A replica of the annex where Jewish schoolgirl Anne Frank and her family hid from the Nazis will open in New York next week, targeting a new generation with the lessons of the Holocaust.The recreation of the cramped hiding space shared by Anne and seven others at Manhattan’s Center for Jewish History is the first replica displayed outside of Amsterdam, and will be free to visit for thousands of schoolchildren.”They live in a different world. They have a very different media landscape around them. They are still very interested in the topic — but know less about it,” said Anne Frank House executive director Ronald Leopold.Unlike the Amsterdam museum, set in the building where Anne Frank hid from Nazis and wrote her diary during the Second World War, the New York iteration is furnished as it would have been in the 1940s.Visitors are led through a bookcase like the one behind which Anne and her family hid from the Nazi occupiers after Anne’s sister Margot received orders to go to a labor camp in July 1942.The exhibition is brought to life largely with visual installations and uses minimal text narration. It relies instead on audio guides tailored to different age groups and interactive displays like a giant underfloor map of Europe and the Nazi Holocaust machinery.”This is how we think, at this moment in time, you could bring the memory of the Holocaust across towards these young generations,” Leopold said.- Not just ‘in the past’ -Mockups of the rooms used by Anne Frank and her family were recreated by an exhibition designer with experience of theater and opera using two scale models commissioned by Anne’s father Otto Frank in the 1960s.  The daily struggle of living in hiding is illustrated with ordinary objects and photos including artifacts that belonged to Anne Frank, like the first diary book gifted to her on her 13th birthday on June 12, 1942.Her diary has since been published in more than 70 languages with millions of copies sold. It recounts her life as an ordinary teenager living in extraordinary circumstances up until her arrest along with everyone in the annex in August 1944 after 25 months in hiding. She died along with Margot in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in February 1945.”Now young people (can) come here in this exhibition and get to know what it means to be in hiding, what it means to be persecuted,” said Hannah Elias, granddaughter of Anne Frank’s cousin Buddy Elias.”This has a strong connection to the present, because there are still a lot of people that are persecuted or that might go into hiding, and to know that it’s not just a thing in the past. It’s not something that we can close a chapter and then not look at it again.”The exhibition opens to the public Monday to coincide with International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz Nazi death camp.”The Anne Frank House feels that our responsibility has never been greater,” said Leopold.”This story is not just about the past. It’s a reminder that is also very much a call to action for the present and for the future — stand against anti-Semitism, stand against other forms of hate.”

The United States, the world’s biggest donor, froze virtually all foreign aid on Friday, making exceptions only for emergency food, and military funding for Israel and Egypt.Secretary of State Marco Rubio sent an internal memo days after President Donald Trump took office vowing an “America First” policy of tightly restricting assistance overseas.”No new funds shall be obligated for new awards or extensions of existing awards until each proposed new award or extension has been reviewed and approved,” said the memo to staff seen by AFP.The sweeping order appears to affect everything from development assistance to military aid — including to Ukraine, which received billions of dollars in weapons under Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden as it tries to repel a Russian invasion.The directive also means a pause of at least several months of US funding for PEPFAR, the anti-HIV/AIDS initiative that buys anti-retroviral drugs to treat the disease in developing countries, largely in Africa.Launched under president George W. Bush in 2003, PEPFAR is credited with saving some 26 million lives and until recently enjoyed broad popular support along partisan lines in Washington.But the memo explicitly made exceptions for military assistance to Israel — whose longstanding major arms packages from the United States have expanded further since the Gaza war — and Egypt, which has received generous US defense funding since it signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979.Rubio also made an exception for US contributions to emergency food assistance, which the United States ahs been contributing following crises around the world including in Sudan and Syria.Lawmakers from the rival Democratic Party said that more than 20 million people relied on medication through PEPFAR and 63 million people on US-funded anti-malaria efforts including nets.”For years, Republicans in Congress have decried what they see as a lack of U.S. credibility vis-a-vis countries like China, Russia, and Iran,” said Representative Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Relations Committee, and Representative Lois Frankel.”Now our credibility is on the line, and it appears we will cut and run from American commitments to our partners around the world,” they wrote in a letter.Washington has long leveraged aid as a tool of its foreign policy, saying it cares about development and drawing a contrast with China, which is primarily concerned about seeking natural resources.Meeks and Frankel also noted that foreign assistance is appropriated by Congress and said they would seek its implementation.- ‘Life or death consequences’ -The memo allows the State Department to make other case-by-case exceptions and temporarily to fund salaries to staff and other administrative expenses.The memo called for an internal review of all foreign assistance within 85 days.In justifying the freeze, Rubio — who as a senator was a supporter of development assistance — wrote that it was impossible for the new administration to assess whether existing foreign aid commitments “are not duplicated, are effective and are consistent with President Trump’s foreign policy.”The United States has long been the world’s top donor in dollar terms, although a number of European nations, especially in Scandinavia, give significantly more as a percent of their economies. The United States gave more than $64 billion in overseas development assistance in 2023, the last year for which records were available, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which advises industrialized countries. Trump had already on taking office Monday signed an executive order suspending foreign assistance for 90 days, but it was not immediately clear how it would be implemented. Anti-poverty group Oxfam said that Trump was abandoning a longstanding consensus in the United States for foreign assistance. “Humanitarian and development assistance accounts for only around one percent of the federal budget; it saves lives, fights diseases, educates millions of children and reduces poverty,” Oxfam America president Abby Maxman said in a statement. “Suspending and ultimately cutting many of these programs could have life or death consequences for countless children and families who are living through crisis,” she said.

