content management system
A conversation with Ambassador Matthew Klimow, the former top U.S. diplomat in Turkmenistan, takes a deeper look into a country often described as one of the most closed and repressive in the world. Klimow argues that there has been noticeable progress in Turkmenistan and that significant factors must be considered in U.S. policy toward the nation.
Click here for the full story in Uzbek.
your ad hereNAIROBI, KENYA — East African Community leaders on Wednesday called for an immediate ceasefire in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where government forces are fighting rebel group M23, while aid agencies say the clashes are deepening the already dire humanitarian crisis there.
Kenyan President William Ruto led an online meeting for seven of eight of the trade bloc’s heads of state. The only member not participating was Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi.
In a statement afterward, the leaders called on the warring parties to cease hostilities in eastern Congo and facilitate humanitarian access to the affected areas.
The summit also asked the DRC government to protect diplomatic missions in the country, following attacks this week by protesters in the capital, Kinshasa, targeting embassies of several countries presumed to be sympathetic to the M23 rebel group.
The Congolese government has accused Rwanda of supporting M23, which this week took control of Goma, the capital of North Kivu province. Witnesses reported seeing bodies in the streets, but local officials have not determined a death toll.
The Congolese government said it is fighting to push out the rebels from the city of 2 million.
Edgar Githua, an international relations analyst in Nairobi, said animosity between Tshisekedi and Rwandan President Paul Kagame could derail any ceasefire talks.
“There’s still a lot of bad blood between DRC and Rwanda on how to approach this issue because DRC believes that these are Rwandese, and Kagame categorically keeps on saying M23 are not Rwandese, these are ethnic Tutsis who are Congolese by citizenship,” Githua said. “It is only that they share a language with Rwanda. So, this issue of identity is what is ailing this conflict and needs to be addressed deeply.”
Meanwhile, aid agencies say these latest clashes have made the dire humanitarian crisis in DRC even worse, as thousands of Goma residents, many of whom were already displaced due to earlier conflict, are forced to flee again.
Maina King’ori, the acting country director for CARE International in DRC, told VOA from Goma, “There’s been no electricity supply for the last several days in most parts of Goma. The water system is not functioning; it has been shut down, though slowly coming back in some places, and there has been no internet connectivity in Goma for the last three days. This makes living really difficult.”
King’ori urged parties to the conflict to adhere to international humanitarian law and protect civilians.
“Civilians cannot be a target,” he said. “Civilians are not party to this conflict, yet they’re having to bear the immense load. … They’re the ones that are having to feel the pain of sleeping outside, of being relocated several times, of losing loved ones.”
Democratic Republic of Congo is grappling with a decadeslong crisis that humanitarian agencies say has left over 6 million people displaced, with recent hostilities exacerbating their plight.
North Kivu, where Goma is located, hosts over 2.7 million internally displaced people, according to CARE International.
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QUETTA, Pakistan — A Pakistani man suspected of killing his U.S.-born 15-year-old daughter in a so-called honor killing after she apparently refused to stop sharing videos on TikTok appeared in court Thursday in the southwestern city of Quetta, police said.
The shooting happened on a street in the southwestern city of Quetta on Tuesday. The suspect, Anwar ul-Haq, initially said that unidentified gunmen shot and killed his daughter before he confessed to the crime Wednesday, police official Babar Baloch said.
“Our investigation so far has found that the family had an objection to her dressing, lifestyle and social gathering,” another police investigator, Zohaib Mohsin, said. “We have her phone. It is locked,” he told Reuters. “We are probing all aspects, including honor killing.”
The family had recently returned to Balochistan province in predominantly Muslim Pakistan, a nation with conservative social norms, having lived in the United States for about 25 years, Baloch said.
The suspect has U.S. citizenship, the officer said. He said Haq had told him his daughter began creating “objectionable” content on the social media platform TikTok when she lived in the United States.
He told police that she continued to share videos on the platform after returning to Pakistan. Baloch said the main suspect’s brother-in-law had also been arrested in connection with the killing.
Police said they had charged Haq with the killing. They did not offer proof of Haq’s U.S. citizenship except for the suspect’s own testimony and declined to say whether the U.S. Embassy had been informed of the incident.
His family declined to respond to a Reuters request for comment.
More than 54 million people use TikTok in Pakistan, a nation of 241 million. The government has blocked the video-sharing app several times in recent years over content moderation.
Islamabad often takes issue with what it terms “obscene content” with the social media platform, which has lately started complying with requests from Pakistan to remove certain content.
Over 1,000 women are killed each year in Pakistan at the hands of community or family members over perceived damage to “honor,” according to independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.
That could involve eloping, posting social media content, fraternizing with men, or any other infraction against conservative values relating to women.
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WASHINGTON — Kash Patel, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, insisted to deeply skeptical Democrats on Thursday that he did not have an “enemies list” and that the bureau under his leadership would not seek retribution against the president’s adversaries or launch investigations for political purposes.
“I have no interest nor desire and will not, if confirmed, go backwards,” Patel told a contentious Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing. “There will be no politicization at the FBI. There will be no retributive actions taken by the FBI.”
The reassurances were aimed at blunting a persistent line of attack from Democrats, who throughout Thursday’s hearing confronted Patel with a vast catalog of his incendiary statements. They said those statements raise alarming questions about his loyalty to the president, such as when he described some of the prosecuted Jan. 6 rioters as “political prisoners” and called for a purge of anti-Trump “conspirators” in the government and news media.
“There is an unfathomable difference between a seeming facade being constructed around this nominee here today, and what he has actually done and said in real life when left to his own devices,” said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat. His colleague, Senator Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota, later added, “It is his own words. It is not some conspiracy. It is what Mr. Patel actually said himself.”
Patel defended himself by insisting that Democrats were putting his comments and social media posts in a “grotesque context.” He said the suggestion that he had an “enemies list” — a 2023 book he authored includes a lengthy list of former government officials he says are part of the so-called deep state — was a “total mischaracterization.”
“The only thing that will matter if I’m confirmed as a director of the FBI is a de-weaponized, de-politicized system of law enforcement completely devoted to rigorous obedience to the Constitution and a singular standard of justice,” Patel said.
Patel was picked in November to replace Christopher Wray, who led the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency for more than seven years but was forced out of the job Trump had appointed him to after being seen as insufficiently loyal to him.
Patel is a former aide to the House Intelligence Committee and an ex-federal prosecutor who served in Trump’s first administration. He has alarmed critics with rhetoric — in dozens of podcasts and books he has authored — in which he has demonstrated fealty to Trump and assailed the decision-making of the agency he’s now been asked to lead.
But Patel sought on multiple occasions to reassure Democrats that his FBI would be independent from the White House. He would not acknowledge that Trump had lost the 2020 election, conceding only that Joe Biden was sworn in as president. But he did not endorse Trump’s sweeping pardon of supporters, including violent rioters, charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
“I do not agree with the commutation of any sentence of any individual who committed violence against law enforcement,” Patel said in response to a question from Senator Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the committee. Durbin made his opposition to Patel clear at the outset.
Durbin said the FBI is critical in keeping America safe from terrorism, violent crime and other threats, and the nation “needs an FBI director who understands the gravity of this mission and is ready on day one, not someone who is consumed by his own personal political grievances.”
Patel pledged if confirmed to be transparent and said he would not involve the FBI in prosecutorial decisions, keeping those with Justice Department lawyers instead.
“First, let good cops be cops,” Patel wrote in outlining his priorities. “Leadership means supporting agents in their mission to apprehend criminals and protect our citizens. If confirmed, I will focus on streamlining operations at headquarters while bolstering the presence of field agents across the nation. Collaboration with local law enforcement is crucial to fulfilling the FBI’s mission.”
Patel found common cause with Trump over their shared skepticism of government surveillance and the “deep state” — a pejorative catchall used by Trump to refer to government bureaucracy.
He was part of a small group of supporters during Trump’s recent criminal trial in New York who accompanied him to the courthouse, where he told reporters that Trump was the victim of an “unconstitutional circus.”
That close bond would depart from the modern-day precedent of FBI directors looking to keep presidents at arm’s length.
Republican allies of Trump, who share the president’s belief that the FBI has become politicized, have rallied around Patel and pledged to support him, seeing him as someone who can shake up the bureau and provide needed change.
Senator Chuck Grassley, the Republican chairman of the committee, sought to blunt attacks on Patel preemptively by focusing on the need to reform an FBI that he said had become weaponized.
The FBI in recent years has become entangled in numerous politically explosive investigations, including not just the two federal inquiries into Trump that resulted in indictments but also probes of Biden and his son, Hunter.
“It’s no surprise that public trust has declined in an institution that has been plagued by abuse, a lack of transparency, and the weaponization of law enforcement,” Grassley said. “Nevertheless, the FBI remains an important, even indispensable institution for law and order in our country.”
He later added: “Mr. Patel, should you be confirmed, you will take charge of an FBI that is in crisis.”
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Johannesburg — Rwandan President Paul Kagame has lashed out at South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa, after Ramaphosa accused Rwanda of backing the M23 rebels behind the escalating crisis in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo this week. Kagame has accused Ramaphosa of “lying” and warned of possible “confrontation.”
South Africa has troops deployed in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo as part of a U.N. peacekeeping mission there, as well as in a separate deployment by the Southern African Development Community, or SADC, aimed at backing up Congolese forces fighting rebels.
But Pretoria is under pressure this week after 13 South African soldiers were killed in a recent surge in fighting that resulted in the M23 militia – which Rwanda is widely accused of backing – making a rapid advance and seizing partial control of the key city of Goma in North Kivu province on Sunday night.
Ramaphosa said in a written statement on Wednesday that the M23, and what he called “a Rwandan Defense Force militia,” were responsible for the casualties, while his minister of defense, Angie Motshekga, went one step further.
“It’s just that at that stage, when they were firing above our heads, the president did warn them to say, ‘If you are going to fire, we’ll take it as a declaration of war.’”
The remarks by Ramaphosa and Motshekga have caused a diplomatic spat with Kigali.
Kagame verbally hit back in an angry statement posted to his social media on Wednesday night, saying the Rwandan Defense Force was not a militia and quote, “if South Africa prefers confrontation, Rwanda will deal with the matter in that context any day.”
He also disputed Ramaphosa’s statement that the dead South African soldiers were “peacekeepers,” saying the SADC force was engaged in “offensive combat operations.”
“I spoke with the president of South Africa, who sought me out to speak with me, on this matter, because of their involvement in eastern Congo, and he’s also there pretending to be playing a peacemaker role. M23 are not Rwandans, please, and South Africa dares even issue threats,” he said.
South African Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola has directly blamed Rwanda for backing the M23, saying reports by U.N. experts proved Kigali’s involvement. He said on Wednesday that South Africa had taken part in an African Union meeting on the crisis.
“As South Africa, we participated in that platform and put our position across, which is that there is a ceasefire, immediate cessation of hostilities… and, also, to request all the forces that are supporting M23, to also cease all support immediately,” he said.
Mineral-rich eastern Congo, which borders Rwanda, has been plagued by conflict for more than three decades. The current fighting stems partly from the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
The perpetrators fled across the border to North Kivu, and Rwanda says they now represent a security threat to its territory.
The Congolese government has accused Kigali of being active in eastern Congo, saying Kigali is after the area’s vast mineral wealth.
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TAIPEI, TAIWAN — The Lunar New Year, also called the Chinese New Year or the Spring Festival in China, is traditionally celebrated with tables piled with food and red envelopes filled with cash for children.
In past years, smoke from outdoor fire pits filled the air throughout the morning and afternoon, as people burned paper money to ensure that even the ancestors can feel the financial boon that the biggest holiday of the year usually brings to the living.
In recent years, however, China’s economic slowdown has altered the atmosphere of Chinese New Year. Facing increasing financial burdens, young people are reexamining long-held traditions as they welcome the Year of the Snake, opting for more frugal alternatives during this year’s eight-day-long national holiday.
A 30-year-old legal worker from Shanghai, who did not want to use his name for fear of reprisal, told VOA that stores selling trinkets and supplies for the holiday appeared unusually deserted.
He said people appear to be forgoing large purchases, which manifests mostly in the custom of giving money-filled red envelopes — the color symbolizes good luck and prosperity in the new year.
“As with goods purchased for the new year, red envelopes have become more simple and less thick,” the Shanghai resident said.
He told VOA he usually gives his niece an envelope with around $140 inside, but this year, he plans to give her $90.
Talk on social media
Frustration with the economy is being expressed on social media — young people are saturating online threads with images and comments describing the pressure and criticism they will encounter during the holiday.
An account on RedNote called “I don’t give a damn about the banana” posted a series of funny images detailing the levels of anxiety young, unmarried and unemployed people will face during the holiday.
“You haven’t earned any money but you still have to give the younger kids a red envelope,” the user wrote, over a picture of a woman giving a small bill to a cat.
Many others offer advice to ease fears of being scrutinized by the family.
“Unique-me” wrote on the Chinese social media platform Weibo: “Now the economy is not good, it’s good to just have an income. If you are in a difficult situation, you can admit that you don’t make much. There is no need to be generous. Just show your appreciation. Those who have opinions about you because of the size of your red envelope, let them have opinions.”
Faced with economic woes, some local governments are advocating frugality. Baise City, Guangxi, suggested that the amount of money in a red envelope should not exceed $3.
The initiative also encourages the younger generation to give their elders “blessing gifts” with commemorative significance or emotional value instead of red envelopes.
This move has attracted widespread attention, with many social media users expressing their support for the program’s positive impact on financial and mental health. Some suggested that blessing gifting be promoted nationwide.
Workplace anxiety
The size of red envelopes exchanged in the workplace and increasing leniency on new year vacation day allowances have stoked fears of job insecurity among employees.
“The economic downturn is not only reflected in my meager salary, but also in the red envelopes given by the boss every year,” “Life with Greed” said on Weibo.
A user called “Let’s try to be happy” commented on Weibo: “My company is in a slump. New Year gifts have not been issued. In previous years, the maximum New Year holiday was 20 days, but this year it was more than a month. I don’t know what it will be like next year. It feels like it is on the verge of bankruptcy.”
A 39-year-old government worker in Dalian, who spoke to VOA on the condition of anonymity because of security fears, said despite having a family and a stable job, she will limit her holiday spending.
“We have to reduce some unnecessary expenses, such as buying less candy and snacks, and we try to buy simple things outside when worshiping,” the wife and mother said.
The changes in Chinese Spring Festival customs are affected by many factors, but the economy is most critical, said Sun Guoxiang, a professor in the international affairs and business department at Nanhua University in Taiwan.
“The economic downturn has led to a decline in consumption capacity. Young people pay more attention to rational consumption and actual needs, which reduces the relatively high-cost parts of traditional Spring Festival customs,” Sun said, adding that pressure from family about issues that include work, marriage and education cannot be ignored as drivers of this trend.
He said the future of Chinese New Year and how it will be celebrated will depend heavily on China’s development and whether the country can overcome its current economic decline.
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President Donald Trump is widely expected to impose tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada as early as February 1 as part of a plan he says will boost the U.S. economy. But with much about the specifics still unknown, economists, business owners and everyday consumers are still trying to understand how it could impact them. Johny Fernandez reports from New York City. (Produced by: Bakhtiyar Zamanov)
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MANILA — Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. offered on Thursday to remove a U.S. missile system from the Philippines if China halts what he called its “aggressive and coercive behavior” in the disputed South China Sea.
The U.S. Army installed the Typhon mid-range missile system in the northern Philippines in April last year to support what the longtime treaty allies described as training for joint combat readiness.
China has repeatedly demanded that the Philippines remove the missile system, saying it was “inciting geopolitical confrontation and an arms race.”
Asked by reporters about China’s criticism of the missile system, Marcos said he did not understand the Chinese position because the Philippines does not comment on China’s missile systems which “are a thousand times more powerful than what we have.”
“Let’s make a deal with China: Stop claiming our territory, stop harassing our fishermen and let them have a living, stop ramming our boats, stop water cannoning our people, stop firing lasers at us and stop your aggressive and coercive behavior, and we’ll return the typhoon missiles,” Marcos told reporters in central Cebu province.
“Let them stop everything they’re doing and I’ll return all of those,” he said.
Chinese officials did not immediately comment on the Philippine leader’s remarks.
The U.S. Army’s mobile Typhon missile system, which consists of a launcher and at least 16 Standard Missile-6 and Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles, was repositioned about two weeks ago from the northern Philippines to a strategic area nearer the capital, Manila, in consultation with Philippine defense officials, a senior Philippine official told The Associated Press.
The Philippine official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of a lack of authority to discuss the sensitive issue in public, said the U.S. missile system is now nearer an area where Chinese and Philippine coast guard and navy forces have been involved in increasingly tense faceoffs in the South China Sea.
Tomahawk missiles can travel over 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers), which puts parts of mainland China within their range. The missile system will remain in the Philippines indefinitely, the Philippine official said.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said last week that the Philippines is “creating tensions and antagonism in the region and inciting geopolitical confrontation and an arms race” by allowing the U.S. missile system to be positioned in its territory.
“This is a highly dangerous move and an extremely irresponsible choice,” Mao said.
Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro has rejected China’s demand that the missile system be removed as interference in Philippine internal affairs.
The U.S. and the Philippines have repeatedly condemned China’s increasingly assertive actions to press its territorial claims in the South China Sea, where hostilities have flared over the past two years with repeated clashes between Chinese and Philippine coast guard forces and accompanying vessels.
Aside from China and the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan also have overlapping claims in the busy waterway, a key shipping route which is also believed to be sitting atop large undersea deposits of gas and oil.
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GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo — President Paul Kagame said Rwanda was ready for “confrontation” as he rejected criticism over his backing for M23 rebels who were pushing south on Thursday in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo after capturing the major city of Goma.
M23 rebels, with support from Rwandan troops, marched into Goma this week and are now advancing toward Bukavu, capital of neighboring South Kivu province, in the biggest escalation since 2012 of a decades-old conflict.
Rwanda is facing an international backlash over its actions in eastern Congo, where it has repeatedly intervened either directly or through allied militias over the past 30 years in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide.
But the chorus of condemnation, which has included Germany canceling aid talks with Rwanda and Britain threatening to withhold $40 million of annual bilateral assistance, was having no apparent effect on the ground.
After seizing Goma, a lakeside city of nearly 2 million and a major hub for displaced people and aid groups, M23 fighters were advancing south from the town of Minova, along the western side of Lake Kivu.
