WASHINGTON: The Trump administration released $5.3 billion in previously frozen foreign aid, mostly for security and counternarcotics programs, according to a list of exemptions reviewed by Reuters that included only limited humanitarian relief.
President Donald Trump ordered a 90-day pause on foreign aid shortly after taking office on January 20, halting funding for everything from programs that fight starvation and deadly diseases to providing shelters for millions of displaced people across the globe.
The freeze sparked a scramble by US officials and humanitarian organizations for exemptions to keep programs going. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has said all foreign assistance must align with Trump’s “America First” priorities, issued waivers in late January on military aid to Israel and Egypt, the top US allies in the Middle East, and for life-saving humanitarian aid, including food. The waivers meant those funds should have been allowed to be spent.
Current and former US officials and aid organizations, however, say few humanitarian aid waivers have been approved.
Reuters obtained a list of 243 further exceptions approved as of February 13 totaling $5.3 billion. The list provides the most comprehensive accounting of exempted funds since Trump ordered the aid freeze and reflects the White House’s desire to cut aid for programs it doesn’t consider vital to US national security.
The list identifies programs that will be funded and the US government office managing them.
The vast majority of released funds — more than $4.1 billion — were for programs administered by the US State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military affairs, which oversees arms sales and military assistance to other countries and groups. Other exemptions were in line with Trump’s immigration crackdown and efforts to halt the flow of illicit narcotics into the US, including the deadly opioid fentanyl.
More than half of the programs that will be allowed to go forward are run by the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, or INL, and are aimed at helping fight drug trafficking and illicit migration to the US, according to the list.
Those exemptions were worth $293 million and included funds for databases to track migrants, identify possible terrorists and share biometric information.
A State Department spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Reuters could not determine if some exemptions had been granted but were not on the list.
Trump has long railed against foreign aid, which has averaged less than 2 percent of total federal spending for the past 20 years, according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Trump has described the US “foreign aid industry” as “in many cases antithetical to American values.”
Billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has led an effort to gut the United States Agency for International Development, the main delivery mechanism for American foreign assistance and a critical tool of US “soft power” for winning influence abroad.
In contrast to security-related programs, USAID programs received less than $100 million in exemptions, according to the list. That compares to roughly $40 billion in USAID programs administered annually before the freeze.
Exempted USAID programs included $78 million for non-food humanitarian assistance in Gaza, which has been devastated by war. A separate $56 million was released for the International Committee of the Red Cross related to the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, the list showed.
The list did not include specific exemptions for some of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, including Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, Myanmar and Afghanistan, which means funds for those places appeared to remain stopped.
Security exemptions included $870 million for programs in Taiwan, $336 million for modernizing Philippine security forces and more than $21.5 million for body armor and armored vehicles for Ukraine’s national police and border guards, the list showed.
The biggest non-security exemption was $500 million in funding for PEPFAR, the flagship US program fighting HIV/AIDS, which mainly funds health care services in Africa and is credited with saving millions of lives. That compares with PEPFAR’s annual budget in 2024 of $6.5 billion. PEPFAR is administered by the State Department’s global health bureau.
‘DYSFUNCTIONAL’
A current USAID employee, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the process for requesting exemptions as “very dysfunctional” and said the agency’s remaining staff have sought clarity on what criteria are being used. Rubio has said the Trump administration reached out to USAID missions overseas to identify and designate programs that will be exempted.
J. Brian Atwood, USAID’s administrator from 1993 to 1999, said reducing foreign aid to a narrow set of exemptions was shortsighted. “When people are starving or feeling desperate, they are going to become a security problem eventually,” he said. “They’ll migrate or become an immigration problem, or they will be more inclined to move to terrorism.”
The foreign aid that was paused by Trump had previously been approved by Congress, which controls the federal budget under the US Constitution. As a candidate and as president, Trump has said he opposes foreign aid for “countries that hate us” and would prefer to instead spend the money at home. The exemptions in the list were granted before a federal judge last week ordered the Trump administration to restore funding for foreign aid contracts and awards that were in place before January 20. Reuters was unable to establish what exemptions, if any, had been granted since February 13.
