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Former CNN reporter Arwa Damon on the war in Ukraine one year later and the need for aid in Turkey and Syria | CNN

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Former CNN reporter Arwa Damon on the war in Ukraine one year later and the need for aid in Turkey and Syria | CNN



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Arwa Damon is an award-winning journalist and CNN’s former Senior Worldwide Correspondent. After 18 years reporting from the world’s hotspots, she left the community final 12 months to concentrate on the non-profit she based: Worldwide Community for Support, Aid and Help (INARA). Her group helps folks affected by wars and disasters. Lately, Arwa spoke to CNN from the INARA workplace in Turkey because the group supplies assist in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake. She mentioned the issues she noticed whereas reporting on the conflict in Ukraine, the help that’s nonetheless wanted one 12 months later, why she based INARA and what she is presently seeing (and never seeing) within the world response to the earthquake in Turkey and Syria.

This dialog has been edited and condensed for readability.

The conflict in Ukraine is about to hit the one-year mark. Are you able to inform us about what you noticed and skilled whereas reporting there?

“I used to be on the Ukraine-Poland border. I believe what struck me most, I keep in mind standing there very distinctly, watching these Ukrainian households coming throughout the border. It was a scene that I’d seen so many occasions earlier than, exhausted moms dragging alongside kids who’re barely in a position to put one step in entrance of the opposite. The fixed click on, click on, click on of the wheel spinning round on the little suitcases that they’re carrying. Then these faces with these nearly clean expressions of simply shock and exhaustion. As I used to be watching this in actual time, my thoughts simply superimposed on high of all of it the opposite photographs I’d seen from different conflict zones, from Syria and from Iraq, and it was the identical actual picture. After which I used to be struck by the distinction although, as a result of when these Ukrainian households obtained throughout the border, there have been piles of garments ready for them. There have been heat cups of tea, there have been buses lined as much as take them someplace. There have been volunteers with indicators providing rides, and a part of me was so heartened and heat to see this outpouring of assist and a part of me was so devastated that very same outpouring of assist was not afforded to different populations.”

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“The way in which folks responded to Ukraine is the way in which that we ought to be responding to folks in disaster. That ought to be our customary. That ought to be the norm.”

What sort of assist has INARA supplied to those that have been impacted by the conflict in Ukraine inside the final 12 months?

“We targeted so much on psychological well being. One of many first tasks that we did was type of recognizing that with all of those volunteers on the bottom, with all of those frontline people that existed on the market – there’s a little bit of sensitivity in terms of coping with those who have simply been via the trauma of conflict, particularly kids. There are specific fundamental do’s and don’ts that aren’t essentially apparent. We’ve a wealth of expertise coping with pediatric trauma sadly. So one of many first issues we did was tried to get info out to these frontline staff who have been providing coaching or distributing brochures in numerous languages simply to be sure that they have been conscious of the fundamentals wanted, by way of coping with kids which have been vastly traumatized. Additionally –and that is fairly vital– differentiating between what’s a traditional traumatic response and what are some key indicators that there’s going to be a probably deeper underlying longer lasting downside.”

“INARA’s major type of baseline for these kind of interventions is, ‘what are the gaps?’ We all know, from our personal expertise, that the primary hole we find yourself filling isn’t at the start of the disaster or the conflict. We all know that these gaps, that we find yourself filling, emerge when the media highlight strikes away when the funding has dried up and when the NGOs are usually not current on the bottom.”

“We’re constructing a secure house in partnership with a corporation from Mariupol. They particularly highlighted an issue the place quite a lot of these households which have fled from Mariupol, they have been female-led households. The lads had stayed behind; they have been both preventing or volunteering or had had been killed. And the moms wanted a secure place to have the ability to go away their kids in order that they may go discover work. What we’ve carried out, and what we’re nonetheless doing is constructing these secure areas that each act as areas the place the youngsters can get social assist, psychological well being assist, but additionally the place the mother and father can simply go away their youngsters for an extended period of time.”

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Because the conflict closes in on the one-year mark, has INARA’s work elevated?

