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The US Senate narrowly confirmed former Fox News co-host Pete Hegseth as Pentagon chief on Friday, despite allegations of alcohol abuse, sexual misconduct and other fears about his ability to lead the world’s most powerful military.Three Republican senators voted against Donald Trump’s pick as secretary of defense, resulting in a 50-50 tie that required J.D. Vance to cast the deciding ballot — only the second time in history a vice president has had to intervene to save a cabinet nominee.The razor-edged result underscored concerns about Hegseth, who will take over the Pentagon with war raging in Ukraine, the Middle East volatile despite ceasefires in Lebanon and Gaza, and as Trump expands the military’s role in security on the US-Mexico border.The 44-year-old is a former Army National Guard officer who until recently worked as a co-host for Fox News — one of Trump’s favored television channels.Hegseth has a combative media personality, fierce loyalty and telegenic looks — common hallmarks in Trump’s entourage.Supporters say Hegseth’s deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq give him the insight to run the Defense Department better than more experienced officials who would normally be considered for the job.He has pledged to focus the military on “lethality” and to bring back “warrior culture” to the Pentagon.In confirming him, Republicans brushed aside his lack of experience leading an organization anywhere near the size of the Defense Department — the country’s largest employer with some three million personnel.They also approved Hegseth despite allegations of financial mismanagement at veterans’ nonprofits where he previously worked, reports of excessive drinking, and allegations that he sexually assaulted a woman in California.Asked during his confirmation hearing last week about criticism he has faced, Hegseth said there was a “coordinated smear campaign” against him, and that he is “not a perfect person, but redemption is real.”Trump has stood by him, telling reporters Friday: “Pete’s a very, very good man.”Shortly after he was confirmed, Trump wrote on his Social Truth platform: “Congratulations to Pete Hegseth. He will make a great Secretary of Defense!”- ‘Erratic and aggressive behavior’ -But three Republicans — senators Susan Collins, Mitch McConnell and Lisa Murkowski — were unconvinced and voted against him.Murkowski said on X the day before the Friday vote that “past behaviors Mr Hegseth has admitted to, including infidelity on multiple occasions, demonstrate a lack of judgment that is unbecoming of someone who would lead our armed forces.”Prior to his approval by the full Senate, lawmakers received an affidavit from Hegseth’s former sister-in-law Danielle Hegseth that added to the allegations against him.”I believe Hegseth has an alcohol abuse problem and was abusive to his ex-wife Samantha,” the affidavit said, though it noted that Danielle Hegseth did not personally witness physical or sexual abuse by the incoming defense secretary.Danielle Hegseth however said she “personally observed… Hegseth’s erratic and aggressive behavior over many years,” that she was subjected to emotional abuse by him, and that she was told by his ex-wife that she once hid from him in a closet because she “feared for her personal safety.”According to the affidavit, Hegseth also told his ex-sister-in-law that women should not work or have the right to vote, and said that “Christians needed to have more children so they can overtake the Muslim population.”During his combative confirmation hearing, Hegseth stuck to his opposition to diversity, equity and inclusion policies — long a bugbear for Republicans — saying they are “dividing troops inside formations, causing commanders to walk on eggshells, not putting meritocracy first.”But he sought to soften past remarks opposing women serving in combat, telling lawmakers that “women will have access to ground combat roles… given the standards remain high.”Three more of Trump’s most contentious nominees will soon be grilled by lawmakers.Kash Patel — Trump’s nominee to lead the FBI — Tulsi Gabbard, his pick for director of national intelligence, and Robert F Kennedy Jr, the president’s choice for secretary of health and human services, are expected to have Senate hearings next week.