They tried to take the town of Nyabibwe, about 50 km north of Bukavu, on Wednesday but were pushed back by Congolese forces, a local resident told Reuters by phone.
A civil society source in Bukavu, who has contacts around the region, said clashes were ongoing on Thursday morning in a location known as Kahalala, about 20 km away from Nyabibwe.
“The Congolese army seems to be putting up fierce resistance there,” the source said.
In the latest diplomatic initiative, France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot arrived on Thursday in Congo’s capital Kinshasa, more than 1,600 km west of Goma. He was due to meet President Felix Tshisekedi, the Congolese presidency said.
Barrot’s visit comes two days after Congolese protesters in Kinshasa attacked the French embassy and several other foreign missions over their perceived support for Rwanda.
Any successful push south by M23 would see them control territory previous rebellions have not taken since the end of two major wars that ran from 1996 to 2003, and magnify the risk of an all-out conflict that draws in regional countries.
Troops from neighboring Burundi, which has had hostile relations with Rwanda, support Congolese troops in South Kivu. A spokesperson for Burundi’s military declined to comment on the current situation in Congo.
In Goma itself, where M23 say they plan to administer the city and appear to be settling in for a lengthy period of control, the border with Rwanda, which is close to the city center, was re-opened under M23 control, its spokesperson said.
Kagame accuses South Africa
Kagame responded angrily on X to a post by President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, 13 of whose soldiers have been killed in eastern Congo since last week. Ramaphosa attributed the fighting to an escalation by the M23 and the Rwandan army.
Kagame accused South African forces of working alongside a militia in Congo with ties to perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan genocide and “threatening to take the war to Rwanda itself.”
“If South Africa wants to contribute to peaceful solutions, that is well and good, but South Africa is in no position to take on the role of a peacemaker or mediator,” Kagame wrote.
“And if South Africa prefers confrontation, Rwanda will deal with the matter in that context any day.”
Since the fall of Goma, Rwanda has also reacted angrily to calls for restraint from Western nations, accusing its critics of “victim-blaming” and turning a blind eye to what it says is Congo’s complicity in the slaughter of Tutsis.
Congo rejects Rwanda’s accusations, saying Kigali’s true motive for involvement in its eastern provinces is to use its proxy militias to control lucrative mineral mines. U.N. experts have documented the export of large quantities of looted Congolese minerals via Rwanda.
M23 is the latest ethnic Tutsi-led insurgency backed by Rwanda to fight in Congo since the 1994 genocide, when extremist Hutus killed about a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus, and were then toppled by Tutsi forces led by Kagame, who has been Rwanda’s president ever since.
About a million Hutus, some refugees and some genocide perpetrators, fled into eastern Congo in the aftermath of the genocide, and Rwanda accuses Congo of harboring Hutu-led militias bent on killing Tutsis and threatening Rwanda itself.
The eight-member East African Community, to which Rwanda and Congo both belong, held a virtual summit late on Wednesday to discuss the crisis. The final communique largely embraced Rwanda’s position.
It called for a peaceful resolution of the conflict through direct talks between Congo and armed groups. Congo rejects direct negotiations with the M23, which it considers a terrorist group.
The EAC also recommended a joint summit to discuss the crisis with the Southern African Development Community.
SADC member Angola, which has led the most recent efforts to broker a peace deal but is also a firm ally of Congo, called on Rwanda to withdraw its forces shortly after hosting Tshisekedi for talks in Luanda on Wednesday.
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GENEVA — The U.N. human rights chief appealed on Thursday for $500 million in funding for 2025 to support its work, such as investigating human rights abuses around the world from Syria to Sudan, warning that lives hang in the balance.
The U.N. human rights office has been grappling with chronic funding shortages that some worry could be exacerbated by cuts to U.S. foreign aid by President Donald Trump. The annual appeal is for funds beyond the allocated U.N. funds from member states’ fees, which make up just a fraction of the office’s needs.
“In 2025, we expect no let-up in major challenges to human rights,” High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk told member states in a speech at the U.N. in Geneva.
“I am very concerned that if we do not reach our funding targets in 2025, we will leave people … to struggle and possibly fail, without adequate support,” he said.
He said any shortfall would mean more people remain in illegal detention; that governments are allowed to continue with discriminatory policies; violations may go undocumented; and human rights defenders could lose protection.
“In short, lives are at stake,” Turk said.
The human rights office gets about 5% of the regular U.N. budget, but the majority of its funding comes voluntarily in response to its annual appeal announced on Thursday.
Western states give the most, with the United States donating $35 million last year or about 15% of the total received in 2024, followed by the European Commission, U.N. data showed. Still, the office received only about half of the $500 million it sought last year.
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Days after Chinese upstart DeepSeek revealed a breakthrough in cheap AI computing that shook the U.S. technology industry, the chief executives of Microsoft and Meta defended massive spending that they said was key to staying competitive in the new field.
DeepSeek’s quick progress has stirred doubts about the lead America has in AI with models that it claims can match or even outperform Western rivals at a fraction of the cost, but the U.S. executives said on Wednesday that building huge computer networks was necessary to serve growing corporate needs.
“Investing ‘very heavily’ in capital expenditure and infrastructure is going to be a strategic advantage over time,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on a post-earnings call.
Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, said the spending was needed to overcome the capacity constraints that have hampered the technology giant’s ability to capitalize on AI.
“As AI becomes more efficient and accessible, we will see exponentially more demand,” he said on a call with analysts.
Microsoft has earmarked $80 billion for AI in its current fiscal year, while Meta has pledged as much as $65 billion towards the technology.
That is a far cry from the roughly $6 million DeepSeek said it has spent to develop its AI model. U.S. tech executives and Wall Street analysts say that reflects the amount spent on computing power, rather than all development costs.
Still, some investors seem to be losing patience with the hefty spending and lack of big payoffs.
Shares of Microsoft — widely seen as a front runner in the AI race because of its tie to industry leader OpenAI – were down 5% in extended trading after the company said that growth in its Azure cloud business in the current quarter would fall short of estimates.
“We really want to start to see a clear road map to what that monetization model looks like for all of the capital that’s been invested,” said Brian Mulberry, portfolio manager at Zacks Investment Management, which holds shares in Microsoft.
Meta, meanwhile, sent mixed signals about how its bets on AI-powered tools were paying off, with a strong fourth quarter but a lackluster sales forecast for the current period.
