The top Democrat on a House panel that oversees foreign aid is backing President Obama's call for an overhaul of the nation's $1.5 billion food aid program.

“I am pleased the Administration is working to make food aid more efficient and effective,” Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), the ranking member on the House Appropriations panel on State and Foreign Operations, said in an email. Secretary of State John Kerry is scheduled to testify before the subcommittee about the president's budget on April 17, The Hill has learned.

“In a time of tight budgets, it is critical to get the best value possible for services and investments, including relieving hunger," she wrote. "This is an important proposal, and I look forward to working with the Administration and my colleagues to move toward more efficiency in food aid."

Israel has shot down Secretary of State John Kerry's blueprint for restarting peace talks with the Palestinians, Israel's Haaretz reports.

Kerry met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in recent days and laid out a plan for to boost economic development in the Palestinian territories.

Behind the scenes, however, the U.S. envoy and his Israeli counterparts clashed over Kerry's proposal, which would focus at first only on border and security issues as a way to get the talks started.

Israeli leaders want the talks to also address the Jewish character of the Israeli state and the question of the right of return of descendants of Palestinians expelled from their land in 1948. They argue that Kerry's approach would require too many Israeli concessions on the front end.

Expectations are high that U.S. and EU officials can forge a far-ranging, high-standard tradeagreement that will open markets and bolster economies on both sides of the Atlantic. 

Business leaders joined congressional lawmakers and European Union (EU) officials on Wednesday to launch a coalition designed to drill down on the trade issues in preparation for the start of negotiation between the United States and the European Union (EU) sometime this summer. 

Talks are expected to start as early as June and stakeholders are pressing for a quick resolution, although it could take two years to sort out the differences in the world's largest trading relationship. 

The White House said Wednesday that the United States stands "ready to help the Iranian people" in the aftermath of a 6.3-magnitude earthquake that struck Tuesday.

"The American people extend condolences to the people of Iran for the devastation that resulted from the recent earthquake and aftershocks in southern Iran, particularly to those whose loved ones were injured or lost their lives," NSC spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said in a statement. "We are deeply saddened by the loss of life and the destruction that’s been caused by this disaster, and stand ready to help the Iranian people in this time of need."

The Associated Press reported that as many as 650 people were injured and at least 37 were killed by the quake.

Lawmakers called on the State Department to designate Vietnam as an egregious human-rights violator on Wednesday ahead of talks in Hanoi on Friday.

The chairman of the House human rights panel said the State Department should designate the communist nation as a “country of particular concern” under the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act because of its continued religious persecution and political repression. The call comes days before the annual human-rights dialogue is expected to take place in Hanoi after being cancelled last year. 

The State Department lifted the designation, which opens up countries to criticism and possibly sanctions, in 2006 amid reports of progress on human rights. Since then, said Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), religious persecution has gotten worse.

“We do call on the Obama administration to designate Vietnam as a country of particular concern,” Smith said at a press conference with religious leaders. “The Vietnamese government has cracked down on religious believers, evangelicals, Montagnards, Catholics and others.”

Smith also said he would re-introduce his Vietnam Human Rights Act within the next day or two. The bill would create benchmarks that Vietnam would have to meet to get U.S. assistance; it cleared the House last September but died in the Senate.

The State Department thanked Cuba on Wednesday for sending back two American children who had been kidnapped by their parents after they lost custody.

The couple are accused of abducting their two sons, aged two and four, from their grandmother's care and sailing to Cuba. The family of four was discovered in a Havana marina on Tuesday and have been extradited back to Florida.

“We do appreciate the Cuban authorities' extensive cooperation to resolve this situation quickly,” State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said. “Thanks to a joint effort by the Department of State, FBI, U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. citizen children are safely back at their home.”

President Obama's budget proposes overhauling the nation's $1.5 billion-a-year food aid program, setting up a bruising battle on Capitol Hill that cuts across party lines.

In one corner are farm state lawmakers who want the government to continue buying U.S.-grown food and shipping it abroad. In the other: reform proponents who agree with Obama that the current system is a waste of taxpayer money that only harms poor countries' ability to grow their own food.

“After nearly 60 years of experience, we are encouraged by the president’s proposal to fundamentally alter our food aid program to reach more people, more quickly, at less cost,” Reps. Ed Royce (R-Calif.) and Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), the chairman and ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a joint statement. “Several recent studies have highlighted the need for reform. We look forward to working with the Administration and our colleagues in Congress to modernize U.S. food aid programs while ensuring maximum impact and efficiency.”

They'll have a tough time convincing their colleagues on agricultural panels. Twenty-one senators wrote to Obama opposing the overhaul when rumors first emerged. 

“American agriculture is one of the few U.S. business sectors to produce a trade surplus, exporting $108 billion in farm goods in 2010,” they wrote. “During this time of economic distress, we should maintain support for the areas of our economy that are growing.”

The chairman of the Oversight Committee's National Security panel on Wednesday slammed the State Department's efforts to give foreign aid directly to partner nations amid reports of massive corruption in Afghanistan.

The Obama administration and other donors agreed in 2010 to provide more aid directly to the Afghan government to help it learn to manage funds and deliver services. Afghanistan, however, remains one of the most corrupt countries in the world, leading to hundreds of millions of dollars a year being wasted out of the almost $93 billion Congress has appropriated since 2002.

Afghanistan “is the most corrupt nation on the face of the planet,” said Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah). “And what's the USAID [U.S. Agency of International Development] suggestion on how we do this better? Let's use USAID Forward, a program introduced in 2010, where we give the money directly to them – with less oversight, less accountability.”

The U.S. Mission to the United Nations is boycotting a U.N. session on international justice out of concern that its real goal is to whitewash Serb crimes in the former Yugoslavia. 

The session was called by General Assembly President Vuk Jeremic, a former Serbian foreign minister and known critic of the U.N. Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, according to Foreign Policy. The session follows the recent acquittal of two Croatian generals accused of massacring Serbs.

“The United States strongly disagrees with the decision of the President of the General Assembly to hold an unbalanced, inflammatory thematic debate today on the role of international criminal justice in reconciliation and will not participate,” U.S. mission spokeswoman Erin Pelton said in a statement.