Food prices have the potential to change regimes and the course of history. When Marie Antoinette allegedly said ”Let them eat cake” in 1789, she was wondering why higher bread prices were causing so much trouble in Paris. Analysts say pushing the urban poor beyond their purchasing limits can, and will, cause unrest.
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/ 21 February 2007
Disaster officials and aid agencies are closely monitoring Tropical Cyclone Favio, due to make landfall in flood-drenched Mozambique on Thursday, as it crosses the narrow sea channel from Madagascar. By 6pm local time on Wednesday afternoon, Favio was a very intense category-three storm with winds of about 185km/h.
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/ 27 November 2006
With humanitarian groups sounding the alarm about the violence in eastern Chad near Sudan, the Chadian government has sent troops south to neighbouring Central African Republic to battle rebels there who, it said, are being backed by Sudan. Chad is already contributing troops to a regional peacekeeping force in CAR but the prime minister said last week that he wants to send more.
The military has taken control of food production by small-scale farmers in parts of southern Zimbabwe, a rights NGO headed by church leaders claimed recently.
The Solidarity Peace Trust alleges that army units have "hijacked" plots and maize harvests in the southern province of Matabeleland, leaving smallholder farmers with no income or food.
Botswana is struggling to control a diarrhoea epidemic that has claimed the lives of 470 children since January. "A few adult cases have been reported but mostly children are affected," Colo Boitshoko, spokesperson for the Ministry of Health said. "We had a lot of rain for this time of the year."