Morning Briefing

Al Jazeera examines the consequences of Somalia's ongoing famine, "the worst hunger crisis seen here for two decades." Many Somalis fled their rural homes to Mogadishu to escape drought and conflict, but "the city has become the epicenter of the world's worst humanitarian crisis," the news service reports, adding, "While new arrivals say that conditions in the capital are better than elsewhere in the country, they are atrocious by any other measure." In the city, "[m]alnutrition rates are more than double the emergency threshold," and many refugees face homelessness as camps become more crowded, Al Jazeera reports (Wander 1/19).