A Vietnamese woman accused of assassinating the North Korean leader's half-brother is to walk free after Malaysia dropped murder charges against her on Monday, weeks after her Indonesian co-accused was also released. The 2017 killing of Kim Jong Nam with a toxic nerve agent at Kuala Lumpur's international airport shocked the world, but Doan Thi Huong's guilty plea to the lesser charge of "causing injury" makes her the only person convicted in the case. Malaysia allowed the two women's suspected North Korean handlers to leave in the days after the murder, amid a furious diplomatic row as Seoul accused Pyongyang of plotting the Cold War-style hit. The pair, who claimed they were tricked into carrying out the killing, were put on trial facing a murder charge. But last month the charge against Indonesian suspect Siti Aisyah was dropped and on Monday, prosecutors withdrew the charge against the second accused, Doan Thi Huong from Vietnam, and replaced it with a lesser one. She pleaded guilty to "causing injury" and was handed a three year and four month jail term, with her lawyers saying she would be freed next month due to sentence reductions. The women would have been sentenced to death by hanging if convicted of murder. While there was relief for Huong, the outcome means her conviction is the only one over the sensational assassination of Kim Jong Un's estranged relative, who was seen as heir apparent to the North Korean leadership until he fell out of favor. Huong, a 30-year-old former hair salon worker who had been living a precarious existence among Malaysia's army of migrant workers before her arrest, said she was "happy" after the verdict was handed down. "This is a fair sentence," she told reporters at the High Court in Shah Alam, outside Kuala Lumpur. "This is a fair judgment, I thank the Malaysian government and the Vietnamese government." Her father Doan Van Thanh, who was at court, said he planned to "host a big party to welcome my youngest daughter back home". Huong had already failed at one attempt to secure an early release. Days after Aisyah's charge was dropped, prosecutors announced that the attorney-general had rejected a request to withdraw Huong's murder charge, prompting her to break down in floods of tears in court. Hanoi had stepped up diplomatic pressure on Malaysia after Huong's first failed release bid, following the example of the Indonesian government which had mounted a sustained diplomatic offensive to secure the release of 27-year-old Aisyah. Aisyah was freed immediately after her murder charge was dropped and she flew back to Indonesia to a jubilant welcome. The decision not to release Huong straight away sparked criticism in Vietnam and Malaysia of her unfair treatment and accusations of political meddling in the justice system. During the women's long-running trial which began in October 2017, the court was shown CCTV footage of them approaching Kim as he waited for flight, one of them placing their hands on his face, and then both of them running to bathrooms before fleeing the airport. But the pair always maintained they were innocent pawns in a plan hatched by North Korea and believed they were carrying out pranks for a reality TV show. NHAMPUEPUA, Mozambique — Fulai Joaquim has enough food to feed his 10 children for another week, maybe two. Then, he says, it is in the hands of God. A cyclone ripped his cassava crop from the ground, leaving the roots to rot in the field, and the floods that followed washed away his maize. "There have been a lot of tears," said Joaquim, 45, as he trudged past the small plots of land that hug the mud and stick homes of Nhampuepua, also destroyed by the storm. "Everyone is hungry." Hundreds of rural communities were plunged into food crisis after Cyclone Idai tore through central Mozambique on March 14, humanitarian workers say. The government estimates that more than 700,000 hectares of agricultural land was flooded, leaving many farmers with nothing to harvest. From the air, the kilometers (miles) of flattened crops look like thinning, slicked-back hair. More than 750 people died in the storm and heavy rains before it hit Mozambique and two other southern African countries, Zimbabwe and Malawi. Two weeks later, as search and rescue operations wind down, the focus is shifting to feeding the survivors. Maize imports to Mozambique could double this year from the usual 100,000 tons, said Wandile Sihlobo, an economist with the South African agribusiness association, Agbiz. How that might impact prices is uncertain. "Food-security-wise, it's been devastating," the World Food Program's director for Southern Africa, Lola Castro, told Reuters at the airport in the cyclone-hit port city of Beira. "We have to scale up fast." WFP has delivered food aid to some 200,000 Mozambicans and aims to reach a million in the next two weeks, Castro said. But that is not enough. Farmers also need seeds to re-plant as quickly as possible. "It needs to be done yesterday," Castro said. The storm could not have come at a worse time, barely a month before the main maize harvest, the region's principal crop. In countless villages, reporters saw households desperately trying to dry green, unripe cobs salvaged from the flood waters. But villagers said eating the cobs was making them ill. In Bebedo, 100 km northwest of Beira, dozens of families came out to see a Russian-made helicopter land in a cloud of dust, carrying a WFP delivery of fortified food. Within 20 minutes, they had carried more than a hundred brown boxes of Plumpy'sup, a fortified peanut paste used to treat malnutrition in young children, as well as white sacks containing a soy and corn flour blend. It was the second delivery that day. The village is being used as a distribution center to feed neighboring communities — 17,000 mouths in all. But residents said Nhampuepua, an hour and a half's drive from Beira, was falling through the cracks. The only aid that had reached there by Saturday was donated by a local petrol company. Nhampuepua's suffering highlights the scale of the task confronting humanitarian agencies and the government. The United Nations humanitarian coordination agency, which is overseeing the disaster response, estimates that 1.85 million people scattered across an area of 3,000 square kilometers — roughly the size of Luxembourg — were affected by the storm in Mozambique alone. The subsistence farmers of Nhampuepua, hardened by years of poverty, are already replanting what they can, using cuttings from the uprooted cassava plants that now litter the village. But the land has its rhythm and will not be rushed, however great the need. Only in eight months will the cassava be ready to eat. Until then, hunger is a real threat. On Saturday, Diniz Jeronimo, 28, and his family of five shared a bowl of plain boiled spaghetti for their only meal. Their crops were devastated. Like most of the community, the family's only immediate income comes from selling charcoal, which takes seven days to make. On the slow, sandy road to Dondo, the nearest town, a stream of bicycles carried sacks of the fuel. Now Diniz is worried the price will come down. At the same time, the cost of food has shot up. — Reuters
