French President Emmanuel Macron condemned on Monday “extraordinarily rude” comments made about his wife Brigitte by his Brazilian counterpart Jair Bolsonaro.
“He has made some extraordinarily rude comments about my wife,” Macron said at a press conference when asked to react to statements about him by the Brazilian government.
“What can I say? It’s sad. It’s sad for him firstly, and for Brazilians,” he added.
On Sunday, a Bolsonaro supporter posted a message on Facebook mocking the appearance of Brigitte Macron and comparing her unfavorably with Brazil’s first lady Michelle Bolsonaro.
“Now you understand why Macron is persecuting Bolsonaro?” he wrote next to an unflattering picture of Brigitte Macron, 65, who is 28 years older than Bolsonaro’s wife, Michelle.
Bolsonaro replied on Facebook: “Do not humiliate the guy, ha ha.”
“I think Brazilian women will probably be ashamed to read that from their president,” Macron said. “I think that Brazilians, who are a great people, will probably be ashamed to see this behavior…
“And as I feel friendship and respect towards the Brazilian people, I hope that they will very soon have a president who behaves in the right way.”
The Democratic Republic of Congo has announced a coalition government.
The announcement comes eight months after President Felix Tshisekedi won a long-delayed presidential election.
“The government is finally here,” Prime Minister Sylvestre Ilunga Ilukamba said Monday. “The president has signed the decree and we will begin work soon.”
Under the power-sharing deal, 23 posts are going to members of Tshisekedi’s Direction for Change, while the remaining 42 will be filled by members of former president Joseph Kabila’s Common Front for Congo.
The December vote was marred by disorganization at many polling stations, including missing voter rolls and malfunctioning electronic voting machines that pushed the vote well into nighttime hours, forcing election officials to conduct their activities by flashlight. A election observer mission set up by the Catholic Church said it had received at least 544 reports of malfunctioning voting machines.
Violence also overshadowed the vote, with four people killed in eastern South Kivu, including a police officer and an election official, over accusations of voter fraud.
The election to replace outgoing President Joseph Kabila was originally set to take place in 2016, but was called off when Kabila refused to step down after the end of his mandate. Kabila had ruled the DRC since his father’s assassination in 2001.
The election was initially scheduled for December 23, but was postponed by a week because of a warehouse fire in the capital Kinshasha earlier in the month that destroyed thousands of voting machines.
Election officials also decided to postpone the election in three cities until March. The eastern cities of Beni and Butembo were stricken with Ebola. The western city of Yumbi was experiencing ethnic violence. The move to delay the vote in the three locations affected more than one million voters.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the military on Monday to cut fuel transfers to Gaza in half, in response to rocket attacks from the coastal strip, raising tensions along Israel’s southern border in addition to those stemming from a renewed threat from the north amid reported Israeli strikes on Iranian targets in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.
Netanyahu also instructed his staff to prepare plans for building a new neighborhood in a West Bank settlement near where a teenage Israeli girl was killed in an explosion last week. Israel said the blast was a Palestinian attack.
The flurry of activity comes amid a massive manhunt by Israeli troops for the 17-year-old’s killers and dire warnings from Lebanon’s Hezbollah leader of an imminent attack, just weeks before an unprecedented repeat Israeli election.
Netanyahu ordered the Gaza measure to take effect immediately and until further notice. The cut is expected to exacerbate the already dire flow of electricity in the impoverished coastal strip. The move follows airstrikes the military carried out overnight in the Gaza Strip, after three rockets were launched from the territory into southern Israel.
The military said the airstrikes included one on the office of a Hamas commander in the northern Gaza Strip. There were no reports of casualties.
Air raid sirens warning of an incoming attack wailed late on Sunday during an outdoor music festival in the Israeli border town of Sderot, sending panicked revelers scurrying for cover. The military said two rockets were intercepted by its missile defense system.
The rocket attack was the latest in a recent uptick following a relative lull that has threatened to unleash another round of fighting along the volatile Gaza-Israel border.
