Head of US Office of Global Witness
Head of the US Office for Global Witness, a nongovernmental organization working to expose the link between natural-resource exploitation and human-rights abuses
PROFILE
Corinna Gilfillan
Guest
FROM Corinna Gilfillan
To the Point
Conflict Diamonds At least one million African workers earn pennies a day in the backbreaking effort to find diamonds, which themselves have no intrinsic value at all, but serve as symbols of love, wealth and power, and that makes for an industry worth $60 billion a year. By the time they get to a jewelry store, there's no way to identify these stones that have been used to finance brutal conflict in Africa. Bad publicity has driven the industry to reduce smuggling and try to improve the appalling conditions of diamond miners. But the new Hollywood film, Blood Diamond , is raising disturbing questions. What are the human costs? How much smuggling is still going on? How important are diamonds to the economies of countries including Sierra Leone, Botswana and South Africa?
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To the Point
The Trump agenda: where's the beef? President Trump says big things are happening. After celebrating a House bill on health care, he doesn’t yet have Senate agreement. With James Comey’s public testimony scheduled tomorrow, the President today tweeted his selection of a new FBI Director. Is the Chief Executive all style and no substance? Later, terror attacks in Iran and conflicting claims about who’s behind them.
To the Point
White House budget proposal slashes and burns President Trump's first budget request is considered dead on arrival in Congress — a familiar development in Capitol Hill. We hear what it reveals about the priorities of the new administration. What's likely to die… and what might survive?
To the Point
Venezuela spirals into economic and political chaos Venezuela, a country whose potential for prosperity is unmatched, finds itself on the verge of civil war. What sustains the repressive government? With time running out, guest host León Krauze looks at what the international community can do to pull the country from the edge of collapse.
To the Point
Ex-FBI Director Comey tells his side of the story Today, former FBI Director James Comey came close to calling the President who fired him a liar. The White House denied the claim and called it insulting, but Republican Senators did not challenge Comey’s truthfulness. Many questions remain: did the President try to obstruct a federal investigation? Later, we’ll go behind the “velvet rope” for a look at 5-Star health care for the richest Americans.