The world opened its wallet for former US president Bill Clinton.
Governments, corporations and billionaires with their own interests in US foreign policy gave the former president’s charity millions of dollars, the records he released on Thursday show.
The records were released to lay bare any financial entanglements that could affect Clinton’s wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, as the next secretary of state.
Saudi Arabia, Norway and other foreign governments gave at least US$46 million, and donors with ties to India delivered millions more.
Corporate donors included the Blackwater security firm, at risk of losing its lucrative government contract to protect US diplomats in Iraq, and Yahoo, involved in disputes over surrendering Internet information to Chinese authorities that led to the imprisonment of dissidents there.
Other high-profile donors include celebrities Barbra Streisand, Steven Spielberg, Paul Newman, Carly Simon and Chevy Chase, while sports figures included New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and Formula One driver Michael Schumacher.
The records account for at least US$492 million in contributions to the William J. Clinton Foundation, a nonprofit created by the former president to finance his library in Little Rock, Arkansas, and charitable efforts in dozens of countries to reduce poverty and treat AIDS.
President-elect Barack Obama made Hillary Clinton’s nomination as secretary of state contingent on her husband revealing the foundation’s contributors, to address questions about potential conflicts of interest.
The foundation disclosed the names of its 205,000 donors on its Web site on Thursday, ending a decade of resistance to identifying them. It released only the names of donors and the range of their contributions. It did not identify each contributor’s occupation, employer or nationality or provide any other details. The foundation said separately on Thursday that fewer than 3,000 of its donors were foreigners but did not identify which ones.
It was not immediately clear whether the disclosures will raise any serious challenge to Hillary Clinton’s nomination to be secretary of state.
Shortly after the documents were released, Hillary Clinton made another appearance at the State Department for meetings with transition aides, officials said. It was the latest of several trips to the building for the former first lady since she was nominated by Obama.
After negotiations with Obama’s transition team, Bill Clinton promised to reveal the contributors, submit future foundation activities and paid speeches to an ethics review, step away from the day-to-day operation of his annual charitable conference and inform the State Department about new sources of income and speeches.
Saudi Arabia gave US$10 million to US$25 million to the foundation. AUSAID, the Australian government’s overseas aid program, and COPRESIDA-Secretariado Tecnico, a Dominican Republic government agency formed to fight AIDS, each gave US$10 million to US$25 million.
Norway gave US$5 million to US$10 million. Kuwait, Qatar, Brunei and Oman each gave US$1 million to US$5 million. Jamaica and Italy’s Ministry for Environment and Territory gave US$50,000 to US$100,000 each. Tenerife donated US$25,000 to US$50,000. The Dutch national lottery gave US$5 million to US$10 million.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS