WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s administration told Congress on Friday it would cut nearly all remaining jobs at the US Agency for International Development and shut the agency, even as Trump promised that the US would provide assistance to Myanmar following a devastating earthquake.
Humanitarian aid experts expressed alarm at the new cuts to an agency whose humanitarian aid has gained Washington influence and saved lives across the globe for more than 60 years. USAID plays a major role in coordinating earthquake assistance.
Thousands of USAID staff and Foreign Service officers assigned to the agency learned in an internal memo that all positions not required by law would be eliminated in July and September.
The memo reviewed by Reuters was sent to staff by Jeremy Lewin, the agency’s acting deputy administrator and a member of billionaire Elon Musk’s job-cutting Department of Government Efficiency. DOGE oversaw a first round of cuts to USAID last month.
The State Department notification to Congress of the job cuts, also seen by Reuters, said USAID missions worldwide would be closed and the agency’s remaining functions would be folded into State.
Cuts at the agency have thrown humanitarian efforts around the world into turmoil. The latest notice came on the day that a powerful earthquake hit Thailand and Myanmar, toppling buildings and killing scores of people. USAID has historically played a major role in coordinating disaster relief efforts.
A US appeals court on Friday
ruled that Musk and DOGE can keep making cuts to USAID while they appeal a lower court order that had barred them from doing so.
US Representative Gregory Meeks, top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement that closing USAID was illegal and aimed at withdrawing the US “from its global leadership role with as much cruelty and disruption as possible.”
The exact number of personnel being fired was not immediately available. As of March 21, there were 869 US direct hire personnel on active duty and working, while 3,848 others were on paid administrative leave, according to Stand Up for Aid, a grassroots advocacy group.
The terminations also included thousands of Foreign Service officers on assignment to USAID around the globe, according to a source familiar with the matter.
In his memo, Lewin said agency personnel worldwide would shortly receive emailed termination notices giving them the choice of being fired on July 1 or September 2.
Over the next three months, the State Department would assume USAID’s remaining “life-saving and strategic aid programming,” he said, adding that USAID personnel will not automatically be transferred to the department, which would conduct “a separate and independent hiring process.”
Trump in January ordered a 90-day freeze of all US foreign aid and a review of whether aid programs were aligned with his policy. He claimed without evidence that Musk had found fraud at the agency, which he said was run by “radical left lunatics.”
Musk and DOGE gained access to USAID’s payment and email systems, froze many payments and told much of its staff they were being placed on leave. On February 3, Musk wrote on X that he had “spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.”
On Friday, a statement from Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the State Department had notified the US Congress of its intent to reorganize USAID, saying the agency had “strayed from its original mission long ago.”
“We are reorienting our foreign assistance programs to align directly with what is best for the United States and our citizens,” Rubio said.
The decision to cut the remaining USAID jobs sparked concern among humanitarian aid experts, who said the firings and funding cuts would prevent a concerted US response to the earthquake that hit Myanmar and Thailand.
In a post on X, Jeremy Konyndyk, a former USAID official who is president of Refugees International, called the move “a total abdication of decades of US leadership in the world.”
He said the firings will cut “the last remnants of the team that would have mobilized a USAID disaster response” to the earthquake.
Trump on Friday said he had spoken with officials in Myanmar about the earthquake and that the US would provide assistance.
State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said the changes at USAID would not affect the administration’s ability to deploy a Disaster Assistance Response Team, or DART, adding she could not give a timeline.
The former USAID disaster response chief told Reuters the Trump administration’s massive personnel and funding cuts have “kneecapped” the agency’s ability to send disaster response teams to Thailand and Myanmar, opening the way to China and other US rival countries.
“I suspect we will see very shortly Chinese teams showing up, if they haven’t already, possibly Turkish, Russian, Indian teams really making their presence known in support of people that are really suffering right now in Thailand and Burma, and the US won’t be there,” said Sarah Charles, who served as assistant USAID administrator for humanitarian affairs until February 2024, using the former name of Myanmar.
