Trump carves up world and international order with it


By AFP
April 12, 2025


Analysts say talks to end the war in Ukraine 'could resemble a new Yalta' - Copyright POOL/AFP Gavriil Grigorov

Fabien Zamora

By casting doubt on the world order, Donald Trump risks dragging the globe back into an era where great powers impose their imperial will on the weak, analysts warn.

Russia wants Ukraine, China demands Taiwan and now the US president seems to be following suit, whether by coveting Canada as the “51st US state,” insisting “we’ve got to have” Greenland or kicking Chinese interests out of the Panama Canal.

Where the United States once defended state sovereignty and international law, Trump’s disregard for his neighbours’ borders and expansionist ambitions mark a return to the days when the world was carved up into spheres of influence.

As recently as Wednesday, US defence secretary Pete Hegseth floated the idea of an American military base to secure the Panama Canal, a strategic waterway controlled by the United States until 1999 which Trump’s administration has vowed to “take back.”

Hegseth’s comments came nearly 35 years after the United States invaded to topple Panama’s dictator Manuel Noriega, harking back to when successive US administrations viewed Latin America as “America’s backyard.”

“The Trump 2.0 administration is largely accepting the familiar great power claim to ‘spheres of influence’,” Professor Gregory O. Hall, of the University of Kentucky, told AFP.

Indian diplomat Jawed Ashraf warned that by “speaking openly about Greenland, Canada, Panama Canal”, “the new administration may have accelerated the slide” towards a return to great power domination.

– The empire strikes back –

Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has posed as the custodian of an international order “based on the ideas of countries’ equal sovereignty and territorial integrity,” said American researcher Jeffrey Mankoff, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

But those principles run counter to how Russia and China see their own interests, according to the author of “Empires of Eurasia: how imperial legacies shape international security.”

Both countries are “themselves products of empires and continue to function in many ways like empires”, seeking to throw their weight around for reasons of prestige, power or protection, Mankoff said.

That is not to say that spheres of influence disappeared with the fall of the Soviet Union.

“Even then, the US and Western allies sought to expand their sphere of influence eastward into what was the erstwhile Soviet and then the Russian sphere of influence,” Ashraf, a former adviser to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, pointed out.

But until the return of Trump, the United States exploited its position as the “policeman of the world” to ward off imperial ambitions while pushing its own interests.

Now that Trump appears to view the cost of upholding a rules-based order challenged by its rivals and increasingly criticised in the rest of the world as too expensive, the United States is contributing to the cracks in the facade with Russia and China’s help.

And as the international order weakens, the great powers “see opportunities to once again behave in an imperial way,” said Mankoff.

– Yalta yet again –

As at Yalta in 1945, when the United States and the Soviet Union divided the post-World War II world between their respective zones of influence, Washington, Beijing and Moscow could again agree to carve up the globe anew.

“Improved ties between the United States and its great-power rivals, Russia and China, appear to be imminent,” Derek Grossman, of the United States’ RAND Corporation think tank, said in March.

But the haggling over who gets dominance over what and where would likely come at the expense of other countries.

“Today’s major powers are seeking to negotiate a new global order primarily with each other,” Monica Toft, professor of international relations at Tufts University in Massachusets wrote in the journal Foreign Affairs.

“In a scenario in which the United States, China, and Russia all agree that they have a vital interest in avoiding a nuclear war, acknowledging each other’s spheres of influence can serve as a mechanism to deter escalation,” Toft said.

If that were the case, “negotiations to end the war in Ukraine could resemble a new Yalta,” she added.

Yet the thought of a Ukraine deemed by Trump to be in Russia’s sphere is likely to send shivers down the spines of many in Europe — not least in Ukraine itself.

“The success or failure of Ukraine to defend its sovereignty is going to have a lot of impact in terms of what the global system ends up looking like a generation from now,” Mankoff said.

“So it’s important for countries that have the ability and want to uphold an anti-imperial version of international order to assist Ukraine,” he added — pointing the finger at Europe.

“In Trump’s world, Europeans need their own sphere of influence,” said Rym Momtaz, a researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace.

“For former imperial powers, Europeans seem strangely on the backfoot as nineteenth century spheres of influence come back as the organising principle of global affairs.”

MACEDONIA

Ex-ministers charged as probe into deadly club fire broadens


By AFP
April 12, 2025


19 people died in the blaze and nearly 200 other people were injured - Copyright AFP -

North Macedonia authorities said Saturday they had widened an investigation into a nightclub fire that killed 61 people, to include former ministers and officials.

The interior ministry said in a statement that, in coordination with the prosecutors, criminal charges had been filed against 19 people for “serious crimes against public security”.

They were under investigation over the March 16 fire that broke out during a hip-hop concert at the club in the eastern town of Kocani. One of Europe’s deadliest fires, the blaze also injured nearly 200 other people.

The 19 new suspects, according to the prosecutors, include notably former economy ministers, as the ministry officials and officials of the protection and rescue directorate.

They were all in office from 2012, when the club opened, until the blaze broke out in March.

They “did not act at all in line with the regulations on protection measures and thereby endangered lives of people and property on a large scale”, a public prosecutor’s office statement said.

Stage fireworks set off inside during the concert, which triggered a stampede for the exit, are thought to have caused the fire.

Local media reported that among of those arrested is the current minister without portfolio and the former head of the protection and rescue directorate.

A warrant had also been issued for the former economy minister, who is currently serving as an ambassador.

These latest developments brings the number of people under investigation to 52 and three companies.

Police arrested 33 people in the initial stages of the investigation, including seven police officers, a former economy minister and ministry officials as well as three former mayors of the town.

Myanmar marks new year festival mourning quake losses


By AFP
April 12, 2025


The Myanmar city of Mandalay is still devastated from last month's 7.7-magnitude quake - Copyright AFP Sai Aung MAIN

Lynn MYAT

Thousands marked the start of Myanmar’s water festival on Sunday in the ruins of last month’s earthquake, with the country’s most raucous holiday muted by the tragedy of the tremor.

The “Thingyan” festival typically celebrates Myanmar’s new year with water-splashing rituals symbolising cleansing and renewal, but the central cities of Mandalay and Sagaing lie devastated from the 7.7-magnitude quake.

Two weeks on from the disaster which killed more than 3,600, hundreds are still living in tent encampments peppered among pancaked apartment blocks, razed tea shops and demolished hotels.

Many still lack working latrines and need to queue for drinking water, and the weather forecast for heavy rains has them fretting over their makeshift homes.

Early on Sunday families were buying clay pots and plant sprigs customarily placed inside homes to welcome the new year — even though some had nowhere to put them.

“Everyone is in trouble this year,” said 55-year-old Ma Phyu, camping with nine family members north of Mandalay’s quake-damaged Royal Palace.

“I have to prepare the pot with the flowers because it is our tradition. But my heart is heavy.”

The children in her family had been ordered not to splash water in the street for fear their neighbours would criticise them for celebrating as the city mourns.

Myanmar’s ruling military junta has commanded the five-day festival to have no music or dance.

Since the March 28 quake Mandalay temperatures have soared up to a parching 44 degrees Celsius (111 Fahrenheit) while at night tent-dwellers are needled by mosquitos before rising at dawn to line up for aid.

More than 5,200 buildings have been destroyed according to official figures, while more than two million people are in need as a result of the earthquake, the UN says.

It has issued an emergency plea for $275 million, following US President Donald Trump’s evisceration of Washington’s aid budget which has already hobbled some UN operations in Myanmar.

The World Food Programme says it is being forced to cut off one million people from vital aid this month because donations have dried up.

Myanmar has been riven by a civil war following a 2021 coup which spurred mass poverty and displacement even before the quake.

The tremors were felt as far away as Bangkok, where a high-rise under construction collapsed and trapped dozens of workers.

Despite an announced ceasefire, monitors say Myanmar’s military has continued air strikes, while the junta has accused anti-coup guerillas and ethnic armed groups of maintaining their offensives.

“At a moment when the sole focus should be on ensuring humanitarian aid gets to disaster zones, the military is instead launching attacks,” said UN Human Rights Office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani in a statement this week.

