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The U.S. is sending helmets, sleeping bags and generators to support the Ukrainian military -- but stopped short of approving other items the interim government reportedly says it needs to stand up to the might of Moscow, saber-rattling on its doorstep. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced Thursday that the U.S. will send the additional non-lethal military aid. The additional aid was announced as fighting between Ukraine's military and pro-Russian factions intensified in the eastern part of the country. Hagel, speaking at a press conference at the Pentagon with his Polish counterpart, said the approved aid would include medical supplies, helmets,...

A look at the latest education news seems to show that academia’s left hand doesn’t know what its far left hand is doing. From the Chronicle of Higher Education we learn that “As students confront rising college costs and a labyrinthine financial-aid process, some are turning to crowdfunding websites like Go-FundMe to cover their expenses.” “While the approach is still novel and hardly widespread, financial-aid officials say, enthusiasm for online campaigns is very much a reflection of the times,” Libby Sander wrote in the Chronicle. “Students are frustrated with the aid process, eager to avoid student-loan debt, and worried over...

For only ten dollars a day or a month you can feed all the starving children in Africa. For only the price of a cup of coffee a year, you can make sure that no one in Kansas City ever goes hungry again. For just a third of your paycheck, you can subsidize a vast bureaucracy that will conduct studies on the best way to save the world and then come up with proposals that will only cost you half your paycheck. This misplaced philanthropic confidence is the idiot stepchild of a free enterprise society where anything can be accomplished...

With billions of dollars in American aid increasingly flowing straight into Afghan government coffers, the United States hired two global auditing firms three years ago to determine whether Afghanistan could be trusted to safeguard the money. The findings were so dire that American officials fought to keep them private. But the money has continued to flow, despite warnings from the auditors that none of the 16 Afghan ministries could be counted on to keep the funds from being stolen or wasted. The problems unearthed by the auditors are detailed in a report to be published Thursday by the Special Inspector...

In May 2009, a small experiment involving 13 homeless men took off in London. Some of them had slept in the cold for more than 40 years. The presence of these street veterans was far from cheap. Police, legal services, health care: Each cost taxpayers thousands of pounds every year. That spring, a local charity decided to make the street veterans — sometimes called rough sleepers — the beneficiaries of an innovative social experiment. No more food stamps, food-kitchen dinners or sporadic shelter stays. The 13 would get a drastic bailout, financed by taxpayers. Each would receive 3,000 pounds (about...

Barack Obama, right, is dressed as a Somali elder by Sheikh Mahmed Hassan Somalia has about 1,000 surviving Christians. And that’s a challenge in a country where everyone is either in an Islamic militia or trying to move to the United States to sponge off welfare and plot terrorist bombings.In 2009, four Christian orphanage workers were beheaded for refusing to convert to Islam. Now Somalia has gotten enough of its act together to ban Christmas. The Somali Government has banned celebration of Christian festivities in the country.The Director General of the ministry, Sheikh Mohamed Khayrow Aden, and the Director...

The European Union on Monday pledged "unprecedented" levels of support to both Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the event that the two parties reach a final status agreement which would include the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state in Judea and Samaria, along with the ethnic-cleansing of at least 100,000 Jews in communities throughout the region. Commending US Secretary of State John Kerry for his efforts in launching direct talks between the two, EU foreign ministers said the 28-nation bloc would "contribute substantially" to post-conflict arrangements to ensure the sustainability of a peace deal. "The EU will provide an...

The number of people seeking U.S. unemployment benefits rose 68,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 368,000, the largest increase in more than a year. The surge in first-time applications could be a troubling sign if it lasts. But it likely reflects the difficulty adjusting for delays after the Thanksgiving holiday. Economists will track the next few weeks closely to see if that trend is reversing, or if the surge is a temporary blip caused by seasonal adjustments. The recent drop in layoffs has coincided with a pickup in hiring. The economy has added an average of 204,000 jobs a...

The desire of distant outsiders to fix Africa may be heartfelt, but it is also age-old and even quaint. Curiously repetitive in nature, renewed and revised every decade or so, it is an impulse Charles Dickens described, in a wickedly accurate phrase, as "telescopic philanthropy." That is, a focus from afar to uplift the continent: New York squinting compassionately at Nairobi. Never have so many people, so many agencies, so many stratagems, so much money been deployed to improve Africa -- and yet the majority of the movers are part-timers, merely dropping in, setting up a scheme in the much-mocked...

