Russia hacking: Trump says he will get info on Friday
WASHINGTON: President-elect Donald Trump said on Tuesday that a briefing he is to receive from US intelligence officials on allegations of Russian hacking of the US election had been delayed until Friday.
In a tweet, Trump voiced continued scepticism about the extent of Russia’s cyber hacking. He and top advisers believe Democrats are trying to delegitimise his November 8 election victory by accusing Russian authorities of helping him.
“The ‘Intelligence’ briefing on socalled ‘Russian hacking’ was delayed until Friday, perhaps more time needed to build a case. Very strange!” Trump tweeted. It was not clear when the briefing originally had been scheduled to take place. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump, who has cast doubt on US intelligence agencies’ conclusion that Russia hacked Democratic Party computers, said over the weekend he would discuss the hacking allegations. With his tweet, he suggested he would not address the subject until he had been briefed by intelligence officials.
Trump has scheduled a January 11 news conference in New York. He is expected to discuss separating himself from his far-flung business empire, and other topics, including Russia, are likely to come up.
US intelligence officials have said they are confident Russia was behind the hacks of political figures in an effort to help Trump win the presidential election. President Barack Obama retaliated to the hacking last week by ordering 35 Russian intelligence officials expelled from the United States and two Russian compounds shut down.
Trump told reporters on Saturday at his Palm Beach, Florida, resort that he knew “things that other people don’t know” about the hacking, “so we cannot be sure” who was responsible.
He said any computer was subject to hacks.
“It’s very important. If you have something really important write it out and have it delivered by courier the old fashioned way,” Trump said, adding: “No computer is safe, I don’t care what they say.” LONDON: Charities have criticised donor governments for shifting aid money from poor countries and spending more on dealing with refugees at home after overall development aid hit a new high in 2015. Official development assistance (ODA) reached a record $131.4 billion in 2015, a rise of 6.6 per cent in real terms from 2014, according to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) figures released on Wednesday.
Of that total, $12.1 billion was spent on hosting and processing refugees in rich countries — around double the amount spent in the previous year.
The Paris-based thinktank said the rise in spending on refugees in donor countries did not have a significant impact on development programmes because half the donors used money from outside their aid budgets to cover these costs. However, several international charities expressed concern over the new trend in spending.
Advocacy group ONE, which campaigns to fight extreme poverty, said rich nations should tackle the root causes of forced migration instead of using aid money to host refugees in their own country.
“It’s crucial that we protect and support people fleeing war and insecurity. But it is short-sighted to do this by shifting resources away from the world’s poorest people,” Sara Harcourt, ONE’s Policy Director of Development Finance, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a statement. Hilary Jeune, aid policy expert at charity group Oxfam International, said OECD aid figures should not include refugee costs, adding: “This is aid which never leaves rich countries”.
The OECD said even if refugee costs were excluded, net ODA in 2015 still grew by 1.3 percent in real terms.
Syria received the most aid funds in 2015 with $4.9 billion in development assistance, followed by Afghanistan with $4.3 billion, then Pakistan, Ethiopia and India.
Of the 28 members of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC), the United States remained the largest donor in 2015 giving $30.1 billion in aid, followed by Britain with $18.5 billion, Germany, Japan and France.
Only six donors — Denmark, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Britain — exceeded the United Nations’ target of spending 0.7 per cent of national income on development aid.