Many of the unfrozen programs reflect Trump’s focus on drug trafficking, including funds supporting fentanyl interdiction operations by Mexican security units and efforts to combat transnational criminal organizations. Trump’s aid freeze has thrown a wrench into those efforts, however.
Reuters reported last week that the pause halted anti-narcotics programs funded by the INL Bureau in Mexico that for years had been working to curb the flow of the synthetic opioid into the United States. More than $64 million was released to support Haitian police and a UN-approved international security force that is helping Haiti’s government fight escalating gang violence that has displaced more than one million people.
The money covers supplies of small arms, ammunition, drones, night vision goggles, vehicles and other support for the force, according to the list. The force is led by Kenya and includes personnel from Jamaica, Belize, the Bahamas, Guatemala and El Salvador.
The Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, focused on preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, received 17 exemptions worth more than $30.4 million, the list showed.
Also released was $397 million for a US-backed program in nuclear-armed Pakistan that a congressional aide said monitored Islamabad’s use of US-made F-16 fighter jets to ensure they are employed for counterterrorism operations and not against rival India.
Some of the released funds were for small expenditures — including $604 for Musk’s Starlink satellite Internet system to run biometrics registration programs in the Darien Gap, a treacherous 60-mile route linking South and Central America used by US-bound illegal migrants.
US exempts security funds from aid freeze but little for humanitarian programs
https://arab.news/yuxmc
US exempts security funds from aid freeze but little for humanitarian programs
- The Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction, received 17 exemptions worth more than $30.4 million
- Also released was $397 million for US-backed program in nuclear-armed Pakistan that a congressional aide said monitored Islamabad’s use of US-made F-16 fighter jets
Nomination of Jordanian American as US surgeon general withdrawn over credentials controversy
CHICAGO: US President Donald Trump on Wednesday withdrew the nomination of Jordanian-American physician Janette Nesheiwat, a FOX TV medical contributor, to serve as the nation’s surgeon general after critics alleged she falsified parts of her medical resume.
In announcing his intention to nominate Nesheiwat in a release on Nov. 22, 2024, then President-elect Trump had said: “Dr. Nesheiwat is a double board-certified Medical Doctor with an unwavering commitment to saving and treating thousands of American lives.”
He added that she was a “proud graduate of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences” and that her “journey began with humble roots as one of five children raised by a widowed immigrant mother who worked as a nurse.”
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/statement-president-elect-donald-j-trump-announcing-the-nomination-dr-janette-nesheiwat
The information is reflected on her website at DrJanette.net, which states: “Dr. Nesheiwat completed her medical residency at University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, UAMS.”
https://www.drjanette.net/about-1
But records published by several media houses claim that Nesheiwat actually earned her medical degree from the American University of the CaribbeanSchool of Medicine, located in St. Maarten, in the Caribbean.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-surgeon-general-nominee-dr-janette-nesheiwat-credentials/
Critics charge that Nesheiwat was never a student at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.
https://lastcampaign.substack.com/p/trumps-surgeon-general-pick-distorted
Nesheiwat, whose parents are Christian-Arab immigrants from Amman, Jordan, was to appear before the US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on Thursday, May 8, 2025, to testify on her nomination before being confirmed.
But her appearance was removed from the announcement on Wednesday afternoon.
The US surgeon general oversees the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, an elite group of over 6,000 uniformed officers who are public health professionals.
The USPHS mission is to protect, promote, and advance the health of the nation.
https://www.hhs.gov/surgeongeneral/index.html#:~:text=The%20Surgeon%20General%20oversees%20the,the%20health%20of%20our%20nation.
Nesheiwat came under further scrutiny after conservative activist and Trump confidant Laura Loomer posted the allegations on Monday on X.
