Free Republic

The U.N. population agency chief said Wednesday she regrets the U.S. government’s decision to cut funding for programs that help ensure safe pregnancies worldwide. The United States used to provide about $70 million per year toward UNFPA programs to protect the health and lives of women and girls in developing countries. More than half of those funds were used for “life-saving humanitarian programs,” said Dr. Natalia Kanem, the agency’s executive director. The Trump administration announced in 2017 it was cutting all funding to the agency. The move was seen as a gesture to American conservatives and anti-abortion activists, though UNFPA...

(Reuters) - German Development Minister Gerd Mueller accused Qatar on Wednesday of financing Islamic State militants who have seized wide areas of northern Iraq and have posted a video of a captive American journalist being beheaded. "This kind of conflict, this kind of a crisis always has a history ... The ISIS troops, the weapons - these are lost sons, with some of them from Iraq," Mueller told German public broadcaster ZDF. "You have to ask who is arming, who is financing ISIS troops. The keyword there is Qatar - and how do we deal with these people and states...