“With these huge expenses, they need to turn the spigot on in terms of revenue generated, but I think this week was a wake-up call for the U.S.” said Futurum Group analyst Daniel Newman.
“For AI right now, there’s too much capital expenditure, not enough consumption.”
There are some signs though that executives are moving to change that.
Microsoft CFO Amy Hood said the company’s capital spending in the current quarter and the next would remain around the $22.6 billion level seen in the second quarter.
“In fiscal 2026, we expect to continue to invest against strong demand signals. However, the growth rate will be lower than fiscal 2025 (which ends in June),” she said.
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WASHINGTON — The State Department on Wednesday sought to clarify President Donald Trump’s order to freeze and review foreign development aid after the top U.S. diplomat blunted some of the chaos that ensued with an emergency order that could shield the world’s largest HIV program from the 90-day funding freeze.
At the White House, Trump said his pauses to foreign and domestic funding are part of his administration’s effort to root out “tremendous waste and fraud and abuse.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s late-Tuesday waiver exempts humanitarian aid, which he classifies as “life-saving medicine, medical services, food, shelter, and subsistence assistance, as well as supplies and reasonable administrative costs as necessary to deliver such assistance.”
The United Nations’ AIDS program welcomed the news, emphasizing the value of the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, which serves 20 million people in 55 countries.
“UNAIDS welcomes this waiver from the U.S. government, which ensures that millions of people living with HIV can continue to receive life-saving HIV medication during the assessment of U.S. foreign development assistance,” said Executive Director Winnie Byanyima. “This urgent decision recognizes PEPFAR’s critical role in the AIDS response and restores hope to people living with HIV.”
‘Blocking woke programs’
In a Wednesday memo sent to journalists, the State Department explained its rationale for the freeze during the review and lauded early cost cuts, saying that “even at this early stage, over $1,000,000,000 in spending not aligned with an America First agenda has been prevented.”
The U.S. spent about $70 billion in foreign aid in fiscal year 2023, the most recent data available.
“We are rooting out waste,” the memo said. “We are blocking woke programs. And we are exposing activities that run contrary to our national interests. None of this would be possible if these programs remained on autopilot.”
The president, who said Wednesday at the White House that he “could stand here all day” and give examples of wasted fraud and abuse in the U.S. government, highlighted a few.
“We identified and stopped $50 million being sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas,” he said. “Fifty million. And you know what’s happened to them? They’ve used them as a method of making bombs. How about that?”
The State Department echoed this, saying in a statement, “Without the pause, U.S. taxpayers would have provided condoms [and other contraceptive services] in Gaza, climate justice marketing services in Gabon, clean energy programs for women in Fiji, gender development programs in D.C., family planning throughout Latin America, sex education and pro-abortion programs for young girls globally, and much more. These types of programs do not make America stronger, safer or more prosperous.”
A day earlier, the State Department sent a memo citing examples of unworthy projects, including $102 million to fund humanitarian aid nonprofit International Medical Corps’ work in war-battered Gaza.
A USAID report says the agency delivered about $7 million worth of male condoms and about $1 million in female condoms in the 2023 fiscal year. In total, the agency said it disbursed nearly 138 million male condoms and 1.7 million female condoms worldwide.
Under USAID, the main administrator for U.S. foreign development funds, the bulk of contraceptive items were delivered to African countries, according to the report. Jordan was the only country in the Middle East to receive a shipment, which consisted of injectable and oral contraceptives valued at $45,680.
‘Dramatic overreach’
At the U.S. Capitol, lawmakers not only affirmed the need for accountability but also emphasized that Congress, not the White House, decides how U.S. taxpayer money is spent.
“I think it’s appropriate to have a review,” said Senator Kevin Cramer, a North Dakota Republican.
“It would be my hope, however, that the aid can be reinstated and flow to Ukraine,” Cramer said. “And then we’ll see in the next appropriation cycle whether or not Congress still has the will to continue that aid.”
“This is dramatic overreach by the White House, by the president,” said Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, a Democrat. “It’s unprecedented, uncalled for. This is money that we have appropriated in our role as members of the Senate and the House.”
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The Russian lawmaker attributed to Trump a quote from a deepfake video created by Ukrainian bloggers and shared on the Telegram messaging platform.
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PRAYAGRAJ, INDIA — At least 30 people were killed and many more injured in a stampede at the world’s largest religious gathering early Wednesday, police said, as millions of pilgrims rushed to dip in sacred waters during the Maha Kumbh festival in northern India.
Police officer Vaibhav Krishna in Prayagraj city said another 60 injured were rushed to hospitals.
Wednesday was a sacred day in the six-week Hindu festival, and authorities expected a record 100 million devotees to engage in a ritual bath at the confluence of the Ganges, the Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati rivers. Hindus believe that a dip at the holy site can cleanse them of past sins and end the process of reincarnation.
The stampede happened when pilgrims tried to jump barricades erected for a procession of holy men, Uttar Pradesh state’s top elected official, Yogi Adityanath, said in a televised statement.
The event’s main draw is the thousands of ash-smeared Hindu ascetics who make massive processions toward the confluence to bathe.
Indian authorities took more than 16 hours to release casualty figures, even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi acknowledged the loss of lives, calling the incident “extremely sad” and extending his condolences.
“Suddenly there was pushing in the crowd, and we got trapped. A lot of us fell down and the crowd went uncontrolled,” the Press Trust of India news agency quoted pilgrim Sarojini as saying. “There was no chance for escape, there was pushing from all sides,” she said.
Distressed families lined up outside a makeshift hospital, desperate for news of missing loved ones. Clothes, blankets and backpacks were strewn around the site of the stampede.
Millions continued to throng the 4,000-hectare pilgrimage site despite the stampede, even as police urged them over megaphones to avoid the confluence. Adityanath urged people to take baths at other riverbanks instead.
“The situation is now under control, but there is a massive crowd of pilgrims,” Adityanath said, adding that 90 million to 100 million pilgrims were at the site.
About 30 million people had taken the holy bath by 8 a.m. Wednesday, he said.
The Maha Kumbh festival, held every 12 years, started on Jan. 13. Authorities expect more than 400 million people to throng the pilgrimage site in total. Nearly 150 million people have already attended, including Defense Minister Rajnath Singh and Home Minister Amit Shah and celebrities like Coldplay’s Chris Martin.
