geneva_convenience

Donald Trump’s tariffs have unleashed a “major negative shock” into the world economy, the International Monetary Fund has said, as it cut its forecasts for US, UK and global growth.

In a stark assessment of the impact of the US president’s policies, as global finance ministers prepare to meet in Washington, the IMF said: “We expect that the sharp increase on 2 April in both tariffs and uncertainty will lead to a significant slowdown in global growth in the near term.”

Since the fall of the USSR, a large part of developing world elites, middle classes, and intellectuals have been effectively transformed into ideological parrots of US liberal propaganda through USAID-funded NGOs, educational and media projects.

In the absence of any competing political or intellectual framework, support for US economic doctrine and political liberalism has remained unchallenged.

Yet USAID's emphasis over the last three decades on white American liberal ideas about multiculturalism, gender and sexual rights is now anathema to American conservatives.

This, more than anything, has prompted the administration to discard the agency altogether.

For Trump, there is no need to continue indoctrinating developing world elites and middle classes in capitalism and anti-welfare policies - they already believe in them, especially if objectionable liberal American ideas must accompany such indoctrination.

The US, he realises, can now solely rely on hard power to impose its will, sparing itself the cost of investing in "soft power".

The UN’s humanitarian agency, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) and Gaza’s civil defence service have rejected the findings of an Israeli military investigation that concluded the killings of 15 Palestinian medics and rescue workers in Rafah last month were caused by “professional failures”.

“The video filmed by one of the paramedics proves that the Israeli occupation’s narrative is false and demonstrates that it carried out summary executions,” Mohammed al-Mughair, a civil defence official, told Agence-France Presse on Monday, accusing Israel of seeking to “circumvent” its obligations under international law.

Jonathan Whittall, the UN’s humanitarian chief for Gaza, said the investigation did not go far enough. “A lack of real accountability undermines international law and makes the world a more dangerous place,” he said.

“Without accountability, we risk continuing to watch atrocities unfolding, and the norms designed to protect us all eroding.”

Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas has mourned the passing of Pope Francis, voicing thanks for his condemnation of the suffering in the Gaza Strip, which has been devastated by the war since Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023.

"On numerous occasions, he expressed his opposition to aggression and wars around the world, and he was among the prominent religious voices that condemned the war crimes and acts of genocide being committed against our Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip," Hamas said in a statement.

Bluma Altmed, a Polish Jew disguised as a Gentile outside the ghetto, recalled a conversation with a Catholic woman who was upset with Jewish resistance fighters for disturbing her sleep: “I have a constant headache because I can’t sleep in such conditions. All night long, I hear machine guns. . . . The explosions and shootings never end. What are those Yids thinking, anyway? They have to die, one way or the other. The least they could do is to give up.”

s Israel continues its onslaught on Gaza, indiscriminately killing men, women, and children, many are appalled by the indifference or support from Israeli society. An October 2024 poll shows that the majority of Israeli Jews either think the war in Gaza should continue or feel indifferent.

Among those who think the war should end, only 6 percent cite “great cost in human life” as the primary motivator; instead, the majority are concerned with the twenty-four remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza. Furthermore, despite ample documentation of war crimes and the International Criminal Court’s issuing of a warrant for the arrest of Israel’s top leaders, 83 percent of Israeli Jews believe the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has conducted itself with “good or excellent ethical conduct during the war.”

The US State Department has found no evidence to support allegations that Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish graduate student at Tufts University, was involved in antisemitic activity or supported terrorism, according to a report in The Washington Post.

The memo, which was shared with The Washington Post by anonymous sources, indicated that Secretary of State Marco Rubio did not have adequate justification to revoke Ozturk’s visa under a provision meant to protect US foreign policy interests.

Her detention followed criticism by the pro-'Israel' website Canary Mission, which had targeted her for co-authoring an op-ed in The Tufts Daily in March 2024.

Israeli forces have bombed al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, the largest remaining functioning hospital in northern Gaza, destroying its emergency unit, main entrance and medical oxygen supplies.

Critically ill patients were left on the street after fleeing the attack in the early hours of Sunday morning, with one doctor reporting that at least three people, including a child who was on oxygen, died due to the rushed evacuation.

Authorities in Gaza have condemned the bombing, noting that al-Ahli Hospital was treating hundreds of patients when it was hit by at least two missiles. About 500 people were killed when Israel bombed the hospital in October 2023.

Statement by heads of OCHA, UNICEF, UNOPS, UNRWA, WFP, WHO and IOM

More than 2.1 million people are trapped, bombed and starved again, while, at crossing points, food, medicine, fuel and shelter supplies are piling up, and vital equipment is stuck.

Over 1,000 children have reportedly been killed or injured in just the first week after the breakdown of the ceasefire, the highest one-week death toll among children in Gaza in the past year.

We are witnessing acts of war in Gaza that show an utter disregard for human life.

With the tightened Israeli blockade on Gaza now in its second month, we appeal to world leaders to act – firmly, urgently and decisively – to ensure the basic principles of international humanitarian law are upheld.

President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pledged a first ever $1 trillion defense budget proposal on Monday, a record sum for the military.

Trump, during a press event with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said the upcoming budget would be “in the vicinity” of $1 trillion.

Anna Feder worked at Emerson College in Boston for 17 years. For 12 of them, she ran the school’s exhibitions and festivals program and curated the Bright Lights Cinema Series, which screened documentaries about liberation struggles, social justice, and marginalized communities.

According to a civil lawsuit filed by Feder against the college this week, the school administration never interfered with her programming until 2023, when she scheduled a screening of the film “Israelism,” a documentary by Jewish filmmakers about young American Jews coming to reject Zionism. Following Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack and the start of Israel’s assault on Gaza, Emerson leadership pressured Feder to cancel the planned November screening.