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In a new Development Policy Centre discussion paper, we examine how institutional design shapes patterns of cooperation, competition and conflict in developing countries, focusing on civil service administration in Afghanistan (2001-2021) and Papua New Guinea since independence in 1975. A central message of our research is that institutions are not neutral containers of governance. They ... Read moreDisclosureThis research was undertaken with the support of the ANU-UPNG Partnership, an initiative of the PNG-Australia Partnership, funded by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The views expressed are those of the authors only. About the author/sNemat BizhanNematullah Bizhan is a senior lecturer at the Development Policy Centre. He leds the Centre's partnership with the University of Papua New Guinea.William MaleyEmeritus Professor William Maley served as Professor of Diplomacy at the Australian National University from 2003-2021, and was Foundation Director of the Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy from 2003-2014.

Multiple Adirondack region organizations welcome new leaders and the Lake George Association is hiring

La Asamblea General de Carolina del Norte anuló el veto del gobernador y convirtió en ley una medida que permite al estado participar en un programa federal de Crédito Fiscal para la Libertad Educativa (EFTC, en inglés). La entrada Carolina del Norte se une a programa federal de créditos fiscales para becas escolares tras anulación de veto se publicó primero en Enlace Latino NC. Carolina del Norte se une a programa federal de créditos fiscales para becas escolares tras anulación de veto was first posted on junio 4, 2026 at 4:00 pm.©2024 "Enlace Latino NC". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at paola@enlacelatinonc.org

The first weekend of June will see not just more events around town, but also some preludes to a bigger occasion.

گزارش نرگس صبا در برنامه تفسیر خبر از مقایسه ایران بین ۱۴ خرداد سال قبل و امروز

نازیلا گلستان در برنامه تفسیر خبر: «ولایت فقیه» امروز حتی صدا هم ندارد

خصوصیات اخلاقی مرجان ساتراپ و نگاه او به مرگ در گفت‌وگو با لونا شاد

Georgia’s State Election Board has advanced a resolution seeking to implement hand-marked paper ballots ahead of the November 2026 general election, contradicting guidelines from the secretary of state’s office directing counties to continue using Georgia’s current voting machines. The resolution, which is not binding, was introduced by newly-appointed Vice Chair Janelle King and passed in […]

شاهین‌نژاد: جمهوری اسلامی روی طناب راه می‌رود

شکریا برادوست: سالگرد مرگ خمینی در حالی که جنازه خامنەای بر دست جمهوری اسلامی مانده، برگزار می‌شود

