Month: May 2019

AG Barr to Face Senate Panel Over Mueller Report

Posted on by SeeUS

U.S. Attorney General William Barr is facing questioning from lawmakers Wednesday after the release of Robert Mueller’s report earlier this month investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential elections.

Barr will meet with the Republican-led Senate Judiciary Committee for a session that is expected to last at least three hours.

Barr will undoubtedly face questions about a Washington Post report out late Tuesday that Mueller contacted the attorney general, both by letter and a phone call, to impress upon him to release the summaries of the report written by his team. Barr instead released his own summary, which Mueller felt failed to capture the full “context, nature, and substance” of the investigation’s conclusions.

The attorney general drew fire from the Democrats and other critics for “summarizing” a report that runs nearly 400 pages in just four pages and determining that Trump did not obstruct justice because he’d not been involved in an “underlying crime” in connection with Russian election interference.

Barr was also widely criticized for holding a press conference to discuss the findings hours before either members of Congress or the media had a chance to read the report.

Barr told reporters that it exonerated Trump of colluding with Moscow and said that later, after assuming power, Trump had “no corrupt intent” to obstruct the probe.

Barr, a Trump appointee as the country’s top law enforcement official, said the president “took no act that in fact deprived” Mueller of “documents and witnesses necessary to complete his investigation.”

Barr concluded, “Apart from whether [Trump’s] acts [as president] were obstructive, this evidence of non-corrupt motives weighs heavily against any allegation that the president had a corrupt intent to obstruct the investigation.”

But Mueller cited 11 instances of possible obstruction of the investigation by Trump, saying that “while this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

Barr also revealed that Trump’s lawyers were shown an advance copy of the report but were not allowed to make any changes. He said the president’s lawyers made no attempt to assert executive privilege about White House conversations to delete any material from the report.

Late last month, in a summary of Mueller’s findings, Barr said the special counsel had concluded that Trump had not colluded with Russia, but reached no decision on whether he had obstructed justice. With Mueller not making a decision on the obstruction issue, Barr said he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein decided that no obstruction charges against Trump were warranted.

Barr told reporters it was his prerogative to make the decision to not charge Trump.

Democrats have said they want to question Barr on how he reached his no-obstruction decision.

Barr was also expected to testify before the Democratic-led House Judiciary Committee on Thursday but that appearance is uncertain.

 

 

 

 
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Beyond Rations: Food Aid Struggles to Adapt to Modern Crises

Posted on by SeeAF

Habibou Iba’s twin sons are wasting away at the age of seven months after existing on a diet of millet and water.

The family was forced out of their home in January when their village in northern Burkina Faso was attacked as jihadist and ethnic violence escalated in the West African nation.

Aid agencies have distributed the typical rations of dry cereals, oil and beans, but what the children really need is milk, said Iba who is too weak to breastfeed.

“I am forced to beg in the village to buy them powdered milk,” Iba, 27, said by phone from the town of Dori, where her sons are being treated for malnutrition by the medical charity Medecins du Monde.

Although awareness about malnutrition has increased in the last few decades, aid agencies still struggle to provide a balanced diet in poor, remote places, said several nutrition advisors for international charities.

With U.N. figures showing wars, persecution and other violence have driven a record 68.5 million people from their homes, more people than ever are dependent on food aid – and for longer periods, making it critical for rations to be nutritious.

In West Africa’s Sahel region, which includes northern Burkina Faso, climate change and conflict have kept people in displacement camps for years with no end in sight. Mali has been in crisis since 2012, while Nigeria has been battling the Boko Haram insurgency for a decade.

“Historically, the concern has been about providing enough food in the context of emergencies, and this idea that an emergency is a short-term thing,” said Corinna Hawkes, director of the Centre for Food Policy at City University of London.

“But the modern-day crises are not short-term. There’s no question that the current world of food aid is not fully caught up with that modern reality.”

U.N. figures show that the number of people in the world without enough nutritious food has been rising since 2014, reaching 821 million in 2017 compared to 784 million three years earlier. The vast majority live in Africa.

