Foreign News
US issues pause on foreign aid, leaked memo says
The US State Department has issued a halt to all existing foreign assistance and paused new aid, according to an internal memo sent to officials and US embassies abroad.
The leaked notice follows President Trump’s executive order issued on Monday for a 90-day pause in foreign development assistance pending a review of efficiencies and consistency with his foreign policy.
The United States is the world’s biggest international aid donor spending $68bn in 2023 according to government figures, The State Department notice appears to affect everything from development assistance to military aid.
It makes exceptions only for emergency food aid and for military funding for Israel and Egypt. The leaked memo’s contents have been confirmed by the BBC.
“No new funds shall be obligated for new awards or extensions of existing awards until each proposed new award or extension has been reviewed and approved,” says the memo to staff.
It adds that US officials “shall immediately issue stop-work orders, consistent with the terms of the relevant award, until such time as the secretary shall determine, following a review.”
It also orders a wide scale review of all foreign assistance to be completed within 85 days to ensure the aid adheres to President Trump’s foreign policy goals.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio – the US’s top diplomat – has previously stated that all US spending abroad should take place only if it makes America “stronger”, “safer” or “more prosperous”.
One former senior State Department official told the BBC the notice meant a “potentially huge” impact on foreign aid programmes funded by the US.
“One can imagine, for example, the humanitarian de-mining programmes around the world suddenly being told stop work. That’s a pretty big deal,” said Josh Paul, who oversaw Congressional relations on weapons transfers at the State Department until late 2023.
Dave Harden, a former US Agency of International Aid (USAID) mission director in the Middle East, told the BBC the move was “very significant”, saying it could see humanitarian and development programmes funded by the US around the world being immediately suspended, while the review is carried out.
He said it could affect a wide range of critical development projects including water, sanitation and shelter.
“The employees of the implementing partner or the [non-governmental organisation] would be able to be paid, but actual assistance, I think, needs to be halted,” said Mr Harden.
“I have gone through assistance suspensions many times when I was the West Bank and Gaza mission director, but that was specific to that account. This is global,” he said.
“Not only does it pause assistance, but it puts a ‘stop work’ order in existing contracts that are already funded and underway. It’s extremely broad,” he added.
The AFP news agency reported the funding freeze could also potentially affect Ukraine, which received billions of dollars in weapons under Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden.
Rubio’s memo, justifying the freeze, said it was impossible for the new administration to assess whether existing foreign aid commitments “are not duplicated, are effective and are consistent with President Trump’s foreign policy”.
Rubio has issued a waiver for emergency food assistance, according to the memo.
This comes amid a surge of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip after a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas began, and several other hunger crises around the world, including Sudan.
The memo also said waivers have so far been approved by Rubio for “foreign military financing for Israel and Egypt and administrative expenses, including salaries, necessary to administer foreign military financing”.
The State Department has been approached for comment.
(BBC)
A total of 1,557 Venezuelan political prisoners have applied for amnesty under a new law introduced on Thursday, the country’s National Assembly President has said.
Jorge Rodríguez, brother of Venezuelan interim President Delcy Rodríguez and an ally of former President Nicolás Maduro, also said “hundreds” of prisoners had already been released.
Among them is politician Juan Pablo Guanipa, one of several opposition voices to have criticised the law for excluding certain prisoners.
The US has urged Venezuela to speed up its release of political prisoners since US forces seized Maduro in a raid on 3 January. Venezuela’s socialist government has always denied holding political prisoners.
At a news conference on Saturday Jorge Rodríguez said 1,557 release requests were being addressed “immediately” and ultimately the legislation would extend to 11,000 prisoners.
The government first announced days after Maduro’s capture, on 8 January, that “a significant number” of prisoners would be freed as a goodwill gesture.
Opposition and human rights groups have said the government under Maduro used detentions of political prisoners to stamp out dissent and silence critics for years.
These groups have also criticised the new law. One frequently cited criticism is that it would not extend amnesty to those who called for foreign armed intervention in Venezuela, BBC Latin America specialist Luis Fajardo says.
