Latest news with #Konyndyk
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump admin sending three USAID staffers to Myanmar to help with earthquake relief
The US has sent a three-person team to Myanmar to help respond to the 7.7-magnitude earthquake, in a move criticised as 'weak and irrelevant' by a former aid official. Much larger Russian and Chinese teams have already been helping search-and-rescue efforts in the country for days. The scaled-back response comes as President Donald Trump is moving to officially end the US Agency For International Development (USAID) and has notified remaining employees their jobs will be eliminated. The Department of Government Efficiency is thought to have already cut billions of dollars from USAID, but the exact figure has not been verified. Any remaining functions are set to be transferred to the Department of State. 'It's not a case of worst-practice; it's really a case of no-practice,' former USAID disaster relief leader Jeremy Konyndyk told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 'It just makes the US look, frankly, kind of weak and irrelevant to most of the other countries that have shown up in force to support the people of Myanmar,' added Konyndyk, now the president of Refugees International. The US team's expected arrival on Wednesday comes five days after the earthquake devastated large swathes of Myanmar's biggest cities on Friday. The US embassy in Burma said in an online statement that the team would be deployed 'to identify the people's most pressing needs, including emergency shelter, food, medical needs, and access to water.' Konyndyk previously warned the first five days was the key period for finding people alive. 'The US has missed that window, and the cost of that is lost lives of people who could have been saved in Myanmar,' he said. The earthquake has killed at least 2,800 people, with thousands more injured. The death toll is predicted to surpass 10,000, according to US Geological Survey modeling. Residents are feared to be trapped under collapsed buildings across the country, including dozens under the collapse of a high-rise building that was under construction. Myanmar's ruling military rejected a major rebel alliance's Tuesday proposal for a unilateral ceasefire to support the international response to the earthquake. The United Nations has urged the international community to step up aid before the upcoming monsoon season worsens the disaster. The US embassy in Burma pledged up to $2 million in aid through Myanmar-based humanitarian organizations. 'The United States stands with the people of Myanmar as they work to recover from the devastation. We offer our deepest condolences for the loss of life and infrastructure in this difficult time,' it said on a statement online. By comparison, a senior international studies lecturer told ABC that the United States contributed 225 USAID workers and $185 million to Turkey and Syria after the 2023 earthquake. 'The Trump administration's paltry efforts in this regard are an insult to the people of Myanmar,' Adam Simpson of the University of South Australia said. China sent about 200 people, including a team, the day after the earthquake and pledged $13.9 million to Myanmar. Two Russian aircraft carrying 60 rescue workers, four dogs, ambulances, and rescue vehicles arrived in the capital on Sunday. The Philippines said it was deploying 114 specialists, while Vietnam sent 100, Singapore 88, and Thailand 55. India, South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, New Zealand, and Taiwan have all also provided emergency support in the form of aid or rescue specialists.