A sprawling tent city has been built on the riverbanks to accommodate the millions of visitors, with roads, electricity and water, 3,000 kitchens and 11 hospitals.
About 50,000 security personnel are stationed in the city to maintain law and order and manage crowds, and more than 2,500 cameras monitor crowd movement and density so officials can try to prevent such crushes.
Several opposition leaders criticized the federal and the state government, both led by Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party, and blamed the stampede on “mismanagement” and “VIP culture” — the latter referring to what they say is preferential treatment for politicians and celebrities.
“The government should make better arrangements to meet the needs of common devotees,” Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi wrote on social platform X.
The 45-day festival is a significant cultural event for India’s Hindus, who make up nearly 80% of the country’s more than 1.4 billion people. It’s also a prestige event for Modi, whose ruling party boasts of promoting Hindu cultural symbols.
The Maha Kumbh festival has had stampedes in the past. In 2013, at least 40 pilgrims who were taking part in the festival were killed in a stampede at a train station in Prayagraj.
Deadly stampedes are relatively common around Indian religious festivals, where large crowds gather in small areas. In July at least 116 people died, most of them women and children, when thousands at a religious gathering in northern India stampeded at a tent camp in Hathras town.
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A report issued Wednesday by Google found that hackers from numerous countries, particularly China, Iran and North Korea, have been using the company’s artificial intelligence-enabled Gemini chatbot to supercharge cyberattacks against targets in the United States.
The company found — so far, at least — that access to publicly available large language models (LLMs) has made cyberattackers more efficient but has not meaningfully changed the kind of attacks they typically mount.
LLMs are AI models that have been trained, using enormous amounts of previously generated content, to identify patterns in human languages. Among other things, this makes them adept at producing high-functioning, error-free computer programs.
“Rather than enabling disruptive change, generative AI allows threat actors to move faster and at higher volume,” the report found.
Generative AI offered some benefits for low-skilled and high-skilled hackers, the report said.
“However, current LLMs on their own are unlikely to enable breakthrough capabilities for threat actors. We note that the AI landscape is in constant flux, with new AI models and agentic systems emerging daily. As this evolution unfolds, [the Google Threat Intelligence Group] anticipates the threat landscape to evolve in stride as threat actors adopt new AI technologies in their operations.”
Google’s findings appear to agree with previous research released by other large U.S. AI players OpenAI and Microsoft, which found a similar failure to achieve novel offensive strategies for cyberattacks through the use of public generative AI models.
The report clarified that Google works to disrupt the activity of threat actors when it identifies them.
Game unchanged
“AI, so far, has not been a game changer for offensive actors,” Adam Segal, director of the Digital and Cyberspace Policy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations, told VOA. “It speeds up some things. It gives foreign actors a better ability to craft phishing emails and find some code. But has it dramatically changed the game? No.”
Whether that might change in the future is unclear, Segal said. Also unclear is whether further developments in AI technology will more likely benefit people building defenses against cyberattacks or the threat actors trying to defeat them.
“Historically, defense has been hard, and technology hasn’t solved that problem,” Segal said. “I suspect AI won’t do that, either. But we don’t know yet.”
Caleb Withers, a research associate at the Center for a New American Security, agreed that there is likely to be an arms race of sorts, as offensive and defensive cybersecurity applications of generative AI evolve. However, it is likely that they will largely balance each other out, he said.
“The default assumption should be that absent certain trends that we haven’t yet seen, these tools should be roughly as useful to defenders as offenders,” he said. “Anything productivity enhancing, in general, applies equally, even when it comes to things like discovering vulnerabilities. If an attacker can use something to find a vulnerability in software, so, too, is the tool useful to the defender to try to find those themselves and patch them.”
Threat categories
The report breaks down the kinds of threat actors it observed using Gemini into two primary categories.
Advanced persistent threat (APT) actors refer to “government-backed hacking activity, including cyber espionage and destructive computer network attacks.” By contrast, information operation (IO) threats “attempt to influence online audiences in a deceptive, coordinated manner. Examples include sock puppet accounts [phony profiles that hide users’ identities] and comment brigading [organized online attacks aimed at altering perceptions of online popularity].”
The report found that hackers from Iran were the heaviest users of Gemini in both threat categories. APT threat actors from Iran used the service for a wide range of tasks, including gathering information on individuals and organizations, researching targets and their vulnerabilities, translating language and creating content for future online campaigns.
Google tracked more than 20 Chinese government-backed APT actors using Gemini “to enable reconnaissance on targets, for scripting and development, to request translation and explanation of technical concepts, and attempting to enable deeper access to a network following initial compromise.”
North Korean state-backed APTs used Gemini for many of the same tasks as Iran and China but also appeared to be attempting to exploit the service in its efforts to place “clandestine IT workers” in Western companies to facilitate the theft of intellectual property.
Information operations
Iran was also the heaviest user of Gemini when it came to information operation threats, accounting for 75% of detected usage, Google reported. Hackers from Iran used the service to create and manipulate content meant to sway public opinion, and to adapt that content for different audiences.
Chinese IO actors primarily used the service for research purposes, looking into matters “of strategic interest to the Chinese government.”
Unlike the APT sector, where their presence was minimal, Russian hackers were more common when it came to IO-related use of Gemini, using it not only for content creation but to gather information about how to create and use online AI chatbots.
Call for collaboration
Also on Wednesday, Kent Walker, president of global affairs for Google and its parent company, Alphabet, used a post on the company’s blog to note the potential dangers posed by threat actors using increasingly sophisticated AI models, and calling on the industry and federal government “to work together to support our national and economic security.”
“America holds the lead in the AI race — but our advantage may not last,” Walker wrote.
Walker argued that the U.S. needs to maintain its narrow advantage in the development of the technology used to build the most advanced artificial intelligence tools. In addition, he said, the government must streamline procurement rules to “enable adoption of AI, cloud and other game-changing technologies” by the U.S. military and intelligence agencies, and to establish public-private cyber defense partnerships.
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WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate kicked off Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation hearing Wednesday. Candidates for the President’s Cabinet must be confirmed by the Senate. But individuals considered for politically appointed positions are thoroughly vetted during presidential transitions by a president-elect’s legal team. What to know about this process.
