Morning Briefing

Though world food prices "jumped to a record high" in the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO) latest index, the agency "is drawing comfort from the absence of widespread riots, usually the defining element of a food crisis," the Financial Times reports looking at the factors that have led some food prices to rise significantly without sparking international panic. "To an outsider, the relative calm, compared with riots in more than 30 countries three years ago, is striking. But a closer look reveals big differences to the situation then, differences that make clear why the world is not facing a crisis. At least not yet," the newspaper writes.