A top Republican lawmaker said Wednesday the funding priorities for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) do not go far enough in addressing the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The Biden administration has requested $32 billion in foreign assistance for USAID — $3 billion more than the amount appropriated by Congress in 2023.

House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul said in a hearing with USAID administrator Samantha Power that it is not clear how the agency plans to spend the requested $400 million in the fund for countering Chinese influence.

“Our foreign aid must serve as a clear alternative to the CCP and our adversaries while also saving lives and projecting U.S. global leadership around the world,” McCaul said.

Budget hearings with agency heads are an annual exercise on Capitol Hill, with funding requests serving as a starting point for negotiations.

“The People’s Republic of China and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin are ready to step in — whether through opaque loans on unfavorable terms or with mercenaries in tow,” Power told the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “An international order that values democracy and human rights and respects international borders is not a given. Indeed, authoritarian actors are challenging and aiming to reshape it. We have to invest in the stable and more humane world that we need.”

Power told lawmakers that House Republicans’ budget legislation addressing the looming debt ceiling crisis would cause significant harm to USAID’s worldwide mission and America’s global influence. Last month, the Republican-majority House of Representatives passed legislation that has no chance of adoption in the Democratic-majority U.S. Senate. But their proposal, if passed, would increase the debt limit in return for cuts to government spending, including decreasing USAID funding by up to 22%.

“China and Russia aren’t slashing their international affairs budget by nearly one-third. In fact, they are growing and expanding their foreign assistance programs as a means to advance their national interests and exert influence on the global stage. We’re losing ground,” Representative Gregory Meeks, the ranking member on the committee, said Wednesday.

On Sunday, McCaul told ABC News “This Week” that “defaulting is not the right path to go down. … Our adversaries look at this very closely. They look at when we’re divided. … I think they would love nothing more, particularly China, to see us default in our full faith and credit under the Constitution.”

He added that Republicans have laid out a plan to avoid it.

“I think we were reasonable,” McCaul said. “We’re willing to raise the debt ceiling, but we want meaningful spending cuts and capping spending … at 2022 levels.”

Power said 2019 USAID funding had increased at half the rate that its programming had grown. According to public opinion polls, many Americans perceive the investment in foreign aid to be much higher than it actually is. Surveys consistently show that the public believes 25% of the U.S. budget is spent annually on foreign assistance when in fact, it is less than 1%.

“It absolutely goes without saying that nothing that I’m proposing here should come at the expense of the appropriate investments in our defense and in the competition that we are in with the PRC globally,” Power told lawmakers.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press.
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The U.N. special rapporteur for Myanmar said Wednesday that Myanmar’s military has imported at least a $1 billion worth of weapons and weapons materials since overthrowing the democratically elected government in February 2021, with Russia as the junta’s top supplier.

“Russia and China continue to be the main suppliers of advanced weapons systems to the Myanmar military, accounting for over $400 million and $260 million respectively since the coup, with much of the trade originating from state-owned entities,” Tom Andrews said.

He told reporters at a news conference at U.N. headquarters that weaponry provided by Russian suppliers has been used to commit probable war crimes and crimes against humanity in Myanmar. 

“These weapons, and the materials to manufacture more of them, have continued to flow uninterrupted to the Myanmar military despite overwhelming evidence of its responsibility for atrocity crimes,” he said.

The military seized power on February 1, 2021, alleging massive election fraud after their political party gained only 33 of 498 contested parliament seats. Since then, the U.N. human rights office says at least 3,000 civilians have been killed, more than 17,500 detained and more than a million displaced as the military pursues its brutal crackdown to retain power. The United Nations says at least 17.6 million people in Myanmar require humanitarian assistance.

The special rapporteur presented his latest report, “The Billion Dollar Death Trade:  International Arms Networks that Enable Human Rights Violations in Myanmar,” in which he used both private and public sources, including trade databases, to identify more than 12,500 unique purchases or recorded shipments from multiple sources directly to the junta or known Myanmar arms dealers working on the military’s behalf.

