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Famine

  • Famine Looms as Wars Rend Horn of Africa

    The police in Somalia stood near the corpses of lambs in Dagaari. Drought is killing livestock and destroying livelihoods. She cannot afford rice or wheat or powdered milk anymore. At the same time, a drought has decimated her family's herd of goats, turning their sole livelihood into a pile of bleached bones and papery skin. The result is that Ms. Safia, a 25-year-old mother of five, has not eaten in a week. Her 1-year-old son is starving too, an adorable, listless boy who doesn't even respond to a pinch.

  • A flower that bears seeds of doom?

    Bamboo, that is used so extensively in northeast India for various purposes like building houses, bridges, in medicines, and more, spells doom in the form of famine the moment it starts flowering. But is it true, finds out Robert L Sungte If you think all flowers are beautiful and are meant to bring smiles on everyone's face, think once again. There is this flower which does just the opposite. That flower belongs to the bamboo.

  • India's Green Revolutionary Is Back In Spotlight

    Forty years after he helped rescue the world from growing famine and a deepening gloom over the future of food supplies, Monkombu Sambasivan Swaminathan is once again agitating for revolution -- this time a perpetual one. The 82-year-old scientist, dubbed here the father of the Green Revolution for helping development a hybrid wheat seed that allowed Indian farmers to dramatically increase yields, says the current food crisis offers the world a chance to put farmers on the right road to unending growth.

  • North Korea Heading Towards Famine - Report

    Soaring global food prices and reluctant donors are pushing North Korea back toward famine, which could see the secretive government turn even more repressive to keep control, a paper released on Wednesday said. "The country is in its most precarious situation since the end of the famine a decade ago," said the paper from the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics. Stephan Haggard, who wrote the paper with Marcus Noland, said the sharp increase in world prices for commodities had sent ripples through the communist state's economy.

  • Famine an indirect phenomenon of bamboo flowering, says Laloo

    Famine caused by bamboo flowering is an indirect phenomenon that happens in 30 to 40 years depending on the species of the bamboo. Senior Congress legislator and NEHU Head of Department of Botany Dr RC Laloo told The Sentinel that bamboo flowering does not directly lead to famine but it occurs after rats have shortage of food. He said when rats feed on the high-protein seeds of bamboo, flowers start to reproduce while their population doubles leading to shortage of seeds. Therefore, the rats are left with no option but to attack the paddy fields, Dr Laloo said.

  • Bamboo flowering causes food shortage in Mizoram

    Famine relief operations are underway in Mizoram as the remote state is hit by acute food shortage after an army of rats devoured rice crops. According to the State's Food and Supplies department, this year, the food shortage has affected about 630,000 people, nearly 70 per cent of the 900,000esidents of Mizoram. However, no starvation deaths have been reported so far. The people of Mizoram fear bamboo flowering, the harbinger of famine.

  • Reasons for soaring prices

    AND all nations came to Egypt to Joseph to buy grain because everywhere the famine was severe:" Genesis 41:57 The Old Testament. The World Bank chief, Robert Zoellick, recently said that the demand for ethanol, droughts in Australia and Europe, financial market speculation, and increased demand for food due to rising incomes in China and India, has significantly contributed to "soaring" food prices around the world.

  • CPB on hunger strike for rationing system

    Communist Party of Bangladesh (CPB) yesterday demanded introducing rationing system and effective steps against hoarders and syndicates responsible for price hike of essentials, says a press release. CPB Dhaka Committee observed a five-hour token hunger strike at the party's central office at Paltan in the city protesting police intervention in the human chain programme on April 17.

  • Life returns to normal after 18 years

    Communist Party of Bangladesh (CPB) yesterday demanded introducing rationing system and effective steps against hoarders and syndicates responsible for price hike of essentials, says a press release. CPB Dhaka Committee observed a five-hour token hunger strike at the party's central office at Paltan in the city protesting police intervention in the human chain programme on April 17.

  • UN agency warns of food crisis in North Korea

    North Korea faces a looming food and humanitarian crisis after a poor harvest that has caused food prices to skyrocket and supplies to dwindle, the United Nations World Food Programme said on Wednesday. Agricultural experts in Seoul have said the shortfall, the result of flood damage last year, high commodity prices and political wrangling with major food donor South Korea, may be one of the worst since famine hit North Korea in the 1990s.

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