Indonesia palm oil firms eye new markets as US trade war casts shadow


By AFP
April 12, 2025


Indonesia accounts for more than half the global supply of the edible oil, used in making foods such as cakes, chocolate, and margarine as well as cosmetics, soap and shampoo - Copyright AFP WAHYUDI

Marchio GORBIANO

Indonesian palm oil companies are seeking new markets in Europe, Africa and the Middle East as they try to protect themselves from the impact of Donald Trump’s trade war, a top industry executive told AFP.

Indonesia is the world’s biggest producer of the edible oil — used in making foods such as cakes, chocolate, and margarine as well as cosmetics, soap and shampoo — and accounts for more than half the global supply.

But the 32 percent tariffs imposed on the country make it one of Asia’s hardest hit by the US president’s sweeping measures that have sent shockwaves around the world.

Palm oil is one of Indonesia’s biggest exports to the United States, and while Trump has announced a 90-day pause on implementing the levies, producers say the uncertainty is forcing them to look elsewhere to earn their keep.

“It actually gives time for us to negotiate… so products can still enter there. I think this is very good,” said Eddy Martono, chairman of the Indonesian Palm Oil Association (GAPKI) on Thursday.

However, he warned that market diversification “must still be done” to avoid the impact of the tariffs if they come into force later in the year, adding that firms would look to Africa — specifically top importer Egypt — the Middle East, Central Asia and Eastern Europe.

“We should not just depend on traditional markets. We will continue to do it. We have to do that,” he said.

Exports of palm oil products to the United States have steadily grown in recent years, with Indonesia shipping 2.5 million tons in 2023, compared with 1.5 million tons in 2020, according to GAPKI data.

Eddy called on Jakarta to keep its dominance in that market through talks, particularly as rival palm oil producer Malaysia was hit with lower tariffs.

“Indonesian palm oil market share in the United States is 89 percent, very high. This is what we must maintain,” he said.

According to Indonesian government data, the United States was the fourth-largest importer of palm oil in 2023, behind China, India and Pakistan.



– Smallholder pain –



But Eddy remained confident the US would still need Indonesian palm oil if no deal was sealed when the 90 days are up.

“It is still a necessity for the food industry. I believe our exports to the US will slightly decline or at least stagnate,” he said.

“Those who are harmed first are consumers in America because their main food industry products need palm oil.”

Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani said at an economic meeting Tuesday that she would lower a crude palm oil export tax, alleviating some of the pain.

While Eddy welcomed the move, saying it would make Indonesia’s palm oil exports more competitive, for the country’s 2.5 million palm oil smallholder farmers, the threatened tariffs were worrying.

Mansuetus Darto, the national council chairman of the Palm Oil Farmers Union (SPKS) said the measures would have had a far-reaching impact if a deal wasn’t struck.

“The raw material of the palm oil will pile up and then farmers cannot harvest anymore because of overcapacity in existing plants,” he said before the pause was announced.

President Prabowo Subianto opted for a path of negotiation with Washington instead of retaliation and will send a high-level delegation later this month.

While Trump took aim at Indonesia’s billion-dollar trade surplus with the United States, Prabowo said his threatened levies may have done Indonesia a favour by “forcing” it to be more efficient.

Chief economic minister Airlangga Hartarto also said Jakarta would buy more products such as liquefied natural gas and liquefied petroleum gas to close the gap with the world’s biggest economy.

That has given hope to the industry that a deal with Trump can be done, otherwise they will be forced to turn elsewhere.

“There is still time,” said Mansuetus after the pause was announced.

“The government should prepare to negotiate as best as possible with the US government.”

Bernie Sanders fights apathy on American left


By AFP
April 13, 2025


US Senator Bernie Sanders is emerging as one of the most vocal opponents to US President Donald Trump - Copyright AFP Robyn Beck

Bernie Sanders is emerging as one of the most vocal opponents to US President Donald Trump, with the 83-year-old senator drawing tens of thousands of people to his “fighting oligarchy” rallies around the country.

Supporters packed the Gloria Molina Grand Park in Los Angeles on Saturday as guests including politicians, union representatives and musical acts took to the stage before speeches by Sanders and Democrat representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

“There are some 36,000 of you, the largest rally that we have ever had,” Sanders told the cheering crowd.

“Your presence here today is making Donald Trump and Elon Musk very nervous.”

The self-described socialist, an independent who has never been a member of the Democratic Party, has been attracting crowds over the past two months on his nationwide “fighting oligarchy” tour.

His progressive, leftist rhetoric has resonated with people opposed to Trump’s policies and with those disappointed in established Democrats’ lack of political resistance to Trump.

Folk rock legend Neil Young led the LA crowd on Saturday in chanting “Take America Back!” while he played the electric guitar.

Feminist singer-songwriter Maggie Rogers dubbed the event “Berniechella,” a nod to the massive Coachella music festival taking place in the Californian desert.

Alex Powell, a 28-year-old art teacher in the audience, said Americans “need hope.”

“I’m really disappointed by the Democrats’ response, I want more action on their part, more outrage,” she told AFP.

– ‘Traumatized’ –

“Donald Trump’s new term is distressing, it’s really scary,” Powell said, describing how some of her middle school pupils were “traumatized” after one of their parents was deported from the United States under Trump’s anti-immigrant campaign.

Sanders addressed a litany of grievances, including Trump’s massive cuts to government funding and threats to healthcare and research.

Mentions of Elon Musk, the owner of Tesla and X, drew boos from the crowd.

The South African billionaire has been tasked by Trump with dramatically reducing government spending, and is for many Sanders supporters a symbol of the corrupting influence of wealth in politics.

Sanders was “right the whole time,” 27-year-old Vera Loh told AFP.

“The collusion of money and politics has had terrible effects.”

Loh, a housekeeper, said she was stunned by the apathy of many Democrat leaders since Trump’s defeat of presidential candidate Kamala Harris in November.

“The party put too much focus on minorities,” Loh said.

“If people don’t see it as a class war, then we just get lost with the identity politics.”

She told AFP she wanted politicians to remember “we want higher pay, we want housing, we want to be able to afford things.”

– ‘Authoritarian society’ –

“We are living in a moment where a handful of billionaires control the economic and political life of our country,” Sanders said on Saturday.

Trump is moving the United States “rapidly toward an authoritarian form of society,” he said.

The senator from Vermont hopes to encourage new independents to run for office without the Democrat label, at a time when the party is at an all-time low in the polls.

Sanders has no ambitions to run for president in 2028, but has taken rising progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez under his wing.

“No matter your race, religion, gender, identity or status, no matter if you disagree with me on some things… I hope you see that this movement is not about partisan labels or purity tests, but it’s about class solidarity,” the 35-year-old congresswoman told the crowd on Saturday.

“She would make a good presidential candidate,” Lesley Henderson, a former Republican supporter, told AFP.

Depressed by the news since January, the 52-year-old nursing assistant was attending the first political rally of her life with her husband.

“I just hope it’s not too late,” she said, alarmed by Trump’s talk about ruling an unconstitutional third term.

“If no one’s standing up and saying anything now, what makes us think that there might even be midterms, or a next presidential election?”

Trump spotlight divides S.Africa’s Afrikaners


By AFP
April 14, 2025


Some white South Africans say President Donald Trump's intervention is a welcome acknowledgement of their fears - Copyright AFP/File SAUL LOEB
Julie BOURDIN

Country music and the aroma of pancakes enveloped the “Boeremark”, or farmer’s market, outside South Africa’s capital Pretoria where thousands of Afrikaners browsed on a Saturday morning.

Signs written in Afrikaans advertised traditional foods: braided “koeksister” doughnuts, cinnamon-sprinkled “melkkos” porridge, strips of “biltong” cured meat.

There were stands of books in Afrikaans, a language linked to Dutch, and racks of khaki clothes associated with Afrikaner farmers known as “boere”.

The peaceful scene was a far cry from claims of fear and persecution that have reached Washington, leading President Donald Trump to offer refugee status to the white Afrikaner minority in February and thousands to apply.

But, despite the mellow mood, many at the market told AFP they did feel threatened in post-apartheid South Africa.

As “a white person and a boer”, she was a victim of “reverse racism”, said jewellery vendor Cesere Smith, 54. “There is trouble coming,” she told AFP vaguely, welcoming Trump’s intervention.

