Category World News

United States President Donald Trump’s administration has directed that all federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) staff be put on paid leave and eventually be laid off, as the Republican leader takes aim at initiatives meant to address systemic racism.

An Office of Personnel Management memo, first reported by CBS News, directed agencies to place DEI office staffers on paid leave by 5pm (22:00 GMT) on Wednesday and take down all public DEI-focused webpages by the same deadline.

Agencies must also cancel any DEI-related training and end any related contracts, and federal workers are being asked to report to the office if they suspect any DEI-related programme has been renamed to obfuscate its purpose within 10 days – or face “adverse consequences”.

By Thursday, federal agencies have been directed to compile a list of federal DEI offices and workers as of Election Day in November. They also are expected to develop a plan to execute a “reduction-in-force action” against those federal workers by next Friday.

The moves follow an executive order Trump signed on his first day in office this week ordering a sweeping dismantling of the federal government’s DEI programmes, which could touch on everything from anti-bias training to funding for minority farmers and homeowners.

Trump has called the programmes “discrimination” and insisted on restoring what he describes as strictly “merit-based” hiring.

But civil rights advocates have argued that DEI programmes are necessary to address longstanding inequities and structural racism.

Basil Smikle Jr, a political strategist and policy adviser, said he was troubled by the Trump administration’s assertion that diversity programmes were “diminishing the importance of individual merit, aptitude, hard work, and determination” because it suggested women and people of colour lacked merit or qualifications.

“There’s this clear effort to hinder, if not erode, the political and economic power of people of colour and women,” Smikle said.

“What it does is open up the door for more cronyism,” he said.

Trump’s anti-DEI push picks up where his first administration left off.

One of Trump’s final acts during his first term in 2017-2021 was an executive order banning federal agency contractors and recipients of federal funding from conducting anti-bias training that addressed concepts like systemic racism.

His successor, Democrat and former US President Joe Biden, promptly rescinded that order on his first day in office and issued a pair of executive orders — now rescinded — outlining a plan to promote DEI throughout the federal government.

While many changes may take months or even years to implement, Trump’s new anti-DEI agenda is more aggressive than his first and comes amid far more amenable terrain in the corporate world.

More than one million people have fled the war in Sudan to seek refuge in neighbouring South Sudan, according to the United Nations.

In its latest update on one of the world’s worst displacement crises, the UN issued new data on Tuesday showing that more than 770,000 people have fled through the Joda crossing on South Sudan’s northern border with Sudan in the last 21 months.

Tens of thousands more have crossed the border at other points, bringing the total to have fled to South Sudan since the war between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) erupted in April 2023 to more than a million, according to the statement issued by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

“The arrival of over a million people into South Sudan is a stark and sobering statistic and truly shows the increasing scale of this crisis,” the UNHCR’s Sanaa Abdalla Omer said.

Most crossing the border are South Sudanese nationals who had previously fled from civil war in the world’s newest country, the statement noted.

“The people of South Sudan continue to show extraordinary generosity, welcoming those in need and sharing what little resources they have, but they cannot shoulder this massive responsibility alone,” Omer added.

Two transit centres in Renk County on South Sudan’s northern border, which have been designed for fewer than 5,000 people, are now hosting more than 16,000.

The UN has called for more support for both displaced people and the communities hosting them, warning that resources in South Sudan such as healthcare, water and shelter had become “dangerously overstretched”.

Famine

The war continues to rage as its second anniversary approaches, with the RSF and SAF accusing each other of war crimes, including targeting civilians and indiscriminately shelling residential areas, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of people.

At least 20,000 people have been killed and some 25 million – half of the country’s population – are suffering from severe hunger and in urgent need of humanitarian aid.

Last month, the UN-backed global hunger-monitoring group, the Famine Review Committee of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) published a report outlining famine in five areas, including in Sudan’s largest displacement camp, Zamzam, in North Darfur province.

Famine conditions were confirmed in Abu Shouk and al-Salam, two camps for internally displaced people in el-Fasher, the besieged capital of North Darfur in western Sudan, as well as in residential and displaced communities in the Nuba Mountains in southern Sudan, according to the report.

Panama and China have pushed back against United States President Donald Trump’s controversial claims regarding the Panama Canal.

The Panama Canal “was not a gift” from the US, Panama’s President Jose Raul Mulino said on Wednesday in response to Trump’s threat to seize control of the strategic waterway. Beijing, meanwhile, rejected the US president’s assertion that it is effectively in control of the canal.

“We reject in its entirety everything that Mr Trump has said,” Mulino said during a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “First because it is false and second because the Panama Canal belongs to Panama and will continue to belong to Panama. The Panama Canal was not a concession or a gift from the United States. ”

Trump has previously refused to rule out military action to take control of the canal, which the US opened in 1914 to provide a trade route linking its east and west coasts but handed to Panama in 1999.

During his inauguration on Monday, the US president repeated his complaint that China was effectively “operating” the canal, which was “foolishly given to Panama,” thanks to a growing presence around the waterway,

“We didn’t give it to China, we gave it to Panama. And we’re taking it back,” Trump declared.

‘Never interfered’

Panama City on Tuesday made a formal complaint to the United Nations, referring to an article of the UN Charter precluding any member from “the threat or use of force” against the territorial integrity or political independence of another.

In a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, it requested that the UN Security Council – on which the US has a veto – take up the matter.

On Wednesday, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing said, “China does not participate in the management and operation of the canal and has never interfered in the affairs of the canal. ”

Mulino has previously denied that any nation interferes with the Panama Canal, saying that it operates on a principle of neutrality.

However, Panama has announced that it now plans an audit of the canal and the Panama Ports Company, a subsidiary of Hong Kong-based conglomerate CK Hutchison Holdings that operates the ports of Balboa and Cristobal on either end of the canal.