UN: Widespread food aid cuts loom in Congo

The World Food Program says it has begun scaling back food aid in the Democratic Republic of Congo because of lack of funding, AP reported. WFP spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs says the agency's 478 million plan to feed 4.2 million people in Congo through Dec. 2015 is only 25 percent funded, and warns that without new funding they won't be able to help 300,000 internally displaced people in North Kivu province. Byrs said that the funding shortage has caused "a significant scale-down" in help for the North Kivu, South Kivu, Equateur, Kasai and Orientale provinces. Byrs says the cutbacks also would affect thousands of schoolchildren and 180,000 malnourished children, pregnant women and nursing mothers across the country.