“Every person should be proud of who they are, but here we must feel guilty — and that’s not right,” Smith told AFP.

White Afrikaners are predominantly descendants of Dutch settlers who arrived at the tip of Africa more than three centuries ago. Today they make up most of South Africa’s 7.3 percent white population.

Mainly Afrikaner-led governments imposed the race-based apartheid system that denied the black majority political and economic rights until it was voted out in 1994.

Under apartheid, whites benefited from reserved access to jobs, education, land and markets.

The privilege has a legacy. For example, unemployment among white South Africans stands at more than six percent compared to more than 35 percent for the black population.



– ‘Phantom pain’ –



Prominent journalist and author, Max du Preez, was scathing of complaints of persecution among his fellow Afrikaners.

“Afrikaners are far better off materially and culturally today than in 1994,” he told AFP.

Afrikaans culture is thriving, he said, adding that it is the only local language with four television channels and an array of newspapers, magazines and festivals.

The fear of white persecution “is a phantom pain: it’s not about what is actually happening, but about what could happen”, he said.

“Nothing is coming. The last thing that will happen here is a race war.”

Afrikaner “disillusion” grew as the post-apartheid economy struggled with corruption and governance, said professor Christi van der Westhuizen, author of several books on Afrikaner identity.

This made many susceptible to “divisive” narratives pushed by right-wing groups with roots in apartheid, even if “significant sections of Afrikaners remain vehemently opposed” to these ideas, she said.

Such groups have found a sympathetic audience in the United States, where Trump is close to conservative South African-born billionaire Elon Musk.

Their claims that white farmers are targeted for murder — despite official data that most victims of killings are young black men in urban areas — have morphed into a myth of a “white genocide”, repeated by Trump at the weekend.

Another sore point is an education bill that some believe will limit Afrikaans learning at schools. Also under fire are government attempts to redress apartheid-era discrimination through regulations on business, labour and property ownership.



– Integration –



On a recent Monday, five men — black and white — sat around a plate of biltong in a church room in Johannesburg while discussing their mission to bring South Africa’s races together.

“This narrative of victimhood makes me sick. The people who were victims here are millions of black people,” said Trevor Ntlhola, 57, a pastor and former anti-apartheid activist.

“It takes me back to the 1980s when I preached in white churches against apartheid,” said pastor Alexander Venter, 70, his voice breaking.

“The dismantling of apartheid let white people off lightly. A lot of racial conditioning was just buried, and now it’s all resurfacing,” he said.

“Trump has given a microphone to radical whites all over the world,” added Schalk van Heerden, 47, co-founder of the Betereinders (“Better Enders”) movement of Afrikaners which has the slogan “Be better not bitter”.

Right-wing groups think Afrikaans culture can only be preserved through self-governance and separation, said Betereinders co-founder Johan Erasmus, ideas that evoke apartheid principles of “separateness”.

“Our solution is integration,” he said. Many Afrikaners want to be part of “the story of the South African project” of post-apartheid reconciliation.

“People have been betting against us (South Africa) for the last 30 years,” he said. But “we are still here.”

Trump blames Zelensky for ‘millions’ of deaths in Russian invasion




PUTIN'S SOCK PUPPET

By AFP
April 14, 2025


US President Donald Trump resumed his attempts Monday to blame Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky for Russia’s invasion, falsely accusing him of responsibility for “millions” of deaths.

Trump — who had a blazing public row in the Oval Office with Zelensky six weeks ago — said the Ukranian shared the blame with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered the February 2022 invasion, and then-US president Joe Biden.

The Republican told reporters that there were “millions of people dead because of three people.”

“Let’s say Putin number one, but let’s say Biden, who had no idea what the hell he was doing, number two, and Zelensky,” Trump said during a meeting with the visiting president of El Salvador.

Trump then doubled down on his attack on Zelensky.

“He’s always looking to purchase missiles,” he said dismissively of the Ukrainian leader’s attempts to maintain his country’s defense against the Russian invasion.

“When you start a war, you got to know that you can win the war,” Trump said. “You don’t start a war against somebody that’s 20 times your size, and then hope that people give you some missiles.”

Relations between Trump and Zelensky have been tense ever since the US president stunned the world by opening talks with Russia in February.

In the run-up to their televised row on February 28 Trump repeatedly echoed Moscow’s talking points — blaming Ukraine for the war and calling Zelensky a “dictator without elections.”

Zelensky has since tried to patch things up, including sending a delegation to Washington last week to discuss a mineral deal Trump has called for, that would give the US preferential access to Ukrainian natural resources.

But the US leader has stepped up his rhetoric in the last few days.

Trump however insisted a deal to end the Ukraine war was possible, despite Ukrainian accusations that Moscow is stalling.

“I want to stop the killing, and I think we’re doing well in that regard. I think you’ll have some very good proposals very soon,” Trump said.

Trump’s comments came despite a deadly Russian strike on the Ukrainian city of Sumy on Sunday that killed at least 35 people, one of the deadliest attacks of the war.

The US president said on Sunday that the attack was a “mistake” but did not elaborate. Russia insisted Monday that its missiles hit a meeting of Ukrainian army commanders.

Zelensky urged US counterpart Donald Trump in a CBS interview broadcast Sunday to visit his country to better understand the devastation wrought by Russia’s invasion.

Zelensky urges Trump to visit Ukraine to see war devastation: CBS


By AFP
April 13, 2025


A Russian strike killed at least 34 people in Ukrainian city Sumy on Sunday - Copyright AFP ADEK BERRY

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged US counterpart Donald Trump on Sunday to visit his country to better understand the devastation wrought by Russia’s invasion.

“Please, before any kind of decisions, any kind of forms of negotiations, come to see people, civilians, warriors, hospitals, churches, children destroyed or dead,” he said in a CBS “60 Minutes” interview broadcast Sunday.

With a visit to Ukraine, Trump “will understand what (Russian leader Vladimir) Putin did.”

“You will understand with whom you have a deal,” Zelensky added.

Zelensky’s invitation follows the heated row at the White House in late February between the Ukrainian president, Trump and US Vice President JD Vance, which played out in front of press.

Vance at the time accused Ukraine of hosting foreign leaders on “propaganda tours” to win support.

Zelensky repeated his denial of that allegation, and told CBS that if Trump chose to visit Ukraine, “we will not prepare anything. It will not be theater.”

“You can go exactly where you want, in any city which (has) been under attacks.”

Trump is pushing for a quick end to the more than three-year war, with the United States holding direct talks with Russia despite its unrelenting attacks on Ukraine.

Washington has also held talks with Ukrainian officials on a potential truce, while European nations are discussing a military deployment to reinforce any Ukraine ceasefire.

Kyiv has previously agreed to a US-proposed unconditional ceasefire but Moscow has turned it down.

“Putin can’t be trusted. I told that to President Trump many times. So when you ask why the ceasefire isn’t working — this is why,” Zelensky said.

“Putin never wanted an end to the war. Putin never wanted us to be independent. Putin wants to destroy us completely — our sovereignty and our people.”

Zelensky spoke to CBS Friday in his hometown Kryvyi Rig, where a Russian strike earlier this month killed 18 people, including nine children.

The Ukrainian leader said he had “100 percent hatred” for Putin, asking “how else can you see a person who came here and murdered our people, murdered children?”

However he added that the animosity “doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work to end the war as soon as possible.”

As negotiations continue over ending the war, Zelensky said that a just peace would be “to not lose our sovereignty or our independence,” and pledged to eventually reclaim any territory currently held by Russia.

“We, no matter what, will take back what is ours because we never lost it — the Russians took it from us.”

Man charged over Tesla arson as anti-Musk wave sweeps US


By AFP
April 14, 2025


Tesla's image has been badly tarnished by Elon Musk's role in the US government's cost-cutting drive and his company has become the target of vandals - Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP David Ryder

A man who allegedly torched two vehicles at a Tesla dealership and painted “Die Elon” on the side of the building has been hit with federal charges, the US Department of Justice said Monday.

The charges are the latest to be levied in connection to attacks on the EV maker, whose boss Elon Musk has become a hate figure for some over his role in slashing government as a top advisor to President Donald Trump.

