GHF head meets UN aid orgs. for first time as UN's Albanese asks for GHF dismantlement
Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) head Rev. Johnnie Moore met with leaders of UN aid organizations on Wednesday, according to a Thursday report by Axios, citing a US official and two other sources with direct knowledge of the matter.
This is the first reported meeting between Moore and the UN aid organizations since GHF began its humanitarian aid operations in the Gaza Strip, and it comes after a group of UN experts called for the dismantlement of the foundation.
The statement, led by UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, 'expressed concerns over the GHF's operations,' and said that 'Palestinians are paying the ultimate price of the international community's legal, political and moral failure.'
'The GHF, a non-governmental organisation created by Israel in February 2025, with US support, to allegedly distribute aid in Gaza, is an utterly disturbing example of how humanitarian relief can be exploited for covert military and geopolitical agendas in serious breach of international law,' said the statement.
'The entanglement of Israeli intelligence, US contractors, and ambiguous non-governmental entities underlines the urgent need for robust international oversight and action under UN auspices.'
Albanese sanctioned by the US over 'political, economic warfare' against Israel
These statements come as Albanese faces sanctions by the US because of her stance over Israel, with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio criticizing her efforts to have the International Criminal Court take action against US and Israeli officials, companies, and executives.
'Albanese's campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel will no longer be tolerated,' Rubio said Wednesday in a post on X/Twitter.
'We will always stand by our partners in their right to self-defense,' he wrote. 'The United States will continue to take whatever actions we deem necessary to respond to lawfare and protect our sovereignty and that of our allies.'
Solve the daily Crossword
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Los Angeles Times
2 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
‘A continual assault.' How UCLA's research faculty is grappling with Trump funding freeze
Their medical research focuses on potentially lifesaving breakthroughs in cancer treatment, and developing tools to more easily diagnose debilitating diseases. Their studies in mathematics could make online systems more robust and secure. But as the academic year opens, the work of UCLA's professors in these and many other fields has been imperiled by the Trump administration's suspension of $584 million in grant funding, which University of California President James B. Milliken called a 'death knell' to its transformative research. The freeze came after a July 29 U.S. Department of Justice finding that the university had violated the civil rights of Jewish and Israeli students by providing an inadequate response to alleged antisemitism they faced after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. The fight over the funding stoppage intensified Friday after the Trump administration demanded that UCLA pay a $1-billion fine, among other concessions, to resolve the accusations — and California Gov. Gavin Newsom said the state will sue, calling the proposal 'extortion.' Amid heightened tensions in Westwood, thousands of university academics are in limbo. In total, at least 800 grants, mostly from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, have been frozen. UCLA scholars described days of confusion as they struggle to understand how the loss of grants would affect their work and scramble to uncover new funding sources — or roles that would ensure their continued pay, or that of their colleagues. While professors still have jobs and paychecks to draw on, many others, including graduate students, rely on grant funding for their salaries, tuition and healthcare. At least for the moment, though, several academics told The Times that their work had not yet be interrupted. So far, no layoffs have been announced. Sydney Campbell, a pancreatic cancer researcher and postdoctoral scholar at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine, said her work — which aims to understand how diet affects the disease — is continuing for now. She has an independent fellowship that 'hopefully will protect the majority of my salary.' But others, she said, don't have that luxury. 'It is absolutely going to affect people's livelihoods. I already know of people ... with families who are having to take pay cuts almost immediately,' said Campbell, who works for a lab that has lost two National Institutes of Health grants, including one that funds her research. Pancreatic cancer is among the most deadly of cancers, but Campbell's work could lead to a better understanding of it, paving the way for more robust prophylactic programs — and treatment plans — that may ultimately help tame the scourge. 'Understanding how diet can impact cancer development could lead to preventive strategies that we can recommend to patients in the future,' she said. 'Right now we can't effectively do that because we don't have the information about the underlying biology. Our studies will help us actually be able to make recommendations based on science.' Campbell's work — and that of many others at UCLA — is potentially groundbreaking. But it could soon be put on hold. 'We have people who don't know if they're going to be able to purchase experimental materials for the rest of the month,' she said. For some, the cuts have triggered something close to an existential crisis. After professor Dino Di Carlo, chair of the UCLA Samueli Bioengineering Department, learned about 20 grants were suspended there — including four in his lab worth about $1 million — he felt a profound sadness. He said he doesn't know why his grants were frozen, and there may not be money to pay his six researchers. So Di Carlo, who is researching diagnostics for Lyme and other tick-borne diseases, took to LinkedIn, where he penned a post invoking the Franz Kafka novel 'The Trial.' The unsettling tale is about a man named Josef K. who wakes up and finds himself under arrest and then on trial — with no understanding of the situation. 