Eastern DR Congo faces ‘catastrophe’ from floods: UN

People cross the floodwater of the Carrigrès bridge in a pirogue in the Pompage district in Kinshasa on January 9, 2024 following heavy rains and the flood of the Congo River. Unusually heavier rainfall prompted by climate change has forced rivers and lakes in the central African country to overflow, swallowing towns, villages and roads on the shores. (AFP)
Short Url
Updated 09 May 2024
Follow

Eastern DR Congo faces ‘catastrophe’ from floods: UN

  • The UN body voiced concern at the effect on health service provisions as sickness hit affected areas of the country
  • Locals were reporting seeing hippos, crocodiles and snakes in flooded inhabited areas, risking fatal attacks, especially on children and livestock

KINSHASA: Eastern DR Congo faces a “humanitarian catastrophe” after being hit by severe flooding affecting about half a million people, the UN World Food Programme said Wednesday.

“Heavier rainfall than usual during the rainy season, prompted by climate change, has forced rivers and lakes to overflow, swallowing towns, villages and roads on the shores,” the WFP said in a report citing “chaos” in South Kivu and Tanganyika provinces.

Worst-affected are Haut-Lomami and Tanganyika provinces, which border the lake of the same name as well as neighboring Burundi, Tanzania and Zambia.
“All around Lake Tanganyika, and areas upstream of the Congo River basin, people have lost their homes, their fields and livelihoods,” the WFP reported, estimating 471,000 people were affected with 451,000 hectares (1.1 million acres) flooded, including 21,000 hectares of cropland.

 

“People in flooded areas need food, shelter, clean drinking water, health and sanitation support, as well as support to restart their livelihoods.
“However, WFP has very limited resources to respond to the flooding crisis due to current funding levels and the food assistance pipeline situation.”Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
“With towns and villages swallowed in the lakes and rivers, diseases are rife. Latrines have overflowed into the water that surrounds people’s homes and sanitation is poor.
“People are forced to wade through and wash their clothes and cooking implements in cholera-riddled water,” said the report, warning of “a whole host of animal-borne diseases.”
Locals were reporting seeing hippos, crocodiles and snakes in flooded inhabited areas, risking fatal attacks, especially on children and livestock.
Amid lost harvests, “people are struggling to feed their families which is leading to more people arriving in health care facilities with symptoms related to months of poor food intake. Especially children are at risk of developing malnutrition.”
Flooding has hit vast swathes of Africa in recent weeks, which have notably claimed 257 lives in Kenya, according to a latest toll Wednesday.
 


Ukraine drone attacks target Russian power, oil facilities, officials and media say

Updated 5 sec ago
Follow

Ukraine drone attacks target Russian power, oil facilities, officials and media say

Ukraine launched waves of drone attacks targeting oil and power facilities in western parts of Russia overnight, officials and media outlets reported on Wednesday.
Debris from a destroyed drone sparked a fire at an industrial facility in Kstovo, in Nizhny Novgorod, governor of the region that lies east of Moscow said on the Telegram messaging app.
“According to preliminary data, there are no casualties,” Gleb Nikitin, the governor, said.
He did not disclose further detail. Baza, a Russian Telegram news channel, which is close to Russia’s security services, reported that an oil refinery in Kstovo was on fire.
In the western Russia region of Smolensk, which borders Belarus, air defense systems destroyed a drone attempting to attack a nuclear power facility, Governor Vasily Anokhin said. He added that parts of the region were under a “massive” drone attack.
“According to preliminary information, one of the drones was shot down during an attempt to attack a nuclear power facility,” Anokhin said on the Telegram messaging app. “There were no casualties or damage.”
Another 26 drones were downed over the Bryansk region that borders Ukraine, and 20 drones over the Tver region that borders the Moscow region to its south, regional governors said. There were no damage or casualties, they said.
Russian aviation watchdog Rosaviatsia said on Telegram that in order to ensure safety it was halting all flights at the Kazan airport. Kazan, the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan, lies some 830 km (516 miles) east of Moscow.
The full scale of attacks was not immediately known. Reuters could not independently verify the reports and there was no comment from Ukraine.
Both sides deny targeting civilians in their attacks in
the war
that Russia started with a full-scale invasion in February 2022. Kyiv says that its attacks inside Russia aim to destroy infrastructure key to Moscow’s war efforts.