He noted that law professor Juan Carlos Apitz, of the Central University of Venezuela, told CNN Español that that part of the amnesty law “has a name and surname”. “That paragraph is the Maria Corina Machado paragraph.”
It is not clear if the amnesty would actually cover Machado, who won last year’s Nobel Peace Prize, Fajardo said.
He added that other controversial aspects of the law include the apparent exclusion from amnesty benefits of dozens of military officers involved in rebellions against the Maduro administration over the years.
On Saturday, Rodríguez said it is “releases from Zona Seven of El Helicoide that they’re handling first”.
Those jailed at the infamous prison in Caracas would be released “over the next few hours”, he added.
Activists say some family members of those imprisoned in the facility have gone on hunger strike to demand the release of their relatives.
US President Donald Trump said that El Helicoide would be closed after Maduro’s capture.
Maduro is awaiting trial in custody in the US alongside his wife Cilia Flores and has pleaded not guilty to drugs and weapons charges, saying that he is a “prisoner of war”.
[BBC]
In the second half of the 19th Century, photography became one of the British Empire’s most persuasive instruments for knowing – and classifying – India.
A new exhibition – called Typecasting: Photographing the Peoples of India, 1855-1920, and organised by DAG, the Delhi-based art gallery – brings together nearly 200 rare photographs from a period when the camera was deployed to classify communities, fix identities and make India’s complex social differences legible to the colonial government.
Spanning 65 years, the exhibition maps an expansive human geography: from Lepcha and Bhutia communities in the north-east to Afridis in the north-west; from Todas in the Nilgiris to Parsi and Gujarati elites in western India.
It also turns its gaze to those assigned to the lower rungs of the colonial social order – dancing girls, agricultural labourers, barbers and snake charmers.
These images did not merely document India’s diversity; they actively shaped it, translating fluid, lived realities into apparently stable and knowable “types”.
Curated by historian Sudeshna Guha, the exhibition centres on folios from The People of India, the influential eight-volume photographic survey published between 1868 and 1875. From this core, it expands outward to include albumen and silver-gelatin prints by photographers such as Samuel Bourne, Lala Deen Dayal, John Burke and the studio Shepherd & Robertson – practitioners whose images helped define the visual language of that time.
“Taken together, this material tells the history of ethnographic photography and its effect on the British administration and the Indian population, in a project which in size and depth has never before been seen in India,” says Ashish Anand, CEO of DAG.
Here’s a selection of images from the exhibition:
[BBC]
A co-founder of online fashion giant Asos died after falling from a high-rise apartment block in Thailand, police have said.
Quentin Griffiths has been named by Thai police as the man found dead on the ground in the eastern seaside city of Pattaya on 9 February.
A police investigator told the BBC Griffiths, a British passport holder, was by himself, his room was locked from the inside, and there was no trace of any break-ins at the time of the death. An autopsy did not reveal any evidence of foul play.
Griffiths co-founded Asos in 2000 and remained a significant shareholder after leaving the firm five years later.
A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “We are supporting the family of a British national who has died in Thailand and are in contact with the local authorities.”
Police in Pattaya told the BBC Griffiths was found dead outside a luxury hotel where he had been staying in as a long-term resident in a suite on the 17th floor.
He was involved in two ongoing court cases that might have caused him stress, police also told the BBC.
Griffiths was separated from his second wife, a Thai national, and had reportedly been engaged in a legal dispute with her over a business they ran together, the BBC understands.
He co-founded Asos in London with Nick Robertson, Andrew Regan and Deborah Thorpe.
Its name originally stood for As Seen On Screen as it sold fashion inspired by clothing worn by TV and film stars.
It grew to become an online fashion marketplace stocking hundreds of brands as well as its own lines and at one time was valued at more than £6bn.
Its largest shareholders include Danish billionaire Anders Holch Povlsen – who owns Danish clothing giant Bestseller and Mike Ashley, owner of Frasers Group.
[BBC]
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