Charles said contracts with urban search and rescue teams from Los Angeles and Virginia had been “turned back on” after being cut.
But, she said commercial contracts for transporting those teams remained cut and non-governmental aid groups that normally would provide emergency water, sanitation and medical help had laid off staff or run out of funds due to Trump’s foreign aid freeze.
“It’s really devastating to watch in real time,” she said.
Rubio said earlier this month that more than 80 percent of all USAID programs had been canceled.
Remaining USAID staff fired, Trump says Myanmar will still get earthquake aid
https://arab.news/8c8ha
Remaining USAID staff fired, Trump says Myanmar will still get earthquake aid
- Thousands of USAID staff and Foreign Service officers assigned to the agency learned in an internal memo that all positions not required by law would be eliminated in July and September
Australian political leaders launch election campaigns focused on first-time homeowners
MELBOURNE: Australia’s rival political leaders offered Sunday competing policies to help Australians buy a home ahead of the nation’s first federal election in which younger voters will outnumber the long-dominant baby boomer generation.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and opposition leader Peter Dutton officially launched their parties’ campaigns ahead of the May 3 elections.
Helping aspiring homeowners buy into a national real estate market in which prices are high and supply is constrained due to inflation, builders going broke, shortages of materials and a growing population was central to both campaigns.
“Buying a first home has never been easy, but for this generation, it’s never felt further out of reach,” Albanese told his supporters in the west coast city of Perth.
“In Australia, home ownership should not be a privilege you inherit if you’re lucky. It should be an aspiration that Australians everywhere can achieve,” he added.
The governing center-left Labor Party promised Sunday 10 billion Australian dollars ($6.3 billion) in grants and loans to build 100,000 new homes over eight years exclusively for first-homebuyers, who would only have to pay a 5 percent deposit instead of the current minimum 20 percent, with the government paying the remainder.
Opposition promises to reduce housing demand
Dutton’s conservative Liberal Party promised to ease demand for housing by banning foreign investors and temporary residents from buying existing homes for two years while reducing immigration and foreign student numbers.
Spain busts ring bringing Moroccans in via Romania
MADRID: Spanish police said on Sunday they had broken a ring that had brought in up to 2,500 Moroccan irregular immigrants via Romania, arresting four suspects.
The four were detained in the southeastern Murcia province on charges of belonging to a criminal organization and facilitating irregular migration, the Guardia Civil said in a statement.
The Moroccans entered Europe by plane to Romania, from where they were transported to Spain, with each one charged 3,000 euros ($3,400) for the voyage, it said. The suspects were alleged to be the ringleaders of the organization. Their nationalities were not specified.
Spanish authorities believe the ring organized 50 such trips over the past two years, each one composed of between 20 and 50 Moroccans, making for a total of between 1,000 and 2,500 irregular immigrants.
The outfit was alleged to have a “logistics center” in Romania where it hid the migrants while they awaited their transport to Spain.
The Guardia Civil said the operation to bust the ring was conducted with the help of Europol and the European Union’s border patrol agency Frontex.
Dozens reported killed in east Congo as government, rebels trade blame
- Renewed fighting has killed some 3,000 people and worsened one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises
GOMA: At least 50 people were killed in weekend attacks in Congo’s conflict-battered east, authorities said Saturday. The government traded blame with Rwanda-backed rebels over who was responsible for the violence that quickly escalated the conflict in the region.
The renewed violence that residents reported in and around the region’s largest city of Goma — which the M23 rebels control — was the biggest threat yet to ongoing peace efforts by both the Gulf Arab state of Qatar and African nations in the conflict that has raised fears of regional warfare.
Goma resident Amboma Safari recounted how his family of four spent the night under their bed as they heard gunfire and bomb blasts through Friday night. “We saw corpses of soldiers, but we don’t know which group they are from,” Safari said.
The decades-long conflict between Congo and the M23 rebels escalated in January, when the rebels made an unprecedented advance and seized the strategic eastern Congolese city of Goma, followed by the town of Bukavu in February.
The latest fighting has killed some 3,000 people and worsened what was already one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises, with around 7 million people displaced.
