KYIV, Ukraine: Belarus has forced the closure of the US Embassy’s Public Diplomacy and USAID offices in a move that comes amid the tensions with the US and its allies over Belarusian authorities’ crackdown on protests.
Samantha Power, the US Agency for International Development administrator, said Friday that the Belarusian authorities aim to “severely disrupt US development assistance and public diplomacy in Belarus by forcing the closure of facilities that house key US Government operations, and by ending employment of all of USAID’s local staff and Department of State public diplomacy staff.”
She added that the move, which is effective Nov. 20, demonstrates the authorities’ “callous disregard of the interests of the Belarusian people.”
US Envoy for Belarus Julie Fisher described the Belarusian authorities’ decision as a reflection of their “deep insecurities about the role of diplomacy, people-to-people ties and independent civil society.”
She added that the US “will not be deterred from its commitment to helping advance democracy and human rights in Belarus and to supporting the aspirations of the Belarusian people to build a more promising future in a free and independent Belarus.”
The ambassador noted that the US government’s development assistance implemented in Belarus by USAID since the 1990s has supported entrepreneurship and the expansion of small-to-medium private enterprises. More recently, it provided key COVID-19 relief while Belarusian authorities were dismissive of the pandemic.
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the main opposition candidate in the country’s disputed August 2020 presidential vote, was forced to leave Belarus under official pressure. She expressed gratitude Friday to the US Embassy Public Diplomacy and USAID offices.
“They will return to new Belarus,” Tsikhanouskaya said on Twitter. “I ask them to continue work for Belarusians — we see and value this consistent support.”
Belarus’ relations with the US and the European Union have become increasingly tense following the country’s authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko being handed a sixth term in the August 2020 vote that the opposition and the West have rejected as rigged. The election fueled massive protests, to which authorities responded with a fierce crackdown that saw more than 35,000 people arrested and thousands beaten by police.
Lukashenko’s government has moved methodically to squelch any remaining resistance, shutting NGOs and independent media and arresting activists and journalists.
Viktor Babariko, the former head of a Russia-owned bank who aspired to challenge Lukashenko in the 2020 vote, was sentenced to 14 years in prison in July on the money-laundering charges that he rejected as politically motivated.
On Friday, Babariko’s last remaining lawyer, Yauhen Pylchanka, was stripped of his license due to alleged legal violations during the trial. Pylchanka said the move was spearheaded by the country’s top state security agency, which still goes under its Soviet-era name KGB.
“The Belarusian KGB initiated my expulsion from the collegium of lawyers under a sham pretext of violation of professional ethics,” Pylchanka told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. “Babariko has been left without lawyers and without any communications with the outside world, deprived of the possibility to properly defend himself.”
Also Friday, the Belarusian Interior Ministry outlawed popular messaging app channels NEXTA, NEXTA-Live and LUXTA as extremist and blocked German broadcaster Deutsche Welle and the Current Time TV channel.
Belarus forces US to close public diplomacy, USAID offices
https://arab.news/9uyyp
Belarus forces US to close public diplomacy, USAID offices
- U.S. Agency for International Development administrator said Belarusian authorities aim to “severely disrupt U.S. development assistance and public diplomacy in Belarus
- U.S. Envoy for Belarus described the Belarusian authorities' decision as a reflection of their "deep insecurities about the role of diplomacy”
US lawmakers in new push to free wrongly deported migrant
- Yassamin Ansari: ‘I’m in El Salvador to shine a light on Kilmar’s story and keep the pressure on Donald Trump to secure his safe return home’
- Maxwell Frost: ‘Trump is illegally arresting, jailing, and deporting people with no due process’
Kilmar Abrego Garcia was sent back to his country and remains imprisoned despite the Supreme Court ordering the administration of President Donald Trump to facilitate the man’s return to the United States.
“I’m in El Salvador to shine a light on Kilmar’s story and keep the pressure on Donald Trump to secure his safe return home,” congresswoman Yassamin Ansari of Arizona said on social media.
“We want to make sure that Kilmar is still alive. We want to make sure that he has access to counsel,” added Ansari, who was accompanied by fellow US House Democrats Robert Garcia, Maxwell Frost and Maxine Dexter.
“Trump is illegally arresting, jailing, and deporting people with no due process,” Frost wrote on X.
“We must hold the Administration accountable for these illegal acts and demand Kilmar’s release. Today it’s him, tomorrow it could be anyone else,” the Florida representative added.
The visit comes days after Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen managed to meet with Abrego Garcia, though only after a considerable effort.
Van Hollen, who represents Maryland where Abrego Garcia and his family have lived for years, accused the Central American nation of staging a photo of him supposedly sipping margaritas with Abrego Garcia.
