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Overseas missions for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) have reportedly been told to shut down and that staffers were being recalled to the United States by Friday. 

CBS News reported that Peter Marocco, the director of foreign assistance at the State Department who was tapped by State Department Secretary Marco Rubio to run USAID, told the agency’s leadership that those who do not comply will be evacuated by the military. 

Fox News Digital has reached out to USAID and the State Department. 

USAID has come under scrutiny by the Trump administration over what it is spending. 

‘For decades, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has been unaccountable to taxpayers as it funnels massive sums of money to the ridiculous — and, in many cases, malicious — pet projects of entrenched bureaucrats, with next-to-no oversight,’ the White House said Monday. 

USAID allocated millions of dollars for programs the Trump administration considers controversial and that frequently involved diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives launched during the Biden administration, critics say.

During an interview with Fox News that aired Tuesday, Rubio said USAID has ‘basically evolved into an agency that believes that they’re not even a U.S. government agency.’

‘That they are a global charity. That they take the taxpayer money and spend it as a global charity, irrespective of whether it is in the national interest or not in the national interest,’ he said. 

The goal was always to reform the agency, Rubio said, but that ‘now we have rank insubordination.’ 

‘Their basic attitude is: ‘We don’t work for anyone. We work for ourselves’,’ he said. ”No agency of government can tell us what to do’.’

Rubio said a common complaint among U.S. embassies around the world is that USAID isn’t cooperative and ‘undermines the work that we’re doing.’

On Tuesday, Sen. Jodi Ernst, R-Iowa, said every dollar given to USAID needs to be scrutinized.

In a series of posts on X, Erst noted millions in aid that were allegedly funneled to fund good causes ended up in the hands of bad actors. 

She noted $9 million in humanitarian aid to feed civilians in Syria that allegedly ended up in the hands of terrorists, as well as another $2 million spent on Moroccan pottery classes and promotion. 

Other projects included trade assistance to Ukraine to pay for models to attend Fashion Weeks events in New York City, London and Paris and millions spent to help Afghans grow crops instead of opium. 

‘The results: opium poppy cultivation across the country nearly doubled, according to the UN,’ she wrote. 

‘USAID asked, ‘Can you tell me how to get how to get to Sesame Street?’ and ended up in Iraq,’ she wrote in another post. ‘USAID authorized a whopping $20 million to create a Sesame Street in Iraq.’

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Saudi Arabia said it would not establish ties with Israel unless a Palestinian state is created, shooting down U.S. President Donald Trump’s claim that the Saudis were not demanding a Palestinian homeland when he floated the idea of the U.S. government taking control of the Gaza Strip.

Trump said on Tuesday at a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he wants the U.S. to take over the Gaza Strip, which has been ravaged by the Israel-Hamas war, after Palestinians are resettled in other countries.

‘The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it, too,’ Trump said at the White House. ‘We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous, unexplored bombs and other weapons on the site.’

‘Level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out, create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area,’ he said. ‘Do a real job. Do something different. Just can’t go back. If you go back, it’s going to end up the same way it has for 100 years.’

Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Wednesday that the country rejects any attempts to displace the Palestinians from their homeland, stressing that its position on the Palestinians is not up to negotiation.

The statement noted that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has affirmed the kingdom’s position in ‘a clear and explicit manner’ that does not make other interpretations possible under any circumstances.

Any proposed displacement of Palestinians, an idea Trump has suggested multiple times since retaking office last month, is a highly sensitive matter for both Palestinians and Arab countries.

Trump said on Jan. 25 that he wanted Jordan, Egypt and other Arab nations to accept more Palestinian refugees from the Gaza Strip, potentially moving out enough people to ‘just clean out’ the area.

‘You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing and say, ‘You know, it’s over,” he said at the time.

Amid the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, Palestinians feared they would suffer from another ‘Nakba,’ meaning catastrophe in Arabic, which refers to the displacement and dispossession of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the 1948 war at the birth of the State of Israel.

The U.S. had led months of diplomacy to convince Saudi Arabia to normalize ties with Israel and recognize the Middle Eastern country. But the war in Gaza, which began with Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on the Jewish State, prompted the Saudis to abandon the matter amid Arab anger over Israel’s offensive.

Trump wants Saudi Arabia to follow in the footsteps of countries including the United Arab Emirates, a Middle East trade and business hub, and Bahrain, which signed the Abraham Accords in 2020 and normalized ties with Israel.