At least 52 people were killed between Friday and Saturday, including a person shot dead at Goma’s Kyeshero Hospital, Congo’s Ministry of Interior said in a statement that blamed the attack on M23.
M23 spokesperson Lawrence Kanyuka issued a statement blaming Congolese forces and their allies for the attacks. Kanyuka said Congo’s joint operations with local militias and southern African troops “directly threaten the stability and security of civilians” in the region.
The group said it has been compelled to “reconsider its position to prioritize the security” of the people in the area, suggesting the crisis could worsen. Christian Kalamo, a civil society leader in the North Kivu province that includes Goma, said at least one body was seen on the streets on Saturday.
“It is difficult to know if it is the Wazalendo, the FARDC (Congolese forces) or the M23” that carried out the attacks, Kalamo said. “Now, we don’t know what will happen, and we live with fear in our stomachs, thinking that the war will resume.”
Tanzania opposition party barred from upcoming elections
DAR ES SALAAM: Tanzania’s main opposition party has been disqualified from upcoming general elections, the country’s election chief said, after it refused to sign an electoral code of conduct.
The east African nation has increasingly cracked down on its opposition ahead of a general election due in October.
The opposition Chadema party has accused President Samia Suluhu Hassan of returning to the repressive tactics of her predecessor, John Magufuli.
Chadema leader Tundu Lissu, who was arrested and charged with treason earlier in the week, previously said that his party would not participate in the polls without electoral reform.
On Saturday, Chadema said the party’s secretary-general John Mnyika would not attend an Independent National Elections Commission meeting to sign the government’s electoral code of conduct.
The decision was “informed by the lack of a written response” to the party’s “proposal and demands for essential electoral reforms,” it said in a statement.
INEC Director of Elections Ramadhani Kailima said following the meeting that “any party that hasn’t signed today will not be allowed to take part in the general election or any other elections for the next five years.” “There will be no second chance,” he told reporters.
He did not mention Chadema by name, and the party has not commented on the INEC’s decision.
Tanzania is scheduled to hold presidential and national assembly elections in October.
President Hassan’s party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi swept to victory in local elections last year.
Chadema said those elections had been manipulated, and that it would petition the high court to demand reforms ahead of the upcoming polls.
Lissu last year warned that Chadema would “block the elections through confrontation” unless the electoral system was reformed.
The opposition’s demands have been long ignored by the ruling party.
Hassan was initially feted for easing restrictions imposed by Magufuli on the opposition and the media in the country of 67 million people.
But rights groups and Western governments have criticized what they see as renewed repression, with the arrests of Chadema politicians as well as abductions and murders of opposition figures.
Bangladesh reintroduces ‘except Israel’ phrase on passports
- Israel is a flashpoint issue in Muslim-majority Bangladesh, which does not recognize it
- In 2021, the words “except Israel” were removed from passports
DHAKA: Bangladesh has restored an “except Israel” inscription on passports, local media reported Sunday, effectively barring its citizens from traveling to that country.
Israel is a flashpoint issue in Muslim-majority Bangladesh, which does not recognize it.
The phrase “valid for all countries except Israel,” which was printed on Bangladeshi passports for decades, was removed during the later years of ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s tenure.
Nilima Afroze, a deputy secretary at the home ministry, told Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha (BSS) news agency on Sunday that authorities had “issued a directive last week” to restore the inscription.
“The director general of the department of immigration and passport was asked to take necessary measures to implement this change,” local newspaper The Daily Star quoted Afroze as saying Sunday.
In 2021, the words “except Israel” were removed from passports, although the then government under Hasina clarified that the country’s stance on Israel had not changed.
The country’s support for an independent Palestinian state was visible on Saturday when around 100,000 people gathered in Dhaka in solidarity with Gaza.
The Gaza war broke out after Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel which resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
A fragile ceasefire between the warring parties fell apart last month and Gaza’s health ministry said Sunday that at least 1,574 Palestinians had been killed since then, taking the overall death toll since the war began to 50,944.