Two Tesla vehicles were badly damaged in the firebomb attack on a showroom in Albuquerque on February 9, and slogans likening Musk and his company to Nazis were sprayed on the walls.

Jamison Wagner, 40, who lives in the city, in the western state of New Mexico, was also charged over a firebomb attack that hit an office of the state’s Republican Party last month.

If convicted of the two counts of malicious damage or destruction of property by fire or explosives, he could be jailed for up to 20 years on each count, the Department of Justice said.

“Let this be the final lesson to those taking part in this ongoing wave of political violence,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement.

“We will arrest you, we will prosecute you, and we will not negotiate. Crimes have consequences.”

Federal prosecution carries a stiff penalty compared to local law, where such a crime typically results in a sentence starting from just 18 months’ incarceration and a $5,000 fine. In March, Trump even suggested that people who vandalize Tesla property could be deported to prisons in El Salvador.

Musk, the South Africa-born billionaire chief of Tesla and SpaceX, is leading Trump’s ruthless cost-cutting drive at the head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Lauded on the right, he has rapidly become one of the most controversial figures in the country.

Several Tesla dealerships and a number of cars both in the US and around the world have been vandalized, and the company’s stock price has taken a hammering.

Holocaust remembrance and Gaza collide in Brussels schools


By AFP
April 14, 2025


Belgium's national memorial to Jews murdered in the Holocaust in Brussels

 - Copyright AFP TANG CHHIN Sothy

Matthieu DEMEESTERE

A few months ago in Brussels, Arthur Langerman was telling high school pupils about losing family members in the Holocaust and escaping a Nazi raid himself, when he was cut short by two Muslim teens wanting to talk about Gaza.

“It’s a genocide, and it’s been happening for 75 years,” interjected one of the young women, triggering a heated back-and-forth about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

For their history teacher, Olivier Blairon, the scene sums up how hard it is to teach the genocide of six million Jews during World War II since the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023 triggered Israel’s onslaught on the Gaza Strip.

Blairon works in a large high school in the Brussels district of Koekelberg, home to a large community of Moroccan descent, where he said many students “identify with the violence suffered by Gazans”.

“I have heard anti-Semitic remarks,” Blairon said. “Some of my students mix things up” by equating all Jews with Israel, he said. Some are also deliberately “provocative”.

“So I take the time to unpick their preconceptions,” he said.

Blairon’s students made up the lion’s share of youths present at the encounter with the 82-year-old Langerman, which AFP attended at the Belgian capital’s secular Jewish community centre, the CCLJ.

“The October 7 attacks highlighted how hard it has become to talk about the Holocaust,” said the centre’s co-director, Nicolas Zomersztajn.

“It’s more complicated in the current context,” said Zomersztajn, who laments how the Jewish community is constantly being asked to take a stance on the war in Gaza.

At the Brussels Jewish Museum, where four people were killed in a jihadist attack in 2014, a handful of school outings were cancelled in the immediate aftermath of October 7.

Some students report sick on the day of a visit or find a way to avoid going on to see a nearby synagogue, said Frieda Van Camp, who works in the museum’s education department.



– Hate messages –



Anti-Semitism has been surging worldwide on a scale unseen in recent memory since the war in Gaza was sparked by the Hamas attack that killed 1,218 people in Israel. Since then more than 50,800 people, mostly civilians, have died in the Palestinian territory.

The Belgian anti-discrimination body Unia recorded 91 anti-Semitic incidents between October 7 and December 7, 2023 — compared to 57 for the whole of the previous year.

Most involved online hate messages directed at the Jewish community, which numbers around 30,000.

A May 2024 poll found that around one in seven Belgians felt “antipathy” towards Jews.

Anti-Semitic prejudice was disproportionate among people on the far left, far right and in Muslim communities, the poll of 1,000 adults found.

When it comes to talking about Jews and the Holocaust in Brussels schools, “you can feel people tense up”, said Ina Van Looy, who is in charge of a project combating discrimination at the CCLJ.

“For some teachers it has become difficult to take their students to any kind of Jewish site,” she said.

“Some teachers are completely overwhelmed by the way students get their information and how they talk about the conflict” between Israel and the Palestinians, she said. “Many of them feel helpless.”

During the talk with Langerman, it was Van Looy who stepped in to calm things down after the discussion turned to Gaza.

Afterwards, it was agreed that she would visit the Koekelberg school to talk about the notion of genocide.

“These young people are hurt, they are angry. We have to listen to them,” she told AFP.



– Not being ‘silenced’ –



In Belgium, all students are formally taught about the Nazi’s systematic slaughter of Europe’s Jews by the end of high school.

Schools organise trips from primary upwards to Holocaust memorial sites, such as Fort Breendonk near Antwerp or the Kazerne Dossin transit camp in Mechelen, where the country’s Jews were rounded up for deportation.

And pupils in Brussels regularly take part in inaugurating new “stolpersteine” or “stumbling stones” on the city’s sidewalks, in memory of Jews murdered in the Nazi death camps.

Between 1942 and 1944, some 25,000 Jews were deported from Belgium to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in German-occupied Poland. Fewer than 2,000 survived.

But in the past few months, two primary school headteachers from Anderlecht, another Brussels district with a large Muslim population, decided their students would not take part in unveiling new stones.

They thought “it was not fair to impose that on students and parents” at the height of the Gaza conflict, said Bella Swiatlowski, of the Belgian association for the memory of the Holocaust.

Neither headteacher wanted to discuss the issue when contacted by AFP.

Finally the mayor of Anderlecht stepped in and found a way for the two schools to be represented at the inauguration ceremony in January.

That same month, dozens of primary and secondary schoolchildren took part in another “stumbling stone” inauguration marking 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz, laying a white rose on the ground in a solemn and moving ceremony.

Faouzia Hariche, the Algerian-born deputy mayor of Brussels in charge of public education, paid tribute to the “courage” of teachers who refuse to “be silenced” on teaching the Holocaust.

“A small minority of teachers are fearful of tackling the subject,” she said. “We need to give them the tools to do so.”

The miracle babies who survived Ravensbruck


By AFP
April 14, 2025


Photos of Ravensbruck survivor Mikolaj Sklodowski with his mother - Copyright AFP TANG CHHIN Sothy

Alexandra LESIEUR

They were born in a hell on Earth and were never supposed to survive. But by some miracle a handful of babies born in Ravensbruck concentration camp in northern Germany made it out alive.

Guy Poirot — who was born there on March 11, 1945 — said they owe their lives to “the collective will of the women” who risked their lives to hide and feed them when they had almost nothing for themselves.

“We are the children of all those women,” the 80-year-old French survivor told AFP.

German Ingelore Prochnow, who was born in Ravensbruck nearly a year before him, calls them “my camp mothers”, who saved them from extermination and hunger in the second biggest Nazi camp after Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Until 1943, most newborns were smothered, drowned or burned and women up to eight months pregnant were mostly given lethal injections to abort their babies.

So women hid their bumps for fear of being sent to the “Revier”, the camp infirmary notorious for medical experiments and for selections for execution.

Like the other 130,000 inmates of the Nazi’s biggest camp for women and children, they worked 12 to 14 hours a day transporting bricks, pushing wagons, resewing uniforms or working in a Siemens factory.

“The guards beat and kicked me numerous times,” wrote Polish prisoner Waleria Peitsch despite “my advanced state” after arriving on the biggest convoys carrying pregnant women after the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944.

Still, she survived the violence and the epidemics sweeping the camp to give birth to her son Mikolaj on March 25, 1945.



– ‘Kinderzimmer’ –



After a new medical officer arrived in the autumn of 1943 births were tolerated if they happened out of sight.

French resistance member Madeleine Aylmer-Roubenne brought her daughter Sylvie into the world on March 21, 1945, in “a sort of corridor, no water, no toilet nearby or electricity, just a candle on the floor.”

Her German midwife, a common criminal, risked her life to get the forceps and chloroform from the infirmary which had a state-of-the-art birthing room with “all the obstetric instruments” you could imagine, Aylmer-Roubenne wrote in her memoirs of the camp.

The same solidarity saw women stealing food and rags for new mothers so they could make nappies and medical gloves to make teats for bottles.

“The women washed the babies with the lukewarm drink they got in the morning, warmed them and protected them from the guards,” said Prochnow.

