♦ The United States announced it will again pull out of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

♦ The decision will take effect at the end of December 2026.

♦ This will be the third time that the United States has left UNESCO, which is based in Paris, and the second time during a Trump administration. 

♦ The Trump administration in 2017 announced that the U.S. would withdraw from UNESCO, citing anti-Israel bias.

♦ That decision took effect a year later.

♦ The U.S. and Israel stopped financing UNESCO after it voted to include Palestine as a member state in 2011.

♦ The United States previously pulled out of UNESCO under the Reagan administration in 1984 because it viewed the agency as mismanaged, corrupt and used to advance the interests of the Soviet Union.

♦ It rejoined in 2003 during George W Bush's presidency.