The networks and companies he identified in these transfers operate in Russia, China, Singapore, Thailand and India.

“The diversity and volume of goods provided to the Myanmar military since the coup is staggering,” Andrews told reporters. “I identified fighter jets, attack helicopters, reconnaissance and attack drones, missile systems, tank upgrades, radio and communications equipment, radar complexes, and components for naval ships.”

Russian weaponry

Moscow is by far Myanmar’s largest arms dealer, conducting more than $400 million in transfers from 28 Russian entities, including from state-owned ones, since the February 2021 coup. The report says 16 of those suppliers have been sanctioned by some countries for their role in Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The special rapporteur says more than half of the confirmed arms exports from Russia to the junta come from the state-controlled Rosoboronexport. It has shipped at least $227 million worth of equipment and materials to the Myanmar military since the coup, including SU-30 fighter jets and rocket launch systems, as well as supplies for MiG-29 fighter jets. 

“The Russian Mi-35 helicopter was reported to be the most sighted aircraft, including in strikes against schools, medical facilities, and civilian homes and infrastructure,” Andrews says in his report. “MiG-29 and Yak-130 aircraft have also been used extensively since the coup, with Yak-130 jet fighters seen in attacks in Chin, Kachin, Kayin, Mon, and Shan States and Sagaing Region.”

Andrews, an independent human rights expert, whose mandate comes from the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council, says under international humanitarian law, Russia has an obligation to deny further transfers of its weapons, since it should know the Myanmar military is systematically committing violations of international humanitarian law with them.

Chinese entities, including state-owned ones, are the second-largest supplier to Myanmar’s military, having sent $267 million in spare parts, communications equipment, missiles, tanks and fighter jets, which Andrews says also violates international arms treaties and conventions.

The special rapporteur said he presented his findings to the countries identified in his report, including Russia and China.

“In all cases, there was not a specific rebuttal about any of the facts that I have identified from anybody,” he said.

An emailed request for comment from VOA to the Russian mission early Wednesday was unanswered as this story was published.

Regional arms flows

ASEAN members Singapore and Thailand both supported the regional bloc’s “five-point consensus” for ending the fighting in Myanmar and moving toward talks, as well as a 2021 U.N. General Assembly resolution calling on nations not to arm Myanmar. But while Andrews emphasized the governments are not implicated in his report, arms dealers have extensively used their banking and shipping sectors to facilitate hundreds of millions of dollars in arms transfers. 

The special rapporteur says Singapore has become a major hub for spare parts, raw materials, and manufacturing equipment sent to the Myanmar military that feed its domestic arms factories. Transactions have totaled at least $254 million since the coup. Its banks have been used extensively by arms dealers. Thailand-based entities have conducted $28 million in arms transfers.

He said both countries have received his report and are looking into it.

Neighbor India is also called out for supplying $51 million worth of arms and related materials to the military since the coup. The special rapporteur says both Indian state-owned and private entities are involved in the weapons transfers. 

In the report, India told the special rapporteur that it shares a 1,700-kilometer-long border with Myanmar, and any arms transfers that may have been made to Myanmar were based on commitments made to the civilian government before the coup and centered upon India’s domestic security concerns. But Andrews says shipments continued after the coup.

Blatant behavior

The Myanmar military does not try to hide its purchases. More than $947 million of arms-related trade Andrews identified went directly to entities controlled by the Myanmar military. An additional $58 million was funneled through Myanmar-based military suppliers or sanctioned arms dealers.

Despite Western economic sanctions and arms embargoes, and a U.N. General Assembly resolution calling on all member states “to prevent the flow of arms into Myanmar,” Andrews says aircraft, weapons and other materials continue to get to the junta because of poorly coordinated international sanctions.

“If you don’t enforce sanctions, you don’t have sanctions,” he said.

