← This Week in Global Development
This Week in Global Development
Fact-checking US aid claims as the State Department continues to hire
00:29:17
In our landmark 150th episode, we discuss a common theme in global development over the past 18 months: the state of U.S. foreign aid. We’re seeing the https://www.devex.com/organizations/united-states-department-of-state-dos-23842 steadily...
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- [00:04]
A
My name is Rumbi Chakamba, and you're listening to this Week in Global Development, hosted by myself, Ata Saldinga and David Ainsworth. We are joined by Dave and Alyssa.
- [00:14]
B
And good news.
- [00:15]
A
This is our 150th episode of this Week in Global Development. I feel like we need confetti or, like, hats or caps or something to celebrate. So, Dave, as a co host, how does it feel to be like, 150 episodes old?
- [00:30]
C
I think pretty good. Like, feeling like I'm 150 seems the highest. I think I look good. I think we all look good. I think we've really. It's really grown as well. It's been. It's been great to come and do this every week and chat to people about what's going on in the. In the world of development. I think it's nice to give a bit more kind of opinion and color and an understanding of kind of what's going on and why, rather than just bringing people just the facts mum. So I really enjoy that, the opportunity. Well, anyone who knows me knows that I like to share my opinion as often and as frequently as possible with anyone who listens. So I think it's. It's been great. I've really enjoyed it.
- [01:05]
A
That you do for me, the most I get. I still get surprised when people, like, reach out and they're like, oh, we watched the podcast. Watch it every week. I always assumed, like, we're doing this and we've got, like, five people who are watching and listening. And then you hear someone who says, like, I watch it, like, every single week. So that's been surprising. But, like, like you, I also enjoy the conversations that are behind the stories that we kind of have every week as a newsroom, and I think this is a chance to kind of bring those to light. So it's been fun. And, Alyssa, you've been featured a lot in these 150 episodes. Curious how many you've done, because there was a time when I would always, like, ask you to come on. And I'll now feel guilty. I'm like, I think I've asked Alyssa a hundred times.
- [01:44]
B
I love to come on. I love to chat with you guys. I mean, I think it's been a great time to, like Dave said, kind of peel back the layers a little bit. And I think it's also been fun. It's great to connect with folks, like you said. You know, I think the. There's been two or three people now who have told me that they exclusively listen to our Podcast on Ron Runs, which as a woman who uses music and true crime to pump me up on runs, Devex style podcast was really impressive to me that people could. Would do that and choose to do that with their laps. So, yeah, it's fun to see the way that readers engage with our content in different. Different areas.
- [02:14]
A
I was gonna say, I guess we have to keep it high energy for anyone who's running to this.
- [02:17]
C
If you're listening to this right now, while you're running, keep going. Go on, keep going. Come on, you're doing really well. Come on. Only a couple more miles. Come on. Although you probably, you're right at the start of your run probably if you're listening to this now. So maybe you've got another half an hour to go. You've got three month to go. Well, best of luck anyway. I'm sure you'll do it.
- [02:34]
A
So one thing I also found really interesting was when we took over because Raj launched the podcast and then when we started taking over hosting duties, it was a time when USAID was being dismantled. So that was like a very chaotic time. And I think at that time we did not have a lot of answers. And what I found really interesting is how much the community just valued just having that discussion and us saying we really don't know what's happening, but as soon as we find out, we'll give you as much information as we have. And I think just having that platform to share has been so important to so many people. Do you find the same, Alyssa? Because I know, like, you were really in the thick of it at that time.
- [03:11]
B
Definitely. I mean, a message like always jumps out to me during that time. Kind of the haze and Devex as a niche publication, I feel like we were really in the thick of it with so many of our readers trying to figure out what was going on. And I got a signal message from someone that just said, I get more information from journalists than I do from any other, you know, from my boss, from my colleagues. And I think it's just been such a kind of a testament to again, trying to get the news out and doing it fast, but also doing it in different ways. So again, the podcast has been a good avenue for that and I think just being, being able to show a face to the reporting also, like we're people that are interested in what our readers are going through and hoping to just shed some light on all of that.
- [03:48]
A
So, yeah, here's to 150 episodes and hopefully more than 150 more. Anyway, speaking of USAID I guess this kind of goes in line with the first story I wanted to talk about, Alyssa, that you did. You've been reporting on the State Department hiring, hiring new contractors and they're doing this through, is it hiring agencies? Can you take us a little bit about through that and what that kind of means for this period that the State Department is going through?
