Morning Briefing

"Seven out of the eight governments in [Africa's] Sahel ... have taken the unprecedented step of declaring emergencies as 12 million people in the region are threatened by hunger," Inter Press Service reports. "Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Cameroon and Nigeria have all called for international assistance to prevent yet another hunger crisis on the continent," the news service writes, noting that Senegal "has refrained from announcing an emergency, largely for political reasons," as it is holding presidential elections later this year (Palitza, 4/15).