1. In Congo, aid group Action Against Hunger will stop treating tens of thousands of malnourished children from May, which the charity said will put the children in “mortal danger.”
2. In Ethiopia, food assistance stopped for more than 1 million people, according to the Tigray Disaster Risk Management Commission. The Ministry of Health was also forced to terminate the contract of 5,000 workers across the country focused on HIV and malaria prevention, vaccinations and helping vulnerable women deal with the trauma of war.
3. In Senegal, the biggest malaria project closed. It distributed bed nets and medication to tens of thousands of people, according to a USAID worker who was not authorized to speak to the media. Maternal and child health and nutrition services also closed. They provided lifesaving care to tens of thousands of pregnant women and treatment that would have prevented and treated acute malnutrition.
4. In South Sudan, the International Rescue Committee closed a project providing access to quality health care and nutrition services to more than 115,000 people.
5. In Colombia, program shuttered by the Norwegian Refugee Council left 50,000 people without lifesaving support including in the northeast, where growing violence has precipitated a once-in-a-generation humanitarian crisis. It included food, shelter, clean water and other basic items for people displaced in the region.
6. In war-torn Sudan, 90 communal kitchens closed in the capital, Khartoum, leaving more than half a million people without consistent access to food, according to the International Rescue Committee.......and there's fourteen more!!    https://apnews.com/article/usaid-cuts-hunger-sickness-288b1d3f80d85ad749a6d758a778a5b2

What USAID does, and why Trump and Musk want to get rid of it. APN ELLEN KNICKMEYER and MEG KINNARD February 4, 2025 WASHINGTON (AP) — Dozens of senior officials put on leave. Thousands of contractors were laid off. A freeze put on billions of dollars in humanitarian assistance to other countries. Over the last two weeks, President Donald Trump’s administration has made significant changes to the U.S. agency charged with delivering humanitarian assistance overseas that has left aid organizations agonizing over whether they can continue with programs such as nutritional assistance for malnourished infants and children Then-President John F. Kennedy established the U.S. Agency for International Development, known as USAID, during the Cold War. In the decades since, Republicans and Democrats have fought over the agency and its funding.

What’s going on with USAID?........On his first day in office Jan. 20, Trump implemented a 90-day freeze on foreign assistance. Four days later, Peter Marocco — a returning political appointee from Trump’s first term — drafted a tougher than expected interpretation of that order, a move that shut down thousands of programs around the world and forced furloughs and layoffs. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has since moved to keep more kinds of strictly life-saving emergency programs going during the freeze. But confusion over what programs are exempted from the Trump administration’s stop-work orders — and fear of losing U.S. aid permanently — is still freezing aid and development work globally. Dozens of senior officials have been put on leave, thousands of contractors laid off, and employees were told Monday not to enter its Washington headquarters. And USAID’s website and its account on the X platform have been taken down. It’s part of a Trump administration crackdown that’s hitting across the federal government and its programs. But USAID and foreign aid are among those hit the hardest.Rubio said the administration’s aim was a program-by-program review of which projects make “America safer, stronger or more prosperous.”The decision to shut down U.S.-funded programs during the 90-day review meant the U.S. was “getting a lot more cooperation” from recipients of humanitarian, development and security assistance, Rubio said.......read on   https://apnews.com/article/usaid-foreign-aid-freeze-trump-peter-marocco-8253d7dda766df89e10390c1645e78aa

World’s poorest bear the brunt of the climate crisis: 10 underreported emergencies. Care International report highlights ‘deep injustice’ neglected by world’s media, as extreme weather along with Covid wipes out decades of progressGuardian Saheed Kamali Dehghan  Fri 14 Jan 2022  From Afghanistan to Ethiopia, about 235 million people worldwide needed assistance in 2021. But while some crises received global attention, others are lesser known.Humanitarian organisation Care International has published its annual report of the 10 countries that had the least attention in online articles in five languages around the world in 2021, despite each having at least 1 million people affected by conflict or climate disasters.

Zambia....First on the list, Zambia has 1.2 million malnourished people and about 60% of the 18.4 million population living below the international poverty line of $1.90 (£1.40) a day. Women produce 60% of the country’s food supply, but families headed by women faced higher poverty rates than those headed by men. Food insecurity in Zambia has primarily been blamed on prolonged drought, but rising corn prices and flooding have contributed.              Ukraine.....Currently in the news amid renewed tension between Russia and the west, in Ukraine, 3.4 million people were in need of assistance in 2021, after years of conflict. “While a comprehensive political solution for the conflict is still not in sight, people in eastern Ukraine are daily forced to put their lives on the line. Along the 420-km ‘contact line’ that separates Ukrainian government-controlled territory from that of the separatists, the situation is particularly dangerous,” the report said.                                                                                                                                          Malawi......Malawi is facing a food insecurity crisis, with 17% of the population severely malnourished. Droughts, floods and landslides have been predicted to worsen over the coming years. Cyclone Idai in 2019 severely affected harvests and left tens of thousands displaced. “The climate crisis is hitting people here earlier and much harder than the people of the global north,” said Chikondi Chabvuta, advocacy lead for Care International in Malawi. “We are already seeing real-life consequences with delayed rainfall, heavy and destructive rainfall, unpredictable rainfall patterns, infertile soil, destroyed harvests.”                                                                                                                                                            Central African Republic.....read on- there's eight more! The article is two years old but probably no change today. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/jan/14/worlds-poorest-bear-brunt-of-climate-crisis-10-underreported-emergencies

Failure of State: For Decades, Alabama’s Mining Regulator Has Left Citizens Unprotected. Alabama has long demanded it remain the primary regulator of coal mining within its borders. The result? Unmitigated risks for citizens and statutory benefits for coal companies. Inside Climate News  Lee Hedgepeth  December 22, 2024  OAK GROVE, Ala.—The regulators have known all along. The residents have been telling them. Abamians have for decades been raising their voices about the risks of longwall mining, an aggressive method of extracting coal that has left sinking homes in its wake and increased the risks of an explosive gas seeping to the surface. 

“Currently we are living in fear of gas escaping from the underground mines and causing an explosion or burns,” a Kimberly, Alabama, resident wrote in a letter to regulators in September 1999. “There have been people killed who were above longwall mines.” A quarter-century later, little has changed.  “I don’t want to blow up,” a resident above another Alabama longwall mine said in June. All the while, an investigation by Inside Climate News shows that state regulators—who have long championed state rather than federal primacy over the regulation of coal extraction—have done little to nothing to address residents’ fears or mitigate the considerable risks of longwall mining. 

Instead, a review of thousands of pages of public documents shows that state regulators have rubber-stamped coal mining permits that have left citizens largely unprotected from the impacts of subsidence and methane escape.  Even when, in March 2024, a home explosion atop Oak Grove Mine killed a man and critically injured his grandson, state mining regulators kept the situation at arm’s length, never taking substantive action to address what residents and coal mining experts still say are imminent, potentially deadly, dangers.

Longwall mining uses bladed machines that shear coal from expanses as wide as 1,000 feet and as long as two miles, leaving behind a rock ceiling that then collapses behind the cutting tool, typically causing the land above it to sink.  Methane is a climate “super pollutant” contributing to worsening floods, heat waves and other disasters. But it can also trigger explosions when it builds up in enclosed places, like homes. The subsidence caused by longwall mining that can damage buildings can also create cracks in the ground that provide easy routes for underground methane to escape to the surface......read on   https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22122024/alabama-coal-mine-regulators-fail-to-protect-residents/#:~:text=Even%20when%2C%20in%20March%202024,imminent%2C%20potentially%20deadly%2C%20dangers.