Loomer stated that “we can’t have a pro-COVID vaccine nepo appointee who is currently embroiled in a medical malpractice case and who didn’t go to medical school in the US as the US Surgeon General.”
“She is now being accused of lying about her credentials,” added Loomer.
https://x.com/LauraLoomer/status/1919180558355013817
On X, Loomer has described the COVID-19 vaccinations as “dangerous.”
She added: “Vaccines Cause Autism. Even Donald Trump knows this. That’s why he has directed his new admin and his HHS secretary @RobertKennedyJr to INVESTIGATE the link between vaccines and autism.”
Nesheiwat’s sister, Julia Nesheiwat, is an American academic, business executive and former government official who served as the 10th homeland security advisor in the Trump administration from 2020 to 2021.
She also held various positions in the administrations of former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
Janette Nesheiwat was involved in a family tragedy when she was 13 years old in 1990.
According to published reports, Nesheiwat had been looking for a pair of scissors when she reached into a fishing box on a shelf in her father’s bedroom.
The fishing box fell to the ground and a gun that was in it discharged, killing her sleeping father, Ziad Nesheiwat.
In her 2024 book, “Beyond the Stethoscope,” Nesheiwat said she became a doctor as a result of the tragedy.
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Beyond-the-Stethoscope/Janette-Nesheiwat/9798888456514
Ironically, the man Nesheiwat was to succeed as surgeon general, Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, who was dismissed by Trump on April 21, had issued a public advisory in July 2024 that accidental firearm discharge deaths are “an urgent public health crisis.”
https://medicine.yale.edu/news/yale-medicine-magazine/article/vivek-murthy-dismissed-as-us-surgeon/
At the time of going to press, Nesheiwat had not responded to the news of the nomination withdrawal.
Australian jury convicts two men for murder of Indigenous teen
- Some witnesses said the attackers had used racial slurs before the attack, but racism was not an alleged motive in the court proceedings
- A fourth person charged over Turvey’s killing, Aleesha Gilmore, was cleared of both murder and manslaughter charges, court documents showed
SYDNEY: An Australian jury on Thursday found two men guilty of murdering Cassius Turvey, a 15-year-old Indigenous boy whose killing sparked nationwide anti-racism protests.
Turvey was attacked and beaten with a metal pole in October 2022 in the western city of Perth, the court heard. He died 10 days later in hospital.
Jurors convicted the two men — Jack Brearley and Brodie Palmer — of his murder, papers from the Supreme Court of Western Australia showed.
A third man, Mitchell Forth, was found guilty of manslaughter but cleared of murder.
All three men got out of a pick-up truck and chased a group of teenagers that included Turvey, Australian public broadcaster ABC said.
Brearley assaulted Turvey with a pole from a shopping trolley, the court heard.
Prosecutors said Brearley was angry because someone had smashed his car windows — though there was no suggestion Turvey was responsible, the ABC said.
Some witnesses said the attackers had used racial slurs before the attack, but racism was not an alleged motive in the court proceedings.
In the days after the killing, thousands of protesters held rallies and vigils around Australia.
At the time, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the attack was racially motivated, describing it as a “terrible tragedy.”
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people face stark inequalities compared to other Australians, with shorter life expectancies, poorer health and education, and higher incarceration rates.
A fourth person charged over Turvey’s killing, Aleesha Gilmore, was cleared of both murder and manslaughter charges, court documents showed.
India, Pakistan trade air and drone strikes as tensions spiral
- Pakistan’s air defense system shot down an Indian drone near a naval air base in the eastern city of Lahore
- India’s government said that 13 civilians had been killed by Pakistani fire in “ceasefire violations” along their de facto border
- Pakistan’s Civil Aviation Authority said it has reopened Islamabad and Lahore airports
DUBAI: Tensions between India and Pakistan escalated on Thursday, with both countries reporting drone attacks, civilian casualties, and cross-border military action amid a deepening crisis along their highly militarized frontier.
