For years, food policy in the Middle East and North Africa was very simple: hydrocarbon exports paid for carbohydrate imports. Rising agricultural commodities prices and a large population increase mean that the traditional policy is now untenable even if crude oil trades at about $120 a barrel, forcing countries in the region, including Saudi Arabia, to reconsider how it feeds its population. "The region has woken up to the new food market reality," says Abdolreza Abbassian, an expert at the Food and Agriculture Organisation in Rome.

>> Governments of Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast have announced a joint health programme to tackle a meningitis epidemic, which has gripped the bordering area of the two countries. By the second week

HANOI: Rising prices and a growing fear of scarcity have prompted some of the world's largest rice producers to announce drastic limits on the amount of rice they export. The price of rice, a staple in the diets of nearly half the world's population, has almost doubled on international markets in the last three months. That has pinched the budgets of millions of poor Asians and raised fears of civil unrest.

Yemen's health ministry recently announced a new strategy to fight malaria in the country at a reduced cost. In place of annual campaigns against the disease, it plans to have permanent teams

In a bid to check the menace,of malaria in SolomoA Islands (in the southwest Pacific Ocean), the UN Development Programme (UNDP) will provide US $548,000 for community-based malaria