Poor diet has overtaken smoking as the world’s biggest killer, according to the latest Global Burden of Disease study, causing 20 percent of deaths in 2017.

Difficult decisions

Malnutrition, or a lack of proper nutrition, occurs when there is not enough food or not enough of the right food.

About one in 10 children in Burkina Faso has acute malnutrition, according to the World Food Programme (WFP), when insufficient food or illness causes rapid weight loss.

Acute malnutrition kills, but a bigger long-term threat is chronic malnutrition, also known as stunting, which happens when a child has food but not enough nutrients to develop properly.

It affects about 20 percent of children under five worldwide.

Children who grow up eating rice or millet with no meat, milk, or vegetables, are at risk of stunting, which hinders cognitive as well as physical growth, said Fidele Rima, a UNICEF nutrition advisor in Burkina Faso.

“We have enough food, but we lost our animals,” said Aibata Diallo, an older woman living in Barsalogho camp, a collection of tents set up in scrubland for people who fled violence.

Like other residents, she is surviving off basic rations: 400 grams of cereals, 100 grams of beans and 25 grams of oil per day, according to WFP, the U.N.’s food assistance agency.

Small children and pregnant or breastfeeding women receive fortified cereals, which partly replace the missing vitamins and minerals in their diet, but WFP said it still expects to see malnutrition spike among people who have left home.

“We’re covering the basics. If we could do more we would want to do more,” said David Bulman, WFP country representative for Burkina Faso, citing funding as the main constraint.

Aid agencies cannot distribute meat, milk or vegetables because it is too costly and even fortified cereals are not always available, aid workers said.

“In an emergency response it really depends on where we’re getting the food that’s being donated – that will matter for how much we can control the level of fortification and nutritional value,” said Allison Oman Lawi, a senior policy advisor for East and Central Africa at WFP.

Sometimes donors send food or specify it should be sourced from a country in which fortified cereals are not produced.

Cost restrictions often mean choosing between quantity and quality, since cutting rations or targeting a smaller group can be the trade-off to afford nutritious foods, said Lawi.

“I have to make really difficult decisions,” she said.

Long-term thinking

Distribution of rations was never intended to be a long-term solution but an interim until people start growing or buying food again, said Mamadou Diop, West Africa representative for global charity Action Against Hunger.

“What happens is that often we propose a minimalist approach, and the populations are obliged to turn to other mechanisms to regain their eating habits,” said Diop.

These other mechanisms were still up for debate, he said.

Should people be given cash to buy meat and vegetables? What if there is none in the market or they spend it on something else?

Other aid workers agreed the goal was to move toward self-sufficiency – helping people plant gardens or start an activity that can generate income, even in a camp.

But the rising malnutrition rates in Africa suggest few people were phasing out of food aid. One fifth of people on the continent are undernourished, about the same as in 2005.

“I don’t think we should be looking at providing assistance for years,” said Bulman, WFP’s Burkina Faso representative.

Aid experts noted malnutrition depended on more than food.

Children with diarrhea or worms from unclean water will not benefit from any amount of supercereals while aid workers know that recipients often sell rations to buy medicine or fuel.

“It’s not as easy as just giving food and then there will be no more malnutrition,” said Nathalie Avril, a nutrition advisor for medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres.

Diversification and allowing people to choose food themselves should be priorities in long-term aid situations, she said, perhaps by using vouchers although this has challenges.

The last paved road disappears miles before it reaches Barsalogho camp, which is surrounded by sunbaked, barren land.

“I think everybody knows what to give, the point is that it’s not easy to get it,” Avril said.