Israel accused the Iranian-backed militant Islamic Jihad group of orchestrating the rocket attacks, as part of what it considers Iran’s region-wide campaign of chaos.
“Hostile elements near and far, attempting to ignite a war, are dragging you into violence and destroying the stability and security of your home,” wrote Maj. Gen. Kamil Abu Rukun, the coordinator of government activities in the territories, in a direct message to Gaza residents in Arabic on his Facebook page.
Gaza’s Hamas rulers say that Israel’s slow-moving approach to implementing an unofficial Egyptian-brokered truce aimed at alleviating the enclave’s dire living conditions could lead to further escalation.
The continued impasse, in which Gaza’s humanitarian crisis has been highlighted by the occasional outburst of violence, has also begun to spark a different tone in Israel, where critics have been advocating for a stronger military response alongside a need to address the civilian needs of Gaza’s impoverished 2 million residents.
“Israel’s strategy over the past few years has been to maintain the situation as it is,” retired general Guy Tzur told Israel’s Army Radio. “Therefore we are in a strategy of ‘rounds’ (of violence) and this does nothing to change the situation … we need to establish deterrence on the one hand and provide serious humanitarian relief on the other.”
In the West Bank, the search was still on for the attackers behind the deadly blast Friday at a water spring that killed Rina Shnerb, 17, near the settlement of Dolev, and wounded her brother and father. As politicians paid the family condolence visits, Netanyahu announced he had ordered his staff to prepare plans for building a new neighborhood in Dolev that would have about 300 residential housing units.
Dolev is a small settlement northwest of Jerusalem and, if approved, the new housing plans would herald a significant boost in its population. Most of the world considers settlements to be illegal and Netanyahu is typically careful in announcing such plans. But with Sept. 17 elections looming, he is wary of losing the backing of hard-liners who supports such measures.
“We will deepen our roots and strike at our enemies. We will continue to strengthen and develop the settlements,” Netanyahu said in a statement.
The flare-ups come as Israel has also dramatically stepped up its campaign against the growing Iranian military activity in the region. In recent days, Israel has acknowledged attacking targets near the Syrian capital, Damascus, to thwart what it called an imminent Iranian drone strike against Israel.
Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes in Syria in recent years, most of them aimed at arms shipments believed to be headed from Iran to its Shiite proxy Hezbollah. But direct clashes between Israel and Iranian forces have been rare, and Israel has typically been wary of publicly acknowledging them for fear of sparking a fierce response that could deteriorate into all-out war.
Lebanese officials reported that Israeli warplanes also attacked a Palestinian base in eastern Lebanon near the border with Syria early Monday, a day after an alleged Israeli drone crashed in a Hezbollah stronghold in southern Beirut while another exploded and crashed nearby.
In recent days, U.S. officials have said that Israeli strikes have also hit Iranian targets in Iraq.
Israel Security Cabinet was convening Monday to discuss the next steps in the various fronts the country currently faces.
Israel considers Iran to be its greatest enemy and has repeatedly vowed that it will not allow Iran to establish a permanent military presence in Syria, where Iranian troops have been supporting President Bashar Assad during the country’s eight-year civil war.
Heavy rainfall and flash floods have killed 62 people in Sudan and left 98 others injured, the official SUNA news agency reported on Sunday.
Sudan has been hit by torrential rains since the start of July, affecting nearly 200,000 people in at least 15 states across the country including the capital Khartoum.
The worst affected area is the White Nile state in the south.
Flooding of the Nile river remains “the biggest problem”, SUNA said, citing a health ministry official.
On Friday the United Nations said 54 people had died due to the heavy rains.
It said more than 37,000 homes had been destroyed or damaged, quoting figures from the government body it partners with in the crisis response.
“Humanitarians are concerned by the high likelihood of more flash floods,” the UN said, adding that the rainy season was expected to last until October.
The floods are having a lasting humanitarian impact on communities, with cut roads, damaged water points, lost livestock and the spread of water-borne diseases by insects.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said an extra $150 million were needed from donors to respond to surging waters, in addition to the $1.1 billion required for the overall humanitarian situation in Sudan.
