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.  

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.”

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.

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.  

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.”

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.

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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. 

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.

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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.

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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.

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.” 

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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. 

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The U.S. State Department has approved a possible $8 billion sale of F-16 fighter jets to Taiwan, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency said on Tuesday in an official notification to Congress.

The potential deal is for 66 aircraft, 75 General Electric Co engines, as well as other systems, the agency said in a statement, adding it served the interests of the United States and would help Taiwan maintain a credible defense.

China has already denounced the widely discussed sale, one of the biggest yet by the United States to Taiwan, which Beijing considers a renegade province. It has warned of unspecified “countermeasures.”

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jim Risch, a Republican, has welcomed the proposed sale of the Lockheed Martin Corp F-16 jets.

“These fighters are critical to improving Taiwan’s ability to defend its sovereign airspace, which is under increasing pressure from the People’s Republic of China,” he said in a recent statement. 

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News on Monday that President Donald Trump notified Congress of the sale last week.

Pompeo told Fox News the sale was “consistent with past U.S. policy” and that the United States was “simply following through on the commitments we’ve made to all of the parties.”

In Tapei, President Tsai Ing-wen said the sale would help Taiwan build a new air force and boost its air defense capacity.

In a post on Facebook, Tsai said she was grateful for Washington’s “continuous support for Taiwan’s national defense.”

“With strong self-defense capacity, Taiwan will certainly be more confident to ensure the cross-strait and regional peace and stability while facing security challenges,” she said.

Taiwan unveiled its largest defense spending increase in more than a decade last week, amid rising military tensions with China.

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U.S. envoy for North Korea Stephen Biegun says the Trump administration is ready to resume stalled negotiations over North Korea’s nuclear program.

Speaking Wednesday in Seoul where he was meeting with South Korean officials, Biegun said the United States is “prepared to engage as soon as we hear from our counterparts in North Korea.”

President Donald Trump wrote on Twitter earlier this month that he had received a letter from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un expressing a desire “to meet and start negotiations” after the conclusion of U.S.-South Korean joint military exercises, which ended Tuesday.

North Korea considers the exercises a threat to its existence, and since late last month it carried out six short-range ballistic missile tests that Kim said were in response to the drills.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Tuesday he was concerned about the latest missile tests, disagreeing with Trump, who has shrugged off their importance.

“I wish that they would not” launch the missiles, the top U.S. diplomat told CBS News.

The two latest projectiles, fired last Friday, flew 230 kilometers into the waters off North Korea, but, aimed differently, could reach South Korea as well as American troops and civilians living there.

Trump has voiced his discontent as well, not about North Korea’s missile tests, but about the costs of the military drills with Seoul.

Asked about the missile tests, Trump told reporters, “I have no problem. These are short-range missiles.”

Trump called the missiles “smaller ones.”  He said earlier this month that Kim had sent him “a really beautiful letter” that included a “small apology” for conducting the missile tests.

The U.S. leader has held out hope that he can bring about Pyongyang’s denuclearization by the time his first term in the White House ends in January 2021.

Pompeo acknowledged in the CBS interview, however, that the United States and North Korea “haven’t gotten back to the table as quickly as we would have hoped” to continue the nuclear weapons talks.

Pompeo said the U.S. knew “there will be bumps along the way” in the negotiations.

“We hope Chairman Kim will come to the table and a get a better outcome” than by maintaining North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, he said.

“It will be better for the North Korean people,” Pompeo concluded. “It’ll be better for the world.”

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China hopes to welcome the United States “back to the negotiating table” to discuss global efforts to limit climate change at a United Nations summit to be hosted by Chile in December, its top climate change envoy said on Tuesday.

Xie Zhenhua, China’s Special Representative for Climate Change Affairs, told journalists during a visit to a solar energy plant outside the Chilean capital Santiago that China would provide “full support to the Chilean presidency of this meeting.”

The summit was “strong proof that a multilateral negotiation process is successful, that multilateralism is working,” he said.

Asked if the U.S. approach to the threat of climate change under President Donald Trump and the U.S.-China trade dispute might affect the outcome in Santiago, Xie replied: “China and the U.S. has many differences but we do have some common grounds on climate change issues as well and we welcome them back to the negotiating table on climate change, we are very open to that.”

Trump has signaled his intention to withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris climate accord and been dismissive of regulations aimed at slashing greenhouse gas emissions. He has also expressed his preference for bilateral trade pacts over multilateral agreements.

In July, China pledged on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Osaka to show “the highest possible ambition” in the fight against climate change. Experts and policy advisors say the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter could introduce new and more stringent carbon targets next year. 

Xie said China would back a bid by the U.N. secretary-general and climate change envoy to persuade all countries to update their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) goals to keep global warming to well below two degrees centigrade.

“The most important objective is to identify the new NDCs for the post-2020 period and link those new NDCs together with the financial support from the developed countries as promised,” Xie said. “To have that financial support in place is very important and that’s the objective we would like to achieve.”

China is a key investor in Chilean renewable energy projects and manufactured half of the solar panels at the 110MW Parque Quilapilún solar plant Xie visited with environment minister Carolina Schmidt.

Schmidt will serve as president of the COP25 U.N. climate change summit in December.

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Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen thanked the United States on Tuesdsay for approving the sale of 66 advanced F-16V fighter jets and urged rival China to respect Taiwan’s right to defend itself.
 
