Category: Uncategorized

Footage contradicts U.S. claim that Nicolás Maduro burned aid convoy

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The narrative seemed to fit Venezuela’s authoritarian rule: Security forces, on the order of President Nicolás Maduro, had torched a convoy of humanitarian aid as millions in his country were suffering from illness and hunger.

Vice President Mike Pence wrote that “the tyrant in Caracas danced” as his henchmen “burned food & medicine.” The State Department released a video saying Mr. Maduro had ordered the trucks burned. And Venezuela’s opposition held up the images of the burning aid, reproduced on dozens of news sites and television screens throughout Latin America, as evidence of Mr. Maduro’s cruelty.

But there is a problem: The opposition itself –not Mr. Maduro’s men– appears to have set the cargo alight accidentally.

Unpublished footage obtained by The New York Times — including footage released by the Colombian government, which has blamed Mr. Maduro for the fire — allowed for a reconstruction of the incident. It suggests that a Molotov cocktail thrown by an anti-government protester was the most likely trigger for the blaze.

The rag used to light the Molotov cocktail separates from the bottle, flying toward the aid truck instead. Half a minute later, that truck is in flames.

The same protester can be seen 20 minutes earlier, in a different video, hitting another truck with a Molotov cocktail, without setting it on fire.

Many of Mr. Maduro’s critics also claim that he ordered medication set on fire during the border standoff. For example, John R. Bolton, President Trump’s national security adviser, posted on Twitter on March 2: “Maduro has lied about the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela, he contracts criminals to burn food and medicine intended for the Venezuelan people.”

Juan Guaidó, the leader of Venezuela’s opposition, has fervently maintained that the aid contained medicine and that it was burned by Mr. Maduro as well.

Yet this claim too appears to be unsubstantiated, according to videos and interviews.

After being contacted by The Times about these claims, American officials released a more cautious statement describing how the fire began:  “Eyewitness accounts indicate that the fire started when Maduro’s forces violently blocked the entry of humanitarian assistance,” the statement said. It did not specify that Mr. Maduro’s forces lit the fire.

[The New York Times]

Women worldwide spearhead humanitarian aid but not its decision-making

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Women have always been on the front lines of humanitarian action. Women such as Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton not only faced the most brutal conflicts and epidemics of their day, they helped lay the foundation for modern humanitarianism.

Today, more than half of Red Cross or Red Crescent volunteers around the world are female, and women are among the first to respond in disaster, epidemics and conflict, from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the Philippines and Syria.

They are also just as likely as their male counterparts to pay the ultimate sacrifice for their compassion and courage. Just last year, 25-year-old Saifura Hussaini Ahmed Khorsa and 24-year-old Hauwa Mohammed Liman were providing post-natal care at an ICRC-supported health center in Rann, Nigeria, when they were kidnapped, and later killed, by an armed group.

Despite this legacy, women are still not equally represented in top decision-making roles in the humanitarian sector — a profession based on basic principles of impartiality and humanity and on the belief that all people have inherent dignity. “If you had a visual representation, the [humanitarian sector] would be a pyramid with women forming the base,” says Margareta Wahlström, president of the Swedish Red Cross and former official at both the IFRC and the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. “As the pyramid gets narrower at the top, there are fewer and fewer women. Women are the base, as the workers, and the men tend to take positions of higher responsibility.”

In the United Nations system, the report noted, there is a similar pyramid. “Women comprise 42.8 per cent of all employees, but with a much greater concentration of women at the entry-level.” As of February 2019, ten of the UN’s 27 humanitarian coordinators are women.

In the Red Cross Red Crescent network, women make up only 31 per cent of the governing boards that oversee Red Cross or Red Crescent National Societies. At the global level, women make up 17 per cent (5 of 30) of elected members on the IFRC governing board.

[Red Cross and Red Crescent]

Flash flooding damage in Afghanistan

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In Kandahar province, some 21,200 people have been assessed requiring humanitarian assistance as a result of recent floods. 25 people are known to have died and 40 people have been injured. According to joint assessments conducted by the government and humanitarian partners in Kandahar and seven flood-affected districts, 1,340 houses have been damaged and a further 1,276 have been destroyed.

In Hilmand province, almost 6,000 people have been affected by the floods and require humanitarian assistance, including 5,400 people who have been displaced from their homes. According to partners on the ground, more than 770 houses in the province have been destroyed.

The Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS) has also managed to reach 644 affected households in Khoshkaba and Nahr-e-Saraj which are in hard to access areas. Further assessments are ongoing, including in contested areas, and the numbers of affected people will likely continue to rise.

Assessment teams have noted the most affected households gave access to boreholes for drinking water, and that no damage has been reported to schools or health facilities with people able to access necessary health services. However, communities in Khoshkaba and Nahr-e-Saraj are reportedly drinking unsafe water, raising concerns over outbreaks of diarrhoea and waterborne diseases.