Sudan’s new prime minister says in an interview that ending his country’s international pariah status and drastically cutting military spending are prerequisites for rescuing a faltering economy.
Abdalla Hamdok, a well-known economist, told The Associated Press on Sunday that he has already talked to U.S. officials about removing Sudan from Washington’s list of countries sponsoring terrorism and portrayed their reaction as positive. He says that “a democratic Sudan is not a threat to anybody in the world.”
He also hopes to drastically cut Sudan’s military spending which he says makes up a large chunk of the state budget.
Hamdok was sworn in last week as the leader of Sudan’s transitional government. His appointment came four months after the overthrow of autocratic leader Omar al-Bashir, who ruled for nearly three decades.
Two members of an Iran-backed Iraqi paramilitary force say that a new drone attack has killed one commander and wounded another near the border with Syria.
Officials from the Hezbollah Brigades, separate from the Lebanese groups of the same name, said the drone attack occurred Sunday near the Qaim border crossing.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to journalists about the matter.
Iraq’s Hezbollah Brigades operate under the umbrella of the state-sanctioned militias known collectively as the Popular Mobilization Forces. Many of them are supported by Iran.
If confirmed, it would be the latest in a series of attacks that have targeted PMF bases and weapons depot in Iraq. U.S. officials have said that Israel was behind at least one of them.
Six people were injured Saturday when lightning struck a 60-foot pine at the Tour Championship where they were taking cover from rain and showered them with debris, Atlanta police said.
A pine tree is stripped of bark after being hit by lightning at East Lake Golf Club during the third round of the Tour Championship golf tournament, Aug. 24, 2019, in Atlanta.
The third round of the season-ending PGA Tour event at East Lake Golf Club had been suspended for about 30 minutes because of storms in the area, and fans were instructed to seek shelter. The strike hit the top of the tree just off the 16th tee and shattered the bark all the way to the bottom.
Ambulances streamed into the private club about 6 miles east of downtown Atlanta. The players already had been taken into the clubhouse before the lightning hit.
Brad Uhl of Atlanta was among those crammed under a hospital tent to the right of the 16th hole that was open to the public.
“There was just a big explosion and then an aftershock so strong you could feel the wind from it,” Uhl said after the last of the ambulances pulled out of the golf course. “It was just a flash out of the corner of the eye.”
Atlanta police spokesman James H. White III said five men and one female juvenile were injured in the lightning strike. He said they were taken to hospitals for further treatment, all of them alert, conscious and breathing.
The PGA Tour canceled the rest of golf Saturday, with the round to resume at 8 a.m. Sunday, followed by the final round.
Last week at the BMW Championship in the Chicago suburbs, Phil Mickelson was delayed getting to the golf course when lightning struck the top of his hotel, causing a precautionary evacuation.
When a “Himalayan tsunami” roars down from the rooftop of the world, water from an overflowing glacial lake obeys gravity. Obliterating everything in its path, a burst is predictable only in its destructiveness.
“There was no meaning in it,” one person who withstood the waters in India’s Himalayas told a Public Radio International reporter. “It didn’t give anyone a chance to survive.”
Christian Huggel, a professor at the University of Zurich in Switzerland who specializes in glaciology and geomorphodynamics (the study of changing forms of geologic surfaces), said thousands of cubic meters of water moving down a mountain “is really quite destructive and it can happen suddenly.”
That water comes from glacial lake outburst floods, or GLOFs, which are increasing in frequency as climate change increases the rate of glacial melting. This catastrophic lake drainage occurs wherever there are glaciers in places such as Peru and Alaska.
The most devastating GLOFs occur in the Himalayan regions of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal and the Tibetan Plateau. When combined, the area has the third-largest accumulation of snow and ice after Antarctica and the Arctic.
Melting glaciers
In the Himalayas, climate change melted glaciers by a vertical foot and half of ice each year from 2000 to 2016, according to a study released in June’s Science Advances by Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y.
That is twice the rate of melting from 1975 to 2000.