“Alone my mother could never have kept me alive.”

The newborns were gathered together in the “Kinderzimmer” or children’s room from September 1944 where their life expectancy was no more than three months, wrote Marie-Jose Chombart de Lauwe, a medical student and French resistance fighter who tried to keep them alive.

Rats bit at their fingers at night. Almost all were taken by hunger, dysentery, typhus and the terrible cold, with temperatures dropping to minus 15 degrees Centigrade (five degrees Fahrenheit).

With the mothers being worked to exhaustion, most had no milk. There was little milk powder to put into the two bottles that were shared by between 20 and 40 babies.

“Mummy had no milk,” French survivor Jean-Claude Passerat-Palmbach recalled. “So a Romanian Roma woman and a Russian, who had lost their babies, breastfed me.”

Born in November 1944, he only survived because of the generosity of the other prisoners in the farm where his mother was sent afterwards.



– Babies like ‘little old people’ –



The babies looked like “little old people”, Chombart de Lauwe said, with wrinkled skin, bloated tummies and triangular faces. They suffered from abscesses and green diarrhoea.

The situation got even worse in 1945. Around 6,000 prisoners were gassed and thousands of women and children sent to other camps as the Russians advanced. In total, between 20,000 and 30,000 people perished in Ravensbruck.

Sylvie Aylmer and her camp “brother” Guy Poirot were saved by being hidden under the skirts of some of the 7,500 prisoners evacuated by the Swedish Red Cross between April 23 and 25 after SS chief Heinrich Himmler agreed to free them in the hope of saving his own skin.

Ingelore Prochnow and her mother, however, were forced into a “death march” of 60 kilometres towards the Malchow sub-camp when advancing Soviet troops liberated them.

The babies that survived Ravensbruck were for the most part born just before its liberation by the Red Army during the night of April 29 to 30.

The Nazis burned their records, but a register kept by a Czech escapee noted 522 births in the camp between September 1944 and April 1945. Only 30 of those names were not marked as dead. Some were transferred to Bergen-Belsen where “only a few newborns survived”, according to Valentine Devulder, who is writing a thesis on pregnant women in the camps.



– Transgenerational trauma –



Growing up, many of the little survivors like Sylvie Aylmer were not told they had been born in a concentration camp. For her, Ravensbruck had been “a French village”.

“I discovered when I was 13 when my sister and I went to an exhibition on Ravensbruck and the former prisoners who were there took us in their arms. It was a shock,” she remembered. She has still never gone back. That place “gives me the creeps”, she said.

Her father, who was also a resistance member, died in the camps.



The Pole Mikolaj Sklodowski, now a priest, says Mass there and often takes young people on visits. “Talking about the suffering in the concentration camps is a duty to those who remain there forever,” he said.

The camps have marked all of them in one way or another.

Guy Poirot, who talks about his experiences to young people “so this will not happen again”, said he is still “very marked psychologically” by what happened. The former civil servant, who has a son, said his “health has been fragile” all his life.

Sylvie Aylmer suffered from anorexia when she was small and spent several years in therapy. “Things were not easy with my mother. When she saw me, she saw the camp,” she said.

Ingelore Prochnow was abandoned by her mother in a refugee camp when she was three having survived the camps. She only learned about her past when she was 42.

She said she is “resilient and rarely sick” but her youngest daughter was anorexic. “She weighed only 30 kilos (66 pounds, four stones and 10 pounds) when she died. She looked like a concentration camp prisoner and felt she was carrying my weight on her shoulders,” said the mother of two.

“She died in 2019 aged 50. The final diagnosis was that she was suffering from ‘transgenerational trauma’.”

German archive where victims of the Nazis come back to life

By AFP
April 13, 2025


Vast repository: the Arolsen Archives contain millions of documents on victims of the Nazis - Copyright AFP Menahem KAHANA

Céline LE PRIOUX

If it wasn’t for the Arolsen Archives, half-sisters Sula Miller and Helen Schaller would never have met.

American Miller and German Schaller only recently discovered they had the same father — a Holocaust survivor who emigrated to the US.

Miller “contacted us because she was looking for information about her father”, said Floriane Azoulay, director of the Arolsen Archives, the world’s largest repository of information on the victims and survivors of the Nazi regime.

Mendel Mueller, a Jew born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was incarcerated in two Nazi concentration camps: Buchenwald in northern Germany and Auschwitz in what was then occupied Poland.

An investigation of the archives revealed he had another daughter, Helen, who was still alive and living in Germany.

“Thanks to us, the two women got to know each other,” Azoulay said.

Eighty years after the end of World War II, people all over the world are still discovering the fate of their family members sent to Adolf Hitler’s Nazi death camps.

The vast Arolsen Archives, located in the quaint spa town of Bad Arolsen in central Germany, contain millions of documents and objects.

When Miller contacted the archive to find out about her father, researchers stumbled upon a 1951 letter from his wife looking for his whereabouts.

Shortly after the war, Mueller had married a German woman — the mother of his daughter Helen, born in 1947.

But some time later, he left for the US without her and started a new life there, marrying an Austrian woman — who gave birth to Sula in 1960.

Four years after Miller’s initial inquiry, investigators from Bad Arolsen managed to track Helen down and the two sisters met for the first time last year.

“Their physical resemblance was striking,” Azoulay said.

The two had complicated and conflicting views on their father, but “their meeting helped them make peace with the past”, she said.



– Watches, wallets and rings –



Although 90 percent of the material held by the Arolsen Archive has now been digitised, the complex still stores some 30 million original documents on almost 17.5 million people.

There are also thousands of items such as watches, rings and wallets collected from the old Nazi camps.

The archive was originally set up by the Allies in early 1946 as the International Tracing Service to help people find relatives who had disappeared during the war.

It mostly dealt with Jews but also Roma, homosexuals, political dissidents and “racially pure” children kidnapped by the Nazis as part of a programme to address the falling birth rate.

Bad Arolsen was chosen because it had escaped Allied bombing and had a working telephone network, and because of its location at the centre of Germany’s four occupation zones (French, American, British and Soviet).

At first the service was run by a curious mix of members of the Allied forces, Holocaust survivors from all over Europe and Germans — including former members of the Nazi party.

But from the 1950s onwards, as many of the survivors left the country, German staff numbers increased.

Today, the archive has around 200 employees, assisted by some 50 volunteers around the world.

And it is still handling around 20,000 enquiries per year, according to Azoulay, often from children or grandchildren of victims or survivors who want to know what happened to them.

Like Abraham Ben, born to Polish-Jewish parents in a displaced persons camp in Bamberg, southern Germany, in May 1947.



– No grandparents –



Now almost 80, Ben is still hoping to shed light on the fate of his father’s family, who were left behind when he escaped from the Warsaw Ghetto.

“There is a high probability that they died in the camps,” he said.

Ben’s father “never talked about (the Holocaust)… and we never asked him about it. We felt it was too painful for him.”

Almost no one had grandparents in the centre for Jewish refugees where Ben was born because the elderly — too weak to work — were first to be killed in the camps.

“At the age of 10, I realised other children had grandparents because I went to a German school and my classmates would describe the gifts they had given them at Christmas.”

Ben said he is hoping to find “cousins who may have survived” among the children of his father’s five brothers and sisters.

The archives at Bad Arolsen include documents issued by the Nazi party, such as Gestapo arrest warrants, lists of people to be transported to the camps and camp registers.

The documents are often surprisingly detailed, given the low chances of survival of the people listed in them.

In Buchenwald, the camp register kept a record of every prisoner’s height, eye and hair colour, facial features, marital status, children, religion and which languages they spoke, as well as their name, date of birth and deportation number.



– ‘Best day of her life’ –



From the beginning, the records were sorted according to a phonetic alphabet, since the same name can be spelled differently in different languages.

“For example, there are more than 800 ways to write ‘Abrahamovicz’,” said Nicole Dominicus, head of archive administration.

Later the archives were expanded to include files compiled by the Allies, as well as correspondence between the Red Cross and the Nazi administration.

The files also contain letters written by people searching for their lost relatives.

In a letter written to the International Tracing Service in 1948, a mother who survived Auschwitz asks about her missing daughter, who she was separated from in the camp.

Volunteers working for the archives outside Germany also help trawl through records in other countries.

