Republican attempts to indict Hillary Clinton did not end with the election and ongoing inquiries now put a Bangladeshi Nobel Peace Prize winner squarely in the crosshairs. Muhammad Yunus, and anti-poverty advocate of microfinance, is under political attack at home that is now fueled by the GOP.
Human rights experts are warning about negative impacts from U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to revive some of the trade and travel restrictions with Cuba that former President Barack Obama had relaxed in an effort to improve relations between the two countries. Many had said the sanctions against Cuba had accomplished little, other than to undermine the economic opportunities of Cubans.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spent the past two days in Washington defending proposed massive cuts to the foreign affairs budget, using the ‘less is more’ approach. Critics on both sides of the aisle characterized his proposal to cut the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) by about 30 percent as “reckless” and “divorced from reality.”
The Trump administration wants to cut U.S. contributions to the U.N. by more than 50 percent, according to a report from Foreign Policy. The reduction is significantly more than what was set out in a draft executive order leaked in late January. And the proposal would come on top of a proposed 37 percent cut to the U.S. Agency for International Development expected to be in the administration’s 2018 budget proposal, to be released on Thursday.