Francisco Martínez confesó a la fontanera del PSOE que el Servicio de Inteligencia hizo trabajos sobre los negocios de la familia del presidente en el semestre de las elecciones generales de 2015Los audios del sumario del 'caso Leire': “Yo no estoy aquí para otra cosa que no sea limpiar” El ex secretario de Estado de Seguridad, Francisco Martínez, mantuvo dos reuniones en julio de 2024 con Leire Díez, la integrante de la trama conspiranoica que trabajó para desestabilizar causas judiciales vinculadas a la corrupción socialista. Díez, exmilitante socialista, intentaba sonsacar al ex número dos de Interior detalles del funcionamiento de las cloacas del PP a cambio de garantizarle un buen trato judicial. Las maniobras de Díez estaban amparadas por el entonces secretario de Organización del PSOE, Santos Cerdán, quién habría ordenado financiar con dinero del partido todos estos movimientos. Por su parte, Francisco Martínez está siendo juzgado ahora en la Audiencia Nacional como impulsor desde el Ministerio del Interior de la Operación Kitchen ejecutada en 2014 por varios comisarios de policía con la intención de robar documentación sobre la financiación ilegal del PP a la familia del extesorero, Luis Bárcenas. El ex número dos de Interior reveló en la segunda de las reuniones con Leire Díez que el Centro Nacional de Inteligencia (CNI) había investigado a Pedro Sánchez, líder de la oposición y elegido un año antes secretario general del PSOE. “El otro día hablamos del tema de las saunas [del suegro de Pedro Sánchez]”, comenzó Martínez. “Seguro 100% que hay un informe del CNI, al menos uno, sobre las saunas, que es del año 2015, casi, casi, casi seguro del segundo semestre”. Las elecciones generales de 2015 se celebraron el 20 de diciembre, dentro del segundo semestre en el que, según Francisco Martínez, el CNI elaboró un informe que llegó al Gobierno de Mariano Rajoy (PP) sobre las saunas que regentaba el suegro de Pedro Sánchez. “Eso sí que es fácil, porque eso se llama a tu jefe máxima que es Esperanza [Casteleiro, directora del CNI] y que te diga qué es… Y eso lo hemos confirmado estos días que existen y yo no lo he visto. Pero sé que existe. Y quien lo ha visto me lo ha dicho. Y no sé si es uno o son 16, pero que es uno seguro. Eso abre otra puerta que yo te decía el otro día que yo creo que sin ella no se completa esta historia, que es el CNI, que no es que yo les tenga especial manía, que a mí mucho no me quieren. Pero han hecho muchas cosas de todo esto, muchísimas cosas, probablemente hechas mucho mejor que las cosas que Villarejo o El Gordo o no se qué. Mucho mejor hechas. Pero a mí, si de verdad queréis saber qué pasó y limpiar, no podéis dejar esa casa sin mirar. Aunque es mucho más difícil, claro”. Díez grabó aquella reunión y conservó el archivo que ahora se ha incorporado al sumario de la causa penal que instruye el juez Santiago Pedraz. La exmilitante socialista pretendía obtener información complementaria sobre las andanzas de la policía patriótica del PP contra el presidente Pedro Sánchez. En el verano de 2014, el comisario José Manuel Villarejo informó al entonces secretario de Estado de Seguridad, Francisco Martínez, de los negocios del suegro de Pedro Sánchez y comentaron que el conocimiento de esa circunstancia podría dañar mucho la imagen del entonces recién elegido secretario general del PSOE. Villarejo: Está todo [el negocio de las saunas] a nombre del mayor, que es gay, es maricón, pero luego los otros dos por debajo, el suegro y el otro hermano, son los responsables, los que llevaban la gestión, y esa es la historia... Martínez: Y Sánchez lo sabe seguro, sabe perfectamente a qué se dedica el suegro... Villarejo: Sí, coño, ya me contarás... Es su punto débil, esto es mortal, mortal. Cuando haga falta... es un tema para que solamente lo trates con el presidente y con el número 1, para en un momento determinado decirle tenemos tal información... Martínez: Esto lo mata. Esto mataría a cualquiera políticamente, un tío que va con la bandera del rollo este feminista y no sé qué. ¿Feminista y lo tienes lleno de polacas chupando pollas en la sauna? Villarejo: Mortal, Paco. Imagínate cuando me enteré... ¡se me puso el rabo de la hostia! El ex secretario de Estado de Seguridad comentó a Leire Díez que aunque no estuvo elegante en sus palabras, nunca ordenó desde el Ministerio ningún espionaje a Pedro Sánchez ni ningún informe para difundir los negocios de su suegro. Sin embargo, el comisario Villarejo hizo notas informativas para las autoridades del Ministerio del Interior que incluían todo un historial de Sánchez, su mujer, las aficiones de sus hijas y los negocios de su suegro. Además, en diversas reuniones que el comisario grabó con empresarios y policías aseguró que el ministro del Interior le había encargado reportajes “sobre los puticlubs” del suegro de Pedro Sánchez. Todo eso que Villarejo contaba en sus comidas se produjo supuestamente en el último trimestre de 2014. Ahora, las grabaciones incorporadas al sumario del caso Leire incorporan este testimonio de Francisco Martínez donde revela que, además de los supuestos trabajos del comisario Villarejo para desacreditar al líder socialista, el Centro Nacional de Inteligencia también se implicó en la investigación sobre las saunas del suegro de Pedro Sánchez, y lo hizo en el segundo semestre de 2015, cuando se celebraron las elecciones generales del 20 de diciembre de aquel año. El PP perdió su mayoría absoluta (se quedó con 123 diputados) y el PSOE logró 90 escaños. El PSOE llegó a denunciar ante la Audiencia Nacional las primeras grabaciones conocidas donde Villarejo hablaba con Martínez sobre esos negocios. El juez instructor del caso Villarejo rechazó investigar los hechos: “No existen indicios de que la información relativa al suegro del presidente del Gobierno de la nación, Pedro Sánchez, sea resultado de ninguna investigación en la que hubieran participado José Manuel Villarejo Pérez, en su condición de comisario del Cuerpo Nacional de Policía adscrito a la DAO, y Francisco Martínez Vázquez, desde su puesto de secretario de Estado de Interior”.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.The former Madison deputy clerk who claimed responsibility for the 23 late-arriving ballots in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election has been reassigned within the clerk’s office to non-election tasks.Jim Verbick — the election office’s former second-in-command who was previously scrutinized and sued for the clerk’s office losing 200 ballots in the 2024 election — admitted to losing track of the absentee ballots that didn’t end up arriving at several polling places until after 8 p.m. on Election Day in April, according to public records obtained by Votebeat. He told Votebeat that he’s only partially to blame, that understaffing and a lack of communication led to the mistake, and that it’s unfair that he got reassigned away from elections. Verbick is now the city clerk’s office’s lead worker for licensing.