Word: problem
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...awful travel gripe? The Avenger may be able to sort it out for you. Click here to tell us your problem...
...Kenyan ancestry might lead him to give their country some kind of preferential treatment. Instead, Obama seems determined to use what influence he has in the way a parent might withhold love from an errant child. "I sometimes think Obama's roots in Kenya can actually be a problem," Prime Minister Raila Odinga said in a recent newspaper interview. "Kenya is always being held to different standards compared to neighboring countries." (See Barack Obama's family tree...
...adult literacy. But when USAID's inspector general sent a team over in August 2007 to check on the progress, it could not validate the claims because the USAID mission in Islamabad "did not require RTI to adhere to reporting requirements critical to monitoring the program performance." The problem was serious enough for RTI, which derived close to 40% of its $710 million in revenues last year from USAID, to be disqualified from follow-on contracts on this particular project. (See pictures of Pakistan below the surface...
Part of USAID's problem is a "bunker mentality" that exaggerates genuine security concerns, he says, noting that agency regulations prevented key personnel from accompanying even members of Congress who traveled there to examine aid projects. But other observers say the problems go far beyond security issues. For Shuja Nawaz, a Pakistan security expert and director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council in Washington, the core of USAID's shortcomings is that it has outsourced "its thinking, planning and local interactions with the recipients" to Beltway contractors who are more incentivized to keep money flowing than getting...
...Obama Administration seems to recognize the problem. "Let's face it, we have devoted a smaller percentage of our government budget to development than almost any other advanced country, and too little of what we have spent has contributed to genuine and lasting progress," said Secretary of State Hilary Clinton in a July 15 speech at the Council on Foreign Relations. "Too much of the money has never reached its intended target but stayed here in America to pay salaries or fund overhead in contracts." Ironically perhaps, one of the best things Clinton can do is to rebuild and finally...