US Secretary of State John Kerry says the United States will provide an additional $75 million (£46 million) in aid to create Palestinian jobs and help them improve roads, schools and other infrastructure. US officials say the aid is designed to boost Palestinian public support for faltering peace talks with Israel by showing them tangible benefits from the process. Kerry announced the aid in Bethlehem, where he is meeting Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. Kerry earlier met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem. The new aid brings the US contribution to a Palestinian infrastructure programme to $100 million (£62...

U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday urged the White House to lift its suspension of military aid to Egypt, AFP reports. The lawmakers warned that freezing funds and weapons deliveries might unravel decades of cooperation with a key regional ally. Democratic Representative Eliot Engel, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he had initially supported a temporary halt to deliveries of F-16 aircraft to the Egyptian military following its ouster of President Mohammed Morsi in July. “But today I do not believe that suspending the military aid will make the Egyptian government more democratic or make it easier for the...

The United States will cut off aid to Egypt in the wake of the July coup against President Mohammed Morsi and the turmoil that has followed, a U.S. official told CNN on Tuesday. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the full suspension has been prompted by an “accumulation of events,” including recent violence against protesters, dozens of whom were killed over the weekend. The suspension will formally take effect in the coming days, the official said. …

The US federal government shutdown could have direct repercussions on the transfer of US aid to Israel, US State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf told The Jerusalem Post Wednesday. "The impact of the shutdown could threaten our ability to provide foreign military financing to Israel and other important allies," Harf said. (Snip) In 2007, the two countries agreed on a 10-year, $30-billion military aid package covering the 2009-18 fiscal years. Total US foreign military funding was about $5.5 billion for more than 80 countries in 2011, according to State Department data. Harf said the State Department had not had to

According to USAID (United States Agency For International Development), the federal agency in charge of distributing the vast majority of foreign aid monies to other countries, United States taxpayers have paid for over one billion dollars in foreign aid packages to help support the “Syrian Humanitarian Response." Despite the threat of continued chemical attacks against the Syrian people that has served as the focal point of rallying cries for advocates of US military intervention (including the Obama administration), The Daily Beast reported that gas masks were not among the items

The U.S. government has decided privately to act as if the military takeover of Egypt was a coup. After asserting this was not a coup has now decided to go with a temporarily press blitz attributing the spontaneous De-Morsification is connected directly to earlier ant-imam, video and California pure pork sausage sponsor, according to this leading U.S. senator. “The decision was we’re going to avoid saying it was a Coup, Embassy attack, Muslim fanatic rampage, Gun running grab, but to stay on the safe side of the law, we are going to act as if the , designation has been...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republicans in the Senate want to make sure the federal government does not become involved in the financial maelstrom hitting Detroit, which filed for the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history last week. They have proposed at least three "No Bailout" amendments to spending bills that the Senate is currently considering, all of which would limit the U.S. government's ability to help cities in fiscal crisis. Even though the amendments will likely fail in the Democrat-dominated chamber, cities and counties are alarmed by legislation they say could jeopardize funding for hundreds of local governments and are pushing...

This article has been updated to reflect new developments. It was first published on Jan. 31, 2011. The recent military coup in Egypt has prompted a renewed debate about American aid to the country. Sens. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, and Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, have both called for cutting off aid, while the White House has said it's in no hurry to end the aid. We've taken a step back and tried to answer some basic questions, including how much the U.S. is giving Egypt, what's changed in the two years since the Arab Spring and who is...

In a sharp escalation of the U.S. role in Syria's bloody civil war, the White House announced late Thursday that it will provide military aid to rebels fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad after confirming that his government used chemical weapons on the opposition. Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes told reporters on a conference call that President Barack Obama had heard pleas from Syria's rebel Supreme Military Council (SMC) for more help. "Our aim is to be responsive," Rhodes said, underlining that the new assistance would have "direct military purposes."

London - The claim was made by the Israeli liberal newspaper “Haaretz” citing a report of the British Government’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills which oversees security exports. Israel is reported to have exported to Pakistan a range of military equipment purchased from Britain, but Islamabad denied the claim with a spokesman for the Directorate of Inter-Services Public Relations describing it as “baseless”. “The report is misleading and not based on facts,” he said. The claim was made by the Israeli liberal newspaper Haaretz citing a report of the British Government’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) which...

Secretary of State John Kerry last month secretly sent $1.3 billion in U.S. military aid to Muslim Brotherhood-controlled Egypt, waiving the restrictions put in place by Congress to withhold such aid unless the country could meet certain democracy standards. “Under U.S. law, for the $1.3 billion to flow the secretary of state must certify that the Egyptian government ‘is supporting the transition to civilian government, including holding free and fair elections, implementing policies to protect freedom of expression, association and religion, and due process of law’,” Reuters reports. Kerry’s quiet decision came before an Egyptian court this week sentenced 43...