- [04:14]
B
Absolutely. So you know, just as Rimby, you were mentioning last year was this period of great transition influx, we're seeing the same thing, just in a different flavor and color this year. I think as someone who was hired on at devex to cover USAID and then watched my beat transform with the space, it's been really interesting to follow that evolution and that's what we're seeing now. So this week I wrote a, a story about how the State Department is continuing to hire staff through contracting firms. And this is something that I reported on late last year. It's continued and we just felt it was time for a re update because we saw an elevated surge about the last couple weeks, last month or so. And this is specifically happening through contracting firms. And like the consultancy agencies that USAID used, a lot of the same ones like Credence LLC is an example. So we're talking about kind of companies that help government agencies streamline their hiring and they do so through contract positions. So I spoke with A couple folks, one union in particular, particular had a list of 30 groups that they had noted were hiring and they were kind of very clear that this is not an exhaustive list, this is just what they found. So we're talking 30 separate individual companies and this is just what one, one group has found that are putting out roles and that's both for the State Department's foreign assistance, both hubs, kind of the DC based, a lot of DC based roles which we can get into, but also for legacy usaid. So for folks that follow our coverage, you'll know that USAID as an agency, as an institution is now kind of a hollowed out shell of itself that's specifically, specifically focused on closeout. And that legacy unit is hiring. A lot of these are termination officers, HR officers. So people that can really kind of shield and shepherd the agency through the final phases of its closeout process, the timeline of which has been extended several times now, but latest is that will happen by end of year. But anyway, so we're seeing a lot of that and I think there's talking to people kind of in D.C. and outside of D.C. there's a lot of mixed emotions about this you know, I think on the one hand, folks are excited and they're happy that State Department is staffing up because everyone knows that there's going to be a lot more bodies needed to really deliver the type of assistance that the US and that Congress has mandated. However, there's duplication in roles of roles that were once staffed by the people that have been let go over the last 16 months.
- [06:21]
A
Yeah, you know, during that period of turmoil, I don't know, I guess we have to come up with a naming for it. During that period of tmr, a lot of people were saying that it seems the administration doesn't understand what it takes to get this work done. And it seems like this hiring spree might be an indication of them finally realizing what it may take. But you kind of look back at it and say, okay, did we have to fire and then just rehire people to do this? Dave, are you seeing this sort of shift in understanding that they're now kind of understanding what it takes to get work done and what people they may need?
- [06:56]
C
Yeah, I think so. Like, I mean, giving money away is a lot harder than it seems, I think. Is that the topic lesson to take away from this? Really? It takes a lot of people to give money away. I've just been sitting here doing some sums on the back of an envelope. It looks like in general you can say that it takes one person for every $5 million you want to give away. And that seems quite constant, actually, across not just the United States, but like across administrations, like. And if you're trying to give away $60 billion, you need a lot of people in order to do it right. And they've, they've fired more than 10,000 people, I think, at USAID, and they're still committed to giving away $50 billion. Ish. This year. Well, we'll talk about that number a little bit, I think, when we come on to some of the later stories. But they've committed to giving away a significant amount of cash this year. If they want to do that, they're going to have to hire a hell of a lot of people. And not just that they're going to have to hire experienced people. Like, these are very like this surprisingly specific skills involved in giving money away, like the due diligence, the contract creation, all of this sort of stuff. And I think, yeah, they, it's fairly obvious looking at the, the destruction of usa, that they didn't really have a plan when they were doing it. It was ideologically driven, that everything was very new. The guys at Doge were like, hey, let's move fast and break things. Oh, we broke something. Oh, well, never mind. And then they fell out with, with Donald Trump. Elon Musk fell out with Donald Trump. Doge ceased to really be a thing. But the thing was broken by then. And one thing that we've seen is that ideologically they're very focused on not hiring the people that they had in government before. They're suspicious of former USAID workers. They think that they're all Democrats, they're all wet, they're all like, they're never going to be able to work with Republicans. And so they're hiring completely different people. And it's obviously not a good way to give away money for global development, is obviously not a good way to get money to people in low and middle income countries. But arguably it is a good way to make sure that there's nobody in the organization who doesn't share your politics. And that seems to be arguably a more important position for this administration than the competence of the individuals involved.