In Farah province, ANDMA has reported that 9,250 households in Farah city have been assessed as flood-affected, including 3,600 families whose houses have been completely destroyed and more than 5,600 whose homes have been damaged.

In Hirat province, 254 households in Shindand district have been identified as affected by the floods. Assessments are ongoing in three other districts, Zawol, Pusht Koh and Zir Koh.

[UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs]

Tornadoes in the United States

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A pair of tornadoes killed at least 23 people on Sunday in Alabama, causing infrastructure damage with at least 150 miles per hour (241 kph) winds in the deadliest twister to hit the United States in almost six years. More than 100 rescuers are digging through rubble in search of victims of the half-mile-wide tornado.

The following is a list of some of the deadliest single tornadoes and tornado outbreaks in the United States over the last quarter century:

* A so-called Super Outbreak of 362 tornadoes hit the southeastern United States over three days in April 2011, killing an estimated 321 people, and causing about $11 billion in damages across 12 states, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Three of the tornadoes were rated EF-5, the top of the five-step Enhanced Fujita scale that meteorologists use to measure tornado strength.

* The deadliest tornado to hit the United States in the last several decades struck Joplin, Missouri on May 22, 2011 and killed at least 158 people, NOAA said. Damage from the storm exceeded $3 billion, the most of any single tornado in U.S. history.

* The so-called Super Tuesday Outbreak of 87 tornadoes in the southeastern United States on Feb. 5, 2008, killed 57 people, according to NOAA. It had the longest footprint of any tornado in U.S. history, according to private forecaster Accuweather, touching down continuously for 122 miles (196 km) through Arkansas.

* A tornado outbreak in the Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, metropolitan area on May 3, 1999, spawned 61 tornadoes and killed 55 people, with one single tornado responsible for 36 deaths, according to the Weather Channel.

* An outbreak of seven tornadoes in central Florida in February 1998 killed 42 people and injured 260 others in the state’s deadliest tornado outbreak since 1962, the National Weather Service reported.

* In April 2014, an outbreak of dozens of tornadoes stirred up by a powerful storm system hit the Southeast and Midwest over a three-day period and killed 32 people in Iowa, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee, according to NOAA.

* A tornado killed 24 people on May 20, 2013 in Moore, Oklahoma. The tornado had winds over 200 miles per hour (322 kph), giving it the most severe rating of EF-5. It lasted about 40 minutes, and caused billions of dollars worth of damage, according to NOAA.

[Reuters]

Charitable giving in the U.S

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A study published on Monday by the Fundraising Effectiveness Project reported that charitable giving contributions in the USA only increased 1.6% last year despite a strong economy.

The report also highlights the 4.5% decrease in total donors from 2017, indicating a shrinking pool of individuals involved in philanthropy.

Donations under $1,000 from smaller and middle class donors fell by more than 4%, while gifts from major donors increased 2.6%, the Washington Post reported.

The Council of Foundations and other groups within the charitable sector have warned lawmakers about the impact that the 2017 tax overhaul could have on charitable giving. Under the new tax law, millions of Americans no longer qualify to take the charitable tax deduction, which is a giving incentive.

[Council of Foundations]

Iraq facing “aid deserts” as more areas become No-Go Zones

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Global organization Mercy Corps warns that extremist activity is increasing in Iraq, which is threatening to create no-go areas, and creating the risk that these areas could become “aid deserts.” The rise in insurgency threatens humanitarian operations in parts of Iraq as access and safety are increasingly precarious.

According to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, there have been almost 2000 security incidents involving extremist groups since January 1, 2018; and despite ISIS having been pushed out of Mosul, ISIS elements have regrouped in the provinces of Kirkuk, Diyala, Salahaddin, and parts of Anbar.

“What we are reading in the media and what we are seeing on the ground in Iraq simply doesn’t add up,” says Tanya Evans, Iraq Country Director for Mercy Corps. “If anything, extremist groups are growing in confidence. As the reconstruction efforts continue to stall, groups like ISIS are filling the cracks. In some of the worst-affected areas, we face daily challenges in reaching vulnerable populations. If aid workers can’t reach communities, we face the very real danger of creating aid deserts in areas where the humanitarian needs are overwhelming.”

Mercy Corps has operated continuously in Iraq since 2003, providing assistance to 5 million Iraqis affected by war, violence and displacement in all 18 governorates. Currently the organization is addressing the needs of people affected by conflict, providing lifesaving supplies and working with communities to recover and rebuild.

[Mercy Corps]

The climate crisis has arrived –start imagining your future

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Evidence of the devastating impacts of anthropogenic climate change are stacking up, and it is becoming horrifyingly real. There can be no doubt that the climate crisis has arrived. The climate disaster future is increasingly becoming the present.

