The House GOP has not yet decided whether to bring up a Russia trade bill that passed the House Ways and Means Committee on Thursday, a key GOP congressman said. Read more...

Sens. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Max Baucus (D-Mont.) argued on the floor Thursday about how to pay for a bill to assistant African economies.

The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) provides aid to economies of sub-Saharan Africa and trade incentives.

Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) says he will no longer object to transferring anti-AIDS funds from a prominent U.S. program to a multilateral fund to fight AIDS.

Lugar announced Thursday that he would release his hold on the $250 million meant to go from the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

The veteran lawmaker said he was swayed by conversations at the International AIDS Conference under way in Washington, D.C.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday unanimously approved nine of President Obama's nominees for ambassadorships, setting up their possible approval by the full Senate before the August recess.

The posts being filled are in Ghana, Liberia, Zimbabwe, Guinea, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Serbia, the Marshall Islands and Oman.

The nominee to be ambassador to Harare, Bruce Wharton, laid out a path forward for the lifting of the sanctions against Robert Mugabe's regime at a hearing last week.

The full list is below: 

Your morning global affairs speed-read

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney's pre-election trip abroad got off to a rough start after unnamed campaign advisers criticized President Obama to the British press, creating an uproar in the Obama camp. Romney distanced himself from the remarks in an television interview.

Romney's stop in Great Britain is the first leg of a trip that will also take him to Poland and Israel. Today he's scheduled to meet with leaders of the main parties: Tory Prime Minister David Cameron, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg (also the leader of the British Liberal Democrats), Foreign Secretary William Hague and Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne; as well as former Labour Party Prime Minister Tony Blair and Labour Leader Ed Miliband.

Disability treaty: The Senate Foreign Relations Committee marks up the United Nations treaty on people with disabilities, which Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and several other Republicans on the committee held up last week. The treaty has broad bipartisan support, but some in the home-schooling movement believe it could impose international standards on how they raise their children.

Russian trade: The House Ways and Means panel, which has jurisdiction over trade, finally marks up legislation establishing permanent normal trade relations with Russia after Republicans and Democrats struck a deal on a way forward on human-rights legislation many lawmakers want to see attached.

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.): “I believe there were certainly elements of Hezbollah [involved]"

Democrats hammered Romney on an anonymous quote from a campaign adviser in a British paper

“The overall human rights situation in China continues to deteriorate,” the State Department's top human rights official told reporters Wednesday after two days of meetings in Washington with his Chinese counterparts.

Michael Posner, the assistant secretary of state for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, issued the remarks at the end of the United States' annual dialogue with China. The dialogue is aimed at raising concerns with the Chinese leadership, but is not a negotiation.

“Over the last two days, we’ve focused on a number of cases where lawyers, bloggers, NGO activists, journalists, religious leaders, and others are asserting universal rights and calling for peaceful reform in China,” Posner said. “A number of these individuals have been arrested and detained as part of a larger pattern of arrest and extralegal detention of those who challenge official actions and policies in China.” Read more...

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised Syrian Americans and diaspora groups Wednesday for advocating on behalf of the Syrian people and bringing attention to the ongoing violent uprising.