- [09:07]
A
That really interesting. Alyssa, I think you mentioned this in your story that some of the adverts specifically say they do not arm people who've previously worked with USAID before. And logically it just seems like these are the perfect people to do the job. And politics aside, like just getting the work done, it just seems like it makes more sense to get someone who's done this job like for 10 years to just pick it up and continue doing it again. But are you seeing the same thing that Dave is saying, that the politics seems to matter more than the competency?
- [09:36]
B
Look, I mean, it's a tough question and I think that there is truth to both sides. I think that something that we've seen is like you said, Rumby, specific quality on the qualifications for several of these jobs. There is a bullet point in bold that says no experience with USAID is allowed. So these people are just being shuttered. This is really different from what I'm hearing just kind of through my other networks and social life in D.C. where there's a lot of people working with government and actually people that were riffed at various agencies are given a leg up for other agencies because of the way that this type of thing typically works. So total departure from the norm in terms of just the way in which USAID staff are being treated. And I think that, you know, there, there are now we're seeing legislation kind of popping up to really help bring for this, you know, and I wouldn't want to say it's it's for political reasons, because I think there's a number of different reasons that this is happening, but to bring fresh faces, to bring a new pool of applicants and staff into specifically, what's on my mind is the Foreign Service, which is, you know, the FSOs in State Department speak. And we saw that, that last week through some progress on a particular legislation called the Don't Want to Get it Wrong, the Foreign Service Modernization act, which passed with real bipartisan support. You know, people on both sides, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle were really into this idea, but it was really to get more staff. The Bureau of African affairs was specifically called out as a bureau that needed more individuals on it, more individuals with expertise. Now, what that means we're not entirely sure. And I think the groups tracking it have a little concern, or at least that they've shared with me, that they don't really know the details on that and would like to see a little bit more. But again, this is just legislation that's currently moving through Congress. There will be more updates on this. There will be more details shared. But it's a push on both sides of the veil to get more staff, to get, in some cases, fresh faces. And I think underlying all of that is a recognition that more people are needed to really make sure that this type of foreign assistance happens and works. Now, it's also coming in different ways, like we're seeing and we can get into this. But last night our newsroom was scrambling a little bit because we saw a, you know, there was big news coming from the State Department that there were these big pots of money now going toward UN agencies, specifically UNICEF and the World Food Program. So this is kind of almost another way to look at it, right? It's like if you don't have the kind of cavalry of USAID officers going out finding programs, monitoring them, tracking them, the way in which this system once functioned. This is another option, right? Big grants to big organizations and kind of shuffle that along and let them do the work. So it's something that we're unpacking. It's something that we'll have more reporting on this week, so stay tuned. But again, it's just kind of these different layers of how State Department is really reorienting and reconfiguring itself for the future to deliver this stuff.
- [12:11]
A
The thing that I found really interesting about the bill was the idea of bringing fresh faces, and I'm hoping it's diverse faces to the Foreign Service. Not sure how it's actually going to pan Out. But I don't know if it's the same for you guys as well, like in the US and in the UK as well, that like when you think of the Foreign Service, it's kind of like this elite group of people. And I think this bill might actually be able to open that up to different kind of people to be able to work in the Foreign Service and also serve in that sector. Do you have the same thing in the UK, Dave, that it's like just an elite group of people who are like part of the Foreign Service?
- [12:44]
C
Yeah. Historically, if you worked in these things, you could have gone to any university, Oxford or Cambridge, and it's become a little bit more democratic, a little bit less elitist since then. But there is still very much a perception of the, in the UK of civil servants as kind of quite elitist. I mean, famously the program, yes, Prime Minister portrayed like the civil servants as kind of manipulating everything that the ministers did and kind of constantly plotting to make sure nothing actually changed and to be this kind of secret cabal behind the scenes. Now, I would recommend it to anyone who hasn't watched it. It's an extraordinarily funny show, but there's been that picture for a long time and I think there's been some suspicion from right wing governments as well that the Foreign Service, like not just the Foreign Service, the Civil service in the United Kingdom is kind of institutionally left wing and kind of a little bit biased against these right wing principles. How true that actually is, I don't know. And how true it is that this kind of elitist kind of culture still exists within the Civil Service. I don't know how true that is either, but there have been those perceptions, definitely.