Manuela Golc, a volunteer in Poland, recently met a 93-year-old woman to hand over a pair of earrings and a watch that had belonged to her mother, who was deported in 1944 after the Warsaw Uprising.

“She told me it was the best day of her life,” Golc said, with tears in her eyes.

German Achim Werner, 58, was “shocked” when the archives contacted him to let him know they had his grandfather’s wedding ring, taken from him when he arrived at the Dachau concentration camp.

Werner had visited the camp near Munich several times, on school excursions and as an adult, without knowing that his grandfather had been held there.

“We knew that he was detained in 1940, but nothing after that,” he said.

Werner does not know why his grandfather was imprisoned, and since the archives have no further information about him, he probably never will.

But he wants to keep the man’s memory alive and has given the wedding ring to his daughter.

“She will wear it as a pendant and then pass it on to her children,” he said.

Malawi’s debt crisis deepens as aid cuts hurt

By AFP
April 15, 2025


President Lazarus Chakwera and his wife marked the opening of the 2025 tobacco trading season - Copyright AFP Sergei GAPON

Jack McBrams

Behind a dimly lit bar in Malawi’s capital, Ben Manda rubbed his tired eyes and poured a customer a drink. He had been working for 36 hours straight, packing in back-to-back shifts to feed his family of four.

“I haven’t been home in three days,” said the 32-year-old barman in a run-down club in Mtandire, one of Lilongwe’s largest and most crowded informal settlements. “Times are tough.”

Manda is a casualty of Malawi’s economic struggles, his livelihood hanging by a thread as foreign aid cuts and mounting national debt tighten their grip on his destitute African country.

A small television above the bar flickered with news reports of budget shortfalls, unpaid salaries, and a spiralling cost of living.

“The problem is that our leaders divert the money from its intended use,” Manda said, accusing the political leadership of misusing foreign aid.

The country of 21 million people — more than two-thirds of whom live in extreme poverty, according to the World Bank — has for decades been dependent on foreign aid.

The scaling back of funding from Washington’s USAID agency this year as well as cuts by Britain and other donors has fed a storm of crises causing economic instability that is worsening ahead of general elections in September.

“Since 2013, the country has lost an estimated five percent of its GDP, or roughly $545 million annually, due to reduced donor assistance,” Agness Nyirongo, economic governance officer for the Centre for Social Concern, a non-government organisation, told AFP.

“The aid withdrawal means the country has to prioritise the little revenue locally generated to repay loans at the expense of service delivery,” said Willy Kambwandira of the Centre for Social Accountability and Transparency.

Malawi is one of six countries with unsustainable debt levels, according to the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) February 2025 list.

Public sector debt rose from 48 to 93 percent of GDP between March 2020 and March 2024, according to government figures cited in an IMF report this month.

“Fiscal pressures that have contributed to this rise include spending to combat the Covid-19 pandemic and the aftereffects of three cyclones, high inflation, and rising foreign exchange rates,” it said.



– Little left over –



Structural weaknesses and fiscal mismanagement have contributed to Malawi’s economic woes, said university lecturer Bertha Chikadza, president of the Economics Association of Malawi.

For example, tobacco dominates exports, making up 60 percent, and price slumps for the crop have cut foreign exchange earnings.

“With little or no diversification in export earnings, the country has had persistent trade deficits,” she said.

Debt servicing consumes about half of domestic revenue, leaving little for health, education and other critical sectors, Chikadza said.

With inflation of 28.5 percent this year pushing up prices, Malawians have taken to the streets in protest in several cities.

Government coping measures, including cutting public spending and raising taxes, have been deeply unpopular.

President Lazarus Chakwera, standing for re-election in September, repeated at the UN General Assembly last year pleas for debt relief to give his country — and African nations in a similar plight — some “breathing space”.

The topic is a priority this year for the G20 group of leading economies under the presidency of South Africa, the first African nation to hold the role.

More than half of Africa’s 1.3 billion people live in countries that spend more on interest payments than on social issues such as health, education and infrastructure, according to the South African government.

The solution is not to write off debt, said David McNair, global policy executive director at the One Campaign non-profit group.

Developing countries such as Malawi “need more borrowing to allow them to invest, particularly because of the demographic trends,” he said.

However, their debt is “too expensive,” he said, calling for the G20 to put in place a review of ratings agencies’ assessments of debt risk and find ways to unlock lower-cost private capital.

Macron to honour craftspeople who rebuilt Notre Dame


By AFP
April 15, 2025


A devastating fire broke out at the Gothic masterpiece on April 15, 2019 - Copyright AFP Abdul BASIT

French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday will bestow awards on around 100 craftspeople and officials who helped restore Notre Dame to its former glory after a fire nearly destroyed the beloved Paris cathedral six years ago.

The ceremony at the Elysee Palace will take place from early Tuesday evening, around the same time the devastating fire broke out at the Gothic masterpiece on April 15, 2019.

Macron will bestow the awards in the presence of Prime Minister Francois Bayrou and government members including Culture Minister Rachida Dati.

Jean-Claude Gallet, who presided over the Paris fire brigade during the disaster, will also be in attendance.

“You have achieved what was thought impossible,” Macron told restoration workers and officials after he toured the cathedral last November, days before the cathedral re-opened to the public on December 7.

On Tuesday, Macron will once again speak of France’s “pride” over the operation’s success, according to his team, which said an average of 30,000 people a day now visit the restored cathedral.

Macron will also honour Philippe Jost, who headed the public organisation tasked with restoring the cathedral and was elevated to the rank of “commander” of the Legion of Honour, France’s highest national award.

Jost succeeded Jean-Louis Georgelin, the general who had been put in charge of overseeing the restoration but who died in 2023.

Georgelin was conferred with the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, the highest rank of the award established by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802.

The architects Remi Fromont and Philippe Villeneuve will also be decorated.

Alongside them, nearly 100 civil servants, entrepreneurs and craftspeople will be awarded the Legion of Honour or the National Order of Merit, another top award established by Charles de Gaulle.

They represent around 2,000 people who took part in the restoration of the cathedral.

They come from “all the trades” and include carpenters, ironworkers, scaffolders, rope access workers, organ restorers and stained glass artisans, the French presidency said.

Aymeric Albert, who will be made a knight of the Legion of Honour, combed the forests of France to select oak trees needed to rebuild the spire, the nave and the choir.

The massive restoration project was financed thanks to nearly 850 million euros (around $960 million at today’s rate) in donations from all over the world.

Trump eyes near 50 percent cut in State Dept.  budget: US media

AMERICAN ISOLATIONISM

By AFP
April 15, 2025


US President Donald Trump speaks to the press before signing an executive order in the Oval Office of the White House on January 30, 2025 in Washington, DC. - Copyright AFP ROBERTO SCHMIDT

The US State Department is expected to propose an unprecedented scaling back of Washington’s diplomatic reach, multiple news outlets reported Tuesday, shuttering programs and embassies worldwide to slash the budget by almost 50 percent.

The proposals, contained in an internal departmental memo said to be under serious discussion by senior officials, would eliminate almost all funding for international organizations such as the United Nations and NATO.

Financial support for international peacekeeping would be curtailed, along with funding for educational and cultural exchanges like the Fulbright Program, one of the most prestigious US scholarships.

The plan comes with President Donald Trump pressing a broader assault on government spending, and a scaling back of America’s leading role on the international stage.

But the American Foreign Service Association called the proposed cuts “reckless and dangerous” while former US ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul decried a “giant gift to the Communist Party of China.”


US Secretary of State Marco Rubio would have to sign off on any cuts before they were considered by Congress – Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP WIN MCNAMEE

The memo says the State Department will request a $28.4 billion budget in fiscal year 2026, beginning October 1 — $26 billion less than the 2025 figure, according to The New York Times.

Although it has little to say about humanitarian aid, programs tackling tropical disease, providing vaccines to children in developing nations and promoting maternal and child health would go, the Times reported.

USAID — the sprawling development agency eyed for closure by Trump and Musk — is assumed by the memo’s authors to have been fully absorbed into the State Department, said The Washington Post.

Only the Republican-controlled Congress — which needs Democratic votes to pass most laws — has the authority to sign off on the cuts.