The Independent
02-04-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Trump admin sending three USAID staffers to Myanmar to help with earthquake relief
The US has sent a three-person team to Mynamar to help respond to the a 7.7-magnitude earthquake, in a move criticised as 'weak and irrelevant' by a former aid official. Much larger Russian and Chinese teams have already been helping search-and-rescue efforts in the country for days. The scaled-back response comes as President Donald Trump is moving to officially end the US Agency For International Development (USAID) and has notified remaining employees their jobs will be eliminated. The Department of Government Efficiency is thought to have already cut billions of dollars from USAID, but the exact figure has not been verified. Any remaining functions are set to be transferred to the Department of State. 'It's not a case of worst-practice; it's really a case of no-practice,' former USAID disaster relief leader Jeremy Konyndyk told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 'It just makes the US look, frankly, kind of weak and irrelevant to most of the other countries that have shown up in force to support the people of Myanmar,' added Konyndyk, now the president of Refugees International. The US team's expected arrival on Wednesday comes five days after the earthquake devastated large swathes of Myanmar's biggest cities on Friday. The US embassy in Burma said in an online statement that the team would be deployed 'to identify the people's most pressing needs, including emergency shelter, food, medical needs, and access to water.' Konyndyk previously warned the first five days was the key period for finding people alive. 'The US has missed that window, and the cost of that is lost lives of people who could have been saved in Myanmar,' he said. The earthquake has killed at least 2,800 people, with thousands more injured. The death toll is predicted to surpass 10,000, according to US Geological Survey modeling. Residents are feared to be trapped under collapsed buildings across the country, including dozens under the collapse of a high-rise building that was under construction. Myanmar's ruling military rejected a major rebel alliance's Tuesday proposal for a unilateral ceasefire to support the international response to the earthquake. The United Nations has urged the international community to step up aid before the upcoming monsoon season worsens the disaster. The US embassy in Burma pledged up to $2 million in aid through Myanmar-based humanitarian organizations. 'The United States stands with the people of Myanmar as they work to recover from the devastation. We offer our deepest condolences for the loss of life and infrastructure in this difficult time,' it said on a statement online. By comparison, a senior international studies lecturer told ABC that the United States contributed 225 USAID workers and $185 million to Turkey and Syria after the 2023 earthquake. 'The Trump administration's paltry efforts in this regard are an insult to the people of Myanmar,' Adam Simpson of the University of South Australia said. China sent about 200 people, including a team, the day after the earthquake and pledged $13.9 million to Myanmar. Two Russian aircraft carrying 60 rescue workers, four dogs, ambulances, and rescue vehicles arrived in the capital on Sunday. The Philippines said it was deploying 114 specialists, while Vietnam sent 100, Singapore 88, and Thailand 55. India, South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, New Zealand, and Taiwan have all also provided emergency support in the form of aid or rescue specialists.
Yahoo
27-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Elon Musk Hit With Damning Fact-Check Over Pathetic DOGE Defense
During the first meeting of White House Cabinet officials, Elon Musk admitted that DOGE's cut to Ebola prevention programs was a mistake that would be reversed—but federal officials say the money still isn't flowing in yet. 'We will make mistakes. We won't be perfect. But when we make a mistake, we'll fix it very quickly,' Musk, a Trump-appointed special government employee, said Wednesday in defense of his group's haphazard cuts while looming over the Cabinet table. 'So for example with USAID, one of the things we accidentally cancelled—very briefly—was Ebola prevention.' 'So we restored the Ebola prevention immediately. And there was no interruption,' the world's richest man added. But federal officials have said there was nothing brief about the cut, which involved hacking away at several arms of the federal government's disease response, and which has apparently still not been reversed. 'There have been no efforts to 'turn on' anything in prevention' when it comes to Ebola or other diseases, former USAID official Nidhi Bouri told The Washington Post Thursday. Earlier this month, news of an Ebola outbreak in Kampala, Uganda, was reported via a USAID mission, just prior to the seismic cuts. Public health experts have argued that choosing to nix the agency would force the U.S. into an information dark age that could see the country caught off guard in future health crises. Other public health officials were more blunt, arguing that Musk was flat out lying in telling Americans that the nation's disease prevention programs had been restored. 'This is bunk from Elon,' said Jeremy Konyndyk, a former USAID official who led the agency's Ebola response during a 2014-2015 outbreak in West Africa. 'They have laid off most of the experts, they're bankrupting most of the partner orgs, have withdrawn from WHO, and muzzled CDC.' 'What's left is a fig-leaf effort to cover their asses politically,' Konyndyk continued. Konyndyk noted that before the Trump administration's cuts, there would have been a robust interagency and international response to an Ebola outbreak that would have included resources pushed to the host government, a coalition of teams deployed to the region by USAID, the CDC, and the Defense Department, as well as real-time cooperation and data-sharing with the World Health Organization. 'But not this time,' Konyndyk wrote. 'Most experts and operations staff at USAID have been pushed out… USAID's capacity to deploy response teams is totally broken.' 'Bottom line: Elon's vendetta against USAID and the federal workforce is shredding all of the systems that the USG has built up to protect the US homeland against global outbreak risks,' Konyndyk added. 'Scrambling to recall a few staff and issue some belated funding is just window dressing.'