- [13:55]
A
I guess it also help. Well, maybe, I don't know if help is the right word, but then it's kind of difficult to defend a group that you view as elitist as well, isn't it? So when all these cuts are happening and stuff like that, it's really hard for people to then come out and say, oh, we feel bad for this group because it's just been like this elite possibly cabal. And so when all these things are happening, it's kind of hard to stand up and say, oh, this shouldn't be happening to the Foreign Service. Do you think is that the case in the US or Lisa?
- [14:23]
B
And I think the reality is it's a really sad, you know, the reality is that that's just, you know, most people there, we. I did go to an event last week which I will be reporting on in the coming days about the, the state of play of a lot of these fired USAID workers, both contractors and full time staff. But you know, a vast majority of them are still looking for jobs. I mean the industry has been shattered. You know, we know this, our readers know this. But it is interesting to kind of see the way in which that expectation probably defies reality. But back to your point about like the, the non traditional faces, I mean the, the bill, the Foreign Service Modernization act specifically calls out non traditional educational institutions. So that's things like community colleges, technical schools. So this is a really different, it's not your Oxford and Cambridge. Right. As Dave used the analogy to say. And also there's look into creating a pathway for veterans to enter the Foreign Service. So yeah, we could see some really different types of folks and I think people, at least from what I've tracked on both sides of the aisle, are pretty excited about that. You know, diversity in this way is typically seen to be a good thing. Right. I think that's probably not too political of something to say when it comes to different, you know, maybe taking, taking different educational institutions, et cetera, et cetera, to getting that more diverse perspective from the Foreign Service in general.
- [15:35]
C
I think what you have is political officers who are working extremely hard to implement often quite inconsistent decisions that are coming down. And if you have such a sharply polarized political environment, you have like four years of one political party saying we want this and then four years of this political party saying we want the complete opposite. It must be quite a quixotic existence for somebody who's working in a government department trying to implement what these demands. And they also have this kind of traditional neutrality that they're not allowed to speak up and kind of defend themselves in the role. But politicians have increasingly taken to shouting at them. So I think it's easy to criticize the civil service in the uk They've been called the blob before by the political parties in charge who said that you make a decision and you ask them to implement and it just goes in, it gets absorbed by the blob and then nothing happens. But I think I'm going to have to step in and say mostly in my experience working with these individuals, they're trying incredibly hard in incredibly dysfunctional and difficult conditions often to make difficult things happen. And I think that they've not had the kind of a fair crack of the whip in a lot of the criticism that's been thrown out in recent weeks and months.
- [16:51]
A
Completely agree. Although coming From a government that's sometimes slow. I understand the blob mentality, but completely agree. But Dave, you also took time out to fact check Marco Rubio. You took a look at who is actually the biggest donor at the moment. And Marco Rubio had said the US is still the biggest donor by far. And you kind of took time out to fact check this. What did you find?
- [17:15]
C
That it really depends on where you're starting from and your point of view, I think so last year the United States was not the biggest donor in the world by far, according at least to OECD figures. According to oda, the United States wasn't even the biggest donor in the world at all. That was Germany. For the first time ever, Germany was the world's number one donor. The United States slipped down to second. I'm told it's not the first time that the United States ever in the history of ODA has not been the largest donor, but it's certainly the first time in quite a while. And there's some, there's some kind of question marks over that because actually the United States has historically taken quite a relaxed approach to counting things as oda, whereas European governments have tended to count like every brass penny that they can find as ODA to be occasionally quite maximalist in what they feel that they can claim. There's a decent amount of latitude for nation states in what they do and don't declare as oda. And the UK and France and Germany have historically faced some allegations that they've found every single thing that you could possibly count as ODA and lumped in there, whereas the United States has taken the opposite view. It's not tended to count a lot of contributions. It's not counted its contributions towards dfc. And I think that's basically because all the European governments want to look as big as possible and the United States wants to not look too big because. Because of the sheer scale of the U.S. economy. And so you could question whether actually last year the United States was still in some ways the largest donor, but I think by far would certainly be overdoing it this year. We just don't know yet because they haven't reported the figures. The United States has said that it wants to spend 50 billion on foreign affairs, which is not the same as the aid budget. Not all of that foreign affairs money will actually go to aid, but they've said that they want to spend 50 billion on foreign affairs. We don't know how much they've actually spent because nothing really has been reported. So Far, looking at the figures, we've only seen about 6.4 billion of disbursements on foreign assistance.gov, which is the site that tracks this kind of thing. That doesn't necessarily tell us too much either. That's often quite delayed. We can't read in to that anything desperate. So it may be that Marco Rubio has got access to data that they haven't shared publicly, and they're actually spending up a storm.