 
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US Urges Venezuela’s Key Figures to Sway Military to Juan Guaido’s Side

Posted on by SeeUS

U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton says Venezuela’s interim President Juan Guaido needs the support of key figures that can help sway the country’s military forces to his side. Bolton spoke to reporters Tuesday outside the White House. He said the Trump administration is monitoring developments in Venezuela. Guaido is calling for an uprising to force Nicolas Maduro to relinquish power. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
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US Stops Collecting Data Showing Afghan Government Losing Ground

Posted on by SeeUS

The U.S.-led NATO mission in Afghanistan is no longer collecting data showing the Afghan government steadily losing ground to the Taliban, telling a U.S. government watchdog the information was “of limited decision-making value.”

The so-called district-level stability assessments, which measure the number of the country’s districts under government or insurgent control or influence, have been one of the most widely cited indicators of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan.

 

But the U.S.-commanded Resolute Support mission told the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) in March the assessments were no longer being produced.

“District stability data has not been collected since the October 22, 2018 data submitted last quarter,” Resolute Support wrote in response to SIGAR’s request for the information ahead of its latest report, released Wednesday.

“There are no products at command or other forums that communicate district stability or control information,” the letter added.

 

According to SIGAR, U.S. defense officials also said the assessments were “not indicative of effectiveness of the South Asia strategy or of progress toward security and stability.”

 

The SIGAR quarterly report also quoted defense officials as saying it was “more important to instead focus on the principal goal of the strategy of concluding the war in Afghanistan on terms favorable to Afghanistan and the United States.”

When asked for about the decision to end the assessments, a spokesman for Resolute Support referred VOA to the letter sent to the special inspector general.

 

In a statement accompanying the report’s release, SIGAR decried the loss of the data.

 

“Despite its limitations, the control data was the only unclassified metric provided by [Resolute Support] that consistently tracked changes to the security situation on the ground,” SIGAR said.

 

SIGAR also noted that previous commanders of the Resolute Support mission “had previously cited its importance in public statements.”

 

The U.S.-led mission’s decision to eliminate the stability assessments comes after successive reports showed the Afghan government’s control of the country falling to record lows.

 

Low levels of control, influence

 

In its November 2018 report, SIGAR said the Afghan government controlled or influenced only 56 percent of the country’s districts, at the time the lowest level recorded since the watchdog began tracking district control in November 2015.

In SIGAR’s subsequent report, issued this past January, that number had slipped to less than 54 percent, as the Afghan government lost seven districts to the Taliban.

 

According to some, the figures suggest U.S. President Donald Trump’s strategy for Afghanistan, meant to increase pressure on the Taliban and force them to negotiate an end to decades of fighting, is not having the level of success claimed by administration officials.

 

Other data collected for the latest SIGAR report also show reason for concern.

 

According to Resolute Support, the average number of attacks initiated by the Taliban jumped 19 percent for the three-month period ending in January. And according to U.S. Forces-Afghanistan, the number of casualties suffered by Afghan forces were 31 percent higher than compared to the same period last year.

“Ultimately, I don’t think we’ve met all of our strategic goals there,” U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John Sopko told reporters last week, ahead of the report’s release.

“We were going to get the terrorists out and create a government that could keep the terrorists out,” he said. “Obviously, we haven’t kicked the terrorists out if they’re still blowing things up and we’re negotiating with them. That strategic goal has now changed.”

 

Sopko also raised concerns that measuring U.S. progress in Afghanistan has become increasingly difficult, as U.S. and Afghan officials are collecting less data and are preventing other information from going public.

 

“What we are finding now is almost every indicia, metrics, however you want to phrase it, for success or failure is now classified or non-existent,” he said, adding that hiding or eliminating would appear pointless.

 

“The Afghan people obviously know which districts are controlled by the Taliban. The Taliban obviously know which districts they control. Our military knows it. Everybody in Afghanistan knows it,” he said.  “The only people who don’t know what is going on are the people who are paying for all of this, and that’s the American taxpayer.”
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Game On for EU Vote, But Real Fight Comes After

Posted on by SeeEU

On posters, hustings and social media, a battle for Europe is being fought, as contenders seek votes for an EU parliamentary election in late May – but the real battle for power will come only once the count is in.