Local people have noticed the change. In a 2016 interview from the Everest basecamp, Dr. Nima Namgyal Sherpa told VOA that in the past, the glacial streams in the mid-Everest region started flowing in May, but the Sherpas now see the flow beginning in April.
That melted snowpack seeps down to fill mountainside indentations to form glacial lakes. As global warming accelerates the melting, the lakes are expanding, as is their number and threat, monitored in some areas with automated sensors and manual early warning systems by army and police personnel with communication gear.
“Bigger lakes may increase the risk of catastrophic dam failure,” Joseph Shea, a glacier hydrologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, told the magazine Science.
The retreating ice of the Pastoruri glacier is seen in the Huascaran National Park in Huaraz, Peru, Aug. 12, 2016. The melting of glaciers has put cities like Huaraz at risk of what scientists call a “glof,” or glacial lake outburst flood.
Today, there are more than a thousand glacial lakes on the Tibetan Plateau, with more than 130 larger than 0.1 square kilometer in Nepal alone. The lakes threaten the livelihoods and lives of tens of thousands of people who live in some of the world’s most remote areas.
On June 12, 2016, a GLOF near Mount Everest sent 2 million cubic meters of water toward the Nepalese village of Chukhung, which lost just one outhouse to the torrents, in part because scientists warned residents in the area about the approaching danger.
Weeks later, on July 5, a GLOF near the village of Chaku registered on seismometers, which had been installed after an earthquake the year before, as a “huge pulse of energy,” Kristen Cook, a geologist at the GFZ German Research Center for Geosciences, told EOS, an online site that covers earth and space science news.
Examining satellite images, Cook and her colleagues found the GLOF moved boulders as large as 6 meters in diameter.
Early warning systems
This year, on July 7, a GLOF early warning system of weather monitoring stations and river discharge sensors saved lives in Pakistan’s Golain Valley, which has more than 50 glaciers and nine glacial lakes.
“Our standing crops [and] apple and apricot orchards have been completely destroyed,” Safdar Ali, whose shop was heavily damaged as the water swept away livestock, stored grain, irrigation channels and micro hydropower plants, told Reuters.
“I see no loss of human life this time as a positive,” Amanullah Khan, assistant country director for the U.N. Development Program (UNDP) told Reuters. “It shows our training has been a success.”
The UNDP program, which helped establish flood protection systems in the area starting in 2011, has installed small-scale drainage systems and mini-dams, and taught people in the remote region survival skills, such as simple first aid, because the arrival of skilled emergency help can be delayed by the rugged topography.
Local governments are taking preventive measures, such as removing loose rocks and debris that make the bursts of water even more destructive. Authorities are also draining glacial lakes to reduce the amount of water released by a breach, and they are discouraging settlement in GLOF hazard zones.
“If the lakes burst above the villages up in the Everest area, up between 12,000 to 13,000 feet, there are villages all the way downstream and they will wipe [away] some of these villages,” said Norbu Tenzin Norgyal, whose father, Sherpa Tenzin Norgyal, summited Mount Everest with Sir Edmund Hillary in 1953. “The danger is real.”
The U.N. refugee agency said Saturday that 8,500 refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Kasai province had spontaneously abandoned their camp in Angola and were heading to the homes they fled more than one year ago.
The march home from the Lovua settlement in Angola’s Lunda Norte province began one week ago. U.N. refugee spokesman Andrej Mahecic said more than 1,000 refugees already had crossed into DRC and many more were moving toward the border with DRC’s Kasai region.
“This appears to be in response to reports of improved security in some of their places of origin,” Mahecic said. “It is also linked to their wish to return, as well as to be back home in time for the beginning of the new school year.”
Displaced by violence
Violence broke out in the Kasai region in August 2016, triggered by tensions between traditional chiefs and the government. Deadly clashes intensified between the government and armed groups in March 2017, displacing about 1.4 million people from their homes. An estimated 37,000 others fled across the border into Angola in search of refuge.