The US Supreme Court agreed on Friday to weigh whether public funds can be used to establish a religious charter school, a major case testing the historic separation of church and state.The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled last year that the public funding mechanism for a proposed Catholic charter school in the southwestern state was unconstitutional.Charter schools, of which there are some 8,000 in the United States, are government-funded but operate independently of the local school district.They are not allowed to charge tuition or have a religious affiliation.The Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal of the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s ruling that blocked the state Charter School Board’s 2023 approval of the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School.The separation of church and state is a founding US principle. The First Amendment of the US Constitution forbids the establishment of a national religion or the preference of one religion over another.An attorney for the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which is representing the school board, welcomed the decision of the Supreme Court to hear the case.”Oklahoma parents and children are better off with more educational choices, not fewer,” ADF chief legal counsel Jim Campbell said.”The US Constitution protects St. Isidore’s freedom to operate according to its faith and supports the board’s decision to approve such learning options for Oklahoma families.”The American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and allied groups urged the Supreme Court to uphold the ruling by Oklahoma’s top court.”The law is clear: Charter schools are public schools and must be secular and open to all students,” they said. “Converting public schools into Sunday schools would be a dangerous sea change for our democracy.”The conservative-dominated Supreme Court has issued a number of recent rulings blurring the boundaries between church and state, including a decision that a public high school football coach can lead his players in prayer.The court has also allowed parents to use government vouchers to pay for the education of their children at private religious schools.Oklahoma’s Republican superintendent Ryan Walters, the highest education official in the state, has been among those pushing for the establishment of the religious charter school.In June, Walters ordered public schools in Oklahoma, part of America’s so-called “Bible Belt,” to teach the Bible, a move met with lawsuits by parents and teachers.The Supreme Court did not set a date for oral arguments in the religious charter school case but ordered briefs to be submitted by April 21.

The United States, the world’s biggest donor, froze virtually all foreign aid on Friday, making exceptions only for emergency food, and military funding for Israel and Egypt.Secretary of State Marco Rubio sent an internal memo days after President Donald Trump took office vowing an “America First” policy of tightly restricting assistance overseas.”No new funds shall be obligated for new awards or extensions of existing awards until each proposed new award or extension has been reviewed and approved,” said the memo to staff seen by AFP.The sweeping order appears to affect everything from development assistance to military aid — including to Ukraine, which received billions of dollars in weapons under Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden as it tries to repel a Russian invasion.The directive also means a pause of at least several months of US funding for PEPFAR, the anti-HIV/AIDS initiative that buys anti-retroviral drugs to treat the disease in developing countries, largely in Africa.Launched under president George W. Bush in 2003, PEPFAR is credited with saving some 26 million lives and until recently enjoyed broad popular support along partisan lines in Washington.But the memo explicitly made exceptions for military assistance to Israel — whose longstanding major arms packages from the United States have expanded further since the Gaza war — and Egypt, which has received generous US defense funding since it signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979.Rubio also made an exception for US contributions to emergency food assistance, which the United States ahs been contributing following crises around the world including in Sudan and Syria.The memo allows the State Department to make other case-by-case exceptions and temporarily to fund salaries to staff and other administrative expenses.The memo called for an internal review of all foreign assistance within 85 days.In justifying the freeze, Rubio — who as a senator was a supporter of development assistance — wrote that it was impossible for the new administration to assess whether existing foreign aid commitments “are not duplicated, are effective and are consistent with President Trump’s foreign policy.”- ‘Life or death consequences’ -The United States has long been the world’s top donor in dollar terms, although a number of European nations, especially in Scandinavia, give significantly more as a percent of their economies. The United States gave more than $64 billion in overseas development assistance in 2023, the last year for which records were available, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which advises industrialized countries. Washington has long leveraged aid as a tool of its foreign policy, saying it cares about development and drawing a contrast with China, which is primarily concerned about seeking natural resources.Trump had already on taking office Monday signed an executive order suspending foreign assistance for 90 days, but it was not immediately clear how it would be implemented. Anti-poverty group Oxfam said that Trump was abandoning a longstanding consensus in the United States for foreign assistance. “Humanitarian and development assistance accounts for only around one percent of the federal budget; it saves lives, fights diseases, educates millions of children and reduces poverty,” Oxfam America president Abby Maxman said in a statement. “Suspending and ultimately cutting many of these programs could have life or death consequences for countless children and families who are living through crisis,” she said.World Relief, a Christian-oriented humanitarian group, called on the Trump administration to ensure the flow of vital assistance including disaster relief.”We urge that the review of foreign development assistance be conducted swiftly and result in continued prioritization of investments that save lives and mitigate humanitarian crises,” said the group’s senior vice president of international programs, Lanre Williams-Ayedun.

