🇺🇸 President Trump meets Ukraine's Zelensky at World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland [LIVE]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qqg7bmRw8w
mornin yo
https://www.npr.org/2026/01/20/g-s1-106126/trump-world-health-organization-withdrawal
The divorce between the U.S. and WHO is final this week. Or is it?
WHO officials note that there are two requirements to leaving. The first is that one-year notice. That would set the date for U.S. withdrawal as Jan. 22, a year after WHO officials were notified.
The other criteria is the potential problem. In order to leave, the U.S. has to pay all the dues it owes. And that's a lot of money: $278 million for the 2024-2025 period.
The U.S. has not paid up and doesn't plan to. "The United States will not be making any payments to the WHO before our withdrawal," the State Department told NPR in a statement. "The cost born by the U.S. taxpayer and U.S. economy after the WHO's failure during the Covid pandemic — and since — has been too high as it is."
"This is a very, very public and messy divorce," says Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University and the director of WHO's Center on National and Global Health Law. "The man says, 'No, I'm not going to pay you any money, and we're no longer married.' And the woman says, 'No, you can't not be married unless you pay me.'"
The stakes of this high-profile breakup are huge. They could shape the health of both Americans and those around the world for years to come. Here's how it could play out.
Promise ring or not, the U.S. is out
The World Health Organization has 194 member nations. Officially, none of them can pull out of WHO. That's according to its constitution, which has no clause that allows for withdrawal.
"This was not an oversight. It was very deliberate," says Steven Solomon, WHO's principal legal officer. "The drafters understood the historic struggles against the international spread of disease, and they saw how a truly universal organization would make the world safer. So they did not include a withdrawal clause."
But there is one exception to this "no quitting" rule.
In 1948, as the U.S. joined through a joint resolution of Congress, it made an arrangement "reserving for itself, alone among countries, the right to withdraw," explains Solomon.
Even with that exception, there is the matter of dues. Gostin says leaving without paying up is "unlawful."
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/withdrawing-the-united-states-from-the-worldhealth-organization/
year is nearly up
deed is done
>>24157423
P=Piss off VD
US President Donald Trump says he has had "very good talks" with Ukraine's leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, after his envoy Steve Witkoff expressed optimism about finalising a deal to end the war in Ukraine.
The talks between the two leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, lasted about an hour and Trump later said that "the meeting was good".
Witkoff is due to meet Russia's Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin later on Thursday, and Trump told reporters that "everyone wants to have the war end".
"I think we've got it down to one issue and we have discussed iterations of that issue, and that means it's solvable," he said before flying to Moscow with Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.
He gave no details about the remaining sticking point but recent talks have focused on the future status of Ukraine's industrial heartland in Donbas, with a proposal for a demilitarised and free economic zone in exchange for security guarantees for Kyiv.
"If both sides want to solve this, we're going to get it solved," Witkoff said.
The Ukrainian president travelled through the night to get to Davos on Thursday.
He had initially called off his trip to deal with the aftermath of Russian strikes on Kyiv's power infrastructure which have left large areas of the capital without heating, water or power during the harshest winter so far in almost four years of Russia's full-scale war. Thousands of apartment blocks remain without heating.
There has been concern in Kyiv that Trump's spat with his European Nato allies over the future of Greenland has deflected him from the war in Ukraine.
Zelensky said after talks with Trump in Miami late last month that a 20-point US plan to end the war was 90% ready and that Ukraine's position on Donbas, in eastern Ukraine, was different to Russia's.
The 'thorny' issues that threaten to derail a Russia-Ukraine peace deal
Under fire from the sea, families in Odesa try to escape Russian barrage
Ukraine's parliament and half of Kyiv with no heating after Russian strikes
Specifically, Zelensky has offered to withdraw troops from the 25% of Donetsk region that Ukraine still controls by up to 40km (25 miles), to create an economic zone, if Russia does the same. Russian forces have advanced slowly in the east in the past year and Putin is known to covet control of the entire region.
The other big sticking point that Zelensky highlighted last month was future control of Ukraine's enormous Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, seized by Russia in March 2022.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday that discussion with the American envoys would continue "on the Ukrainian issue and other related topics" and refused to say whether he shared Witkoff's optimism on achieving a deal.
Putin has also not yet decided whether to join Trump's Board of Peace on Gaza.
Ukraine's president had hoped to sign two key documents with Trump at Davos covering future security guarantees as well as economic prosperity, but said there was "one mile left to finalise these documents".
It is not yet clear if any signings will take place during their meeting at the World Economic Forum.
However, the head of Ukraine's national security and defence council, Rustem Umerov, said on Wednesday night that his team in Davos had discussed the issues of economic development, post-war recovery and security guarantees with their US counterparts.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g44r22j5jo
don't we all feel better now
she is arrested
it's over
JFC
until out on bail, appeals
it's never over
she gone, another takes her place
generations of DEI assure this will never end
wakey wakey
Fuck that!
The point was changing the fed gov't system is the only way to stop it and arrests are empty promise of justice for we the people