The US State Department on Thursday notified Congress of plans for a major reorganisation that would cut thousands of jobs and focus the department on promoting “America's interests”.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the department needed slimming down after decades of bureaucratic bloat that had brought spiralling costs with no gains for US citizens. Mr Rubio first announced the reorganisation in April, ordering officials to assess how many jobs would be cut in the closure of 132 bureaus and offices, and the merging of others.
“Since my first day as secretary, I have said that this department must move at the speed of relevancy and in April announced a broad reorganisation of the department to better achieve that goal,” Mr Rubio said in a statement. “The plan submitted to Congress … will result in a more agile department, better equipped to promote America’s interests and keep Americans safe across the world.”
Mr Rubio also posted a link to a Fox News story saying the department plans to merge or eliminate more than 300 offices and bureaus.
An executive summary of the proposal, seen by Reuters, said nearly 45 per cent of the department's domestic offices would be merged, eliminated, consolidated or streamlined in the reorganisation.
The department plans to cut thousands of US-based workers, reducing its civil service and foreign service domestic workforce by 3,448 people, according to the congressional notification, out of 18,780 people as of May 4.
Nearly 2,000 of those will be subjected to job cuts while more than 1,500 will be deferred resignations. No job cuts are planned for locally employed staff or US personnel posted overseas.
The State Department published a new organisation chart showing that a new undersecretary of state position would be created to oversee foreign assistance and humanitarian affairs, which will include much of the work previously done by the US Agency for International Development, which was eliminated by Elon Musk and the Department for Government Efficiency.
Senior Democratic senators Jeanne Shaheen and Gregory Meeks said the proposed cuts are too broad and would leave an opening for Russia and China to increase their diplomatic contact with other nations.
"We welcome reforms where needed, but they must be done with a scalpel, not a chainsaw," they said in a statement.
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Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
The biog
Hometown: Cairo
Age: 37
Favourite TV series: The Handmaid’s Tale, Black Mirror
Favourite anime series: Death Note, One Piece and Hellsing
Favourite book: Designing Brand Identity, Fifth Edition
Royal Birkdale Golf Course
Location: Southport, Merseyside, England
Established: 1889
Type: Private
Total holes: 18
Easter%20Sunday
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Indoor Cricket World Cup - Sept 16-20, Insportz, Dubai
Match info
Uefa Nations League A Group 4
England 2 (Lingard 78', Kane 85')
Croatia 1 (Kramaric 57')
Man of the match: Harry Kane (England)
Squad for first two ODIs
Kohli (c), Rohit, Dhawan, Rayudu, Pandey, Dhoni (wk), Pant, Jadeja, Chahal, Kuldeep, Khaleel, Shami, Thakur, Rahul.
What is graphene?
Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms arranged like honeycomb.
It was discovered in 2004, when Russian-born Manchester scientists Andrei Geim and Kostya Novoselov were "playing about" with sticky tape and graphite - the material used as "lead" in pencils.
Placing the tape on the graphite and peeling it, they managed to rip off thin flakes of carbon. In the beginning they got flakes consisting of many layers of graphene. But as they repeated the process many times, the flakes got thinner.
By separating the graphite fragments repeatedly, they managed to create flakes that were just one atom thick. Their experiment had led to graphene being isolated for the very first time.
At the time, many believed it was impossible for such thin crystalline materials to be stable. But examined under a microscope, the material remained stable, and when tested was found to have incredible properties.
It is many times times stronger than steel, yet incredibly lightweight and flexible. It is electrically and thermally conductive but also transparent. The world's first 2D material, it is one million times thinner than the diameter of a single human hair.
But the 'sticky tape' method would not work on an industrial scale. Since then, scientists have been working on manufacturing graphene, to make use of its incredible properties.
In 2010, Geim and Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. Their discovery meant physicists could study a new class of two-dimensional materials with unique properties.
More from our neighbourhood series:
GOODBYE%20JULIA
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Awar Qalb
Director: Jamal Salem
Starring: Abdulla Zaid, Joma Ali, Neven Madi and Khadija Sleiman
Two stars