Trump’s administration has paid El Salvador President Nayib Bukele millions of dollars to lock up nearly 300 migrants it says are criminals and gang members — including Abrego Garcia.
The 29-year-old was detained in Maryland last month and expelled to El Salvador along with 238 Venezuelans and 22 fellow Salvadorans who were deported shortly after Trump invoked a rarely used wartime authority.
The Trump administration admitted that Abrego Garcia was deported due to an “administrative error,” and the Supreme Court ruled that the government must “facilitate” his return.
But Trump has since doubled down, insisting Abrego Garcia is in fact a gang member.
Bukele, who was hosted at the White House last week, said he did not have the power to return Abrego Garcia.
The migrant’s supporters note he had protected legal status and no criminal conviction in the United States.
“My parents fled an authoritarian regime in Iran where people were ‘disappeared’ — I refuse to sit back and watch it happen here,” Ansari said in a statement.
“What happened to Kilmar Abrego Garcia is not just one family’s nightmare — it is a constitutional crisis that should outrage every single one of us,” said Dexter, a congresswoman from Oregon.
Abrego Garcia told Van Hollen that he was initially imprisoned at the Terrorism Confinement Center, a mega-prison for gang members, but was later transferred to a jail in the western department of Santa Ana.
Asian scam center crime gangs expanding worldwide: UN
- A new report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) warned the networks are building up operations in South America, Africa, the Middle East, Europe and some Pacific islands
- Illicit cryptocurrency mining — unregulated and anonymous — has become a “powerful tool” for the networks to launder money, the report said
BANGKOK: Asian crime networks running multi-billion-dollar cyber scam centers are expanding their operations across the world as they seek new victims and new ways to launder money, the UN said on Monday.
Chinese and Southeast Asian gangs are raking in tens of billions of dollars a year targeting victims through investment, cryptocurrency, romance and other scams — using an army of workers often trafficked and forced to toil in squalid compounds.
The activity has largely been focused in Myanmar’s lawless border areas and dubious “special economic zones” set up in Cambodia and Laos.
But a new report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) warned the networks are building up operations in South America, Africa, the Middle East, Europe and some Pacific islands.
“We are seeing a global expansion of East and Southeast Asian organized crime groups,” said Benedikt Hofmann, UNODC Acting Regional Representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
“This reflects both a natural expansion as the industry grows and seeks new ways and places to do business, but also a hedging against future risks should disruption continue and intensify in Southeast Asia.”
Countries in east and southeast Asia lost an estimated $37 billion to cyber fraud in 2023, the UNODC report said, adding that “much larger estimated losses” were reported around the world.
The syndicates have expanded in Africa — notably in Zambia, Angola and Namibia — as well as Pacific islands such as Fiji, Palau, Tonga and Vanuatu.
Besides seeking new bases and new victims, the criminal gangs are broadening their horizons to help launder their illicit income, the report said, pointing to team-ups with “South American drug cartels, the Italian mafia, and Irish mob, among many others.”
Illicit cryptocurrency mining — unregulated and anonymous — has become a “powerful tool” for the networks to launder money, the report said.
In June 2023 a sophisticated crypto mining operation in a militia-controlled territory in Libya, equipped with high-powered computers and high-voltage cooling units, was raided and 50 Chinese nationals arrested.
The global spread of the syndicates’ operations has been driven in part by pressure from authorities in Southeast Asia.
A major crackdown on scam centers in Myanmar this year, pushed by Beijing, led to around 7,000 workers from at least two dozen counrties being freed.
But the UN report warns that while such efforts disrupt the scam gangs’ immediate activities, they have shown themselves able to adapt and relocate swiftly.
“It spreads like a cancer,” UNODC’s Hoffman said.
“Authorities treat it in one area, but the roots never disappear, they simply migrate.”
Alongside the scam centers, staffed by a workforce estimated by the UN to be in the hundreds of thousands, the industry is further enabled by new technological developments.
Operators have developed their own online ecosystems with payment applications, encrypted messaging platforms and cryptocurrencies, to get round mainstream platforms that might be targeted by law enforcement.
Pakistan, UAE sign multiple pacts to strengthen trade and culture cooperation
- UAE Deputy PM Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan is in Islamabad on 2-day visit
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan and the UAE on Monday signed multiple agreements to further cooperation in trade, culture and consular affairs.
This took place during a visit by the UAE’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan to Islamabad.
Sheikh Abdullah arrived in Islamabad on Sunday for a two-day visit aimed at strengthening cooperation in energy, trade and security, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry said in an earlier statement.
Pakistan and the UAE have deepened their economic partnership in recent years.
The UAE is Pakistan’s third-largest trading partner after China and the US, and a major source of foreign investment, with over $10 billion invested in the last two decades.