'Like Josef K., the people actually affected — the public, young scientists, patients waiting for better treatments and diagnostic tools — are left asking: What crime did we commit?' wrote Di Carlo. 'They are being judged by a system that no longer explains itself.' The LinkedIn post quickly attracted dozens of comments and more than 1,000 other responses. Di Carlo, who has been working to find jobs for researchers who depend on paychecks that come from now-suspended grants, said he appreciated the support. But, goodwill has its limits. 'It doesn't pay the rent for a student this month,' he said. Di Carlo's research is partly focused on developing an at-home test that would detect Lyme and other tick-borne diseases, which are on the rise. Because no such product is currently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, he said, people who've experienced a tick bite have to wait for lab results to confirm their infection. 'This delay in diagnosis prevents timely treatment, allowing the disease to progress and potentially lead to long-term health issues,' he said. 'A rapid, point-of-care test would allow individuals to receive immediate results, enabling early treatment with antibiotics when the disease is most easily addressed, significantly reducing the risk of chronic symptoms and improving health outcomes.' Di Carlo lamented what he called 'a continual assault on the scientific community' by the Trump administration, which has canceled billions of dollars in National Institutes of Health funding for universities across the country. It 'just ... hasn't let up,' Di Carlo said. Some professors who've lost grants have spent long hours scrambling to secure new sources of funding. Di Carlo said he was in meetings all week to identity which researchers are affected by the cuts, and to try to figure out, 'Can we support those students?' He has also sought to determine whether some could be moved to other projects that still have funding, or be given teaching assistant positions, among other options. He's not alone in those efforts. Mathematics professor Terence Tao also has lost a grant worth about $750,000. But Tao said that he was more distressed by the freezing of a $25-million grant for UCLA's Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics. The funding loss for the institute, where Tao is director of special projects, is 'actually quite existential,' he said, because the grant is 'needed to fund operations' there. Tao, who is the James and Carol Collins chair in the College of Letters and Sciences, said the pain goes beyond the loss of funds. 'The abruptness — and basically the lack of due process in general — just compounds the damage,' said Tao. 'We got no notice.' A luminary in his field, Tao conducts research that examines, in part, whether a group of numbers are random or structured. His work could lead to advances in cryptography that may eventually make online systems — such as those used for financial transactions — more secure. 'It is important to do this kind of research — if we don't, it's possible that an adversary, for example, could actually discover these weaknesses that we are not looking for at all,' Tao said. 'So you do need this extra theoretical confirmation that things that you think are working actually do work as intended, [and you need to] also explore the negative space of what doesn't work.' Tao said he's been heartened by donations that the mathematics institute has received from private donors in recent days — about $100,000 so far. 'We are scrambling for short-term funding because we need to just keep the lights on for the next few months,' said Tao. Rafael Jaime, president of United Auto Workers Local 4811, which represents 48,000 academic workers within the University of California — including about 8,000 at UCLA — said he was not aware of any workers who haven't been paid so far, but that the issue could come to a head at the end of August. He said that the UC system 'should do everything that it can to ensure that workers aren't left without pay.' A major stressor for academics: the uncertainty. Some researchers whose grants were suspended said they have not received much guidance from UCLA on a path forward. Some of that anxiety was vented on Zoom calls last week, including a UCLA-wide call attended by about 3,000 faculty members. UCLA administrators said they are exploring stopgap options, including potential emergency 'bridge' funding to grantees to pay researchers or keep up labs such as those that use rodents as subjects. Some UCLA academics worried about a brain drain. Di Carlo said that undergraduate students he advises have begun asking for his advice on relocating to universities abroad for graduate school. 'This has been the first time that I've seen undergraduate students that have asked about foreign universities for their graduate studies,' he said. 'I hear, 'What about Switzerland? ... What about University of Tokyo?' This assault on science is making the students think that this is not the place for them.' But arguably researchers' most pressing concern is continuing their work. Campbell explained that she has personally been affected by pancreatic cancer — she lost someone close to her to it. She and her peers do the research 'for the families' who've also been touched by the disease. 'That the work that's already in progress has the chance of being stopped in some way is really disappointing,' she said. 'Not just for me, but for all those patients I could potentially help.'