“I do admit that I had forgotten about the ballots I secured when I left the post office,” he said, adding that he said the error was exacerbated by unexpected absences and mistakes made by others. The issue went to court after the Wisconsin Elections Commission ordered Madison not to count the ballots because they arrived after the 8 p.m. deadline in Wisconsin law. A court reversed the commission’s decision, and the ballots were counted in the final canvass.Verbick’s reassignment was part of a set of personnel changes designed to improve how the clerk’s office manages “the many logistical tasks of administering elections,” Madison Clerk Lydia McComas said in a statement. The city is also hiring two new deputy clerks and a lead employee for absentee voting. But this move doesn’t amount to a net gain of three election positions because one election staff member recently left the office and Verbick was reassigned.Madison officials said after the election that the clerk’s office — not voters — was responsible for the ballots’ late arrival. Election officials had received and sorted the ballots in time to be delivered: They arrived on the Monday before Election Day and were sorted that same evening, then put on a shelf to be delivered in the afternoon of the following day, records show. Emails, spreadsheets and Microsoft Teams messages obtained by Votebeat show that Verbick was in charge of absentee ballots and accepted some blame for their late arrival.Around 4 p.m., Verbick sent a message on Microsoft Teams that he realized he sent out officials to deliver ballots that afternoon without the batch of absentee ballots including the 23 votes that would end up arriving late, former clerk’s office staff member Bonnie Chang said in an email to McComas.Per that same email, Chang said that about an hour later, she scanned a spreadsheet that showed polling sites were still missing absentee ballots. She then contacted Verbick to find out how many ballots were in the late-discovered bin and whether he needed help delivering them. She wrote that he wouldn’t say how many ballots were found or whether more staff were needed to deliver ballots. At around 6 p.m., Chang said, the clerk’s office sent additional staff to help deliver the ballots as early as possible. She said most got reassigned to other tasks.By the time that additional help arrived, Verbick told Votebeat, the ballots had already been sent out for delivery. He said he didn’t think the couriers who were already dispatched to deliver the ballots would have trouble delivering them on-time. In hindsight, Verbick said, he would have used those additional staff to lighten their load. But he also said he could have planned for the additional staff better had anybody told them that they were en route to help him out.That night, Verbick sent an email to McComas taking blame for not putting the batch containing the 23 ballots on the planned afternoon drop-offs to polling places.“Missing the bin of envelopes with the initial afternoon route is my fault,” he emailed McComas at about 10:45 p.m. on Election Day. “I had all of them reviewed this morning and ready to be run with the mail delivery.”Verbick told Votebeat he forgot about the ballots because election workers in the clerk’s office hadn’t told him about a planned USPS delivery around noon that Tuesday. Believing the delivery had not happened, he went to the post office to investigate.Before leaving, he said, he moved the batch of ballots that later arrived late into a secure area because there were no other full-time clerk’s office staffers available to watch them while he was gone. It was there that he forgot the ballots.The error, Verbick told Votebeat, reflected chronic understaffing in the clerk’s office — a problem exacerbated by the increase in absentee voting since the 2020 election.In an email to McComas, Verbick said he didn’t get additional staff that he thought would help process ballots, and that he didn’t intentionally ignore messages from office staff. Relying on hourly and temporary workers to fill those gaps is not enough, he told Votebeat.In an email to Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway sent the night of the incident, McComas said that she would “firmly address the lack of communication” and would have more staff in August and November, including the new deputy to oversee absentee ballots. Wisconsin Elections Commission chair Ann Jacobs called the latest error “absurd” at a commission meeting in late April. The commission voted to investigate Madison over the error, meaning the agency’s first two authorized investigations in its history both center on Madison: one for the 2024 ballot snafu and one for the latest one.Ultimately, the votes affected by this year’s error were counted. Officials said these 23 ballots were correctly, legally cast, counted and checked into the pollbooks just like any other valid absentee ballots — the only problem was that they were delivered and counted after polls formally closed. The Wisconsin Elections Commission voted that the city and county erred in counting the ballots since state law held that ballots must be delivered to polling places “no later than 8 p.m. on election day.” A Dane County judge, however, reversed that order, ruling that the ballots should be counted because they were properly cast, and precedent held that voters shouldn’t be disenfranchised because of clerk errors.Verbick scrutinized for 2024 election snafuThis was the second time in about two years that Verbick has faced scrutiny over allegations that he failed to act decisively when absentee ballots were at risk of being left uncounted. The Wisconsin Elections Commission previously scrutinized Verbick for his inaction after the 2024 presidential election, when nearly 200 voters were disenfranchised.When Maribeth Witzel-Behl, the clerk at the time, was on vacation after the election, Verbick was in charge of the office, Witzel-Behl told the commission in a deposition. Verbick, on the other hand, “testified that he is generally in charge when Clerk Witzel-Behl is not in the office, but that he is ‘not always the point person on everything in the office,’” and wasn’t sure who the point person would have been, according to the commission investigation.The commission stated that Verbick’s involvement was “minimal” by his own account, and that nobody took responsibility for those ballots: “It was always someone else’s job.”After learning about the ballots, the commission stated, Verbick “did not instruct anyone to determine how to get the ballots counted.”Verbick was sued in his personal capacity for his role in the error, and declined to comment about the 2024 snafu. The case is ongoing, and the plaintiffs are demanding financial damages for being disenfranchised. Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