OpenAI tailors version of ChatGPT for US government

Updated 5 min 8 sec ago
Follow

OpenAI tailors version of ChatGPT for US government

  • The new ChatGPT Gov version of OpenAI’s popular chatbot provides a tailored AI tool to assist the work of US government agencies and their employees

SAN FRANCISCO: OpenAI on Tuesday launched a bespoke version of its ChatGPT artificial intelligence tool for use by the United States government.
Big money government contracts are often tech firm targets, and OpenAI already boasts some 90,000 users of ChatGPT across federal, state and local governments in the United States.
The new ChatGPT Gov version of OpenAI’s popular chatbot provides a tailored AI tool to assist the work of US government agencies and their employees.
“By making our products available to the US government, we aim to ensure AI serves the national interest and the public good, aligned with democratic values, while empowering policymakers to responsibly integrate these capabilities to deliver better services to the American people,” OpenAI said in an online post.
The cost of ChatGPT Gov, if any, was not disclosed.
ChatGPT Gov builds on an enterprise version of the chatbot designed for use by businesses and can run on Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, according to OpenAI.
“Self-hosting ChatGPT Gov enables agencies to more easily manage their own security, privacy, and compliance requirements,” OpenAI said.
The company believes the new offering will speed up authorization for OpenAI tools to be used to handle sensitive non-public data in government agencies, according to the post.
In his first full day in the White House, US President Donald Trump announced a major investment to build infrastructure for artificial intelligence led by Japanese giant SoftBank and OpenAI.
Trump said the venture, called Stargate, “will invest $500 billion, at least, in AI infrastructure in the United States.”


Trump’s funding freeze triggers worry, Democrats say it hits Medicaid program

Updated 16 min 46 sec ago
Follow

Trump’s funding freeze triggers worry, Democrats say it hits Medicaid program

  • Order sows confusion among US agencies
  • Foreign aid also frozen, lifesaving medicines withheld

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s order to pause all federal grants and loans sowed widespread confusion on Tuesday over its impact on far-reaching programs such as Medicaid, sending nonprofits and government agencies scrambling to understand its scope and prompting immediate legal challenges. The sweeping directive was the latest step in Trump’s dramatic effort to overhaul the federal government, which has already seen the new president halt foreign aid, impose a hiring freeze and shutter diversity programs across dozens of agencies. Democrats castigated the funding freeze as an illegal assault on Congress’ authority over federal spending, while Republicans largely defended the order as a fulfillment of Trump’s campaign promise to rein in a bloated budget.
Despite assurances from the Trump administration that programs delivering critical benefits to Americans would not be affected, US Senator Ron Wyden, the top finance committee Democrat, said his office had confirmed that the portal doctors use to secure payments from Medicaid had been deactivated in all 50 states.
Medicaid, which covers about 70 million people, is jointly funded by both the states and the federal government, and each state runs its own program.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt could not say whether the program had been frozen, telling reporters at her first briefing since Trump took office on Jan. 20, “I’ll get back to you.”
Leavitt later posted on X that the federal government was aware of the Medicaid portal outage and that no payments had been affected. The website will be back online “shortly,” she said. The order, laid out in a memo from the Office of Management and Budget, which oversees the federal budget, will freeze federal grants and loans as of 5 p.m. Tuesday (2200 GMT) while the administration ensures they are aligned with the Republican president’s priorities, including executive orders he signed ending diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
Federal grants and loans reach into virtually every corner of Americans’ lives, with trillions of dollars flowing into education, health care and anti-poverty programs, housing assistance, disaster relief, infrastructure and a host of other initiatives.
The memo said Tuesday’s freeze included any money intended “for foreign aid” and for “nongovernmental organizations,” among other categories.
The White House said the pause would not impact Social Security or Medicare payments to the elderly or “assistance provided directly to individuals,” such as some food aid and welfare programs for the poor.
In a second memo released on Tuesday, OMB officials said funds for Medicaid, Head Start, farmers, small businesses and rental assistance would continue without interruption. The freeze followed the Republican president’s suspension of foreign aid last week, a move that began cutting off the supply of lifesaving medicines on Tuesday to countries around the world that depend on US development assistance.