More than 400 million voters will deal the hands that leaders, of parties, nations and rival EU institutions, must play; but it will be after the May 23-26 ballot that the high-stakes poker will begin that will shape the European Union for years to come.

Then comes the real suspense: how pro-Union groups may build a majority coalition to work with the EU executive and member states to make law; how a growing eurosceptic bloc may disrupt it; how lawmakers will clash with national leaders over who runs Brussels; and whether British members might end up staying.

“The campaign determines the strength of people’s bargaining positions,” a senior official in the European Parliament said. “But the real game will start after the count.”

The sheer scale of elections for the 751 lawmakers who will convene in the European Parliament in Strasbourg on July 2 limits scope for surprises of the kind voters have delivered in national ballots as they lose confidence in established elites.

Second only to India as an exercise in democracy but beset by low turnouts that hamstring the legislature’s ambitions to legitimacy, proportional representation, a plethora of parties and a tendency for 28 national campaigns to even out shocks mean that poll data tend to be a fair guide to the overall outcome.

That points to policy continuity as the European Union tries to prove its use in defending common interests in global struggles over power, trade and the environment against nationalist critics.

Brexit Party Time

A survey commissioned by the parliament, whose projections were on the money in the 2014 election, shows the center-right EPP and center-left S&D losing 37 seats each and hence the majority they enjoy in an informal “grand coalition.”

That, many lawmakers expect, will mean a broader reaching out after the vote to the likes of the ALDE liberals, who are hoping for a major boost from President Emmanuel Macron’s mold-breaking French party, and also possibly to the Greens.

With Italy’s populist ruling League and, at times, France’s far-right National Rally and Britain’s new Brexit Party topping national opinion rankings, polls show a surge for eurosceptics.

But talk of a blocking minority, with allies in more mainstream groups such as the Polish and Hungarian ruling parties, comes up against the nationalists’ persistent divisions.

The uncertainties around how the parliament will line up in July are compounded this year by a number of new parties – most obviously Macron’s En Marche – keeping options open on whom to sit with, but also by Brexit, since the delay to Britain leaving the EU has led to London holding a vote for 73 British MEPs.

That potentially brief presence means some officials suggest key decisions, notably parliamentary votes on who should succeed Jean-Claude Juncker and his team at the European Commission, be put off until the British have left.

Jobs Row

Even without Brexit, this year may be tricky, as lawmakers and national leaders face off over the legislature’s demand that a lead “Spitzenkandidat” from a winning party succeed Juncker.

Leaders would normally agree on a successor in late June so that parliament can endorse the appointment in July. But a row with parliament could also delay the handover beyond Nov. 1.

Key appointments, including that of European Central Bank president after Mario Draghi leaves in October, will see fierce bargaining, among big states and small, the north, south, east and west of Europe, left and right, men and women, and so on.

The European Council of national leaders, which must also choose its own next president in succession to Donald Tusk, is reluctant to be tied to a choice of Manfred Weber, a conservative German MEP, or Juncker’s Dutch deputy, Frans Timmermans of the Socialists.

Macron is a loud opponent of parliament’s Spitzenkandidat push and Brussels is abuzz with talk that he favors others – notably Frenchman Michel Barnier, the EU’s Brexit negotiator, or centrist Danish EU antitrust commissioner Margrethe Vestager.

Weber and his parliamentary allies will argue strongly that it is that kind of backroom carve-up which is turning Europeans off the EU. In reply, national leaders may argue that they have stronger democratic mandates to govern than a parliament for which in 2014 only 43 percent of voters cast a ballot.

Polling data suggests somewhat more people intend to vote than last time, parliamentary officials say. But there are huge variations in engagement with campaigns largely fought on domestic issues. In Belgium, where voting is compulsory and a national election is held the same day, turnout was 90 percent in 2014. But in Slovakia, it was 13 percent.
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UN Envoy ‘Optimistic’ of Syria Constitution Committee Soon

Posted on by SeeEA

The U.N. special envoy for Syria said Tuesday that he is “optimistic” an agreement can be reached on the long-sought formation of a committee to draft a new constitution for the war-torn country so it can meet this summer.