Mahecic told VOA the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees was engaged in tripartite discussions with Angolan and Congolese authorities to make sure this refugee return movement was well-organized and sustainable.
“The key point for us is to make sure there is proper planning and transport,” he said. “That is why we have engaged both governments on setting up a system where this can be planned, and the transport can be facilitated for those who wish to return home. And that is the key factor. The refugees themselves are the ones making that decision.”
Staff members along routes
Mahecic said UNHCR staff members were placed along the return routes to monitor the condition of people arriving and to assess the nature of these spontaneous returns. He said staff members were on hand to provide immediate help and to get firsthand information about the type of assistance the refugees would need when they returned home.
He added that not everyone was on the move. He noted most of the Congolese refugees remained in Angola. He said the UNHCR would continue to monitor the situation to make sure those who returned to their homes in Kasai were doing so voluntarily.
Two years ago, Myanmar’s army drew international condemnation for driving more than 750,000 Muslim Rohingya into neighboring Bangladesh. This week the Myanmar and Bangladesh governments announced the beginning of a voluntary repatriation plan for many, however not a single person volunteered to go back. Steve Sandford spoke to refugees and rights workers about the prospect of returning home amid security and rights concerns.
Will Russia join next year’s G-7 summit? The question is being considered after U.S. President Donald Trump raised the idea ahead of the group’s annual summit this week in France. The group voted to suspend Moscow’s membership in 2014 after it annexed Crimea, which Russia continues to hold. Trump says it’s time for them to rejoin. Anna Rice reports on whether that’s likely to happen.
President Donald Trump has abandoned his fight with Congress over slashing $4 billion in foreign aid and will allow the appropriated funds to be spent. But the State Department says it agreed with the White House to “redirect all funding that does not directly support our priorities.” VOA Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine has more from Washington.
The three Baltic countries on Friday marked the 30th anniversary of the 1989 “Baltic Way,” a historic anti-Soviet protest that involved nearly 2 million people forming a human chain more than 600 kilometers (370 miles) long.
On Aug. 23, 1989, as the Soviet Union was weakening, the gesture was a powerful expression on the part of Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians that they were not giving up on their independence even after decades of Soviet occupation.
“People holding hands can be stronger than people holding guns,” said Estonian Prime Minister Juri Ratas in a tweet.
The celebrations come as the inhabitants of the three nations _ and many beyond _ worry about Russia’s renewed ambitions to influence the region.
“We must remember the courage and dreams of the participants. But let it also be a reminder that freedom and democracy can never be taken for granted,” Sweden’s Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom said in a statement.
The Baltic News Service recalled Friday that then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said Moscow “started realizing very clearly that the three Baltic nations were moving toward political independence.”
The main commemorations are taking place in Vilnius, the capital of the southern-most Baltic country, and along the Lithuania-Latvia border, with a relay-race and an exhibition. In the evening, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda will host a concert in central Vilnius.
In the Latvian capital of Riga, the three Baltic prime ministers will lay wreaths at the foot of a freedom monument.
The chain has inspired others, including a 2008 human chain in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, where a crowd of at least 100,000 people jammed Tbilisi’s main avenue.
In Hong-Kong, protesters planned Friday to form a 40-kilometer (25-mile) human chain to demand more freedoms from China, saying it was inspired by the “Baltic Way.”
The Baltic countries declared their independence from Russia in 1918 but were annexed to the Soviet Union in 1940. Friday’s events also marked the 80th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a secret agreement between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany that led to the occupation of the Baltic states and Poland.
The Baltic nations remained part of the Soviet Union until 1991.
President Vladimir Putin has ordered the Russian military to find a quid pro quo response after the test of a new U.S. missile banned under a now-defunct arms treaty.
In Sunday’s test, a modified ground-launched version of a Navy Tomahawk cruise missile accurately struck its target more than 500 kilometers (310 miles) away. The test came after the U.S. and Russia withdrew from the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.