Saudi Arabia establishing ties with Israel would be a grand prize for the Jewish State because the kingdom has huge influence in the Middle East and the wider Muslim world, and it is the world’s biggest oil exporter.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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By many measures, millennials are doing considerably well financially. Still, fewer younger adults are thinking about retiring in the traditional sense one day.

“Retirement is becoming more deprioritized,” said Michael Liersch, head of advice and planning at Wells Fargo.

“Ten or 15 years ago that was always the number one goal,” he said. Now, “actually living one’s life in the moment is a bigger priority.”

Although this cohort is very focused on building wealth, “the end game might not be no longer working and sitting on my Adirondack chair,” he said. “That just might not be it.”

More than one-third, or 37%, of Americans want a retirement that looks different from previous generations, according to a 2024 report from Edelman Financial Engines.

Most say that means a more active and adventurous lifestyle. And 32% say they will never be able to “fully” retire, the report found.

“This contrasts sharply with retirement stereotypes of the past, where stability and relaxation were the primary goals,” the report said.

Meanwhile, the median wealth of younger millennials and older Gen Zers — or those born in the 1990s — “more than quadrupled” in recent years, according to an analysis of 2022 data by the St. Louis Federal Reserve.

The number of millennials with seven-figure retirement balances also jumped 400% as of the third quarter of 2024, compared to a year earlier, according to data from Fidelity Investments prepared for CNBC.

Compared to other generations, millennials are also more likely to say that their income went up over the last few months and that they expect their earnings potential to increase again in the year ahead, another report by TransUnion found.

Collectively, millennials are now worth about $15.95 trillion, up from $3.94 trillion five years earlier, according to the most recent Federal Reserve data as of the third quarter of 2024.

But a lot has changed for younger generations, too, said Brett House, an economics professor at Columbia Business School.

What assets millennials have on hand and their relative financial stability “is determined by how they shape up against immediate needs — such as housing down payments or emergency medical payments — and their capacity to generate income to replace salaries and wages in retirement amidst the shift from defined benefit to defined contribution pensions, or the elimination of workplace pensions all together,” House said.

Most younger adults are no longer getting pensions of any kind, so individuals who enter retirement age are now more dependent on personal savings and Social Security, he said.

“There are a lot of financial priorities that we are all trying to reach simultaneously,” said Sophia Bera Daigle, founder and CEO of Gen Y Planning, a financial planning firm for millennials.

Many millennials must contend with hefty student loan balances, mortgages, car payments and child care costs in addition to saving for retirement or future college costs, she said.

“People are really feeling the cash crunch in their 30s to 40s,” said Bera Daigle, a certified financial planner and a member of CNBC’s Advisor Council. “Their net worth is going up but they don’t feel like they are getting ahead.”

That has also contributed to changing views on retirement for millennials, she said.

“When I got into this business, retirement was about quitting the grind … playing golf,” Bera Daigle said.

Now, “it’s really more about flexibility,” she added. “We don’t know what retirement will look like in 20 years… there’s a lot more emphasis on choosing the work they want to do in their 60s.”

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President Donald Trump said Monday he would create a sovereign wealth fund, a pool of assets like those that exist in other countries that can help pay out regular funds to ordinary citizens.

However, full details on how the fund would work were not immediately available. Trump made the announcement in an Oval Office ceremony. He had floated the idea of creating such a fund during his 2024 presidential campaign.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent offered brief remarks at the event outlining the fund.

‘It will be a combination of liquid assets, assets that we have in this country as we work … to bring them out for the American people,’ he said.

Trump said Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick would also be involved in standing up the fund, which could take as long as a year to establish. Lutnick said Monday that the fund could possibly be used to help take over TikTok, though he did not offer details about how such an endeavor would work.

“The extraordinary size and scale of the U.S. government and the business it does with companies … should create value for American citizens,” Lutnick said. “If we are going to buy 2 billion Covid vaccines, maybe we should have some warrants and some equity in these companies and have that grow for the help of the American people.”

Norway has the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world. It takes oil revenues and reinvests them in assets like stocks. Its current net worth is equivalent to approximately $325,000 per Norwegian citizen.

Other countries with large sovereign wealth funds include China, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Iran and Russia.

Alaska and Texas also have state-run funds.

