After Washington handed control of Venezuela’s assets in the United States to the opposition leader, the government of Nicolás Maduro struck back fiercely.
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Conflict-driven hunger worsens; Middle East hit hard
A child in Yemen.
A new report to the UN Security Council shines a spotlight on hunger in conflict zones: The situation in the eight places in the world with the highest number of people in need of emergency food support shows that the link between conflict and hunger remains all too persistent and deadly, according to a new report released today by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP). The report was prepared for the UN Security Council which in May adopted a landmark resolution on preventing hunger in conflict zones.
We talked about the dire situation in Yemen back in 2011. Was anyone listening?
The situation in Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan and Yemen worsened in the latter part of 2018 largely because of conflict, while Somalia, Syria and the Lake Chad Basin have seen some improvements in line with improved security. In total, around 56 million people are in need of urgent food and livelihood assistance across the eight conflict zones.
“This report clearly demonstrates the impact of armed violence on the lives and livelihoods of millions of men, women, boys and girls caught up in conflict,” FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva states in the report foreword. “I would strongly encourage you to keep in mind that behind these seemingly dry statistics are real people experiencing rates of hunger that are simply unacceptable in the 21st century.”
Violence against humanitarian workers is growing, the report states, sometimes forcing organizations to suspend operations and deprive vulnerable populations of humanitarian assistance. In 2018, aid workers and facilities were attacked in all the countries covered in the report.
“This report shows again the tragic link between conflict and hunger and how it still pervades far too much of the world. We need better and quicker access in all conflict zones, so we can get to more of the civilians who need our help. But what the world needs most of all is an end to the wars,” the World Food Programme Executive DirectorDavid Beasley states in the foreword.
Condemnation of starvation as a tool of war
The UN Security Council’s Resolution 2417 is an unambiguous condemnation of starvation as a tool of war. It calls on all parties to armed conflict to comply with their obligations under International Humanitarian Law to minimize the impact of military actions on civilians, including on food production and distribution, and to allow humanitarian access in a safe and timely manner to civilians needing lifesaving food, nutritional and medical assistance.
“The millions of men, women and children going hungry as a result of armed conflict will not be reduced unless and until these fundamental principles are followed”, the report states.
Unprecedented and unacceptable hunger
The growing number of protracted conflicts in the world is creating unprecedented and unacceptable levels of hunger.
Yemen’s three-year war is a stark demonstration of the urgent need for a cessation of hostilities to address the world’s largest food security emergency. In its country analysis, the report states that conflicting parties disregarded the protected status of humanitarian facilities and personnel which made scaling-up operations to prevent famine a difficult and dangerous endeavour.
In the second half of 2018, the Democratic Republic of the Congo had the second highest number (13 million) of acutely food insecure people, driven by a rise in armed conflict.
In South Sudan, where civil strife has persisted for more than five years, the lean season is expected to start earlier than normal, according to the report, pushing those in need of urgent support up to more than 5 million between January and March 2019.
Across the Lake Chad basin including north-eastern Nigeria, Chad’s Lac region and Niger’s Diffa, where Boko Haram militants are active, a major deterioration in food security is projected during this year’s lean season (June-August 2019), and 3 million people are expected to face acute food insecurity.
In Afghanistan, the percentage of rural Afghans facing acute food deficits is projected to reach 47 percent (or 10.6 million people) by March if urgent life-saving assistance is not provided. In the Central African Republic, armed conflict remained the main driver of hunger in 2018, with 1.9 million people experiencing severe food deficits.
Risk of a ‘Caribbean Syria’: All Eyes on the Army in Venezuela Power Struggle
With support from Washington, Venezuelan opposition politician Juan Guaidó has declared himself the country’s new president. Ultimately, though, the military will determine the outcome of his power struggle with incumbent Nicolás Maduro.
Israel shutters TIPH observer mission in flash point Hebron
Government thinks it can hide its abuses of Palestinians and anyone who opposes the government.

The Israeli prime minister has accused the civilian observer mission of acting “against us.” The decision to not renew its mandate has created “an atmosphere of tension,” according to Palestinian officials.
Can Kamala Harris Repeat Obama’s Success With Black Voters? It’s Complicated
What’s not complicated are what’s behind all these attacks on Harris – lots of commentators think she is a winner and are trying to pick at her to boost losers they favor! Ms. Harris has appeal for black voters. But she also faces challenges — skepticism about her background as a prosecutor, overcoming sexism and competing in a crowded primary field.
The Howard Schultz Delusion
Most Americans are not socially liberal and economically conservative.
Senate Advances Pro-Israel Bill as G.O.P. Searches for Democratic Divisions
It’s about defending current Israeli right-wing government, not about defending Israel or promoting peace! A Senate measure to combat the boycott-Israel movement is as much about highlighting new Democratic voices critical of Israel as it is about defending the Jewish State.
Jussie Smollett, Star of ‘Empire,’ Attacked in Possible Hate Crime
crap!!! Smollett was attacked early Tuesday by two people who the police say yelled “racial and homophobic slurs” and wrapped a rope around his neck.