“The work itself has picked up, however once more, what we all know is that our work, particularly as INARA, goes to choose up much more down the road. We’re nonetheless going to be there when all people else leaves. That’s simply the way in which that we function. That’s who we’re. That’s our DNA. We keep. We’ll hold filling within the gaps.”

“Positively our work goes to choose up in Ukraine.”

For tactics to supply humanitarian support to Ukraine, you possibly can contribute to Influence Your World’s marketing campaign right here.

What’s INARA’s general focus and mission?

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“The entire idea and premise for INARA may be very a lot primarily based by myself private expertise reporting for CNN from the conflict zones for effectively over a decade and a half. Continuously coming throughout kids who wanted medical remedy, however they have been unable to entry it. That’s, usually talking, for one in every of two causes: One is that the mother and father don’t know that sure organizations are literally offering the remedy that their youngster wants. The opposite is as a result of no group is offering what the kid wants. INARA was particularly constructed to fill in these gaps and create that community for the households in order that we find yourself connecting the donors, whether or not it’s particular person or bigger donors, to the household – to the remedy. We do that via our caseworkers, and we do that via the entire program that we’ve constructed.”

Arwa and Youssif

“It began out with the story of this little boy named Youssif that I coated for CNN and again in 2006 and 2007. Gunmen poured gasoline on his head when he was standing outdoors of his home taking part in after which set him on fireplace. Up to now, nobody actually is aware of why. Youssif’s father had gone door to door, NGO to NGO, ministry to ministry looking for somebody who might deal with his little boy after which he, by probability, ended up at CNN’s doorstep. I keep in mind the primary time he introduced Youssif into our workplace. He was consuming rice. However his face was such a hardened masks of rivers of scar tissue that he couldn’t open his mouth and so he would eat by taking just a few grains of rice and simply pushing them via his lips. He was very indignant. He was very sullen. And we have been all very deeply impacted by this little youngster.”

“The story went out and CNN’s telephones started blowing up. My e mail was blowing up. I imply, the assist was coming in from around the globe. It transcended boundaries and nationality and faith and all the pieces. Lengthy story very brief, among the finest moments of my profession was once I was in a position to name Youssif’s household and say, ‘Your little boy’s going to get assist. You’re all going to America.’ His case was picked up by the Youngsters’s Burn Basis, after which CNN viewers have been donating to cowl the price of his medical remedy.”

Arwa on how INARA obtained began

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“Quick ahead to 2012 and I’m protecting Syria and it’s very miserable and it feels as if it doesn’t matter what we do, irrespective of how many individuals die, we’re not likely shifting the needle in any respect by way of this horrendous trajectory. We are able to all see the nation happening. It simply grew to become this ‘I have to do extra, I have to do one thing.’ I used to be remembering all these different tales and I used to be remembering all these different occasions after we couldn’t at all times report the story of the kid that was injured, however we’d simply determine it out amongst ourselves. It grew to become, ‘Properly, why not create a charity?’ We’re simply going to determine it out for these households as a result of we are able to determine it out.”

“There’s completely no logical purpose in my thoughts why a toddler who has been injured by conflict or battle or something to do with that ought to not get the medical remedy that they deserve. And so INARA was born. Now we do medical remedy. We’ve this entire holistic remedy plan the place we even have in-house psychological well being professionals. So, the kid is available in, they get assessed for medical, they get assessed for psychological well being, we construct up their remedy plan concurrently. We even have household remedy periods.”

How has INARA been affected by the earthquake in Turkey and Syria?

“I’m speaking to you from Turkey proper now. INARA’s Turkey workplace is positioned in Gaziantep, which may be very near the epicenter of the earthquake. Our workers all dwell in Gaziantep. Our places of work and that entire space was impacted by the earthquake. That’s the place all of our beneficiaries dwell. That’s the place all the youngsters who we deal with dwell. That’s the place all their households dwell. We additionally had quite a few workers who’re over in Antakya, which was very badly hit. Fortunately, fortunately, the entire workers are bodily okay. However lots of them are deeply, deeply traumatized.”

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“You even have to recollect and acknowledge that our workers in Turkey are all Syrian refugees themselves, barring one or two. So, it’s this very deep, intense, compound trauma.”

