folded. Without them, there is no one to take treatments from ports to local clinics, or deliver them to children.

Foreign

Elon Musk summoned as France probes X, Grok AI

Published

4 days ago

February 4, 2026

Admin

ADVERTISEMENT

Prosecutors have filed requests for voluntary interviews of Elon Musk and former X CEO Linda Yaccarino as the authorities in France scrutinize X, formerly Twitter, and its Grok AI.

A team of French police officers, alongside Europol operatives, searched the social media platform’s office in Paris, the French capital, on Tuesday.

Musk and Yaccarino are expected to appear on April 20 for questions about the use of the company’s AI chatbot to create sexualized images of women and children, among others.

Paris public prosecutor Laure Beccuau explained that the aim was to ensure that X “complies with French law, as it operates on the national territory.”

A list of allegations released by the government includes: defamation of a person’s image (deepfakes of sexual nature); denial of crimes against humanity (Holocaust), and operating an illegal online platform by an organized group.

Others are: complicity in the possession of images of minors (pornographic); complicity in the distribution of or offering minors’ images (pornographic); and fraudulent extraction of data from an ⁠automated data processing system.

Musk, the CEO of Tesla, has not directly responded to the raid and investigation, but the world’s richest man has reposted comments critical of the French operation.

Musk often accuses Europe of information censorship and election interference, yet more countries on the continent, including Spain and the United Kingdom, have indicated a probe of X and Grok.

Foreign

Church of England confirms first female archbishop

Published

1 week ago

January 29, 2026

Admin

ADVERTISEMENT

Sarah Mullally has been confirmed as the Archbishop of Canterbury — three months after her historic appointment as the first woman to occupy the position since the establishment of the Church of England nearly 1,400 years ago.

She was formally confirmed as the new leader in a ceremony at St Paul’s Cathedral in London.

Mullally’s appointment was confirmed during a ceremony at St Paul Cathedral in London on Wednesday, BBC reported.

She is the first woman to take on the role in the Church of England’s near 500-year history.

She described the appointment as “an extraordinary and humbling privilege”.

“With God’s help, I will seek to guide Christ’s flock with calmness, consistency and compassion,” the new archbishop said, stressing the need for such leadership in these “times of division and uncertainty for our fractured world,” she said.

Mullally’s confirmation service featured global renditions in what was seen as a unifying act for the church’s mixed congregation.

Hymns were sung by the St Paul’s Cathedral choir; a Xhosa South African chant was rendered; and while a student delivered a reading in both English and Portuguese, the majority spoken language in the Anglican provinces of Mozambique and Angola, with which the diocese of London has a pastoral link.

The church had been without a leader for almost a year after Justin Welby resigned over his failure to report a prolific child abuser.

Mullally was announced as Welby’s replacement last October.

The new archbishop previously worked as a nurse in London hospitals, rising to the position of chief nursing officer for England and director of patient experience in the national health service.

She is now the spiritual leader of 85 million Anglicans worldwide. Her installation is scheduled for March.

Mullaly grew up in Woking, Surrey, and became a priest in 2006.

While, technically, the position of the church’s head (Supreme Governor) is vested in the British monarch, the Archbishop of Canterbury is the most senior bishop and is the spiritual leader of the church and the worldwide Anglican Communion.

Foreign

Bitter Cold Grips Millions As US Digs Out Of Sweeping Snowstorm

Published

2 weeks ago

January 27, 2026

Admin

ADVERTISEMENT

Millions of Americans were facing dangerously cold temperatures Monday in the wake of a massive winter storm that whipped snow and ice across the country, knocking out power and paralysing transportation.

A frigid, potentially life-threatening Arctic air mass threatened to delay clean-up as municipalities from New Mexico to Maine tried to dig out following the storm, which dropped a vicious cocktail of heavy snow and wind along with freezing rain and sleet.

Over 780,000 customers remained without electricity, the Poweroutage.com tracking site showed.

Tennessee, Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana — southern states unaccustomed to intense winter weather and the bone-chilling cold that’s forecast to continue for much of the next week — were especially impacted.

Approximately 190 million people in the United States were under some form of extreme cold alert, the National Weather Service (NWS) told AFP.

Areas across 20 states received at least a foot of snow (30.5 cm), and in many cases far more. The NWS said New Mexico’s Bonito Lake accumulated the highest US total over the weekend with 31 inches (78.7 cm).

New York’s Central Park received 11.4 inches (29 cm) — breaking a same-day snowfall record from 1905.

A compilation of local media reports tallied at least 21 storm-related deaths.

NWS meteorologist Allison Santorelli told AFP the agency was seeing widespread reports of significant ice accumulation, including in places unaccustomed to severe winter weather.

She said this storm recovery was particularly challenging because so many states were impacted — meaning northern states with more resources were unable to share their equipment and resources with less-prepared southern areas.

“A lot of those locations don’t have the means or the resources to clean up after these events,” she said. “We’re particularly concerned about the folks in those areas that are without power right now.”

Dave Radell, an NWS meteorologist based in New York, told AFP that the character of this storm’s snow was “very dry” and “fluffy”, meaning the wind could lash it around with ease, impeding roadway-clearing efforts and visibility.

“That makes it even more challenging,” he said.

Excruciating Cold

The snowfall and biting icy pellets that pummelling cities saw impassable roads and cancelled buses and trains, along with grounded flights — thousands of departures and arrivals were scrapped over the weekend — as concern turned to the hazardous temperatures set to linger for the better part of a week.

The brutal storm system was the result of a stretched polar vortex, an Arctic region of cold, low-pressure air that normally forms a relatively compact, circular system but sometimes morphs into a more oval shape, sending cold air pouring across North America.

Scientists say the increasing frequency of such disruptions may be linked to climate change, though the debate is not settled and natural variability plays a role.

People in the Great Lakes region woke up to extreme temperatures that could cause frostbite on exposed skin within minutes — in parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin, the NWS reported early morning temperatures as low as an excruciating -23°F (-30.6°C).

Forecasted windchills in those areas that make the apparent temperature even more frigid could hit as low as -50F (-45.6C), the weather authority said.

As far south as the Gulf Coast was expected to see freezing temperatures each night into the end of the week.

At least 20 states and the US capital, Washington, were under states of emergency in order to deploy emergency personnel and resources.

Many cities had opened warming centres for those without shelter or without power to take refuge, and authorities across the country were continuing to encourage residents who could to stay home.

AFP