But the proposals will likely loom large in lawmakers’ negotiations over the 2026 budget.

Government departments were facing a deadline of this week to send the White House their plans for cuts, but the State Department has yet to make any public announcements.

It is not clear if Secretary of State Marco Rubio has endorsed the April 10 memo, but he would need to sign off on any cuts before they could be considered by Congress.

The document earmarks 10 embassies and 17 consulates for closure, including missions in Eritrea, Luxembourg, South Sudan and Malta, according to politics outlet Punchbowl News.

Five consulates earmarked for closure are in France while two are in Germany, Punchbowl reported. The list also includes missions in Scotland and Italy.

In Canada, US consulates in Montreal and Halifax would be downsized to “provide ‘last-mile’ diplomacy with minimal local support,” the website reported, citing the document.

US missions to international bodies such as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and the UN’s children’s fund, UNICEF, would be merged with the diplomatic outposts in the city where they are located.

AFP contacted the State Department for comment but there was no immediate response.

Russia jails four journalists who covered Navalny

COMING TO TRUMPLAD SOON

By AFP
April 15, 2025


Sergei Karelin, Konstantin Gabov, Antonina Kravtsova and Artem Kriger were charged with 'participating in an extremist group' - Copyright AFP Clarens SIFFROY

Russia on Tuesday sentenced four journalists it said were associated with late opposition leader Alexei Navalny to five and a half years in a penal colony, intensifying a crackdown on press freedom and Kremlin critics.

Navalny — Putin’s main opponent — was declared an “extremist” by Russian authorities, a ruling that remains in force despite his death in an Arctic penal colony on February 16, 2024.

Moscow also banned Navalny’s organisations as “extremist” shortly before launching its 2022 Ukraine offensive and has ruthlessly targeted those it deems to have links to him.

A judge sentenced the reporters — Antonina Kravtsova, Konstantin Gabov, Sergei Karelin, and Artem Kriger — who all covered Navalny to “five years and six months in a general-regime penal colony”, an AFP journalist heard.

They were found guilty of “participating in an extremist group” after being arrested last year.

The trial proceeded behind closed doors at Moscow’s Nagatinsky district court with only the sentencing open to the media, as has become typical for political cases in Russia amid its Ukraine offensive.

Around a hundred supporters, journalists and Western diplomats came to the court for the verdicts.

Supporters cheered and clapped as the defendants were led in and out and one shouted: “You are the pride of Russia!”

“They will all appeal” their sentences, said Ivan Novikov, the lawyer defending Kriger.

“The sentence is unlawful and unjust,” said a second lawyer for Kriger, Yelena Sheremetyeva.

“No evidence was presented that these guys committed any crimes, their guilt was not proven,” Gabov’s lawyer Irina Biryukova said.



– ‘Doing their job’ –



The press secretary of Navalny’s widow Yulia, Kira Yarmysh, wrote on X that the journalists were convicted simply “for doing their job”.

“Antonina, Artem, Sergei and Konstantin are real journalists and just honest, brave people. They should be released immediately,” she wrote.

Germany’s foreign ministry said on X that the sentences showed that “in Putin’s Russia, the freedom of the press enshrined in the Constitution is worth nothing”.

Since Navalny’s still unexplained death in an Arctic prison last year, Russian authorities have heavily targeted his family and associates.

In January, three lawyers who had defended him in court were sentenced to several years in prison.

Moscow has also escalated its decade-long crackdown on independent media amid its military offensive on Ukraine.

Shortly after ordering troops into Ukraine in 2022, Moscow passed sweeping military censorship laws that ban criticism of its army, forcing most of the country’s independent media to leave the country.

The journalists sentenced on Tuesday rejected the charges of being associated with an extremist group.

Kravtsova, 34, is a photographer who worked for the independent SOTAvision outlet and uses the pen name Antonina Favorskaya.

She had covered Navalny’s trials for two years and filmed his last appearance via video-link in court just two days before his death.

Video correspondents Gabov and Karelin are accused of preparing photos and video material for Navalny’s social media channels.

Both had worked at times with international outlets — Gabov with Reuters and Karelin with the Associated Press and Deutsche Welle.

Kriger, 24, the youngest among the accused, covered political trials and protests for SOTAvision.

After the verdict, he said in court: “Everything will be fine. Everything will change. Those who sentenced me will be sitting here instead of me.”

Peru court sentences ex-president Humala to 15 years for graft


PERU HAS THE MOST EX PRESIDENTS IN JAIL

By AFP
April 15, 2025


Peruvian ex-president Ollanta Humala has been sentenced to 15 years in prison in a corruption case linked to construction giant Odebrecht - Copyright AFP CONNIE FRANCE

A Peruvian court on Tuesday sentenced ex-president Ollanta Humala and his wife to 15 years in prison for graft linked to a globe-spanning corruption scandal involving Brazilian construction group Odebrecht paying bribes to politicians.

The court found the 62-year-old and his wife Nadine Heredia guilty of money laundering for receiving illegal contributions from Odebrecht and the Venezuelan government in two presidential campaigns.

Humala was taken into custody in the courtroom after the ruling, and Judge Nayko Coronado ordered the arrest of Heredia, who did not attend the sentencing hearing.

Humala, a former army officer who led the country from 2011 to 2016, became in 2022 the first Peruvian ex-president to go on trial in the Odebrecht corruption scandal, which has also seen three other former presidents implicated.

Two-term leader Alan Garcia committed suicide in 2019 when police came to his house to arrest him, while Alejandro Toledo (in power from 2001-06) was sentenced last year to more than 20 years in prison for accepting multi-million-dollar bribes in exchange for government contracts.

Investigations continue into the fourth ex-president who was implicated, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (in office from 2016-2018).

Prosecutors had sought a 20-year prison term for Humala and 26 years for Heredia for accepting $3 million in illegal contributions for his 2011 campaign from Odebrecht.

The company is considered responsible for one of the biggest foreign bribery schemes in history.



– Bribes for influence –



The pair were also charged with illegally diverting about $200,000 sent by Venezuela’s then-president Hugo Chavez for Humala’s failed 2006 campaign, and Heredia with “concealment of real estate purchases” made with some of the money.

They have consistently denied all charges, and Humala’s legal team said he would appeal the sentence.

In 2016, Odebrecht agreed to pay $3.5 billion in penalties in Brazil, the United States and Switzerland arising out of payments of more than $788 million in bribes to foreign leaders and government officials in order to win infrastructure projects.

The company admitted having paid at least $29 million in bribes to Peruvian officials between 2005 and 2014.

Leftist Humala came to the presidency in 2011 after beating right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori in a runoff election.

Fujimori herself spent 13 months in detention in a case linked to Odebrecht.

Boeing faces fresh crisis with US-China trade war


By AFP
April 15, 2025


A Boeing 737 MAX aircraft is assembled at the Boeing Renton Factory in Washington state in June 2024 - Copyright POOL/AFP/File Jennifer Buchanan
Elodie MAZEIN

US aviation giant Boeing, fresh off a crippling labor dispute and quality control crisis, has now found itself drawn into the escalating trade conflict between Washington and Beijing.

The largest US exporter, Boeing has been caught in the crossfire after President Donald Trump imposed new tariffs of up to 145 percent on many Chinese products, sparking retaliatory 125 percent levies from Beijing.

The duties more than double the cost of aircraft and spare parts manufactured in the United States.

On Tuesday, Trump accused China of reneging on a “big Boeing deal,” following a Bloomberg news report that Beijing ordered airlines not to take further deliveries of the company’s jets.

The report also said that Beijing requested Chinese carriers to pause purchases of aircraft-related equipment and parts from US firms.

Boeing has declined to comment on the matter.

Last week, Bloomberg reported that China’s Juneyao Airlines was delaying delivery of a Boeing widebody aircraft as the growing trade conflict drives up costs of big-ticket products.

– ‘Not surprised’-

Boeing’s website shows its order book at the end of March contained 130 aircraft due to Chinese customers, including airlines and leasing companies.

But as some buyers prefer to remain anonymous, the true figure could be higher.

Bank of America (BofA) analysts note that Boeing is scheduled to deliver 29 aircraft this year to identified Chinese companies, but added that a large portion of unidentified customers who bought aircraft are actually Chinese.