The U.S. has explained its withdrawal from the treaty by Russian violations, a claim Moscow has denied. Speaking Friday, Putin charged that the U.S. wanted to untie its hands to deploy the previously banned missiles in different parts of the world.''<br />
<br />
He ordered the Defense Ministry and other agencies totake the necessary measures to prepare a symmetrical answer.”
Forces loyal to Yemen’s internationally recognized government have taken full control of a key southern city after overnight clashes with separatists, Yemeni security officials said Friday.
Clashes over Etq, the capital of oil-rich Shabwa province erupted late Thursday night and lasted until Friday morning, said the security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because there were not authorized to talk to the media.
The city of Etq was previously divided between Saudi-backed President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi’s government forces and a separatist militia, trained and armed by the United Arab Emirates.
The infighting between Hadi’s forces and the UAE-backed separatists,ostensibly allies in Yemen’s war against the Shiite Houthi rebels, erupted earlier this month. It has threatened to fracture the Saudi-led coalition, a group of Arab states that intervened in Yemen’s civil war in 2015, to help restore Hadi’s government to power. The previous year, the rebel Houthis overran the capital, Sanaa, and gained control of much of the country’s north.
Separatist militiamen of the so-called Southern Transitional Council, have so far seized strategic southern areas, including the city of Aden and much of the nearby Abyan province.
A Saudi-Emirati commission flew to southern Yemen last week to negotiate a truce between the government forces and separatists but has so far made no progress.
In a tweet posted early Friday, Hani Ben Braik, a separatist leader, would not admit defeat at Etq but said his militiamen chose not to pursue a battle in the city out of “respect” for the truce efforts. However, Ben Baraik warned his forces would fight back if they were attacked again.
Renan Toussaint and Florence Lisene contributed to this report
PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI – Kore Lavi, a U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) food program for malnourished Haitians, ended in August amid a worsening of Haiti’s food insecurity crisis.
It is estimated that 2.6 million people, roughly a quarter of Haiti’s population, faces food insecurity in 2019. Experts say natural disasters, high inflation and the country’s socio-political and economic problems are to blame.
“Kore Lavi has served as a strong model in the ongoing development of Haiti’s National Social Protection Policy,” Alexis Barnes, acting senior development, outreach and communications officer for USAID in Port-au-Prince, told VOA via email.
“This activity was designed to be a partnership with the government of Haiti that would model through a limited sample of households a predictable, social transfer focused on consumption of nutritious foods among the most vulnerable in 21 communes,” Barnes said.
A Kore Lavi marketplace bustling with activity. (Photo: USAID)
New way to address hunger
The multimillion-dollar program began in 2013. It provided nutritious meals to 18,000 households in the southeast, northwest, central plateau and Artibonite regions, as well as the Isle of La Gonave.
Originally scheduled to end in September 2017, USAID extended the program for two more years after Hurricane Matthew in 2016, which devastated homes and food crops in many regions of the Caribbean country.
Four NGOs — the World Food Program (WFP), World Vision, Action Against Hunger and CARE — administered the program with MAST, Haiti’s Ministry of Public Works and Social Affairs (Ministere des Affaires Sociales et du Travail Haitien).
Program coordinator Laurore Antoine said organizers used innovative ways to address hunger.
“We wanted to divorce ourselves from the traditional approach,” Antoine, a Haitian official with CARE, a Geneva-based international humanitarian and international development agency, told VOA.”We wanted to kill two birds with one stone, so we boosted local production, as well.”
Vegetables for sale at the Kore Lavi marketplace (Photo: USAID)
That new approach included “fresh products” such as meat, fish and vegetables sold by program-approved vendors.
“That way the beneficiary was able to consume a nutritionally balanced meal and learn the components of that. But what’s more important is that we achieved this with a network of local vendors whom we found living in the community – in many cases they were women – in fact 86 percent of our local vendors were women,” he said.
Kore Lavi participants received a monthly allotment of food stamps that could be used to buy perishable provisions for the week. Vendors then turned in the vouchers for cash.
Kore Lavi vendor holds vouchers she can exchange for cash. (Photo: USAID)
Government solutions
Haitian opposition lawmaker Youri Latortue, who owns a poultry farm, said boosting national food production is key. He fears Haiti’s food insecurity will soon worsen if that doesn’t happen.
