US ends aid to Palestinian refugee agency
Washington, Sep 1 : The US is ending all funding for the UN's Palestinian refugee agency, the UN Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa), describing it as "irredeemably flawed", a State Department official said.
The US administration has "carefully reviewed" the issue and "will not make additional contributions to Unrwa," the BBC quoted spokeswoman Heather Nauert as saying on Friday.
A spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas later said the move was an "flagrant assault" against his people.
"Such a punishment will not succeed to change the fact that the US no longer has a role in the region and that it is not a part of the solution," Nabil Abu Rudeina was quoted as saying by the Times of Israel.
He added that the decision was in "defiance of UN resolutions".
"We reject in the strongest possible terms the criticism that Unrwa's schools, health centres, and emergency assistance programs are 'irredeemably flawed'," Unrwa spokesman Chris Gunness tweeted.
The latest move comes after the US announced back in January that it would withhold more than half of a tranche of funding for the agency, the BBC reported.
Unrwa was originally set up to take care of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced by the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. It supports more than five million people across the Middle East.
The US has been the largest single donor to Unrwa, providing $368 million in 2016 and funding almost 30 per cent of its operations in the region.
The Donald Trump administration had pledged $60 million to Unrwa in January, but withheld another $65 million pending a review. That remaining payment is now expected to be cancelled.
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Man arrested with Rs 2.54-crore heroin in Mumbai
Mumbai (PTI): Police have arrested a man and seized over 500 grams of heroin worth Rs 2.54 crore in the illicit market from him in Mumbai, officials said on Friday.
The police's Anti-Narcotics Cell (ANC) made the drug seizure in Santacruz in the western suburbs. The operation was conducted by the Kandivali unit of the ANC on Thursday as part of a special crackdown against drug trafficking in the area, they said.
Acting on specific inputs, an ANC team conducted a raid in Santacruz (East) and intercepted a man. During a search, the team recovered 508 grams of high-grade heroin from his possession, an official said.
The seized contraband, a highly addictive, opioid drug derived from morphine, is estimated to be worth Rs 2.54 crore in the international market, he informed.
Following the seizure, a case was registered against the man under relevant sections of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985, and he was formally placed under arrest in the early hours of Friday.
The police are currently investigating the source of the drug and trying to identify the intended recipients of the consignment, he said.