A 2024 study from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace found that without proper safeguards, such as governance and regulatory structures, sovereign wealth funds can turn into ‘conduits of corruption, money laundering, and other illicit activities.’

CORRECTION (Feb. 3, 2025, 8:39 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article misattributed a quotation. Howard Lutnick said the U.S. government’s transactions with companies “should create value for American citizens,” not Scott Bessent.

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Much of the international community believes that Rwanda backs the M23 rebels, who claimed to capture the city of Goma in eastern Congo last week. UN experts believe that an estimated 3,000 – 4,000 Rwandan soldiers are supervising and supporting M23 fighters in the east of the DRC, outnumbering the rebel group’s forces in the country.

“I don’t know,” Kagame said, despite the fact that he is commander-in-chief of the Rwandan Defence Force.

“There are many things I don’t know. But if you want to ask me, is there a problem in Congo that concerns Rwanda? And that Rwanda would do anything to protect itself? I’d say 100%,” he continued.

Madowo told Kagame that comparisons have been made between him and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who backed local separatist forces to try and invade Donbas, an eastern region of Ukraine, in 2014.

“There will be so many stories,” Kagame said of the comparison, adding that he can’t “stop people from saying whatever they want to say.”

“I may be called anything – what can I do about it?” he asked. “We have to do what we have to do… we have to make sure we survive any storm that blows across our country.”

Kagame called the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), one of the largest foreign armed groups operating in the DRC, an “existential threat” to Rwanda. He alleged that the group was fully integrated into the Congolese armed forces, suggesting that other governments in the region also support the rebel group.

Kagame repeatedly insisted that Rwanda will do “whatever it takes” to protect itself, without giving much information about what this entails.

“Nobody,” including the United Nations or the international community “is going to do it for us,” the leader said.

When asked again if he was sending troops to the DRC, Kigame said that Rwanda will do “anything to protect itself,” telling Madowo to “read whatever you want to read from what I’m telling you.”

This post appeared first on cnn.com

Ecuador will apply a 27% tariff on Mexican goods to “ensure fair treatment” of Ecuadorian producers, President Daniel Noboa said on Monday.

In a post on X, Noboa said he is open to signing a free trade deal with Mexico, but “not when there is abuse,” though did not elaborate. The president said that until a free trade deal is struck, a 27% tariff will apply to goods imported from Mexico.

Ecuador imported $541 million worth of goods from Mexico in 2023, Mexican government data shows. The biggest single import was medication, representing 12.6% of the goods sold from Mexico to Ecuador that year.

Still, Ecuador is a miniscule trading partner for Mexico, accounting for less than 0.1% the value of Mexico’s exports last year, according to Mexican government data.

The announcement comes after US President Donald Trump announced a pause on his threat of 25% tariffs on all imports from Mexico, after a conversation with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.

Last year, the two countries broke off diplomatic relations following Noboa’s order of a raid on the Mexican embassy in Quito, Ecuador to arrest Jorge Glas, a former Ecuadorean vice president.

Surveillance footage from the incident in April 2024 showed Ecuadorian police grappling with the Mexican mission’s top diplomat as they arrested Glas, who had been seeking asylum from Mexico when the raid took place. The ex-vice president had sought protection from embezzlement charges by requesting asylum in Mexico, saying that the accusations were politically motivated.

Noboa, the son of a banana tycoon, swept into office in late 2023 as the youngest president in Ecuador’s history on the back of a promise to rein in the rampant crime. Since then, he has embarked on an uncompromising agenda, including declaring “war” on more than 20 criminal gangs.

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The founder of a pro-Russian militia group in eastern Ukraine, described by authorities in Kyiv as a “criminal mastermind”, has died following a bombing in central Moscow, according to Russian state media.

Armen Sarkisyan died Monday at a Moscow hospital from injuries sustained in an explosion in an upmarket residential complex in the capital city, TASS quoted the medical services as saying. The Russian Investigative Committee later confirmed Sarkisyan’s death, stating that “despite the assistance provided, one of the victims died in a medical facility.”

Sarkisyan, also known by nickname “Armen Gorlovsky” after Horlivka (Gorlovka in Russian) the eastern Ukrainian town he is from, founded the separatist Arbat Battalion fighting in the region. Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence described him as a “well-known criminal mastermind” who became the “supervisor” of prisons across Russia and occupied territories of Ukraine in November 2022.