US military planes carrying dozens of expelled migrants arrived in Guatemala, authorities said Friday, as President Donald Trump moved to crack down on illegal immigration.A total of 265 Guatemalans arrived on three flights — two operated by the military, and one a charter, the Central American country’s migration institute said, updating earlier figures.Washington also sent four deportation flights to Mexico on Thursday, the White House press secretary said on X, despite multiple US media reports that authorities there had turned at least one plane back.The Mexican government has not confirmed either the arrival of flights or any agreement to receive a specific number of planes with deportees.But Mexico’s foreign ministry said Friday it was ready to work with Washington over the deportation of its citizens, saying the country would “always accept the arrival of Mexicans to our territory with open arms.”The flights came as the White House said it had arrested more than a thousand people in two days with hundreds deported by military aircraft, saying that “the largest massive deportation operation in history is well underway.”Some 538 illegal immigrant “criminals” were arrested Thursday, it said, followed by another 593 on Friday. By comparison, under Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden deportation flights were carried out regularly, with a total of 270,000 deportations in 2024 — a 10-year record — and 113,400 arrests, making an average of 310 per day.- ‘Bad, hard criminals’ -The Guatemalan government did not confirm whether any of the migrants arrested this week were among the deportees that arrived Friday.”These are flights that took place after Trump took office,” an official in the Guatemalan vice president’s office told AFP.A Pentagon source told AFP that “overnight, two DOD (Department of Defense) aircraft conducted repatriation flights from the US to Guatemala.”Early Friday the White House posted an image on X of men in shackles being marched into a military aircraft, with the caption: “Deportation flights have begun.”And Trump told reporters that the flights were to get “the bad, hard criminals out.””Murderers, people that have been as bad as you get. As bad as anybody you’ve seen,”  he said.Friday’s deportees were taken to a reception center at an air force base in Guatemala’s capital, away from the media.Trump promised a crackdown on illegal immigration during the election campaign and began his second term with a flurry of executive actions aimed at overhauling entry to the United States. On his first day in office he signed orders declaring a “national emergency” at the southern border and announced the deployment of more troops to the area while vowing to deport “criminal aliens.”His administration said it would also reinstate a “Remain in Mexico” policy under which people who apply to enter the United States from Mexico must remain there until their application has been decided.The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said Friday on X that program had been reinstated, and that Mexico had deployed some 30,000 National Guard troops to its border.The Mexican foreign ministry did not confirm either claim in its statement.The White House has also halted an asylum program for people fleeing authoritarian regimes in Central and South America, leaving thousands of people stranded on the Mexican side of the border.

A$AP Rocky was carrying a harmless prop gun from a music video on the night he allegedly shot a former friend in Hollywood, his lawyer told court Friday, as his trial on assault charges got under way.The 36-year-old, who has two children with singer Rihanna, faces two counts of assault with a semiautomatic firearm during confrontations with Terell Ephron on November 6, 2021.The rapper, whose real name is Rakim Mayers, was arrested in April 2022 at Los Angeles International Airport after arriving on a private plane from Barbados, where he and Rihanna had been on vacation.Prosecutors say Mayers pulled a gun on Ephron — also known as A$AP Relli — after a heated argument in the heart of Hollywood, firing on one occasion and causing a minor graze.The two had previously been friends, and had both been part of ASAP, a rap collective from New York, but had fallen out because other members of the group felt Mayers’ commercial success had made him arrogant.Ephron’s resentment “is the catalyst for this incident,” Mayers’ attorney Joe Tacopina said.”It was Relli who was looking for a fight,” he said adding that CCTV footage from the scene showed it was Relli that made the first physical contact.Tacopina said the gun that Ephron alleges was pulled on him was a prop that was not capable of firing live bullets.”The video that you saw shows Rocky holding an object that appears to be the gun, and Relli seized on that and manufactured his extortion.”The evidence will make clear that the object (was) absolutely nothing more than a prop gun… a starter gun, a blank gun, a fake gun. It’s used in pop movies and music videos.”Describing Ephron as “a criminal and a perjurer,” Tacopina said seven police officers searched the scene of the shooting hours later but found neither shell casings nor a weapon. Yet, after officers left, Ephron returned to the scene and discovered a pair of 9mm shell casings he said he had picked up from the street where he was shot at, Tacopina said.With this planted “evidence” Relli set out to extort money from his now-successful former friend.”The evidence will show you nothing more than a money grab, nothing more, a clear intended extortion by Relli (to fund an) extravagant lifestyle.”The trial continues on Tuesday.Before the trial began Mayers rejected an offered plea deal that would have seen him serve six months in jail in exchange for admitting one of the charges against him.A$AP Rocky shot to fame in the first half of the last decade with two mega-selling albums: “Long. Live. A$AP” and “At. Long. Last. A$AP.” In 2019, he was given a suspended prison sentence in Sweden after a fight, in an affair that caused diplomatic tensions between Stockholm and Washington, pushing then-president Trump to intervene.