He also urged countries to target the source of the military’s foreign currency, which it uses to purchase weapons — specifically its lucrative oil and gas sector — and to sanction its foreign trade bank.

“We know that these weapons transfers — we know where they are going and we know how they are being used,” Andrews said. “Since we know how they are being used, we have an obligation to stop aiding and abetting these human rights violations.” 
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Britain’s Prince Harry, his wife Meghan and her mother were involved in a “near catastrophic car chase” involving paparazzi photographers, a spokesperson for the prince said on Wednesday.

It occurred after the couple had attended an awards ceremony held in New York by the Ms. Foundation for Women, where Meghan was honored for her work.  

Pictures that have appeared on social media have shown Harry, Meghan and her mother, Doria Ragland, in a taxi.  

“Last night, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and Ms Ragland were involved in a near catastrophic car chase at the hands of a ring of highly aggressive paparazzi,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

“This relentless pursuit, lasting over two hours, resulted in multiple near collisions involving other drivers on the road, pedestrians and two NYPD (New York Police Department) officers.”

Harry and Meghan stepped down from their royal roles in 2020 and moved to the United States partly because of what they described as intense media harassment.

The prince has long spoken out about his anger about press intrusion which he blames for the death of his mother Princess Diana, who was killed when her limousine crashed as it sped away from chasing paparazzi in Paris.

 
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A French appeals court on Wednesday upheld a one-year prison sentence for former President Nicolas Sarkozy on a conviction for corruption and influence peddling.

His lawyer said he will take the case to France’s highest court and insisted that Sarkozy is innocent. The 68-year-old ex-president would not have to serve time until a final ruling, and if definitively convicted, he could ask to serve his sentence at home.

Sarkozy, 68, was convicted in 2021 of trying to bribe a magistrate in exchange for information about a legal case in which he was implicated. It was the first time in modern French history that a former president had been convicted of corruption and sentenced to prison.

Sarkozy, who was president from 2007 to 2012, denies wrongdoing and appealed the original ruling. The Paris appeals court on Wednesday upheld the conviction and the sentence, according to a court official.

His lawyer, Jacqueline Laffont, called the decision “stupefying” and “unjust.”

Sarkozy is entitled to ask to be detained at home with an electronic bracelet, standard practice for sentences of two years or less. He also received a two-year suspended sentence, which he will not have to serve if he commits no new offense in the next five years.

It is one of multiple legal cases Sarkozy has faced. He was convicted later in 2021 of illegal campaign financing of his unsuccessful 2012 re-election bid. Last week, prosecutors asked for him to be sent to trial on charges that he took millions in illegal financing for his 2007 campaign by the regime of late Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.
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Britain is accelerating plans to protect London from flooding caused by a warming climate and rising sea levels, bringing forward its scheme to protect the city center by 15 years.

London, which sits on a tidal stretch of the River Thames about 80 kilometers from the sea, is protected from storm surges by a 520-meter-wide movable flood barrier east of the city that is raised a handful of times each year.

The government said in a statement it was speeding up an existing climate adaptation program, bringing forward a target to raise defenses in the city to 2050, rather than by 2065 as originally set out in a 2012 document.

“Sea levels are rising at an accelerated rate across the Thames Estuary, and it is therefore essential that we act now to respond to the changing climate,” said Julie Foley, an official at the Environment Agency public body that developed the plans.

The government statement said the change was based on improved climate change models that showed the “heightened risk of flooding from a warming climate and rising sea levels.”

Rising sea levels, in part caused by melting glaciers and record ocean temperatures, are a global threat posing existential risk to some low-lying island states and coastal cities.

In April, the World Meteorological Organization said global sea levels were rising at more than double the pace they did in the first decade of measurements in 1993-2002 and touched a new record high last year.

The full revised plan from Britain will be published Wednesday, setting out how authorities plan to protect 1.4 million people and $405 billion in property from existing tidal risks and new ones driven by climate change.