Click here for the full story in Mandarin.
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U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to impose sweeping tariffs on semiconductors. How do analysts and people from Taiwan’s chip industry view the potential tariffs?
Click here for the full story in Mandarin.
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UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations said Wednesday that there is relative calm in the eastern Congolese city of Goma, following several days of intense fighting between the Rwandan-backed M23 rebels and the Congolese army for control of the city.
“There is, however, continued sporadic shooting, but an overall reduction in exchanges of fire within the city,” U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters. “Continued clashes have been reported in surrounding areas, including in Sake, northwest of Goma.”
Dujarric said bodies were in the streets, and humanitarians report at least 2,000 people have been injured by weapons and shrapnel since the fighting escalated.
In early January, M23 rebels broke a ceasefire agreement, launching a large-scale offensive in the mineral-rich east with the support of the Rwandan army. On Monday, M23 said it had captured Goma, the capital of North Kivu province and a city of more than 2 million people, thousands of whom have been displaced from other conflict areas. Rwanda has denied accusations that it supports the rebels.
Asked who controls the city, Dujarric said the U.N. assessment is that the M23 rebels clearly have “the upper hand.”
The U.N. has a peacekeeping mission in eastern Congo known as MONUSCO, currently with about 10,000 troops and police tasked with protecting civilians and disarming combatants. It has been in the process of drawing down its presence at the request of the Congolese government. In June, it left neighboring South Kivu province entirely. The rebels are reported to be pushing toward its capital, Bukavu.
In and around Goma, MONUSCO has reinforced its positions to counter the rebels’ advance deploying a quick reaction force, a rapid deployment battalion, a reserve battalion, a platoon of special forces and an artillery battery.
“The mission’s priority right now remains the protection of its personnel, its assets and the many civilians sheltering within U.N. premises,” Dujarric said. “Our peacekeepers are also planning on sending out patrols today in Goma to assess the situation, to conduct resupplies and assess routes.”
The U.N. says Goma’s airport remains closed, halting the flow of humanitarian supplies. Most of the roads connecting Goma with the rest of the country are also closed. Water and electricity have been cut off since Sunday, and internet access has been interrupted since Monday. Only mobile phones are working.
In the capital, Kinshasa, the situation was also calm Wednesday. Dujarric said the main roads were reportedly empty, and supermarkets were closed because of the high risk of looting. On Tuesday, protesters attacked, looted and burned some embassies, including those of Belgium, France and Rwanda. The United States said Tuesday it was closing its embassy until further notice. On Wednesday it advised Americans not to travel to the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The U.N. Security Council and Secretary-General Antonio Guterres have called for the M23 to immediately cease hostilities and withdraw from occupied territories. They have also called for the withdrawal of Rwandan forces and a return to the Luanda process of mediation overseen by Angolan President Joao Lourenco.
The East African Community, which includes DRC and Rwanda among its eight members, was expected to hold an emergency summit Wednesday evening. Reuters reported that Rwandan President Paul Kagame would attend, but Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi was not expected to participate.
Before the latest round of violence, eastern DRC was mired in one of the largest and most protracted humanitarian crises in the world, with nearly 6.5 million people displaced due to efforts by armed groups to seize control of the country’s valuable mineral deposits.
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NAIROBI, KENYA — For young people like Winnie Muyam, accessing digital platforms was her way to connect with friends and entertainment, until last year when the 17-year-old said strangers began to chat with her.
“They started talking to me as a friend, telling me how beautiful I was,” she said. “From there they started sending pictures. They wanted to see my private parts and I felt so bad.”
The teenager said her efforts to flag her abusers through the platform’s reporting tools were futile. Her complaint was not acted upon.
While Muyam was able to avoid exploitation, up to 13% of minors online have been exploited or abused, according to a survey by Child Fund International and Africa Child forum.
A majority of the targeted children are 12 to 17 years old. The fund’s child advocacy and protection manager, Eunice Kilundo, said perpetrators try to play on their victims’ desperation for affection.
“They will pose as a very good friend,” said Kilundo. “They even give children rewards and lure them into going deeper and deeper up to the point where probably they may want children to send them their nudes and all that.”
In a fast-changing digital world, parents, caregivers, communities and governments face new challenges in keeping children safe, UNICEF said.
Researchers say a low capacity to investigate and prosecute online sexual exploitation in Africa creates a fertile ground for potential offenders. So Kenyan authorities are training officers in the justice system to handle such cases.
Kilundo said concerted efforts to combat such abuse will go a long way.
“It’s a high time everybody in the children sector — or even outside the children sector, the corporate, government, everyone — to demonstrate commitment and concern,” said Kilundo.
Kenyan law prohibits any sexual involvement with children under 18 years old, including online, without permission of a parent or guardian.
Dennis Otieno, senior counsel for Kenya’s Federation of Female Lawyers, told VOA that although such crimes can be prosecuted, some caregivers are oblivious to them and making them aware is crucial.
“The report rate for such cases is very low,” said Otieno. “Many people still do not understand there are crimes that can be committed through social media.”
More than 22 million people in Kenya have access to the internet, according to national data, and with increasing access to digital platforms, authorities believe programs such as this training will help keep children online safe.
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ISLAMABAD — A senior World Health Organization official cautioned Wednesday that the eradication of polio in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the only countries where the paralytic virus persists, is threatened by the suspension of funding from the United States.
In an online news conference, Hanan Balkhy, regional director for the Eastern Mediterranean, emphasized the crucial role of U.S. financial contribution to the organization’s surveillance efforts for polio and all other communicable diseases, particularly within her region.
Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump ordered an unprecedented 90-day suspension of almost all foreign aid to give his administration the time to evaluate whether to continue funding the numerous humanitarian, development and security programs that receive U.S. assistance.
On his first day back in the White House, Trump announced he was withdrawing the United States from WHO.
His executive order accused the United Nations agency of mishandling the COVID-19 pandemic and other global health crises, as well as failing “to adopt urgently needed reforms, and its inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states.”
Balkhy referred to Trump’s announcement to withdraw from WHO as “very unfortunate” and highlighted that the U.S. has been a “major” supporter of her organization’s work in the Eastern Mediterranean region for decades.