New York Times
2 hours ago
- New York Times
Trump Nominates Tammy Bruce for U.N. Role
President Trump said on Saturday that he was nominating Tammy Bruce, a spokeswoman for the State Department, as the next deputy representative of the United States to the United Nations. Mr. Trump said on Truth Social that Ms. Bruce had done a 'fantastic job' in her State Department role and that she would 'represent our Country brilliantly at the United Nations.' Ms. Bruce has served as the State Department's spokeswoman since January and has conducted regular press briefings on U.S. foreign policy. She has defended the Trump administration's response to Israel's war in Gaza, as well as its decisions to withdraw from UNESCO, the U.N. cultural agency, and to freeze nearly all U.S. foreign aid funded by the United States Agency for International Development and the State Department. 'I'm blessed that in the next few weeks my commitment to advancing America First leadership and values continues on the global stage in this new post,' Ms. Bruce said on X after the announcement. Ms. Bruce was a political commentator and a contributor to Fox News for more than 20 years before joining the Trump administration. She had been a longtime organizer for the Democratic Party before breaking away to 'expose and help defeat the leftist agenda,' according to her website. She has written several books criticizing the American left. Her nomination for the role, which requires Senate confirmation, comes weeks after the confirmation hearing of Michael Waltz, Mr. Trump's former national security adviser, to serve as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Mr. Trump nominated Mr. Waltz in May after Mr. Waltz stepped down from the national security role, where he faced intense scrutiny earlier this year for a group chat on Signal in which senior officials discussed sensitive details of a military operation in Yemen. His nomination is still awaiting Senate confirmation.
Los Angeles Times
8 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
London police arrest 365 people as pro-Palestinian protesters defy new law
LONDON — British police said they arrested 365 people in central London on Saturday as supporters of a recently banned pro-Palestinian group flouted the law as part of an effort to force the government to reconsider the prohibition. Parliament in early July passed a law banning Palestine Action and making it a crime to publicly support the organization. That came after activists broke into a Royal Air Force base and vandalized two tanker planes to protest Britain's support for Israel's offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Backers of the group, who have held a series of protests around the U.K. in the last month, argue that the law illegally restricts freedom of expression. More than 500 protesters filled the square outside the Houses of Parliament on Saturday, many daring police to arrest them by displaying signs reading, 'I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.' That was enough for police to step in. As the demonstration began to wind down, police and protest organizers disagreed over the number of arrests, as the organizers sought to show that the law was unworkable. 'The police have only been able to arrest a fraction of those supposedly committing 'terrorism' offenses, and most of those have been given street bail and allowed to go home,' Defend Our Juries, which organized the protest, said in a statement. 'This is a major embarrassment to [the government], further undermining the credibility of this widely ridiculed law, brought in to punish those exposing the government's own crimes.' London's Metropolitan Police Service rejected that assertion, saying that many of those gathered in the square were onlookers, media members or people who didn't hold placards supporting the group. 'We are confident that anyone who came to Parliament Square today to hold a placard expressing support for Palestine Action was either arrested or is in the process of being arrested,' the police force said in a statement. On Friday, police said the demonstration was unusual in that the protesters wanted to be arrested in large numbers to place a strain on police and the criminal justice system. The government moved to ban Palestine Action after the activists broke into a British air force base in southern England on June 20 to protest British military support for Israel's war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The activists sprayed red paint into the engines of two tanker planes at the RAF Brize Norton base in Oxfordshire and caused further damage with crowbars. Palestine Action had previously targeted Israeli defense contractors and other sites in the United Kingdom that they believe have links with the Israeli military. Supporters of the group are challenging the ban in court, saying the government has gone too far in declaring Palestine Action a terrorist organization. 'Once the meaning of 'terrorism' is separated from campaigns of violence against a civilian population, and extended to include those causing economic damage or embarrassment to the rich, the powerful and the criminal, then the right to freedom of expression has no meaning and democracy is dead,' Defend Our Juries said on its website. The arrests outside Parliament came amid what is expected to be a busy weekend of demonstrations in London as the war in Gaza and concerns about immigration stoke protests and counterprotests across the United Kingdom. Though Prime Minister Keir Starmer has angered Israel with plans to recognize a Palestinian state later this year, many Palestinian supporters in Britain criticize the government for not doing enough to end the war in Gaza. Pro-Palestinian protesters gathered Saturday afternoon in central London for a march that ended outside the gates of No. 10 Downing St., the prime minister's official residence and offices. On Sunday, a number of groups are scheduled to march through central London to demand the safe release of the Israeli hostages in Gaza. Palestinian militants have held the captives since Hamas-led attackers surged into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 hostage. There are 50 remaining hostages, with 20 of them thought to be alive. Israel's retaliatory attack in Gaza has killed more than 61,000 Palestinians, according to the territory's Health Ministry, which doesn't distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count but says more than half are women and children. Police are also preparing for protests outside hotels across the U.K. that are being used to house asylum seekers. Protesters and counterprotesters have squared off outside the hotels in recent weeks, with some saying the migrants pose a risk to their communities and others decrying what they see as anti-immigrant racism. Deputy Assistant Commissioner Ade Adelekan said the scale of the events would 'put pressure' on the police department. 'This is going to be a particularly busy few days in London with many simultaneous protests and events that will require a significant policing presence,' Adelekan said before the protests began. Kirka writes for the Associated Press.