India’s defense ministry said Pakistan launched an overnight aerial assault using “drones and missiles” that targeted Indian military sites. It said all the attacks were intercepted by Indian air defense systems, adding that New Delhi retaliated by destroying a Pakistani air defense system in Lahore.
“Our response was targeted and measured. It is not our intention to escalate the situation,” Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said during a press conference. “However, if there are military attacks on us, there should be no doubt that it will be met with a very, very firm response.”
In Pakistan, security officials said their air defense systems shot down an Indian drone early Thursday near a naval air base in Lahore. The military later claimed it had downed a total of 25 Indian drones across the country, including several Israeli-made Harop drones near sensitive military installations. Debris from the drones was reportedly recovered from various locations.
The aerial exchanges follow Indian strikes a day earlier in Pakistan’s Punjab province and in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, which Islamabad said killed 31 civilians, including women and children.
In response, Pakistan intensified cross-border shelling, which India said killed 13 civilians and injured 59 others in the town of Poonch. India’s army added that a soldier was also killed, bringing its total death toll to 14 since the flare-up began on Wednesday.
Amid the heightened tensions, Pakistan’s Civil Aviation Authority briefly closed airspace around Islamabad and Lahore, citing “operational reasons,” though both airports were later reopened. Karachi International Airport remains closed.
The crisis has reignited fears of further escalation between the two nuclear-armed neighbors, whose rivalry over the disputed region of Kashmir has triggered wars in the past.
Escalating Tensions
Tensions have escalated since April 22, when gunmen killed 26 people, mostly Indian Hindu tourists, in India-controlled Kashmir. India accused Pakistan of backing militants who carried out the attack, something Islamabad has denied.
Local police official Mohammad Rizwan said only that a drone was downed near Waltan airport, a small airfield in a residential area of Lahore that also contains military installations, about 25 kilometers (16 miles) east of the border with India.
Local media reported that two additional drones were shot down in other cities in Punjab province, of which Lahore is the capital.
Two security officials say a small Indian drone was taken down by Pakistan’s air defense system, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media. It was not immediately clear whether the drone was armed.
The incident could not be independently verified, and Indian officials did not immediately comment.
India said its strikes Wednesday targeted at least nine sites in Pakistan linked to planning terrorist attacks against India.
In response, Pakistan’s air force shot down five Indian fighter jets, its military said.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif vowed overnight to avenge the killings but gave no details, raising fears of a broader conflict between the two nuclear-armed neighbors.
Across the de-facto border in Indian-controlled Kashmir, tens of thousands of people slept in shelters overnight, officials and residents said Thursday.
Indian authorities evacuated civilians from dozens of villages living close to the highly militarized Line of Control overnight while some living in border towns like Uri and Poonch left their homes on their own, three police and civil officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity in keeping with departmental regulations.
Global temperatures stuck at near-record highs in April: EU monitor
- Burning fossil fuels largely blamed for global warming that has made extreme weather disasters more frequent and intense
- Scientists say the current period is likely to be the warmest the Earth has been for the last 125,000 years
PARIS: Global temperatures were stuck at near-record highs in April, the EU’s climate monitor said on Thursday, extending an unprecedented heat streak and raising questions about how quickly the world might be warming.
The extraordinary heat spell was expected to subside as warmer El Niño conditions faded last year, but temperatures have stubbornly remained at record or near-record levels well into this year.
“And then comes 2025, when we should be settling back, and instead we are remaining at this accelerated step-change in warming,” said Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
“And we seem to be stuck there. What this is caused (by) — what is explaining it — is not entirely resolved, but it’s a very worrying sign,” he told AFP.
In its latest bulletin, the Copernicus Climate Change Service said that April was the second-hottest in its dataset, which draws on billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations.
All but one of the last 22 months exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the warming limit enshrined in the Paris agreement, beyond which major and lasting climate and environmental changes become more likely.
Many scientists believe this target is no longer attainable and will be crossed in a matter of years.
