Morning Briefing

"Relief groups are stepping up their appeals for aid to tackle the worsening food crisis in West Africa, where more than 18 million people face hunger," the Guardian reports. "Relief agencies have been sounding the alarm for months about the effects of drought on the Sahel -- a region stretching from the Atlantic to the Red Sea," the newspaper writes, adding, "The situation has been made worse by the knock-on effect of the Libyan uprising that has destabilized Mali" (Tran, 6/12). UNICEF "forecasts that, over the course of 2012, at least 1.1 million children would need to be treated and 5,200 specialist treatment centers will need to be established to cope with the crisis," the U.N. News Centre notes (6/11).