WASHINGTON (The Hill/Xinhua) – Former U.S. secretary of state Mike Pompeo, who’s weighing a 2024 presidential run, took a swipe at his former boss over adding nearly $8 trillion to the national debt. “I stare today at $31 trillion in debt and tell my son, ‘Make sure you work hard, because Social Security may just not be there for you,’” Pompeo said during the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. “Every recent administration, Republican and Democrat alike, added trillions in dollars to our debt. That is deeply unconservative. (The) Trump administration, the administration I served, added $8 trillion in new debt. This is indecent and can’t continue. Earning back that trust will be hard work, it won’t just be a campaign speech,” he continued. Under the Trump administration, the U.S. saw a nearly $7.8 trillion rise in the country’s national debt, according to The Washington Post. A U.S. civil rights organization also reported Thursday that skyrocketing student debt is crushing the American Dream and driving the racial wealth gap in the United States. The growing student loan debt is widening racial wealth gap and will in turn stall economic growth, said National Urban League in a report on its website. Graduates in debt often settle for lower-paying, lower-skill jobs to start paying their loans right away, and this is even truer for borrowers of color, said the report.

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NEW YORK (AP) – Increasingly sophisticated weapons are being trafficked into Haiti mainly from the United States and especially from Florida amid worsening lawlessness in the impoverished Caribbean nation, according to a UN report. The report by the Vienna-based Office on Drugs and Crime said a network of criminal actors including members of the Haitian diaspora “often source firearms from across the U.S.” and smuggle them into Haiti illegally by land from the neighboring Dominican Republic, by air including to clandestine airstrips, but most frequently by sea. “Popular handguns selling for $400-$500 at federally licensed firearms outlets or private gun shows in the U.S. can be resold for as much as $10,000 in Haiti,” the report said. “Higher-powered rifles such as AK47s, AR15s and Galils are typically in higher demand from gangs, commanding correspondingly higher prices,” it added. The UN report added private security companies in Haiti are permitted to buy and keep arms, and while independent verification isn’t possible “specialists speculate that there could be 75,000 to 90,000 individuals working with roughly 100 private security companies across the country, at least five times the number of registered police officers”.

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NEW YORK (RT) – The WHO urged the U.S. and other countries to share information about the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, warning against unsubstantiated speculation and “politicization” of the issue after Washington claimed the pathogen “likely” leaked from a Chinese laboratory. WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus spoke at length about the need to identify the ultimate starting point for the global health crisis during a media briefing, calling it a “scientific” and “moral imperative.” “If any country has information about the origins of the pandemic, it’s essential for that information to be shared with WHO and the international scientific community,” he said, noting he had been in touch with Chinese officials on the matter as recently as a few weeks ago. The agency’s Covid-19 technical lead – Maria Van Kerkhove, an infectious disease epidemiologist – also stated that the WHO had reached out to Washington’s embassy in Switzerland for more information on Covid’s origins, after FBI Director Christopher Wray claimed the virus “most likely” escaped from a Chinese lab in comments to Fox earlier this week, citing a bureau assessment that has not been made public. “It remains vital that that information is shared,” she said, adding that the U.S. has so far not offered access to its data.

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MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia’s ruptured undersea Nord Stream gas pipelines are set to be sealed up and mothballed as there are no immediate plans to repair or reactivate them, sources familiar with the plans have told Reuters. Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2, each consisting of two pipes, were built by Russia’s Gazprom to pump 110 billion cubic metres (bcm) of natural gas a year to Germany under the Baltic Sea. Three of the pipes were ruptured by unexplained blasts in September, and one of the Nord Stream 2 pipes remains intact. But soaring tensions between Moscow and the West over the war in Ukraine had by then already brought Nord Stream 1 to a standstill and prevented its twin ever coming online. Gazprom has said it is technically possible to repair the ruptured lines, but two sources familiar with plans said Moscow saw little prospect of relations with the West improving enough in the foreseeable future for the pipelines to be needed.

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ATHENS (Reuters) – Rescuers continued digging through debris on Saturday at the site of Greece’s worst train crash but were expected to wrap up their search operation later in the day. At least 57 people were killed and dozens were injured on Tuesday when a passenger train with more than 350 people on board collided with a freight train on the same track in central Greece. The disaster has triggered an outpouring of anger and protests across the country, as well as a sharp focus on safety standards across the railway system. A station master in the nearby city of Larissa who was on duty at the time of the crash was charged this week with endangering lives and disrupting public transport. The station master, who cannot be named under Greek law, appeared before a magistrate on Saturday.