Disputed effects

Four groups representing nonprofits, public health professionals and small businesses filed a lawsuit on Tuesday challenging the directive, saying it “will have a devastating impact on hundreds of thousands of grant recipients.” Democratic state attorneys general also said they would ask a court on Tuesday to block the freeze from taking effect.
“From pausing research on cures for childhood cancer to halting food assistance, safety from domestic violence, and closing suicide hotlines, the impact of even a short pause in funding could be devastating and cost lives,” Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Council of Nonprofits, one of the four groups that sued on Tuesday, said in a statement.
In Connecticut, the reimbursement system for Head Start — a government program that provides early education and other benefits to low-income families — was shut down, preventing preschools from paying staff, Democratic US Senator Chris Murphy said on X. The OMB memo did not appear to exempt disaster aid to areas like Los Angeles and western North Carolina that have been devastated by natural disasters. Trump pledged government support when he visited both places last week.
At the Tuesday briefing, Leavitt would not specifically say whether Head Start or disaster aid would be frozen.
Agencies were trying to understand how to implement the new order.
The Justice Department’s Office of Justice Programs, its largest grant-making arm, will pause $4 billion in funding for community-based programs, nonprofits, states and municipalities, according to a person familiar with the matter and a memo seen by Reuters. Among the affected programs include the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which receives more than $30 million a year from the Justice Department.
The OMB memo asserted the federal government spent nearly $10 trillion in fiscal year 2024, with more than $3 trillion devoted to financial assistance such as grants and loans. But those figures appeared to include money authorized by Congress but not actually spent — the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated government spending in 2024 at a much lower $6.75 trillion.
Trump’s Republican allies have been pushing for dramatic spending cuts, though he has promised to spare Social Security and Medicare, which make up roughly one-third of the budget. Another 11 percent of the budget goes toward government interest payments, which cannot be touched without triggering a default that would rock the world economy.

Democrats challenge ‘lawless’ move
Democrats immediately criticized the spending freeze as unlawful and dangerous.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said the administration did not have the authority to prevent spending approved by Congress.
“This decision is lawless, destructive, cruel,” Schumer said in a speech to the Senate. “It’s American families that are going to suffer most.”
The US Constitution gives Congress control over spending matters, but Trump said during his campaign that he believes the president has the power to withhold money for programs he dislikes. His nominee for White House budget director, Russell Vought, who has not yet been confirmed by the Senate, headed a think tank that has argued Congress cannot require a president to spend money.
US Representative Tom Emmer, the No. 3 Republican in the House of Representatives, said Trump was simply following through on his campaign promises.
“You need to understand he was elected to shake up the status quo. That is what he’s going to do. It’s not going to be business as usual,” Emmer told reporters at a Republican policy retreat in Miami.
At least one Republican centrist, US Representative Don Bacon, said he hoped the order would be short-lived after hearing from worried constituents, including a woman who runs an after-school program that depends on federal grant money.
“We’ve already appropriated this money,” he said. “We don’t live in an autocracy. It’s divided government. We’ve got separation of powers.”


Pentagon to pull Milley’s security clearance, Fox News reports

Updated 39 min 57 sec ago
Follow

Pentagon to pull Milley’s security clearance, Fox News reports

  • Milley was among the preemptive pardons that former President Joe Biden issued on Jan. 20, his last day in office

WASHINGTON: US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will announce he is revoking the security clearance and personal security detail for retired Army General and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, Fox News reported on Tuesday cited multiple senior administration officials.
Hegseth will also direct a review to consider if Milley should be stripped of a star in retirement based on actions that “undermine the chain of command,” Fox News reported on Tuesday.
The last portrait of Milley will also be removed from the Pentagon, Fox News reported. Milley was among the preemptive pardons that former President Joe Biden issued on Jan. 20, his last day in office.

 


US sending Patriot missiles from Israel to Ukraine, Axios reports

Updated 29 January 2025
Follow

US sending Patriot missiles from Israel to Ukraine, Axios reports

  • A spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office confirmed to Axios that a Patriot system had been returned to the US, adding “it is not known to us whether it was delivered to Ukraine”

WASHINGTON: The United States transferred some 90 Patriot air defense interceptors from Israel to Poland this week to then deliver them to Ukraine, Axios reported on Tuesday, citing three sources with knowledge of the operation.
“We have seen the reports but have nothing to provide at this time,” a Pentagon spokesperson said in response to the report.
A spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office confirmed to Axios that a Patriot system had been returned to the US, adding “it is not known to us whether it was delivered to Ukraine.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday he had spoken with Netanyahu. They discussed the Middle East, bilateral ties and US President Donald Trump, who took office last week, Zelensky said on social media. The post made no mention of the missiles.