“In terms of our Speedy Response Program, we don’t simply concentrate on kids. It’s that very same idea of, ‘The place are the gaps? How do we discover them, and the way will we fill them?’ So particular to our response for Turkey and Syria, it’s actually trying and looking for the populations that different organizations are unable to achieve after which we’re doing very particular focused distributions of support. We don’t have the generic basket that goes out. It’s very a lot needs-based.”

“We additionally want to speak about what’s occurring in Syria, or not occurring in Syria, as a result of primarily you see this outpouring of assist for Turkey and it’s unbelievable and all of those worldwide rescue groups are coming in and all of this support is coming in by land and sea and air. And simply throughout the border, just like the shortest distance away, folks died as a result of there weren’t sufficient diggers and if there weren’t diggers, there wasn’t sufficient gas to run the diggers and the help wasn’t coming in and the hospitals have been destroyed.”

“We’re partnering with organizations that work in Syria. The necessity there’s so large for all the pieces that we’re simply doing fundamental humanitarian help and partnership with organizations which are already there.”

INARA workers hand out aid in Turkey to earthquake survivors.

How completely different has it been for you going from reporting on wars and disasters full-time, to now, operating this basis and serving to full-time?

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“It’s very, very completely different. Sure, I’m operating INARA proper now, but it surely’s nonetheless a pure volunteer factor. I’m nonetheless storytelling. I’m nonetheless doing journalism, simply otherwise. However sure, being right here as an support employee versus a journalist is a really completely different dynamic.”

“The one factor I do like about doing the help factor is that it offers me extra time to simply sit with folks. Once we’re right here as reporters, we’re on the market and sure, we’re being respectful to folks’s ache and sorrow, however finally, our job is to point out the world what that’s. So we wish to get in, we wish to get what we have to get and we wish to file it and get it on air. Being right here on the help aspect of issues permits me extra time to simply sit and discuss to folks.”

“Now my mind has this completely different degree of depth it’s attempting to cope with as a result of we’re not simply attempting to plan for tomorrow. We’re attempting to plan, ‘What are we going to do in six months? What’s our long-term sport plan right here?’ as a result of we’re right here to remain.”

“We’re just like the little NGO that simply will get it carried out. Give us an issue, we’re gonna determine learn how to resolve it. You need assistance, we’re gonna determine learn how to get it to you.”

You may make a distinction for the victims of the earthquake in Turkey and Syria via Influence Your World’s marketing campaign right here.

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Trump keeps decrying rampant crime. Here’s how his misleading claim has shifted.

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Trump keeps decrying rampant crime. Here’s how his misleading claim has shifted.

By former President Donald J. Trump’s account, the country is awash in crime. But in fact, under President Biden, the rate of violent crime has fallen.

It is a refrain that dates to Mr. Trump’s first presidential campaign in 2016, when he often cited false statistics to claim historically high murder rates and record-breaking urban crime. After he was elected, those warnings waned, even though the country had its biggest one-year increase in murder in 2020, when he was in office.

Once he lost that election, though, Mr. Trump wasted no time in falsely claiming crime records, saying in a 2022 address that “our country is now a cesspool of crime.”

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In making the case for a second term, Mr. Trump has stuck to that message, though his argument has evolved this election cycle from false claims on crime rates to an attack on the credibility of any evidence that refutes him. Here’s how.

March 2, 2024

Mr. Trump selectively homes in on crime in cities, including at a rally in Greensboro, N.C.

Mr. Trump had a point that violent crime in Washington had increased in 2023. But it was one of few outliers. Violent crime overall decreased across the country by 3 percent, and the number of homicides declined on average by 10 percent across 32 cities tracked by the nonpartisan Council on Criminal Justice. In Washington and seven other cities, though, the number of homicides increased.

April 13, 2024

Mr. Trump, at a rally in Pennsylvania, falsely balloons the level of crime in New York.

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Crime, in fact, decreased in the year before March 2024 by 5 percent, and murders by 19.4 percent, the city reported just days before Mr. Trump’s remarks. And in 2023, overall crime declined by 0.3 percent and murders by 11.9 percent, to 386 in 2023 from 438 in 2022.