“When you have 3 million people who don’t have access to food on a daily basis, you are heading towards famine,” he told VOA’s Creole Service. “It’s not normal to depend on international aid agencies to feed the people. Of course it’s true that it is a humanitarian situation (crisis) that they can temporarily assist us with, but it’s not a permanent solution. The (Haitian) government needs to step in to do its part.”
Latortue said the government solution for the current crisis must include all sectors of the food production industry, both livestock and agriculture.
“That’s the only way out of this crisis,” he said.
Once a week the mountain town of Canyette comes alive with the cadence of donkeys carrying baskets of vegetables, fruits and meat. (Photo: USAID)
As Kore Lavi shutters its operations, Barnes is satisfied with the program’s accomplishments.
“Achievements include the development of the SIMAST vulnerability mapping system, which has now expanded and is supported by other donors such as the European Union, and international NGOs working on activities serving the most vulnerable,” she said.
Barnes expressed optimism that the Haitian government will keep the progress going.
“The program succeeded in demonstrating that the government of Haiti can manage a predictable social transfer activity to the most vulnerable in this country in a well-targeted and transparent manner,” she said. “Haiti’s commitment to developing the policy framework for engagement of a durable and manageable social protection system is essential to this task, and we have been proud to support our government counterparts as they vision and structure their system.”
Kore Lavi participant Marie Anna Jolicoeur, a widowed farmer and two of her five children. (Photo: USAID)
Looking forward
Does that mean the beneficiaries will maintain the level of nutrition they achieved over six years?
“The people still have problems,” Antoine acknowledged. He said things will indeed change. MAST needs access to financial resources so they can continue funding the program, he said.
Antoine hopes a micro-loan system CARE put in place to support the food program will motivate former participants to unite and borrow money to launch small businesses that can pick up where Kore Lavi left off.
“Recently, we did a resilience study using a methodology called SenseMaker, where we asked the beneficiaries to tell us how they are living, how the program changed their lives. We can tell you that (the program) required a huge effort, a lot of sacrifices, but in the end, we delivered (what we promised). So today, as we participate in the official closing ceremony, we stand proud of our work with the most vulnerable populations,” Antoine said.
The United States and the Afghan Taliban have resumed peace talks in Qatar to try to conclude an agreement that would bring an end to the longest U.S. overseas military intervention.
The crucial ninth round of talks in the yearlong dialogue process got under way Thursday in the Qatari capital of Doha amid expectations it will lead to the much-awaited peace agreement between the two adversaries.
The talks come a day after clashes with Taliban insurgents in northern Afghanistan killed two American soldiers, bringing the number of U.S military fatalities in the country this year to 14, exceeding the 2018 total.
FILE – Members of the Taliban attend the second day of the Intra Afghan Dialogue talks in the Qatari capital, Doha, July 8, 2019.
Zalmay Khalilzad, the special reconciliation envoy for Afghanistan, is leading the American side while Sher Muhammad Abbas Stanekzai is heading insurgent negotiators, said a Taliban spokesman.
“Head of occupation forces Scott Miller was also present in these negotiations,” Zabihullah Mujahid said, referring to the American commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan.
Khalilzad will travel to Kabul for meetings with the Afghan leadership after concluding the meeting in Doha.
The Afghan-born chief U.S. negotiator tweeted before leaving Washington on Tuesday that “we will try and close on remaining issues. We’re ready. Let’s see if the Taliban are as well.”
The deal, if reached, would require Washington to announce a timeline for withdrawing U.S.-led foreign troops from the country. In return, the Taliban will give guarantees they will not allow transnational terrorists to use Afghan soil for attacks against other countries.
The agreement would pave the way for talks among the Taliban and Afghan stakeholders, including representatives of the government in Kabul. Those talks will focus on a permanent cease-fire and issues related to future governance in Afghanistan.