Wall Street stocks retreated Friday as the market’s latest rally lost steam, while the yen pushed higher after the Bank of Japan lifted interest rates.After a flattish open, major US indices tumbled into the red. The S&P 500 finished down 0.3 percent after closing at a record high on Thursday.”This is normal consolidation or profit taking after a big 2-week rally,” said Adam Sarhan of 50 Park Investment.Wall Street stocks have gained in recent sessions following benign US inflation data, strong earnings from banks and the new presidency of Donald Trump in Washington.Markets have thus far welcomed his growth-oriented agenda and largely shrugged off his threats of tariffs.Sarhan said the market was poised for a pause given the heavy calendar next week, which includes a Federal Reserve monetary policy decision and earnings from tech giants and other big companies.In Europe, both London and Frankfurt stocks hit fresh record highs before turning lower. Paris ended the day with a gain, led by luxury stocks after British fashion house Burberry showed signs of recovery.In Japan, Tokyo’s stock market dropped and the yen rallied after the Bank of Japan lifted borrowing costs to their highest level since 2008 and flagged further increases in the pipeline. Even as other central banks have raised borrowing costs in recent years — and started cutting again in 2024 — the BoJ has remained an outlier.But it concluded last March that Japan’s “lost decades” of economic stagnation and static or falling prices were over, finally lifting rates above zero.In other Asian trading, Hong Kong gained nearly two percent and Shanghai also advanced following Trump’s latest comments with regard to China.In an interview broadcast Thursday night, Trump said he would “rather not” impose tariffs on China and signaled openness at negotiating a trade deal with Beijing. “We have one very big power over China, and that’s tariffs, and they don’t want them, and I’d rather not have to use it,” Trump told Fox News. “But it’s a tremendous power over China.””Clearly these are off-the-cuff remarks but it has left the overnight market feeling like there’s a scenario where China escapes the worst of the tariff regime,” said Jim Reid, managing director at Deutsche Bank.Trump’s remarks earlier Thursday before the World Economic Forum in Davos calling for lower interest rates added to pressure on the dollar. – Key figures around 2140 GMT -New York – Dow: DOWN 0.3 percent at 44,424.25 (close)New York – S&P 500: DOWN 0.3 percent at 6,101.24 (close)New York – Nasdaq Composite: DOWN 0.5 percent at 19,954.30 (close)London – FTSE 100: DOWN 0.7 percent at 8,502.35 (close)Paris – CAC 40: UP 0.4 percent at 7,927.62 (close)Frankfurt – DAX: DOWN 0.1 percent at 21,394.93 (close)Tokyo – Nikkei 225: DOWN 0.1 percent at 39,931.98 (close)Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: UP 1.9 percent at 20,066.19 (close)Shanghai – Composite: UP 0.7 percent at 3,252.63 (close)Dollar/yen: DOWN at 155.93 yen from 156.05 yen on ThursdayEuro/dollar: UP at $1.0500 from $1.0415Pound/dollar: UP at $1.2484 from $1.2353Euro/pound: DOWN at 84.06 pence from 84.31 penceWest Texas Intermediate: UP 0.1 percent at $74.66 per barrelBrent North Sea Crude: UP 0.3 percent at $78.50 per barrelburs-jmb/st