President Donald Trump took aim at abortion access in the United States and overseas Friday, after promising activists rallying in Washington that he would protect the “historic gains” of the anti-abortion movement.Trump revoked two executive orders signed by Joe Biden protecting abortion access, which the former president put in place after the Supreme Court’s seismic decision to overturn the constitutional right to the procedure in 2022. Biden had moved to protect access to abortion pills and women’s ability to travel to states where the procedure is not banned for care, among other things. But Trump — who has been enthusiastically backed by the self-described “pro-life” movement — undid those protections with his own order Friday. He also cut off US funding to foreign civil society groups that provide abortion services, and put the United States back into an international statement opposing abortion rights.A White House memo issued Friday reinstated the so-called Mexico City Policy — known by critics as the “global gag rule” — which bars foreign NGOs from using American aid to support abortion services or advocacy. The policy, first instituted by Ronald Reagan in 1984, has been implemented by every Republican administration since, and rescinded by every Democrat in the White House. Separately, the Trump administration announced it would rejoin the “Geneva Consensus Declaration”, a 2020 statement of countries saying they hope to “protect life at all stages.”The original statement was spearheaded by Trump’s then secretary of state Mike Pompeo, an evangelical Christian, but rejected by Biden.  Those moves “are direct assaults on the health and human rights of millions of people around the world,” Rachana Desai Martin of the Center for Reproductive Rights said in a statement. – Executive orders -Biden had signed two orders following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn abortion rights. His July 2022 order aimed to expand access to emergency contraception and protect women’s health data, pushing back against any attempts at digital surveillance.The order responded to concern that women’s data such as their geolocation and apps that monitor their menstrual cycles could be used to go after those who have had abortions.The July order also sought to protect mobile clinics deployed to the borders of states that have banned abortion.Trump rescinded that, as well as Biden’s August 2022 order that aimed to help women travel out of state to access abortion services.The moves are part of a flurry of orders Trump has issued since returning to the Oval Office shoring up his right-wing agenda. – Anti-abortion rallyEarlier, Trump had addressed the Washington rally, the 52nd annual March for Life on the National Mall, which also featured masked neo-Nazis. “In my second term, we will again stand proudly for families and for life,” Trump said in a pre-taped video message broadcast to the crowd.Trump, who was touring natural disaster zones in North Carolina and California, vowed to “protect the historic gains” made by the anti-abortion movement.At least 100 members of the Patriot Front, a white supremacist group, marched in military style to the sidelines of the rally and stood in columns holding US flags, Christian symbols and banners reading “Strong families make strong nations.”Their leader Thomas Rousseau — flanked by two men with white bandanas covering their faces — told AFP he believed in “patriotic principles,” including the “restitution of the American family unit.”Some rally attendees were angered by the group’s presence. Trump has touted himself as the “most pro-life president ever” and in 2020 became the first sitting commander-in-chief to attend the March for Life. But he has a spotty record on the issue and refused to back a federal ban during his election campaign.”Praise God for President Trump. He’s not our Savior, though,” said David Makovey, who flew from California for the march.

“Aida” has long epitomized opera at its most extravagant — think sweeping sets, luxurious costumes and even real-live horses, an experience intended to transfix the audience with grandeur.A beloved version of that scale helmed the Met for more than three decades — so staging a new production of “Aida,” a tale of love, war and loyalty set in ancient Egypt, was a tall order.”Because Aida is so big and so expensive… I did definitely feel the pressure of that,” director Michael Mayer told AFP in a recent interview of his production that premiered this month, adding that “I knew that there were audiences who wanted the big spectacle.”Verdi’s “Aida” also has long faced criticism of Orientalism, that it offers an exoticized, reductive view of Egypt through an othering Western lens.Addressing that was among Mayer’s tasks — to “acknowledge, even in a gentle way, the kind of imperialism and colonialism associated with a kind of fetishization of ancient Egypt,” he told AFP.”When you look at the history of Grand Opera, you see a lot of operas that are set in exotic locales,” he said, citing “Aida” along with “Madama Butterfly,” set in Japan, and “Turandot,” set in China, as prime examples.”There’s the sense that that those cultures could be fetishized. We appreciate the beauty of them, but in modern times now, I think we’re all much more conscious of Orientalism and colonialism and imperialism and the idea that these cultures were taken apart and reappropriated — and potentially inappropriately so,” Mayer said. “And I think that contemporary audiences are not going to just swallow it hook, line and sinker, without some kind of acknowledgement that there’s a complexity involved.”