Archives: Morning Breakouts

The 26th Annual Meeting of the Food Crisis Prevention Network , "which serves as the platform for deliberation on food production and food security in Africa," opened on Tuesday in Accra, Ghana, the Ghana News Agency reports. The three-day forum will examine "the agricultural and food situation for the 2010/2011 cropping season and come out with measures on tackling food crises," according to the news service. Food security officials from the Sahel and West Africa are attending the forum, in addition to representatives from international groups, including the Economic Community Of West African States, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, Oxfam, UNICEF and the World Food Program.

Today's op-eds come from news outlets including the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today.

Since 2008, global malaria control efforts have "helped reduce infections across Africa and [eliminate] the disease in Morocco and Turkmenistan, but a slowdown in funding risks undoing those achievements," according to the WHO's annual malaria report, which was released on Tuesday, Reuters reports (Nebehay, 12/14).

"At least 100 relief workers in Afghanistan have been killed so far this year, far more than in any previous year, prompting a debate within humanitarian organizations about whether American military strategy is putting them and the Afghans they serve at unnecessary risk. ... Has American counterinsurgency strategy militarized the delivery of aid?" the New York Times writes looking at the different perspectives in this debate.

Reuters examines the effort to create an effective malaria vaccine and asks: "[I]s the vaccine

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday "warned Haiti its foreign aid is being imperiled by political stalemate following disputed elections, spelling more trouble for a nation struggling to recover from a huge earthquake and cholera epidemic," Agence France-Presse reports.

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria on Friday appealed to international donors to join them in an effort to fight medicine theft, SAPA/News24 reports.

"It's not only biologists, philanthropists and donor governments who are needed to make vaccine projects in poor countries work. Financial engineers