Hunger in the News

Today's top headlines:

International
Ethiopia Aid 'Spent on Weapons'. Millions of dollars in Western aid for victims of the Ethiopian famine of 1984-85 was siphoned off by rebels to buy weapons... [BBC]

WFP Increases Focus on Children Under 2. Preventing lifelong damage from malnutrition hinges on boosting efforts to tackle the problem in children under two… [AlterNet]

Are We Heading for Another Food Crisis? Long dry spells in parts of Africa and erratic rainfall in Asia have cast uncertain clouds over crop yields for 2010 in the world's poorest countries. [IRIN -- the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs news service]

Free Care for Expectant Mothers -- is it Enough? Sierra Leone has the world’s highest maternal mortality rate -- 1,800 women die per 100,000 live births… [IRIN]

Domestic
New Formula to Give Fresh Look at Poverty. The Obama administration Tuesday embraced an alternative way of defining what it means to be poor… [The Washington Post]

Profiting from Recession, Payday Lenders Spend Big to Fight Regulation. The influential $42 billion-a-year payday lending industry ... is pouring record sums into lobbying… [Huffington Post]

Senate Passes Funding for Jobless Benefits after Republican Relents. [T]he Senate is back to work on a $100 billion-plus bill reviving popular tax breaks and extending longer and more generous jobless benefits through the end of the year... [Huffington Post]

Some Companies Drop Health Insurance, Don't Tell Employees. [N]ow workers have another worry: companies that drop their health insurance coverage and don't bother to tell employees. [McClatchy]

Spider-Man Fired: Peter Parker Heads to Unemployment Line. Wednesday … is the day Peter Parker, Spider-Man's nice guy alter-ego, hears the words, ''You're fired.'' [Huffington Post]

Climate Change/Environment
Independent Board to Review Work of Top Climate Panel. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been under fire since it was pointed out that the 2007 report included a prediction that Himalayan glaciers would vanish by 2035, although there is no scientific consensus to that effect. [The New York Times]

How Do You Convince People of Global Warming in a Snowstorm? The dead of winter ... is not the easiest time to make the case for global warming. [The Christian Science Monitor]