The Ukrainian Defense Intelligence said the founding of Arbat in 2022 was an attempt to counterbalance the influence of Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin in the Russian private military company sector. Prigozhin was killed the following year when his plane crashed two months after his attempted mutiny against Russia’s leadership.

The battalion fought in several key battles of the ongoing war in Ukraine, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) previously said. Arbat was composed “almost entirely” of former Wagner personnel, the US-based conflict monitor said in October 2023.

Sarkisyan was an ally of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, the Russian-leaning leader who was ousted following deadly protests in Ukraine in 2014 and fled to Russia, according to Ukrainian authorities. Sarkisyan was wanted in Ukraine for his alleged role in the violent response to those demonstrations against Yanukovych.

Sarkisyan was leaving the exclusive Aliye Parusa residential complex in northwest Moscow on Monday morning when the explosion happened, a local resident said in a video published by the independent Russian media outlet SOTA.

Asked about the incident during a press briefing on Monday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said: “The special services are doing their job. It is difficult work. The information is being clarified, and work is ongoing, so it is impossible for us to comment on anything at this time.”

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“What has been happening in Jenin city and the refugee camp over the past two weeks is similar to that of Gaza but on a smaller scale,” Mohammad Jarrar said Monday.

Hundreds of residential units make up the 120 destroyed buildings, he said, noting that the destruction had impacted thousands of families.

Jarrar described scenes of devastation amid a shortage of food, water and medication as services have been disrupted because of the operation. He added that displacement is expected to only further increase.

Israel launched its operation two days after the first stage of the Gaza ceasefire began, dubbing it “Operation Iron Wall.”

The Israeli military said the operation was aimed at eliminating “terrorists and terror infrastructure” and “ensuring that terrorism does not return to the camp after the operation is over – the first lesson from the method of repeated raids in Gaza.”

More than 40 Palestinians have been killed across the West Bank by the Israeli military since the operation was launched, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, which said that 25 of those people were from Jenin. Dozens more have been injured, the ministry said.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right nationalist who opposes the Israel-Hamas ceasefire, said in a January statement that security in the West Bank had been added to the country’s “war goals.”

Smotrich publicly toyed with quitting the Israeli government when the Gaza ceasefire was announced, but decided to stay in the cabinet after saying he had received assurances from Netanyahu on his commitment to continue Israel’s military operations in the West Bank and Gaza.

The mayor said that schools might be opened to take in displaced people, as was seen in Gaza over the 15-month-long war.

“Today the (Jenin) camp is uninhabitable and would require major reconstruction efforts for it to stand on its feet,” he said, adding that the “crisis is huge,” and that alternative housing for the displaced might be needed for around six months.

Last week, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said that Israeli troops would remain in the Jenin camp once their current operation is complete – a significant change in Israeli policy.

Meanwhile, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), said in a statement Monday that “Jenin camp has been rendered a ghost town.”

“Operations conducted both by Israeli and Palestinian security forces have led to the forced displacement of thousands of camp residents, many of whom will now have nowhere to return to. The basics of life are gone,” it said.

“Today’s shocking scenes in the West Bank undermine the fragile ceasefire reached in Gaza, and risk a new escalation,” the UNRWA statement added.

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A former British soldier convicted of spying for Iran after an audacious three-day escape from a London prison was sentenced Monday to more than 14 years behind bars for betraying his country.

Daniel Khalife, 23, was convicted in November of violating the Official Secrets Act and Terrorism Act for providing restricted and classified material to Iran.

“As a young man you had the makings of an exemplary soldier, however, through the repeated violations of your oath of service, you showed yourself to be instead a dangerous fool,” Justice Bobbie Cheema-Grubb said.

Jurors in Woolwich Crown Court had rejected his testimony that he was trying to work for the UK as a double agent.

Khalife’s spying case had not received much attention until he broke out of Wandsworth Prison on the underbelly of a food delivery truck. He was on the run for three days before police arrested him on a bicycle by a canal in London.

Khalife pleaded guilty to the escape during his trial, but continued to contest the spying charges.

Khalife’s lawyer, who argued his acts were more like a plot from “Scooby Doo” than a James Bond thriller, said his client had only passed along imprecise information, including “laughably fake” documents that caused no actual damage.