President Donald Trump announced approval of the $8 billion deal on Sunday. The sale is expected to further inflame U.S. relations with China, which claims Taiwan as its own territory to be annexed by force if necessary.

Tsai on Tuesday also applauded previous arm sales already announced by Trump’s administration, saying those reaffirmed the United States’ “long-standing commitment to helping maintain peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.”

Trump’s announcement begins a period of consultation with Congress, and a formal announcement of the sale could be made as early as next month unless lawmakers object. The State Department, which would ultimately authorize the sale, declined to comment, but members of Congress from both parties welcomed the proposal.

China fiercely opposes all arms sales to Taiwan but has specifically objected to advanced fighter jets such as the F-16V, whose Active Electronically Scanned Array, or AESA, radar is compatible with the F-35 stealth fighters operated by the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marines. The U.S. is also installing upgraded electronics, including AESA radars, on Taiwan’s existing fleet of 144 older F-16s.
 
While the U.S. cut formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan in 1979 in order to recognize Beijing, U.S. law requires Washington to ensure Taiwan has the means to defend itself.

Since 2008, U.S. administrations have notified Congress of more than $24 billion in foreign military sales to Taiwan, including in the past two months the sale of 108 M1A2 Abrams tanks and 250 Stinger missiles, valued at $2.2 billion. The Trump administration alone has notified Congress of $4.4 billion in arms sales to Taiwan.

Tsai has rejected Chinese pressure to unite Taiwan and China under a “one-country, two-systems” framework and soon after her 2016 inauguration, Beijing cut contacts with her government over her refusal to endorse its claim that Taiwan is part of China.
 
Beijing has sought to increase Taiwan’s international isolation by reducing its diplomatic allies to just 17 and stepped up military intimidation, including by holding military exercises across the Taiwan Strait and circling the island with bombers and fighters in what are officially termed training missions.

On Monday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said Beijing had made solemn complaints'' to the U.S. over the planned F-16V sale. Geng called on Washington tofully recognize the serious dangers of the arms sale to Taiwan” and cancel it immediately or bear the consequences.

 “China will take necessary measures to safeguard its own interests according to the development of the situation,” Geng said.

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Only a dozen airlines will eventually share the aviation market for major international routes, predicts Lufthansa’s CEO, while a possible future economic crisis could “accelerate” a consolidation in air travel.

“The sector is evolving towards a dozen companies operating worldwide” on major international routes, in addition to smaller national or regional airlines, Lufthansa boss Carsten Spohr told reporters late Monday.

Without naming them, Spohr forecast there would be “three in the United States, three in China, three in the Gulf and three in Europe”.

The Lufthansa chief executive warned that any future economic crisis could hit European airlines particularly hard, but predicted a downturn could “accelerate” mergers and acquisitions.

“If there is one positive aspect to the flattening of the global economy, and certainly also the worsening figures for all airlines — unfortunately also for us — it is that the consolidation process will tend to accelerate,” Spohr added.

The recent bankruptcies of German low-cost airlines Air Berlin and Germania have enabled Lufthansa to buy back flight routes and aircraft.

The airline industry is “much more cyclical” and at the mercy of economic developments than others, Spohr said, with the sector suffering from international trade tensions.

Lufthansa wants to “and will play an active role” in any future consolidation in the sector, said the airline boss, whose company’s net profit dropped by 70 percent in the second quarter.

Spohr said Lufthansa faced strong competition from low-cost airlines in a “unique price war”, however “we will not be driven out of our domestic market” by low-cost companies like Ryanair, because the German airline “has the financial strength to resist” competition.

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An unmanned Indian space probe successfully entered lunar orbit Tuesday, passing a crucial step towards a historic milestone for the country’s fledgling space program.

The arrival of the $141 million Chandrayaan-2 probe comes nearly a month after it was launched into space aboard India’s powerful Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark Three rocket.  The probe will orbit the moon for two weeks before its Vikram lander — named after Vikram Sarabhai, the scientist regarded as the “father” of India’s space program — will undock from the mothership and land on the moon’s South Pole.  It will then release a small rover dubbed Pragyan that will roam for 14 days, mapping the moon’s surface, conducting experiments to search for signs of water and assessing its topography and geology.

If the planned September 7 landing is successful, India will join the United States, Russia and China as the only nations to achieve a soft landing of a spacecraft on the moon.  It will also become the first nation to attempt a controlled landing on the moon’s South Pole.

Although India was a relative latecomer to the space race, it has developed a reputation for conducting its space explorations at a fraction of the cost spent by countries like the United States.  It first placed an unmanned spacecraft in lunar orbit in 2008, which helped confirm the presence of water on the lunar surface.   

Among other goalposts India has set in the coming years is to put a space station in orbit, an astronaut in space by 2022, a robotic mission to Mars and a mission to explore the sun.

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New figures from the U.S. Census Bureau show that citizenship appears to narrow the economic gap between the foreign-born and native-born in the United States.

The 2018 figures released Monday offer a view of immigrants’ education, wealth, and the jobs they work in. They also look at differences between naturalized immigrants and those who aren’t citizens.
 
Their release come as the U.S. is engaged in one of the fiercest debates in decades about the role of immigration.
 
Stopping the flow of immigrants into the U.S. has been a priority of the Trump administration, which has proposed denying green cards to immigrants who use Medicaid and fought to put a citizenship question on the decennial Census questionnaire.
 
Monday’s figures show naturalized immigrants had a slightly smaller median income than the native-born.

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