Wreckage of wheat silos at Lebanon’s Port of Beirut following an explosion at the port on Aug. 4, 2020. (Hiba Kallas/iStock/Getty Images)

Canada seeks to boost foreign aid for food security

Grain traffic out of Ukraine not yet easing crisis

Amman | Reuters — An international food crisis exacerbated by the Ukraine war has spurred Canada to boost an over $6 billion annual foreign aid budget to help the most hard-hit countries in Africa and the Middle East, Canada’s aid minister said on Thursday. “The Ukraine crisis is creating shock waves when it comes to […] Read more






File photo of a bridge over the Yalu River boundary between China and North Korea. (Tarzan9280/iStock/Getty Images)

U.N. expert says ‘some are starving’ in North Korea

Estimated 40 per cent of North Koreans need humanitarian aid, WFP says

Geneva | Reuters — A United Nations human rights expert voiced alarm on Tuesday at “widespread food shortages and malnutrition” in North Korea, made worse by a nearly five-month border closure with China and strict quarantine measures against COVID-19. Tomas Ojea Quintana, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, […] Read more

Victoria Falls, on the Zambezi River on Zimbabwe’s northwestern border with Zambia. (CIA.gov)

Zimbabwe says grain stocks running out after drought

Harare | Reuters — Zimbabwe has only 100,000 tonnes of grain in its strategic reserves, enough to last just over a month, as the southern African nation suffers the effects of a severe drought, according to the agriculture minister. More than half the country’s population faces food shortages after maize harvests halved last year. The […] Read more


(PaulCowan/iStock/Getty Images)

Worst-case no-deal Brexit plan warns of food shortages

London | Reuters — The British government’s plans for a no-deal Brexit warn of severe disruption to cross-Channel routes, affecting the supply of medicines and certain types of fresh foods, and say that protests and counter-protests will take place across the country, accompanied by a possible rise in public disorder. The “Operation Yellowhammer” worst-case assumptions […] Read more

Food riots grip western Venezuela

San Cristobal/Barinas, Venezuela | Reuters — Hungry mobs ransacked a food collection centre and a supermarket in Venezuela’s western Andean state of Merida on Thursday and reportedly even slaughtered cattle grazing in a field as unrest over food shortages spread through the country. An opposition lawmaker from Merida, Carlos Paparoni, said four people had died […] Read more