- [19:36]
B
And.
- [19:36]
C
And the United States is now once again, by far the world's biggest donor. I would want to see the evidence before I accepted that claim. I don't think we can take that on trust, like it's possible. Looking at the public donations that they've announced, the public money that they've spent, I can't see proof that they're the world's biggest donor by far. They've announced sort of 4 billion in humanitarian funding. We've seen all these health compacts, but we haven't actually necessarily seen a lot of money go out the door. They're just agreements. So I'm somewhat skeptical of that number, basically. And then above and beyond that, I think we also need to look at what it really means to be the world's biggest donor. The United States economy is so vast that it's almost larger than every other member of the Development Assistance Committee put together. Not quite. I think it's about 45 people. I don't want to be quoted on that as an exact number, but that's a sort of ballpark, right? 45% of all of the DAC is just the United States. And the United States is significantly richer per capita than most of the other DAC donors. So really, if we were looking at what's a morally justifiable amount for the United States to spend, it, it shouldn't just be the largest donor by far. It should be 50% of the whole DAC spending. And the rest of The DAC spent 150 billion last year. So that's the kind of ballpark that we should be targeting if the United States was spending in line with the other nations that are kind of contributing. So I think Marco Rubio's claim may be true. It's possible. We don't have the evidence. Certainly the United States is a long way away from the level of generosity that we might inspect. In fact, I believe of all 34 DAC donors last year, the United States was the least generous behind such heavyweights as the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Lithuania, Estonia. Like you would think that if the United States were to be proud of itself, it might aim to get above the Balkan states as a donor in terms of, relative to its population.
- [21:57]
A
I was going to say, I believe it spends 0.09% of its GNI, whereas Germany spent 0.5 and Norway spent 1.03. So. Yeah, and I also think it's important to mention that they're not exactly duking it out to be the highest donor. Germany is also cutting aid. It kind of just became the highest by default. And the US has had these massive cuts as well. And it doesn't really seem like anyone is fighting for this position or trying to increase the amount of aid that they send out. It's just one of those statements that kind of comes out in discussions. Alyssa, you are going to jump in.
- [22:33]
B
No, that's the point that I was going to bring up. Exactly. Rumby. I think to keep in mind the UN standard for this type of giving. It's about 0.7%. Right. If I'm getting that right. So you've got. I'm just looking at the chart that we have in Dave's piece and we've got one, two, three, four countries that do that last year. Four. And then, yeah, the US Is all the way at the bottom. So in terms of that level of generosity and it's like, okay, there's bills and there's money and there's cash, but then there's also kind of looking about that, looking at that in level with what that country's capacity for spending or for donation really is. And I think it's. Norway has been the only country that's consistently been above 1%, give or take, over the last several years at least.
- [23:12]
C
Yeah. Norway has a pretty similar per capita income to the, to the United States, very similar level of individual wealth for the citizens, and it's managed to get to 1%. You're absolutely right. The Germans kind of slipped shamefacedly into first place kind of by mistake and are now standing around looking very embarrassed, hoping that somebody will take the spot ahead of them in the queue again. And they are likely to be cutting again this year. The United Kingdom is likely to be cutting again this year. It's possible it's likely that the United States will increase its spending this year relative to last year, but it dropped by 57% last year. So that wouldn't be a huge achievement if it managed to spend more than last year. But it doesn't look as if ODA is going to be rising to historic levels anytime soon.
- [24:03]
B
Just a call out for People that are interested in that push and follow that Dave is talking about on Germany, our colleague Jesse Chase Lubowitz did a really great piece kind of going through all of that. So I would recommend checking out that story.
- [24:15]
A
And I was going to ask you to talk a little bit more about your piece because speaking of spending, you're looking into these macro grants that were announced, was it yesterday? Alyssa, tell us a little bit more about that and what we can look forward to.