“China represents about 20 percent of the market for large civil jets over the next 20 years,” BofA Securities said in a note.

It added that the US administration cannot ignore Boeing when it considers trade balances.

“Boeing is the US’s largest exporter, as such, we are not surprised by China’s move; however, we do see this as unsustainable,” BofA Securities said.

Boeing’s main competitor Airbus cannot be China’s only supplier of large commercial jets given its capacity constraints, it said.

The Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) is also “highly dependent on US suppliers,” the analysts said.

If China stopped buying aircraft components from the United States, COMAC’s C919 program — a competitor to Boeing’s 737 or Airbus’s A320 — would be halted, they said.

A delivery blockage would affect the United States’ trade balance further as well.

Boeing’s production slowed significantly after quality issues that emerged with an in-flight incident in January 2024, and two factories were subsequently paralysed by a strike in the fall.

According to US official data, commercial aircraft exports reached $4.2 billion in August last year but dropped to $2.6 billion in September. They slipped further in October and November.

In December, when Boeing deliveries gradually resumed, the amount rose to $3.1 billion.

– Airline customers –

Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg previously stressed that the company supports 1.8 million jobs in the United States.

A delivery freeze would have direct consequences for the group, which traditionally receives 60 percent of the price upon delivery.

With its difficulties of 2024, Boeing is already dipping heavily into cash flow that has been depleted by the Covid-19 pandemic and other issues.

Besides concerns surrounding Beijing, Boeing will likely be squeezed by higher duties too.

Michael O’Leary, CEO of Ryanair, Europe’s largest airline by passenger numbers, said on Tuesday his company might postpone delivery of 25 Boeing jets expected from August if they cost more customs duties.

Ryanair, a major Boeing customer, notably placed an order in May 2023 for 300 737 MAX 10s, including 150 firm orders, for a list price estimated at over $40 billion.

Ed Bastian, CEO of Delta Air Lines, said last week that he does not intend to pay customs duties on the Airbus aircraft he expects this year.

Trump ramps up conflict against defiant Harvard


By AFP
April 15, 2025


Harvard University is the highest profile institution to refuse to bend to President Donald Trump's demands for control - Copyright AFP ADALBERTO ROQUE

Joe Prezioso with Sebastian Smith in Washington

President Donald Trump escalated his war against elite US universities Tuesday with a threat to strip Harvard’s tax-exempt status if the country’s most famous educational establishment refuses to submit to wide-ranging government oversight.

Harvard stands out for defying Trump, in contrast to several other universities and a string of powerful law firms that have folded under intense pressure from the White House in its crackdown on American institutions.

Its president, Alan Garber, said the school would not “negotiate over its independence or its constitutional rights.”

Tuesday’s threat of a major tax bill comes a day after the freezing of $2.2 billion in federal funding.

The impacts are already being felt on a campus that has produced 162 Nobel prize winners and whose alumni range from Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg to eight US presidents.

The university said one faculty member had just been told to halt her tuberculosis research because of “the broader funding freeze.”

But the mood was defiant.

“I love it. I think it’s amazing. I think more schools across the country need to. It shows that you’re not going to bow down, you’re not going to let free speech be taken,” student Darious Hanson told AFP.



– Anti-Semitism –



Trump posted on social media that non-profit Harvard “should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity” if it does not submit to his demands for the university to change the way it runs itself, including selection of students and authority for professors.

Trump and his White House team have justified their pressure campaign on universities as a reaction to what they say is uncontrolled anti-Semitism and support for the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

Trump “wants to see Harvard apologize. And Harvard should apologize,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told journalists.

The anti-Semitism allegations are based on controversy at protests against Israel’s war in Gaza that swept across campuses last year.

Columbia University in New York — an epicenter of the protests — stood down last month and agreed to oversight of its Middle Eastern department after being threatened with a loss of $400 million in federal funds.

The White House has also strong-armed dozens of universities and colleges with threats to remove federal funding over their policies meant to encourage racial diversity among students and staff.

The White House has cited similarly ideological goals in its unprecedented crackdown on law firms, pressuring them to volunteer hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of legal work to support issues that Trump supports.



– Harvard defiant –


Harvard, the oldest and wealthiest university in the United States, is now the most prominent institution to resist Trump’s ever-growing bid for control.

The Trump administration is demanding that a wide range of Harvard departments come under outside supervision for potential anti-Semitism. It also seeks to require “viewpoint diversity” in student admissions and choice of professors.

Garber’s insistence that Harvard cannot “allow itself to be taken over by the federal government” sets up a likely long-running, high-profile fight.

Hard-line presidential advisors such as Stephen Miller depict universities as bastions of anti-conservative forces that need to be brought to heel — a message that resonates strongly with Trump’s hard-right anti-elite base.

For Trump’s opponents, the Harvard refusal to bend marks a chance to draw a line in the sand against an authoritarian takeover.

“Harvard has set an example for other higher-ed institutions — rejecting an unlawful and ham-handed attempt to stifle academic freedom,” former president Barack Obama wrote on X. “Let’s hope other institutions follow suit.”

Dozens of universities and other stakeholders are separately battling the Trump administration in court over broad research funding cuts that have led to staff layoffs and created deep uncertainty among US academics.

Harvard sees $2.2 billion in funding frozen after defying Trump


By AFP
April 14, 2025


Students from MIT, Harvard University and other schools rally in April 2024 against Israel's military campaign in Gaza - Copyright AFP -

Elite US university Harvard was hit with a $2.2 billion freeze in federal funding Monday after rejecting a list of sweeping demands that the White House said was intended to crack down on campus anti-Semitism.

The call for changes to its governance, hiring practices and admissions procedures expands on a list Harvard received on April 3, which ordered officials to shut diversity offices and cooperate with immigration authorities for screenings of international students.

Harvard president Alan Garber vowed in a letter to students and faculty to defy the government, insisting that the school would not “negotiate over its independence or its constitutional rights.”

Trump’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism responded with a statement announcing the $2.2 billion hold in multi-year grants, plus a freeze on $60 million in government contracts.

“Harvard’s statement today reinforces the troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in our nation’s most prestigious universities and colleges — that federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws,” it said.

“The disruption of learning that has plagued campuses in recent years is unacceptable. The harassment of Jewish students is intolerable. It is time for elite universities to take the problem seriously and commit to meaningful change if they wish to continue receiving taxpayer support.”

Campuses across the country were rocked last year by student protests against Israel’s war in Gaza, with some resulting in violent clashes involving police and pro-Israel counter-protesters.

Trump and other Republicans have accused the activists of supporting Hamas, a US-designated terrorist group whose deadly attack on October 7, 2023 against Israel sparked the conflict.

The Department of Education announced in March that it had opened an investigation into 60 colleges and universities for alleged “anti-Semitic harassment and discrimination.”

Garber’s letter came after the administration placed $9 billion in federal funding to Harvard and its affiliates under review, making its first demands.

On Friday, the government sent Harvard a much more detailed list demanding an “audit” of the views of students and faculty, which the university made public.



– ‘Raging anti-Semitism’ –



Harvard generated an operating surplus of $45 million on a revenue base of $6.5 billion in the last financial year.

Garber said the school was “open to new information and different perspectives” but would not agree to demands that “go beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration.”

“No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” Garber said.

Top Republican congresswoman Elise Stefanik, who was lauded by Trump last year for aggressive questioning of universities over anti-Semitism, called for Harvard to be defunded, calling it “the epitome of the moral and academic rot in higher education.”

The New York firebrand, seen as one of the most vocal supporters in Congress of Israel and US Jewish causes, accused the university of tolerating “raging anti-Semitism.”

Harvard’s response to the White House’s demands was in sharp contrast to the approach taken by Columbia University, the epicenter of last year’s pro-Palestinian protests.

The Trump administration cut $400 million in grants to the private New York school, accusing it of failing to protect Jewish students from harassment as protesters rallied against Israel’s Gaza offensive.

The school responded by agreeing to reform student disciplinary procedures and hiring 36 officers to expand its security team.

As well as the funding cut, immigration officers have targeted two organizers of the pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia: Mahmoud Khalil, whom the government is seeking to deport, and Mohsen Mahdawi, who was arrested Monday as he attended an interview to become a US citizen.