Those numbers also pale in comparison to the height of crime in New York in the 1980s and 1990s, when Mr. Trump was a mainstay of the city and when it regularly recorded more than 1,500 murders annually. Homicides peaked in 1990 at 2,245.

May 18, 2024

As the general election nears, his claims grow more hyperbolic.

“There’s too much crime in the country. We’ve never seen crime like this before.”

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Mr. Trump, in an interview with a Dallas news station, warns more broadly of a nationwide crime wave. That is false. Violent crime and property crime are near the lowest level in decades, despite public perception to the contrary. And while there was an increase in crime during the pandemic, violent crime was higher in 2020 under Mr. Trump than under Mr. Biden so far.

May 18, 2024

That same day, he attributes the increase to Democratic policies.

Speaking to the National Rifle Association, Mr. Trump vividly and baselessly casts blame on his political opponents.

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June 15, 2024

Mr. Trump wrongly blames methodological changes for obscuring crime trends.

The claim, made at a conservative gathering in Detroit, is misleading. Days earlier, the F.B.I. released a preliminary assessment estimating that crime had fallen in the first three months of 2024. But Mr. Trump insisted the data was fraudulent.

In 2021, the F.B.I. started relying on a new data collection system, aggregating crime data from local and state police departments. Many agencies had yet to fully transition, resulting in reporting from only 68 percent of agencies, which covered about 66 percent of the population. So Mr. Trump has a point that data collection in 2021 was unusually incomplete, but the reported national crime rate that year did not simply omit a third of the country, as he said. Rather, the F.B.I. used a standard statistical process to fill in the blanks and estimate crime for the missing jurisdictions to generate a national rate.

The F.B.I.’s national estimates included data from more agencies in subsequent years: 93.5 percent of the population in 2022 and 94.3 percent in 2023. Both years continued to show a decline in crime compared with 2020.

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June 22, 2024

At a rally in Philadelphia, Mr. Trump insists that the official statistics are “fake.”

“The F.B.I. crime statistics Biden is pushing are fake.”

Minutes later, he points to a different data set, also from the Justice Department.

Mr. Trump was cherry-picking those statistics and referring to the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey, which showed a 43 percent increase in the violent crime rate, from 16.4 per 1,000 people in 2020 to 23.5 in 2022. (Unlike the F.B.I.’s crime rate, which relies on crimes reported to the police, this rate relies on responses to a survey.)

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Left unsaid: The 2022 rate was comparable to rates under the Trump administration (23.2 in 2018 and 21.0 in 2019) and still lower than rates in the 1990s and 2000s. Moreover, in 2023, that rate declined to 22.5 per 1,000 people.

Aug. 3, 2024

He repeats those percentages during a rally in Atlanta.

“Nationwide, there’s been a 43 percent increase in violent crimes since I left office, including a 58 percent increase in rape, 89 percent increase in aggravated assault and a 56 percent increase in stone-cold robbery.”

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Sept. 6, 2024

Addressing the Fraternal Order of Police union in Charlotte, N.C., he again cites those figures.

“Since Kamala Harris took office, she has presided over a 43 percent increase in violent crime, including a 58 percent increase in rape and an 89 percent increase in aggravated assault.”

Sept. 10, 2024

Mr. Trump reprises his claims during the presidential debate.

Sept. 18, 2024

In a Fox News interview, Mr. Trump inaccurately cites an analysis to claim a huge increase in crime.

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“I was right. The following day, D.O.J. announced numbers — I don’t know who it was in D.O.J., but somebody over there likes me — that crime is up 45 percent, murders up, numbers like you wouldn’t even believe.”

Since the debate, Mr. Trump has seized upon and further inflated an analysis repeated in conservative news outlets of revised F.B.I. statistics.

In its September report estimating that violent crime had declined by 3 percent in 2023, the F.B.I. released revised figures for 2022, as it does every year. The revisions, according to an analysis published by Fox News, show a 4.5 percent increase in violent crime from 2021 to 2022.

But even that 4.5 percent figure is misleading, as FactCheck.org has noted. That is because crime data from 2021 was incomplete, as police departments across the country transitioned to a different reporting system. Moreover, the revised data still show that violent crime had declined overall since 2020.