نوێترین هەواڵەنی ڕۆژ لە دەنگی ئەمەریکاوە، پەیوەست بە ئەمەریکا و ئێران و بابەتەکانی دیکە لە سەرانسەری جیهان.

نهاد ناظر هسته‌ای سازمان ملل متحد روز پنجشنبه ۱۴ خرداد گزارشی را برای کشورهای عضو ارسال کرد که در آن هیچ تغییر عمده‌ای در ارزیابی این نهاد از برنامه هسته‌ای رژیم ایران مشاهده نمی‌شود.

The New Lede Editor-in-Chief Carey Gillam talked with attorney and consumer advocate Whitney di Bona from Drugwatch about a flurry of recent legal maneuvers in the battle over Bayer’s proposed $7.25 billion class action settlement […] The post The latest twists and turns in Bayer’s Roundup litigation battle appeared first on The New Lede.

The Minnesota Department of Human Services cut off funding to more than 3,000 care providers across 13 Medicaid services in its sweeping “revalidation” effort to weed out suspected fraudsters, made in response to heightened federal scrutiny over fraud in Minnesota’s social services. Providers that had payments terminated range from smaller businesses serving a few dozen […]

This story is part of Summer & The City, our weekly newsletter made to help you enjoy — and survive — the hottest time in the five boroughs. Sign up here. Most weekends, Craig Campanella heads out of his Jackson Heights apartment with a 25-lb foldable ladder strapped to his back and a gym bag […] The post Queens Apostle of the ‘Swoosh’ Restores Netless Rims in City Parks appeared first on The City Reporter.

Niubó: "El compromís de desplegar aquest acord hi és" La entrada El ‘no’ del 65% dels docents obre una fractura sindical: USTEC aposta per la vaga i Professors de Secundària avala l’acord se publicó primero en Diari del treball.

Francuski predsednik Emanulel Makron (Emmanuel Macron) izjavio je u četvrtak na Cetinju da je sve što je Crna Gora uradila u poslednje dve godine izvanredno i da Francuska ostaje uz Crnu Goru na završnici puta ka EU. "Puno više je urađeno nego što su mnogi mislili da će moći", rekao je on na konferenciji za novinare s crnogorskim predsednikom Jakovom Milatovićem. Makron je na pitanje o tome kako će francuski predsednički izbori iduće godine uticati na EU put Crne Gore, rekao da što Crna...

El festival todavía no confirma a qué hora podrán retomarse las actuaciones previstas para la nocheEl Primavera Sound arranca una edición con The Cure, Gorillaz y Massive Attack como estrellas de un cartel ecléctico El Primavera Sound de Barcelona ha cancelado temporalmente algunos de sus conciertos debido a las lluvias de este jueves, que han afectado parte de los escenarios principales. La cancelación ha afectado, entre otros, a Alex G, programado a las 20.50 horas, que no ha podido comenzar su concierto, mientras Oklou, a la misma hora pero en otro escenario, sí lo ha hecho. El festival todavía no confirma a qué hora podrán retomarse las actuaciones previstas para la noche de este jueves, que incluyen, entre otros, a Massive Attack, Doja Cat y Bad Gyal. Los grandes cabezas de cartel de la edición 24 del festival son artistas y bandas con el renombre y el recorrido de bandas como The Cure, The XX, Gorillaz, My Bloody Valentine o Massive Attack. A estos veteranos se suman fenómenos musicales y culturales más recientes como los neoyorquinos Geese, responsables de uno de los discos de guitarra más aclamados y comentados del pasado año o Kneecap, el aguerrido trío de rap gaélico. Tanto los abonos como las entradas de día para las tres jornadas principales (jueves, viernes y sábado) se agotaron varios meses antes del festival