Geir Pederson told reporters after briefing the Security Council that he based his optimism on the “intensive” and “very good” dialogue he has had with the Syrian government and opposition — as well as “tangible progress,” including on the committee’s rules of procedure and composition.

He told the council that six names on the disputed 50-member civil society list need to be removed, and he believes an agreement can be reached with “goodwill” and “just a little” compromise. 

Pedersen said convening the constitutional committee “could be a first sign of real movement” and “help unlock a broader political process — toward U.N.-supervised elections” and hopefully ending the eight-year civil war.

The more than yearlong effort to form a 150-member constitutional committee has been dogged by objections from Syria’s government over the 50-member list representing experts, independents, tribal leaders and women. There is already agreement on 50-member lists from the government and the opposition.

Pedersen said another priority is the need to speed up and expand the release of detainees and abductees and to clarify the fate of thousands of missing persons. He said the government and opposition “should move away from the one-for-one exchange framework” and scale-up releases.

“Meaningful progress on this key humanitarian file would send a positive signal to Syrians,” he said. “It would be an important confidence-building measure.”

He also said that while any political settlement must be Syrian-owned and Syrian-led, the conflict is “highly internationalized” and its outcome “must enjoy international support and legitimacy.”

Pedersen said he wants to use agreement on a constitutional committee “to see revitalized broad-based international cooperation.” He said “a common forum” to support political progress must be found.

“I’m currently having a discussion with myself and with different international actors on this,” Pedersen said. “What I need is a committed group to come together and to support all the efforts of relaunching the political process in Geneva.”
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‘Incredibly Difficult’ to Reach Mozambique Cyclone Survivors

Posted on by SeeAF

Rains were still pounding parts of northern Mozambique on Tuesday, several days after Cyclone Kenneth, while the United Nations said aid workers faced “an incredibly difficult situation” in reaching thousands of survivors. The death toll was at 38.

U.N. humanitarian spokeswoman Gemma Connell said bad weather kept badly needed supplies from arriving in the main city of Pemba on Monday. This will be a challenge in the rainy days ahead, she told The Associated Press.

The government again urged Pemba residents to flee to higher ground as flooding continued. More than 570 milliliters (22 inches) has fallen in Pemba since Kenneth made landfall on Thursday, just six weeks after Cyclone Idai tore into central Mozambique. 

This is the first time two cyclones have struck the southern African nation in a single season, and Kenneth was the first cyclone recorded so far north in Mozambique in the modern era of satellite imaging.

Up to 50 milliliters (3 inches) of rain were forecast over the next 24 hours, and rivers in the region were expected to reach flood peak by Thursday, the U.N. humanitarian office said, citing a UK aid analysis.

 Scores of thousands of people in Macomia and Quissanga districts north of Pemba and on Ibo island need food and shelter. More than 35,000 buildings and homes were partly or fully destroyed, the government said.

“These people lost everything,” Connell said. “It is critical that we get them the food that they need to survive.” Women and children have been the hardest hit “without the basics that they need to get by,” especially shelter, she said.

A lull in the rain on Tuesday allowed a first flight to leave for Quissanga with food and health supplies, the U.N. World Food Program told reporters in Geneva.

The cyclone will affect the region for months to come after it affected key livelihoods of fishing and agriculture in the largely rural region, the WFP said. Some 31,000 hectares (76,600 acres) of crops were lost at the peak of the harvest season.

“The area is already very vulnerable to food insecurity,” spokesman Herve Verhoosel said.

Authorities were preparing for a possible cholera outbreak as some wells were contaminated and safe drinking water became a growing concern.

With the pair of deadly cyclones — Idai killed more than 600 people last month — Mozambique is “a very complex humanitarian situation,” Connell said. Only a quarter of the funding needed for Idai relief efforts has come in while funding for Kenneth has been slow.

“This is a new crisis,” she said. “We are having to stretch across the two operations. That is a basic reality we are dealing with every day.”
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