“I must say that our relationship has been growing on a good pace,” Sheikh Abdullah said during a joint media briefing with his Pakistan counterpart Ishaq Dar at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“I think both our leaders, the people of Pakistan and the UAE do want to see more development in the relationship,” he added.
Sheikh Abdullah said relations between the two countries, over the past few years, have been “moving faster than they have for a while.”
“And I really look forward that the good spirit that has been moving the relationship in the last few months would continue on so many different cycles, if it’s trade, investment, aviation,” he added.
Dar and Sheikh Abdullah signed several agreements to promote cooperation between the two countries in multiple sectors including culture, trade and consular affairs, the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan said.
They signed a pact between the UAE’s Ministry of Culture and its Pakistan counterpart. And they also inked an agreement to establish a joint committee for consular affairs.
The officials also witnessed the signing of a pact to set up a UAE-Pakistan Joint Business Council. The agreement was inked between the Federation of UAE Chambers of Commerce and Industry and the Federation of Pakistan Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
The UAE royal is also scheduled to meet Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif during his visit.
The UAE is home to over a million expatriates from the Asia nation, the second-largest overseas Pakistani community globally, and a major source of remittances.
Policymakers in Islamabad view the UAE as an ideal export destination due to its geographic proximity, which lowers freight costs and facilitates smoother trade.
In recent years, the two countries have signed a series of agreements to boost economic ties.
In February, during the Abu Dhabi crown prince’s visit to Pakistan, the two sides signed accords in mining, railways, banking and infrastructure.
Last year in January, Pakistan and the UAE signed deals worth more than $3 billion covering railways, economic zones and infrastructure development.
The UAE has become a crucial partner for Pakistan amid Islamabad’s efforts to achieve sustainable growth after suffering from a prolonged macroeconomic crisis.
Carney ahead in polls as Canada enters last week of election campaign
- Mark Carney is looking for a strong mandate to deal with Donald Trump’s tariff threat
- Mark Carney: ‘We need a government that has a plan that meets the moment’
CHARLOTTETOWN, Prince Edward Island: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, ahead in polls in the run-up to an April 28 election, renewed calls on Monday for voters to give him a strong mandate to deal with US President Donald Trump’s tariff threat.
Carney says Trump’s tariffs and talk of annexation pose a huge threat and mean that Canada needs to reduce its reliance on the United States and restructure its economy.
“We need a government that has a strong mandate, a clear mandate. We need a government that has a plan that meets the moment,” Carney said during a campaign event in Charlottetown in the Atlantic province of Prince Edward Island.
The 60-year-old ex-central banker, who had no prior political experience before running to become Liberal leader earlier this year, billed himself as “someone who knows how to negotiate ... (and) how to manage a crisis.”
The Liberal platform, which promises additional spending of around C$130 billion over the next four years, predicts that the 2025/26 deficit will be C$62.3 billion, far higher than the C$42.2 billion forecast in December.
Carney replaced Justin Trudeau, who had been in power for more than nine years and was the focus of opposition attacks about inflation, high immigration levels and a housing crisis.
The official opposition Conservatives had been 20 points ahead at the turn of the year but now trail the Liberals.
A rolling three-day Nanos poll released on Monday put the Liberals on 43.7 percent public support with the Conservatives on 36.3 percent. The left-leaning New Democrats, who compete with the Liberals for the center-left vote, trailed at 10.7 percent.
If repeated on election day, that would give the Liberals a majority of the 343 seats in the House of Commons.
Elections Canada said a record 2 million people had cast their ballots in the first of day of advance voting on Friday, which was a national holiday. Around 28 million Canadians are registered to vote.
Voter turnout in federal elections from the 1950s to the early 1990s ranged between 70 percent and 80 percent, but it has gradually declined. In the 2021 election, only 62.3 percent of eligible voters cast ballots.
Ipsos Public Affairs CEO Darrell Bricker said the advance polls could indicate that overall turnout will be higher, or merely reflect parties’ efforts to boost early voting.
“Too early to say which it is this time,” he said in a post on X.
The Nanos poll of 1,289 people was carried out on April 17, 19 and 20 and is considered accurate to within 2.7 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
White House voices support for Hegseth as a new Signal chat revelation stirs fresh Pentagon turmoil
- White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said report was untrue
WASHINGTON: The White House expressed support Monday for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth following media reports that he shared sensitive military details in another Signal messaging chat, this time with his wife and brother.
Neither the White House nor Hegseth denied that he had shared such information in a second chat, instead focusing their responses on what they called the disgruntled workers whom they blamed for leaking to the media and insisting that no classified information had been disclosed.
“It’s just fake news. They just bring up stories,” President Donald Trump told reporters. “I guess it sounds like disgruntled employees. You know, he was put there to get rid of a lot of bad people, and that’s what he’s doing. So you don’t always have friends when you do that,” Trump said.
The administration’s posture was meant to hold the line against Democratic demands for Hegseth’s firing at a time when the Pentagon is engulfed in turmoil, including the departures of several senior aides and an internal investigation over information leaks.
The White House also tried to deflect attention from the national security implications of the latest Signal revelation by framing it as the outgrowth of an institutional power struggle between Hegseth and the career workforce. But some of the recently departed officials the administration appeared to dismiss as disgruntled were part of Hegseth’s initial inner circle, brought in when he took the job.
“This is what happens when the entire Pentagon is working against you and working against the monumental change that you are trying to implement,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in remarks amplified by a Pentagon social media account.
The latest news added to questions about the judgment of the embattled Pentagon chief, coming on top of last month’s disclosure of his participation in a Signal chat with top Trump administration leaders in which details about the military airstrike against Yemen’s Houthi militants were shared.
“Pete Hegseth must be fired,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said.
Latest reports of Hegseth’s Signal use
The New York Times reported Sunday that the information shared in a Signal messaging chat with Hegseth’s wife, brother and others was similar to what was communicated in the already disclosed chain with Trump administration officials.
A person familiar with the contents and those who received the messages, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, confirmed the second chat to The Associated Press. The person said it included 13 people and was dubbed “Defense ‘ Team Huddle.”
White House officials first learned of the second Signal chat from news reports Sunday, according to an official familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations.
Hegseth, talking to reporters while attending the White House Easter Egg Roll, didn’t address the substance of the allegations or the national security implications they raised but assailed the media.
“They take anonymous sources from disgruntled former employees and then they try to slash and burn people and ruin their reputations,” Hegseth said. “Not going to work with me. Because we’re changing the Defense Department, putting the Pentagon back in the hands of warfighters. And anonymous smears from disgruntled former employees on old news doesn’t matter.”
Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, struck a similar tone, writing on Sunday night on X: “Secretary Hegseth is busy implementing President Trump’s America First agenda, while these leakers are trying to undermine them both. Shameful.”
The Trump administration’s response on the use of Signal
The Trump administration has struggled in its public explanations about senior officials’ use of Signal, a commercially available app not authorized to be used to communicate sensitive or classified national defense information.
The first chat, set up by national security adviser Mike Waltz, included a number of Cabinet members and came to light because Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, was added to the group.
Officials have repeatedly insisted that the information shared on Signal was not classified, though the contents of that chat, which The Atlantic published, shows that Hegseth listed weapons systems and a timeline for the attack on the Iran-backed Houthis last month.
Multiple current and former military officials say launch times and munitions drop times are classified information and putting those details on an unsecured channel could have put those pilots at risk.
The Trump administration has faced criticism for failing to take action so far against top national security officials who discussed plans for the strike in Signal, and the latest report fueled additional calls for Hegseth’s ouster.
“The details keep coming out. We keep learning how Pete Hegseth put lives at risk. But Trump is still too weak to fire him,” Schumer posted Sunday on X.
The New York Times reported that the group in the second chat included Hegseth’s wife, Jennifer, who is a former Fox News producer, and his brother Phil Hegseth, who was hired at the Pentagon as a Department of Homeland Security liaison and senior adviser.
The Times said the second chat had the same warplane launch times that the first chat included.
Hegseth’s Signal use is under investigation by the Defense Department’s acting inspector general at the request of the bipartisan leadership of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The senior Democratic member, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, urged the watchdog Sunday to look into the reported second chat as well.
Wider turmoil inside the Pentagon
The Pentagon has confronted a wave of turbulence stretching beyond Signal. Defense officials have faced scrutiny over a seemingly haphazard and disjointed campaign to purge online content that promoted women and minorities, in some cases scrambling to restore posts after their removals came to light.
Over the past week, five officials in Hegseth’s inner circle have departed.
Dan Caldwell, a Hegseth aide; Colin Carroll, chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg; and Darin Selnick, Hegseth’s deputy chief of staff; were escorted out of the Pentagon as the department hunts down leaks of inside information.
While those three initially had been placed on leave pending the investigation, a joint statement shared by Caldwell on X on Saturday said they “still have not been told what exactly we were investigated for, if there is still an active investigation, or if there was even a real investigation of ‘leaks’ to begin with.”
Former Pentagon spokesman John Ullyot announced he was resigning last week, unrelated to the leaks. The Pentagon said, however, that Ullyot was asked to resign.
A fifth close Hegseth aide, chief of staff Joe Kasper, also was leaving, according to two officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters. They didn’t say why.
Caldwell and Selnick had worked with the defense secretary during his time leading the nonprofit Concerned Veterans for America. Kasper was the one who sent a March memo saying the Pentagon was investigating what it called leaks of national security information and that Defense Department personnel could face polygraphs.