Mark Zuckerberg’s Delusion of Consumer Consent
He said Facebook users want tailored ads. According to our research, that’s not true.
Ex-IBM Executive Says She Was Told Not to Disclose Names of Employees Over Age 50 Who’d Been Laid Off

In sworn testimony filed recently as part of a class-action lawsuit against IBM, a former executive says she was ordered not to comply with a federal agency’s request that the company disclose the names of employees over 50 who’d been laid off from her business unit.
Catherine A. Rodgers, a vice president who was then IBM’s senior executive in Nevada, cited the order among several practices she said prompted her to warn IBM superiors the company was leaving itself open to allegations of age discrimination. She claims she was fired in 2017 because of her warnings.
Company spokesman Edward Barbini labeled Rodgers’ claims related to potential age discrimination “false,” adding that the reasons for her firing were “wholly unrelated to her allegations.”
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Rodgers’ affidavit was filed Jan. 17 as part of a lawsuit in federal district court in New York. The suit cites a March 2018 ProPublica story that IBM engaged in a strategy designed to, in the words of one internal company document, “correct seniority mix” by flouting or outflanking U.S. anti-age discrimination laws to force out tens of thousands of older workers in the five years through 2017 alone.
Rodgers said in an interview Sunday that IBM “appears to be engaged in a concerted and disproportionate targeting of older workers.” She said that if the company releases the ages of those laid off, something required by federal law and that IBM did until 2014, “the facts will speak for themselves.”
“IBM is a data company. Release the data,” she said.
Rodgers is not a plaintiff in the New York case but intends to become one, said Shannon Liss-Riordan, the attorney for the employees.
IBM has not yet responded to Rodgers’ affidavit in the class-action suit. But in a filing in a separate age-bias lawsuit in federal district court in Austin, Texas, where a laid-off IBM sales executive introduced the document to bolster his case, lawyers for the company termed the order for Rodgers not to disclose the layoffs of older workers from her business unit “unremarkable.”
They said that the U.S. Department of Labor sought the names of the workers so it could determine whether they qualified for federal Trade Adjustment Assistance, or TAA, which provides jobless benefits and re-training to those who lose their jobs because of foreign competition. They said that company executives concluded that only one of about 10 workers whose names Rodgers had sought to provide qualified.
In its reporting, ProPublica found that IBM has gone to considerable lengths to avoid reporting its layoff numbers by, among other things, limiting its involvement in government programs that might require disclosure. Although the company has laid off tens of thousands of U.S. workers in recent years and shipped many jobs overseas, it sought and won TAA aid for just three during the past decade, government records show.
Company lawyers in the Texas case said that Rodgers, 62 at the time of her firing and a 39-year veteran of IBM, was let go in July 2017 because of “gross misconduct.”
Rodgers said that she received “excellent” job performance reviews for decades before questioning IBM’s practices toward older workers. She rejected the misconduct charge as unfounded.
Legal action against IBM over its treatment of older workers appears to be growing. In addition to the suits in New York and Texas, cases are also underway in California, New Jersey and North Carolina.
Liss-Riordan, who has represented workers against a series of tech giants including Amazon, Google and Uber, has added 41 plaintiffs to the original three in the New York case and is asking the judge to require that IBM notify all U.S. workers whom it has laid off since July 2017 of the suit and of their option to challenge the company.
One complicating factor is that IBM requires departing employees who want to receive severance pay to sign a document waiving their right to take the company to court and limiting them to private, individual arbitration. Studies show this process rarely results in decisions that favor workers. To date, neither plaintiffs’ lawyers nor the government has challenged the legality of IBM’s waiver document.
Many ex-employees also don’t act within the 300-day federal statute of limitations for bringing a case. Of about 500 ex-employees who Liss-Riordan said contacted her since she filed the New York case last September, only 100 had timely claims and, of these, only about 40 had not signed the waivers and so were eligible to join the lawsuit. She said she’s filed arbitration cases for the other 60.
At key points, Rodgers’ account of IBM’s practices is similar to those reported by ProPublica. Among the parallels:
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Rodgers said that all layoffs in her business unit were of older workers and that younger workers were unaffected. (ProPublica estimated that about 60 percent of the company’s U.S. layoffs from 2014 through 2017 were workers age 40 and above.)
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She said that she and other managers were told to encourage workers flagged for layoff to use IBM’s internal hiring system to find other jobs in the company even as upper management erected insurmountable barriers to their being hired for these jobs.
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Rodgers said the company reversed a decades long practice of encouraging employees to work from home and ordered many to begin reporting to a few “hub” offices around the country, a change she said appeared designed to prompt people to quit. She said that in one case an employee agreed to relocate to Connecticut only to be told to relocate again to North Carolina.
Barbini, the IBM spokesman, didn’t comment on individual elements of Rodgers’ allegations. Last year, he did not address a 10-page summary of ProPublica’s findings, but issued a statement that read in part, “We are proud of our company and our employees’ ability to reinvent themselves era after era, while always complying with the law.”
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