- ‘Fresh and new’ -Mainstream critics of the new production have been, well, critical — but refreshing a pillar of traditional opera is a delicate balance, Mayer said.And part of that balance is toeing the line between reaching new opera-goers and satisfying the old guard — or, how to revamp a traditional opera for a contemporary age, without losing what made it adored to begin with.And on top of that, it has to have staying power — a staple of the repertoire that can satiate audiences for seasons to come.Mayer’s approach to the piece involves presenting it through the eyes of a team of archaeologists unearthing an ancient tomb, before the tale of star-crossed lovers, warring empires and treason unfolds in full color.At one point, the archaeologists are seen looting the tomb of its treasures, a reminder of the colonial context.”I feel like my job was to be able to deliver the beautiful spectacle that audiences who love that about ‘Aida’ could get” he said, while also aiming to “contextualize it.””My dream is that I can give everyone enough that it will turn them on, maybe for the first time,” said Mayer, a director who in addition to working in opera has long worked on Broadway.”I feel like if someone’s coming to the opera for the first time, and they’re seeing this ‘Aida,’ and they’re like, ‘Oh my God, that’s like a Broadway show on crack, I can’t wait to come back’ — then I feel like mission accomplished,” he said.Capturing the hearts of those audiences is vital for the art — and the bottom line of institutions like the Met.”The future of the opera in America is really in the hands of the young people,” Mayer said.”They have to feel like they’re seeing something fresh and new,” he continued, “and not living their fear, which is that they’re going to go and see a museum piece that has nothing to say to them and has nothing to say to the moment that we’re in.”

Sarah Jessica Parker slammed right-wing book bans and Jacinda Ardern called for more “empathy” from leaders as the worlds of entertainment and politics collided at the Sundance festival Friday.The “Sex and the City” actress and the former New Zealand prime minister were among the famous names gathering in snowy Utah for the influential indie movie fest, with their documentaries “The Librarians” and “Prime Minister” respectively.Parker helped produce the former film, which follows a resolute group of US librarians fighting back against conservative bids to remove books covering LGBTQ issues, racism and sexuality from school and public library shelves.Many of the movie’s subjects experienced death threats and lost their jobs, but received a standing ovation following Friday’s world premiere, where they were hailed by Parker as heroes.”There will continue to be opposition to freedom of thought, to access to information,” said Parker.”And these librarians, and many more we haven’t met yet, they will be on the frontlines time and time again.”The conservative war on the teaching of books aimed at sensitizing students to racism and gender identity issues has ramped up since 2021.Particularly in Southern states, including Texas and Florida, groups like Moms for Liberty have pressurized or taken over school boards, drawing up blacklists of the books they want banned.They claim these books are pornographic or wrongly inflict feelings of guilt on white and non-LGBTQ students.Among the novels they have targeted for removal — in some cases, successfully — are “The Catcher in the Rye,” “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “Beloved,” and “To Kill a Mockingbird.”The film shows how teachers and even students who have pushed back against censorship have endured angry confrontations at local meetings.Librarians in some instances have received threats of criminal action or violence.”It feels like I’m living in a dystopian novel right now,” says librarian Nancy Jo Lambert in the film.”If you would have asked me 10 years ago if I was gonna have security concerns at a librarian conference, I’d have been like, ‘you’re nuts,'” she says, after squeezing past protesters.- ‘Globalist’ -Also on Friday, Ardern attended the world premiere of “Prime Minister,” which takes viewers behind-the-scenes for her five years as New Zealand leader.Drawing on home video shot by her now-husband, it covers her widely praised and compassionate response to the Christchurch mosque shootings in 2019 and her more divisive handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.Examining the misogyny she experienced as a young female — and pregnant — world leader, it also touches on her stark political differences with Donald Trump.During Trump’s first term, Ardern took a message of international cooperation to the same United Nations summit at which the US president robustly attacked the “globalist” view of the world.Asked by AFP about Trump’s return and her experiences with him, Ardern deflected, saying: “Empathy, kindness, I believe there is a place for that in public leadership and in politics. “And I hope this story shares that form of leadership on the big screen.”She added: “Ultimately, I can’t speak to any other countries’ politics. I can only speak to the experience I had and the leadership that I believe in.”Aside from the documentaries, Friday at Sundance included the world premieres of surreal drama “Bubble & Squeak” starring Steven Yeun and psychological horror “Rabbit Trap” featuring Dev Patel.Rapper A$AP Rocky and talk show host Conan O’Brien star in comedy “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.”Other A-listers expected at the festival over the weekend include Jennifer Lopez, Benedict Cumberbatch, Chloe Sevigny and Carey Mulligan.Sundance runs until February 2.

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.