Famines

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) _ Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, locked in a standoff with the opposition in power-sharing talks, went ahead Saturday and laid claim to all key ministries as he tries to retain his iron grip on the struggling southern African...

What if Christopher Columbus had missed the New World? For those of us whose families hailed from outside the Americas that would have meant, among other things, no ketchup, no chocolate bars, no potato chips, not even green bean almondine. Whether that...

They look like birds pecking, grain by grain, along the nation's roadsides. Tattered women and children bend to pick up the corn blown from passing trucks. The precious grains are about all there is to eat. Millions of people across Zimbabwe are on...

They look like birds pecking, grain by grain, along the nation's roadsides. Tattered women and children bend to pick up the smattering of corn blown from passing trucks. The precious grains are about all there is to eat. Millions across Zimbabwe are on...

MASVINGO PROVINCE, Zimbabwe — They look like birds pecking, grain by grain, along the nation's roadsides. Tattered women and children bend to pick up the smattering of corn blown from passing trucks. The precious grains are about all there is to...

It's been a bad week for a global anti-poverty summit. Even before Wall Street's turmoil damped the generosity of donor countries, economists were predicting that food and fuel price shocks would drive 100 million people into destitution across the world....

Behind Neonila Scherstiuk Lychyk's school in the Ukraine of her childhood, there was a cemetery and, sometimes during recess, horse carts arrived loaded with corpses. At first, Lychyk said, the teacher would shoo the children indoors. In time, she didn't...

A pitiable harvest this year has left small farmers all over central and northern Afghanistan facing hunger. And aid officials are warning of an acute food shortage this winter for 9 million Afghans, more than a quarter of the population. The crisis...

UNITED NATIONS The U.N. humanitarian office said yesterday that food shortages in Ethiopia have reached alarming levels because of widespread drought in the country. Relief organizations are grappling with a "considerable shortage of supplies," with the...

A Baltimore County judge hearing the case of the Rodgers Forge couple charged with murder in the starvation death of their 2-year-old son ruled yesterday that a police search warrant for the family's home was valid. Defense attorneys for John J....

Sitting in the basket of a hanging scale, 20-month-old Deep Kumar epitomizes the silent but monumental crisis gripping this country: The needle stops at 14 pounds. A healthy child his age ought to weigh nearly twice as much. But very little about Deep...

Flooding in Haiti from three major storms has killed scores of people and "washed away" progress toward dealing with ongoing food shortages, the top-ranking UN humanitarian official said Friday. "The timing of this could hardly be worse," John Holmes,...