Skip to main content

U.S. firm accused of plagiarizing bid for Puerto Rico food supply contract

NEW YORK (Reuters) - An Atlanta-based company that failed to deliver millions of emergency meals to Puerto Ricans struggling to recover from Hurricane Maria may have plagiarized its winning bid to secure a $156 million food supply contract, U.S. lawmakers said on Friday

Democrats on the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs said in a statement that the nine-page proposal made by Tribute Contracting appeared largely to have been “plagiarized from several sources readily available on the internet.”

The allegation marked the latest twist in the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency’s contract with Tribute, which the agency known as FEMA eventually canceled.

Democrats on the U.S. House Oversight Committee earlier this month revealed Tribute had signed up to deliver 30 million meals in Puerto Rico, but provided just 50,000 before FEMA scrapped the deal.

The issue has become a referendum of sorts on the federal government's response in Puerto Rico, where thousands remain without power five months after the island's worst natural disaster in 90 years. The U.S. territory is also struggling through the largest government bankruptcy in U.S. history, with some $120 billion of combined bond and pension debt.


Source :- yahoonews

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

We're open to work with Britain over incident involving ex-agent

The Kremlin said on Tuesday it was ready to cooperate if Britain asks it for help investigating an incident involving a former Russian double agent who fell ill after exposure to an unknown substance. Sergei Skripal, once a colonel in Russia's GRU military intelligence service, was critically ill in hospital on Tuesday after he was exposed to an unidentified substance in southern England. "Nobody has approached us with such a request," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a conference call with reporters, when asked if the British authorities had been in touch seeking help. "Moscow is always open for cooperation." When asked to respond to British media speculation that Russia had poisoned Skripal, Peskov said: "It didn't take them long." Calling the incident "a tragic situation," he said the Kremlin did not have information about what had happened. Source :- yahoonews

Key players recall 1968 Polish student revolt, ensuing anti-Semitism

In March 1968, a student revolt crushed by Poland's baton-wielding police was used as a pretext for an anti-Semitic purge by the communist regime. It began when the communists banned the 19th-century play "Forefathers' Eve" by poet Adam Mickiewicz claiming it had anti-Russian elements. Two students who contested the ban were expelled from the University of Warsaw, prompting their peers to stage a demonstration on March 8. Backed by other civil groups, particularly workers unhappy with daily life under communism, the pro-democracy protests spread to other cities. The regime used the student revolt as an excuse to unleash an anti-Semitic campaign that was rooted in a settling of scores inside the Communist Party, which was split into two camps. Source :- yahoonews

Tension with Israel 50 years after Poland's anti-Semitic campaign

On the 50th anniversary of a brutal anti-Semitic campaign in Poland, the country faces a diplomatic crisis with Israel over a controversial new Holocaust law. In 1968, partly to settle disputes inside the ruling Communist Party, the Polish government stripped many Jews of party membership -- and thus jobs -- prompting around 12,000 to leave the country. Today, Poland's conservative Law and Justice party (PiS) has been accused of trying to deny the Holocaust after introducing a law notably intended to prevent people from describing Nazi death camps in German-occupied Poland as Polish. "It's not the same today," said Adam Michnik, a prominent communist-era dissident who is now editor-in-chief of Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland's leading liberal newspaper. "There are certainly similarities. Once again there's a growing image of a Poland besieged by enemies and the enemies are the Jews who want to do us harm," he told AFP. Source :- yahoonews