Mexican musician Celso Pina, famed as “the rebel of the accordion” for mixing eclectic styles with traditional Colombian cumbia, died Wednesday of a heart attack in his hometown of Monterrey, his record label La Tuna Records said.
He was 66 years old, according to local media.
With an interest in genres ranging from ska to hip-hop, Pina collaborated with a number of major Mexican rock artists including Cafe Tacvba, Lila Downs and Julieta Venegas. In 2002 his solo album “Barrio Bravo” was nominated for a Latin Grammy.
The composer and singer began playing music with his brothers growing up in Monterrey near the northern border, according to his official website. He picked up the accordion in his late 20s, and, still in Monterrey, learned Colombia’s celebrated vallenato style, central to the bouncy cumbia genre.
“Nobody can resist cumbia,” Pina wrote in his last tweet before his death, ahead of concerts planned in the United States, one of about 30 countries he had toured, according to his profile on the Spotify music streaming platform.
“The rebel of the accordion has left us. His music united Latin American cultures and captivated Americans,” the U.S. Embassy in Mexico wrote on Twitter.
VOA correspondent Ayaz Gul contributed to this report from Islamabad.
The death toll from a suicide bomb attack at a wedding in the Afghan capital, Kabul, last week has risen to 80, officials said.
The initial death toll from Saturday’s blast was 63 but jumped to 80 after 17 civilians died from their wounds in recent days, Interior Ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi said Wednesday.
“Seventeen others have succumbed to their injuries in hospital and over 160 are still being treated either in hospitals or at home,” Rahimi said.
A man mourns for victims of the wedding hall bombing during a memorial service at a mosque in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 20, 2019.
The blast, Kabul’s deadliest attack since January 2018, was claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
Survivors said hundreds of guests were inside the hall when the blast occurred near the stage where the musicians were. “All the youths, children and all the people who were there were killed,” witness Gul Mohammad said. One of the wounded, Mohammad Toofan, said that “a lot of guests were martyred.”
The bride’s father told TOLO television station that 14 members of his family were killed in the bombing and three were still missing.
“I know that this will not be the last suffering for Afghans. This suffering will continue. This will not be the last incident to happen against innocent people,” the groom, identified as Mirwais, told the private Afghan news station.
The Taliban, who are set to resume peace talks with the U.S., condemned the attack as “barbaric.”
WASHINGTON – A researcher at the University of Kansas was indicted on federal fraud charges Wednesday for allegedly concealing ties to a Chinese university while doing research funded by the U.S. government, the U.S. Justice Department said.
Feng “Franklin” Tao, 47, an associate professor at a University of Kansas center that conducts sustainable technology research, was charged with one count of wire fraud and three counts of program fraud.
The indictment came amid increased concern by U.S. officials about the risk from China to U.S. universities, part of a broader effort by President Donald Trump’s administration to confront Beijing over what Washington sees as the use of
sometimes illicit methods for acquiring rapid technological advancement.
Intelligence officials have issued dire warnings about the threat of intellectual property theft or even espionage, amid an ongoing trade war with China.
China denies such activities.
U.S. authorities said Tao hid the fact that he was working full time for Fuzhou University in China while conducting research at the University of Kansas funded through U.S. Department of Energy and National Science Foundation contracts.
Five-year pact
The indictment alleges that Tao signed a five-year contract in May 2018 with Fuzhou that required him to be a full-time employee of the Chinese school. Kansas required Tao to file an annual conflict-of-interest report, but Tao “falsely claimed” he had no conflicts of interest in those reports, the Justice Department said.
The indictment says Tao fraudulently received more than $37,000 in salary from the Energy Department and National Science Foundation.
A Justice Department spokesman said Tao had not entered a plea.
Department of Justice officials in Kansas did not immediately respond to questions about whether Tao is a U.S. citizen or whether he was working with classified materials.
If convicted, Tao faces up to 20 years in federal prison and a fine of up to $250,000 on the wire fraud count, and up to 10 years and a fine up to $250,000 on each of the three program fraud counts.
The University of Kansas cooperated and assisted in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s probe of Tao.