This dark assessment of soaring violence and lawlessness under Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris has been central to Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign — even though the facts show otherwise.

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Ukraine says it has attacked North Korean troops in Kursk

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Ukraine says it has attacked North Korean troops in Kursk

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Ukrainian officials said on Monday that their forces had fired at North Korean soldiers in combat for the first time since their deployment by Russia to its western Kursk region.

The clashes mark the first direct intervention by a foreign army since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, as well as an expansion of what was already the largest land war in Europe since the second world war.

“The first military units of the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] have already come under fire in Kursk,” Andriy Kovalenko, Ukraine’s top counter-disinformation official within the national security council, said on Telegram. A senior Ukrainian intelligence official confirmed the military engagement to the Financial Times but declined to provide further details.

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In Kyiv, foreign minister Andrii Sybiha said he had discussed with his visiting German counterpart Annalena Baerbock the “need for decisive action” in response to North Korea’s deepening involvement in the war.

“We urge Europe to realise that the DPRK troops are now carrying [out] an aggressive war in Europe against a sovereign European state,” Sybiha said in a news conference.

The US on Monday called out Russia and China at the UN Security Council for “shamelessly protecting” and emboldening North Korea. South Korea and the EU also condemned the deployment and expressed concern that Russia could reward North Korea with transfers of nuclear and ballistic technology.

Another senior Ukrainian official told the FT that Moscow was already providing military technologies to Pyongyang to help with its missile programmes, as well as “money”.

In Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin met North Korea’s foreign minister, Choe Son-hui, in the Kremlin on Monday.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and North Korean foreign minister Choe Son-hui meet at the Kremlin on Monday © Mikhael Tereshchenko/SPUTNIK/KREMLIN POOL/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Choe passed on a greeting from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who has backed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and signed a treaty with Putin in June that includes a mutual security assistance clause.

The foreign minister last week said that North Korea had “no doubt whatsoever that under the wise leadership of the honourable Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Russian army and people will surely achieve a great victory in their sacred struggle to defend the sovereign rights and security of their state”.

Putin has not confirmed the North Korean deployment but he hinted at it last month, indicating it fell under the security provisions in the treaty.

US and South Korean officials last week confirmed Ukraine’s assessment that around 8,000 North Korean troops were sent to Kursk last month to help Russia’s army push Ukrainian forces out of territory they have occupied since August. Senior Ukrainian intelligence officials told the FT that the forces were in barracks about 50km from the Ukrainian border and preparing to enter the fight within “days”.

Kyiv, Washington and Seoul said that Pyongyang had sent roughly 12,000 troops in all to Russia for its ongoing war effort, including 500 officers and three generals. The remaining forces are located in Russia’s far east, where they are undergoing training.

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The White House has said that the North Koreans would become “legitimate military targets” if they entered the fight against Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Friday that Ukraine could see where Russia was gathering the North Koreans and urged western nations to lift restrictions on long-range weapons to “pre-emptively” strike them before they could attack his forces.

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The senior Ukrainian intelligence official declined to provide specifics about the first military engagement between his country’s forces and the North Koreans. But he said that it occurred within Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukraine controls some 600 sq km of territory, or a little more than half of what it previously held following the summer incursion that took Moscow by surprise.

Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate, the GUR, said over the weekend that Russia had armed the North Korean troops in Kursk with 60mm mortars, assault rifles, machine guns, sniper rifles, anti-tank guided missiles and shoulder-launched anti-tank rocket launchers. The GUR said that some were also provided with night-vision devices and thermal imagers. A few hundred troops from North Korea’s special forces have also been deployed in Kursk.

Ukrainian officials and military analysts have raised questions about the quality and combat effectiveness of the North Korean troops, with most being described as inexperienced, low-ranking soldiers.

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“We will know soon” how well they can fight, said one of the officials on Monday.

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Both Candidates Exude Confidence, Trump Says He Doesn’t Mind if Reporters Are Shot

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Both Candidates Exude Confidence, Trump Says He Doesn’t Mind if Reporters Are Shot
Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are exuding confidence as they head into Election Day. For Trump, that’s nothing new. He said over the weekend that he “shouldn’t have left” the White House at the end of his presidency – despite losing the 2020 election to President Joe …
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