Hearing for state Department Nominees Including ambassador at large for Global Health security and diplomacy as well as u. S. Ambassadors. This is about an hour 20 minutes the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will come to order. Our hearing today is to hear from five of the President Bidens nominees in dealing with career positions and ambassadorships. Its wonderful to have you all here. We thank you all for being here. Thank you do senator ricketts for being here to lead the republican side of this hearing. Its not always easy to find members that have or willing to adjust their schedules in order to accommodate these hearings, and i think senator ricketts for always being available to this committee to carry out our important work. I want to add some opening comments and senator ricketts wont opening comments but first i want to recognize senator reed and allowed to make an introduction and thank him for being here in the committee. We sometimes have a friendly rivalry between Arme
[inaudible conversations] the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will come to order. Our hearing today is to hear from five of the President Bidens nominees in dealing with career positions and ambassadorships. Its wonderful to have you all here. We thank you all for being here. Thank you do senator ricketts for being here to lead the republican side of this hearing. Its not always easy to find members that have or willing to adjust their schedules in order to accommodate these hearings, and i think senator ricketts for always being available to this committee to carry out our important work. I want to add some opening comments and senator ricketts wont opening comments but first i want to recognize senator reed and allowed to make an introduction and thank him for being here in the committee. We sometimes have a friendly rivalry between Armed Services and Foreign Relations but sense of National Defense authorization bill will be up soon and im going to need his help, he goes first. [l
The guns in Eastern Ukraine were largely silent on wednesday, but the rhetoric 20 moscow and kiev is becoming more and more belligerent. While russia says that ukraine cutting off gas supplies to separatist held regions would be tantamount to genocide. The ukrainian Gas Authority says pipelines to those regions were damaged in the fighting but have since been repaired. Both sides are now threatening to restrict access to gas supplies in the middle of winter. Well get the latest from our correspondent in kiev and just a moment, but first, this report. No sooner was there a lull in fighting in Eastern Ukraine than the war of words between moscow and kiev intensified. Russian president Vladimir Putin threatened to stop supplying ukraine with gas, saying the country had failed to make payments. But he also lashed out at ukraine for cutting off the gas supply to rebel held areas of the east. Theres famine there already and the osce has already said theres a humanitarian catastrophe there, a
I am almost ashamed i am doing it because i am discriminating. They are trained capable ready. The 1st group they turned over in december ironically they were National Guard prison guards. They could not understand, in the prisons we work in we work with muslim all the time. All sorts of case law that allows exactly what we would be doing with the women. Long story short we are restricted. This all happened around november. One of the military judges lifted the temporary order, but we still have one in the case of some other and i misspoke this morning. So then 15 soldiers in the normal equal opportunity process anyone for any reason if they feel they have been discriminated against can register an eeo complaint and 15 guards did that, seven or seven or eight men and the rest women the the governing document for us is the Army Regulation 600 dash 20. It requires investigation to try to settle the issue. We sent down a one star because the judges are colonels and lieutenant colonels, we
Blue, declaring that the victim has want a lottery. In order to declare the winnings, they must first pay the tax to the irs. The lottery scam often, but not always, originates from outside of the United States. In the end, the victims pay the money, but they never received any lottery winnings. Just as serious as these scams the risk of taxpayer refund Identity Theft. The irs has made improvements in identification of Identity Theft returns before fraudulent tax refunds are released. Continued attention is needed to effectively combat this crime. For example, the irs still does not have timely access to thirdparty income and withholding information. Most of the thirdparty information is not received by the irs until well after the taxpayers begin filing returns. The deadline for most information returns with irs is march 31. Yet, taxpayers begin filing returns, this year, on january 20. This gap in time prevents the irs from conducting validity checks. Legislation would be needed to a