“The U.S. funding was indeed decisive in fighting polio, eradicating polio. Currently, we are in the last round of eradicating polio in the last two countries in the world: Afghanistan and Pakistan,” the Saudi physician said through an interpreter.
“We hope that our collaboration with our partners will enable us to achieve our goal of fully eradicating polio in these countries during this final stage,” she added.
Balkhy emphasized WHO’s dedication to safeguarding the world against the resurgence of polio.
In 2024, Pakistan reported 73 cases of the paralytic poliovirus, while Afghanistan reported 25 cases. Although there have been no additional polio cases in Afghanistan so far, Pakistani officials confirmed the first poliovirus infection of 2025 last week.
Balkhy attributed efforts led by WHO to contain what she described as the “inevitable” spread of polio in Gaza due to the destruction of its sewage and sanitation services.
She stated they are prepared to discuss the reforms the United States plans to propose and carry out necessary internal assessments to help advance the organization’s work.
“Funding shortfalls in 2024 have already led to devastating cuts to lifesaving health operations. We ask for your support in amplifying our message — help us save lives, restore health systems and bring hope to millions,” Balkhy said.
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According to Harvard University, about 200 copies of the original Declaration of Independence were produced in 1776. Only about two dozen remain. In New York, a new copy from the times of the Founding Fathers was discovered. On Jan. 24, it was put on auction. Elena Wolf has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Videographer: Michael Eckels
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NAIROBI — A small aircraft carrying oil workers in South Sudan’s Unity State crashed on Wednesday, killing 20 people, an official said. The plane crashed at the Unity oilfield airport on Wednesday morning as it was heading to the capital Juba, said Gatwech Bipal, Unity State’s information minister.
Bipal said the passengers were oil workers of the Greater Pioneer Operating Company, or GPOC, a consortium that includes China National Petroleum Corporation and state-owned Nile Petroleum Corporation.
He said among the dead were two Chinese nationals and one Indian. Bipal gave no more details on the circumstances that led to the crash. Media reports had initially put the death toll at 18 but Bipal told Reuters two survivors had later died. One person survived. Several air crashes have occurred in war-torn South Sudan in recent years.
In September 2018, at least 19 people died when a small aircraft carrying passengers from the capital Juba to the city of Yirol crashed. In 2015, dozens of people were killed when a Russian-built cargo plane with passengers on board crashed after taking off from the airport in the capital Juba.
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BEIJING — Lunar New Year festivals and prayers marked the start of the Year of the Snake around Asia and farther afield on Wednesday — including in Moscow.
Hundreds of people lined up in the hours before midnight at the Wong Tai Sin Taoist temple in Hong Kong in a bid to be among the first to put incense sticks in the stands in front of the temple’s main hall.
“I wish my family will be blessed. I hope my business will run well. I pray for my country and wish people peace. I hope this coming year is a better year,” said Ming So, who visits the temple annually on the eve of the Lunar New Year.
The holiday — known as the Spring Festival in China, Tet in Vietnam and Seollal in Korea — is a major festival celebrated by diaspora communities around the world. The snake, one of 12 animals in the Chinese zodiac, follows the just-ended Year of the Dragon.
The pop-pop-pop of firecrackers greeted the new year outside Guan Di temple in Malaysia’s capital, Kuala Lumpur, followed by lion dances to the rhythmic beat of drums and small cymbals.
Ethnic Chinese holding incense sticks in front of them bowed several times inside the temple before sticking the incense into elaborate gold-colored pots, the smoke rising from the burning tips.
Many Chinese who work in bigger cities return home during the eight-day national holiday in what is described as the world’s biggest annual movement of humanity. Beijing, China’s capital, has turned into a bit of a ghost town, with many shops closed and normally crowded roads and subways empty.
Traditionally, Chinese have a family dinner at home on New Year’s Eve and visit “temple fairs” on the Lunar New Year to watch performances and buy snacks, toys and other trinkets from booths.
Many Chinese take advantage of the extended holiday to travel in the country and abroad. Ctrip, an online booking agency that operates Trip.com, said the most popular overseas destinations this year are Japan, Thailand, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, the United States, South Korea, Macao and Vietnam.
Russians cheered, waved and took smartphone photos of a colorful procession with drummers, costumed dancers and large dragon and snake figures held aloft that kicked off a 10-day Lunar New Year festival in Moscow on Tuesday night.
Visitors shouted “Happy New Year” in Russian and expressed delight at being able to experience Chinese food and culture in Moscow, including folk performances and booths selling snacks and artwork.
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Washington — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is pulling the security protections and clearance of retired Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Mark Milley, and he has ordered the Pentagon’s inspector general to review Milley’s actions while serving as the nation’s top uniformed officer to determine if a demotion is warranted, two defense officials confirmed late Tuesday.
The inspector general review will include “an inquiry into the facts and circumstances surrounding Gen Milley’s conduct so that the Secretary may determine whether it is appropriate to reopen his military grade review determination,” said Pentagon spokesman John Ullyot.
“The Secretary informed General Milley today that he is revoking the authorization for his security detail and suspending his security clearance as well,” he said.
Milley served as chairman during President Donald Trump’s first term in office. While the relationship initially went well, it soured deeply and fast, as Milley tried to advise and contain the president on a host of issues.
Milley pushed back on the president’s interest in using force domestically to quell protestors after the death of George Floyd, and he was at the center of a controversy in 2021 when he made independent calls to his Chinese counterpart. Trump called the calls an act of treason, but at the time Milley said the calls were routine and part of the scope of his job.
Milley in his final days as chairman after Trump had left office was equally outspoken about his former boss. He said at his official retirement ceremony “ we don’t take an oath to a king or a queen or to a tyrant or a dictator. And we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator.”
“We don’t take an oath to an individual. We take an oath to the Constitution, and we take an oath to the idea that is America, and we’re willing to die to protect it,” he said at the time.
Hegseth’s chief of staff Joe Kasper said that the decision to strip Milley of his clearance and detail was taken because “undermining the chain of command is corrosive to our national security, and restoring accountability is a priority for the Defense Department under President Trump’s leadership.”
The moves, which were first reported by Fox News, also may include taking down Milley’s Army chief of staff portrait. Milley’s chairman portrait was stripped from the wall just hours after Trump was sworn in. The portraits were both paid for by a donation from the Association of the United States Army, not taxpayer dollars, and were a gift to Milley honoring his service.
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