“There’s no way that what Mr. Khalife did is going to wind up being a lesson for budding spies,” attorney Gul Nawaz Hussain said. “His intentions were neither sinister nor cynical.”

But prosecutors said Khalife had in fact played a “cynical game” by claiming he wanted to be a spy after he had delivered a large amount of restricted and classified material to the Iranian intelligence service, including the names of special forces officers.

Khalife testified that he had been in touch with people in the Iranian government but that it was all part of a ploy to ultimately work as a double agent for Britain, a scheme he developed from watching the TV show “Homeland.”

Authorities said he presented a true risk to national security because of the threat that Iran poses. Police noted that the UK has disrupted 20 plots by Iran, including assassination plans.

British security services were not aware of Khalife’s contacts with the Iranians until he contacted MI6, the UK’s foreign intelligence service, to offer to work as a double agent.

He reached out to MI6 anonymously, saying he had earned the trust of his Iranian handlers and that they had rewarded him by leaving $2,000 cash (£1,578) in a dog poo bag in a north London park.

Khalife joined the army at 16 and was assigned to the Royal Corps of Signals, a communications unit that is deployed with battlefield troops, as well as special forces and intelligence squads.

He was told he could not join the intelligence service because his mother is from Iran.

At 17, he reached out to a man connected with Iranian intelligence and began passing along information, prosecutors said. He was given NATO secret security clearance when he took part in a joint exercise at Fort Cavazos in Texas in early 2021.

The judge noted that his security breaches while on US soil could have caused diplomatic damage.

Khalife’s escape from the Victorian-era prison drew attention to larger failures in the nation’s aging and overcrowded correctional system. An inquiry is currently underway into how Khalife was able to escape and whether others helped.

Two men have been arrested on charges of helping him after he escaped.

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As Germany enters the final few weeks of its election campaign, the man poised to be the next chancellor has doubled down on tightening the country’s immigration policy — shifting the nation to the right.

Merz and the Union party, comprised of the CDU and their Bavarian sister party the CSU, lead the polls with 30% of the vote.

Last week, Merz, a former investment banker at BlackRock with a pilot’s license, also made migration the focus of his campaign. The German lawmaker brought forward two pieces of legislation severely curbing migration. While the non-binding bill passed by a small majority, the binding “Influx Limitation Act” failed. Ahead of that Friday vote Merz told fellow parliamentarians, “the door to hell, we can still close together”.

Notably, among those who voted against the bill, were members of Merz’s own party.

Germany has seen a spate of recent attacks perpetrated by migrants that has catapulted the issue to the center of the election campaign.

In January an attack in Aschaffenburg left two people dead, including a two-year old boy. The attacker was an Afghan migrant. Just before Christmas six people were killed in Magdeburg after a Saudi-origin migrant drove a car through a Christmas market.

Merz dismissed his party’s role in the bill’s failure. Instead, he looked to deflect the blame on to the ruling Social Democratic Party (SPD), headed by current chancellor Olaf Scholz.

But that does not tell the whole story of a tumultuous week for Merz.

There is an unwritten agreement between Germany’s largest parties that they would never seek the support of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) to pass laws or legislation – it’s known as the firewall. Working with the far-right is a taboo in German politics.

Last week Merz made it clear that he did not mind if the AfD voted for his proposals on curbing migration. The far-right party voted on both pieces of legislation Merz proposed, helping push the non-binding bill over the line, a risky gambit that prompted hundreds of thousands of protesters onto the streets.

On the issue of Elon Musk, who has become a feature of this election cycle, Merz said “I don’t appreciate what he is doing, but he is doing something which he is free to do”. Musk has been controversially inserting himself into the German election campaign in favor of the AfD.

“European level” response to Trump

Taking note of US President Donald Trump’s economic measures against some of the US’s closest allies, Merz was clear that any tariffs placed on the European Union would be handled at “the European level”.

The United States is the European Union second largest trading partner, according to US trade data. On Sunday President Trump called the European Union an “atrocity” that would also be facing tariffs, saying the bloc was “taking advantage” of the United States.

On the issue of ending the war, something which President Trump vowed to do within 24 hours after he assumed office, Merz said it would be best to cooperate with the US.

He was eager however, to hear the plans from the horse’s mouth: “we do not yet know what they are really planning to do. I would like to see what they are planning to do”.

Crucially for Merz, he may not have to wait much longer.

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