A large study by dozens of pre-eminent climate scientists, which has not yet been peer reviewed, recently concluded that global warming reached 1.36C in 2024.
Copernicus puts the current figure at 1.39C and projects 1.5C could be reached in mid 2029 or sooner based on the warming trend over the last 30 years.
“Now it’s in four years’ time. The reality is we will exceed 1.5 degrees,” said Samantha Burgess of the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, which runs Copernicus.
“The critical thing is to then not latch onto two degrees, but to focus on 1.51,” the climate scientist told AFP.
Julien Cattiaux, a climate scientist at the French research institute CNRS, said 1.5C “would be beaten before 2030” but that was not a reason to give up.
“It’s true that the figures we’re giving are alarming: the current rate of warming is high. They say every 10th of a degree counts, but right now, they’re passing quickly,” he told AFP.
“Despite everything, we mustn’t let that hinder action.”
Scientists are unanimous that burning fossil fuels has largely driven long-term global warming that has made extreme weather disasters more frequent and intense.
But they are less certain about what else might have contributed to this persistent heat event.
Experts think changes in global cloud patterns, airborne pollution and Earth’s ability to store carbon in natural sinks like forests and oceans, could be factors also contributing to the planet overheating.
The surge pushed 2023 and then 2024 to become the hottest years on record, with 2025 tipped to be third.
“The last two years... have been exceptional,” said Burgess.
“They’re still within the boundary — or the envelope — of what climate models predicted we could be in right now. But we’re at the upper end of that envelope.”
She said that “the current rate of warming has accelerated but whether that’s true over the long term, I’m not comfortable saying that,” adding that more data was needed.
Copernicus records go back to 1940 but other sources of climate data — such as ice cores, tree rings and coral skeletons — allow scientists to expand their conclusions using evidence from much further into the past.
Scientists say the current period is likely to be the warmest the Earth has been for the last 125,000 years.
US denounces Russian obstruction in UN sanctions on North Korea
- US envoy charged that Russia's obstructions was its way to avoid facing reproach for using Pyongyang’s weapons in the war against Ukraine
- Last year, Russia vetoed a Security Council resolution, ending the UN sanctions monitoring system for Pyongyang’s sanctions
NEW YORK CITY: At the United Nations Wednesday, the United States denounced Russia for “cynically obstructing” the monitoring of North Korea’s compliance with sanctions, in Moscow’s bid to avoid facing reproach for using Pyongyang’s weapons in the war against Ukraine.
Several members of the Security Council, including the US and South Korea, convened a meeting Wednesday to ensure member states are “aware of sanctions violations and evasion activity” that generates revenue for North Korea’s “unlawful” weapons of mass destruction and “ballistic missile programs despite Russia’s veto,” said interim US ambassador Dorothy Shea.
In March 2024, Russia vetoed a Security Council resolution, ending the UN sanctions monitoring system for Pyongyang’s sanctions.
Sanctions were implemented in 2006, and were strengthened several times by the Security Council, but the committee responsible for such monitoring no longer exists.
Shea alleges that since late 2023, North Korean has transferred over 24,000 containers of munitions and munitions-related material, and more than 100 ballistic missiles to Russia for use against Ukraine.
“The DPRK continues brazenly to violate the Council’s resolutions by exporting coal and iron ore to China, the proceeds of which directly fund its unlawful WMD and ballistic missile programs,” Shea said.
“It is clear from evidence presented today that Russia is cynically obstructing the Council on DPRK sanctions implementation in order to try to escape reproach for its own violations.”
South Korean Ambassador Joonkook Hwang agreed, denouncing the “illegal military cooperation between Russia and North Korea,” saying it has “severely undermined the Security Council sanctions regime on North Korea and threatens regional and global peace and security.
In May 2022, Russia and China vetoed a resolution imposing new sanctions against Pyongyang, and have advocated for easing sanctions since 2019.
The current sanctions on North Korea have no end date.