The billion-dollar question, of course, is whether these most recent disasters can be used to motivate real change. No doubt it is important to keep this kind of commentary up. It is key that we consider how to give the climate crisis traction in a culture so accomplished at distancing us from uncomfortable realities.

But let’s be honest. No one really knows what works. We have never been here before.

Are you shocked, horrified, scared, bored, tired? What do you do with the terror? Do you compartmentalize it somewhere “safe”? Perhaps like me, you know you care. You attach importance to climate change, you want to act correctly, avoid risking other lives, damaging homes and habitats. Perhaps you know you are scared too – scared of contemplating what we have already lost or of what will happen as the crisis gets closer still.

Halting the climate crisis is still predominately framed as a matter for individual choice and change – use less plastic, cycle to work, fly less. But the behavioral response required is way more complicated than that.

When it comes to the climate crisis, the personal is political. I am talking about a politics that grows from opposition and critique of our current systems. This is evident in young people organizing school strikes and protesters willing to get arrested for their direct action. Some conservation scientists, at least, see recent cultural change as a hopeful sign of a growing sense of care and responsibility.

[The Conversation]

2018 was fourth hottest year on record

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Last year was the fourth warmest on record and the outlook is for more sizzling heat approaching levels that most governments view as dangerous for the Earth, a U.N. report showed on Wednesday.

Average global surface temperatures were 1.0 degree Celsius (1.8 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times in 2018, the U.N.’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said, based on data from U.S., British, Japanese and European weather agencies. “The 20 warmest years on record have been in the past 22 years,” WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a statement.

“The impacts of long-term global warming are already being felt – in coastal flooding, heat waves, intense precipitation and ecosystem change,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Weather extremes in 2018 included wildfires in California and Greece, drought in South Africa and floods in Kerala, India.

Last year, the United States alone suffered 14 weather and climate disasters with losses exceeding $1 billion each, led by hurricanes and wildfires, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said.

[Reuters]

Forecast: Earth’s warmest period on record

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The forecast for the global average surface temperature for the five-year period to 2023 is predicted to be near or above 1.0 °C above pre-industrial levels, according to the Met Office (the UK’s national weather service). If the observations for the next five years track the forecast that would make the decade from 2014 to 2023 the warmest run of years since records began.

Records for annual global average temperature extend back to 1850.

Professor Adam Scaife, Head of Long-Range Prediction at the Met Office said: “2015 was the first year that global annual average surface temperatures reached 1.0 °C above pre-industrial levels and the following three years have all remained close to this level. The global average temperature between now and 2023 is predicted to remain high, potentially making the decade from 2014 the warmest in more than 150 years of records.”

Forecast patterns suggest enhanced warming is likely over much of the globe, especially over land and at high northern latitudes, particularly the Arctic region.

Professor Tim Osborn, director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, which co-produces the HadCRUT4 global temperature figures with the Met Office Hadley Centre, said: “The warmth of 2018 is in line with the long-term warming trend driven by the world’s emissions of greenhouse gases.”

[EurekAlert!]

We are entering an age of mass displacement

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More than 68 million people are currently exiled from their homes by violence, more than at any other point in recorded history. By 2050, according to a recent study by the World Bank, at least another 140 million people will be forced to relocate because of the effects of climate change. Accelerating inequality, meanwhile, continues to drive inhabitants of poor regions to wealthier ones. While the most recent exodus of refugees from wars in the Middle East into Europe has peaked, such colossal population transfers will soon become routine.

In the midst of this unprecedented wave of dislocation, thousands of migrants disappear every year. These disappearances are a function, largely, of the imperatives of secret travel. Lacking official permission to cross borders, “irregular migrants” are compelled to move covertly, avoiding the gaze of the state. In transit, they enter what the anthropologist Susan Bibler Coutin has called “spaces of nonexistence.” Barred from formal routes, some of them are pushed onto more hazardous paths—traversing deserts on foot or navigating rough seas with inflatable rafts. Others assume false identities, using forged or borrowed documents. In either case, aspects of the migrant’s identity are erased or deformed.

This invisibility cuts both ways. Even as it allows an endangered group to remain undetected, it renders them susceptible to new kinds of abuse. De facto stateless, they lack a government’s protection from exploitation by smugglers and unscrupulous authorities alike. Seeking safe harbor, many instead end up incarcerated, hospitalized, ransomed, stranded, or sold into servitude. In Europe, there is no comprehensive system in place to trace the missing or identify the dead. Already living in the shadows, migrants who go missing become, in the words of Jenny Edkins, a politics professor at the University of Manchester, “double disappeared.”

Taken as a whole, their plight constitutes an immense, mostly hidden catastrophe. The families of these migrants are left to mount searches—alone and with minimal resources—of staggering scope and complexity. They must attempt to defy the entropy of a progressively more disordered world—seeking, against long odds, to sew together what has been ripped apart.

[Harpers]