- [24:27]
B
Definitely. So yeah, this happened last night. So, you know, around 7 o' clock, and we were just like, okay, what does this mean? Let's get to it. So stay tuned for more, more reporting on from us to come within probably by the time this podcast is published. But yeah, a press release came out last night essentially saying that the United States is, has given out, has announced its second and third macro grants. Now these are something that we knew had been coming for a while. Actually it was, you know, through, through the grapevine, but also publicly announced by the State Department's foreign assistance head, Jeremy Lewin, several months ago. Just saying that this was something that the State Department was looking at. So big, massive awards to one organization kind of seemed to be picked from the top levels to fund humanitarian emergencies on kind of a, in a way that gives flexible funding to then allow them to put money toward different sectors to different countries with the highest humanitarian need. So that's what we saw last night. The majority of that money will be going to the World Food Program, which is important to note because the World Food Program we've seen over the last couple of months has just increasingly gotten more and more and more money from the State Department. So we saw a big chunk of money going through the U.S. department, U.S. department of Agriculture at the beginning of this year, once that agency took over Food for Peace, which is the US's largest global hunger program for humanitarian needs. We've seen the World Food Program take the biggest slice of the cake when it comes to funding to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian affairs, or ocha, which is something we've also reported extensively about. And now we're as a newsroom just kind of picking apart, okay, what do these macro grants mean and how do they complement or do they duplicate kind of the work that's already being done? Especially because many of these countries are the same. Now I think from what we know, the State Department's argument to that would be, you know, that's by default, that's on purpose because of this push toward hyper prioritizing specific countries. So The State Department has basically made, you know, several mentions to a series of nations that they feel are the most important to tackle with humanitarian response. And though that does track in many cases with kind of what I think the humanitarian community would agree on, there are several countries that are left out. So Somalia is one that comes to mind, you know, nations that are kind of going through a lot of turmoil, but not on this list. So that's something that we're going to be looking at and reporting on and just kind of looking at the ways in which, again, why this decision was made. You know, we had last year, our colleague Colm lynch, who covers the UN covered a lot about how the Trump administration really wanted to get away from the United Nations. And then toward the end of last year, we actually saw them pushing forward in almost unprecedented levels. Right. I mean, maybe that's not fair to say, but let's just say for the last two years, you know, kind of push and pull between whether the US Government likes or does not like the UN and now it kind of seems that the State Department is relying on the UN to deliver the bulk of its humanitarian aid. So these are all questions we're going to be interrogating and kind of trying to figure out more about how this will work in practice, how this money will flow. Will that be duplicated? Will it not? Will this be quite a streamlined approach? You know, these are all kind of live questions right now.
- [27:20]
A
Definitely looking forward to that. And Dave, next week you'll be at London Climate Action Week. I hope I got that right. And hosting a live episode of this Week in Global Development.
- [27:29]
C
That's right, London Climate Action Week next week, where we're going to be there. We'll have a whole day Devex Impact House, where you'll be able to listen to some really high quality speakers talking about all of the kind of issues around climate. We'll be hosting newsletters from London Climate Action Week bringing you all of the kind of latest. My colleagues, Jesse and in that. Well, our colleagues, Jesse and in that we'll be writing those newsletters, so keep an eye out for those. We've just been looking at kind of what's going on, what's on the agenda. Things like electrification is on the agenda, but really still the biggest question for me at least is kind of what's going to happen with climate finance. We've obviously seen the United States withdrawal from the Paris agreement. We're looking forward at nationally determined contributions. Basically, how much money is supposed to flow from rich countries to poor countries? It's supposed to be 300 billion. It isn't 300 billion. It isn't going to be 300 billion anytime soon. Even if it was 300 billion, if it's anything like the 100 billion they were spending a couple of years ago. Pretty rubbish finance. Very poor quality, very debatable. We're a long way from a sustainable kind of climate finance environment. Very far away from it indeed. So that obviously, is going to be something that I'm going to be really interested in monitoring.
- [28:50]
A
Thank you so much. Looking forward to that. And looking forward to the live episode. That's actually one of my favorite things to do, hosting a live episode of twigd. Yeah. But thank you both for joining me.
- [28:59]
B
Thanks for me.
- [29:00]
C
Pleasure.