The 2012 plan had said defenses in the section of the river running past London landmarks such as the Houses of Parliament and the Tower of London would need to eventually be raised by up to a meter.
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A French investigative judge on Tuesday issued an international arrest warrant for Lebanon’s embattled central bank governor after he didn’t show up for questioning in France on corruption charges, a Western diplomat said.

Longtime central bank Governor Riad Salameh was supposed to appear before French prosecutors Tuesday as part of an ongoing European probe. Lebanese officials have not confirmed receipt of the arrest warrant nor commented on the development.

The Western diplomat who confirmed the warrant spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not cleared to speak to media outlets.

Chanez Mensous, a lawyer at the French anti-corruption non-governmental organization Sherpa, which alongside other organizations filed initial legal complaints against Salameh and associates back in May 2021, also confirmed the warrant was issued.

Salameh responded with a statement shortly afterward, saying he will appeal the decision calling it a “clear legal violation.” He also criticized the French judicial process, saying that some confidential information about the case was leaked to the media.

A European judicial team from France, Germany and Luxembourg has been conducting a corruption investigation into an array of financial crimes they allege were committed by Salameh and a long list of his associates from Lebanon’s central bank, as well as Lebanese commercial banks and auditing companies. The allegations include illicit enrichment and laundering of $330 million.

Salameh, 72, who has held his post for almost 30 years, has repeatedly denied all allegations against him. He has insisted that his wealth comes from his previous job as an investment banker at Merrill Lynch, inherited properties and investments.

Assets frozen

The three European governments in March 2022 froze more than $130 million in assets linked to the probe. During a visit to Lebanon in March, the European delegation questioned Salameh about the Lebanese central bank’s assets and investments outside the country, a Paris apartment — which the governor owns — and his brother Raja Salameh’s brokerage firm Forry Associates Ltd.

According to a senior Lebanese judicial official, Riad Salameh never received his summons from Paris, despite several attempts to deliver it. The official said a Lebanese judge sent the notice to Salameh several times over the past two weeks, but it was returned each time because the governor was not present at the central bank to receive the notice. The judicial official spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not cleared to speak to the press.

Salameh’s whereabouts were not known Tuesday, and the central bank did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Salameh’s failure to show up in Paris.

The date for Tuesday’s hearing was set last month, and Lebanon lifted a travel ban on Salameh, who is also being investigated at home. In the probe in Lebanon, Beirut’s Public Prosecutor Raja Hamoush in late February charged Salameh, his brother and a close associate with corruption, including embezzling public funds, forgery, illicit enrichment, money-laundering and violation of tax laws.

Blamed for economic crisis

Once hailed as the guardian of Lebanon’s financial stability, Salameh is being increasingly blamed for the country’s financial meltdown. Many say he precipitated the economic crisis, which has plunged three-quarters of Lebanon’s population of 6 million into poverty.

Lebanon’s banks have since been battered, as millions struggle from soaring inflation, high unemployment and a messy cash-based economy. According to a World Bank report released Tuesday, the cash economy makes up almost 46% of the country’s GDP, as officials stall on implementing critical economic reforms demanded by the international community to make its economy viable again.

Lebanese Deputy Prime Minister Saade Shami criticized Lebanon’s politicians and “vested interest groups” for obstructing reforms and for their lack of urgency in resolving the crisis, saying the “traditional economic class behave as if they live on another planet.”

Salameh’s term ends in July and while there is no apparent successor, the veteran governor has said in television interviews that he plans to step down.

Separately, lawyers representing Salameh, his brother and close associate Marianne Hoayek filed requests this week in Beirut demanding the suspension of the European probe until Lebanon’s own investigation of the governor is completed.

Another Lebanese judicial official said the defense team argued this would ensure proper administration of justice and that a parallel European probe violates Lebanon’s sovereignty. They, too, spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not permitted to speak to the press.
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