CO2, birth & death rates by country, simulated real-time

Oxfam, the antihunger group, has been running a campaign to call attention to the global food crisis, its consequences and its potential solutions. The Times outlined the challenge of future food security on a warming planet in this article several weeks ago, and this week my colleague Jeffrey Gettleman described the appalling famine unfolding in Somalia.

(Reuters) - Millions of children's lives and billions of dollars could be saved if vaccines were more widely available in 72 of the world's poorest countries, according to a series of studies published on Thursday.

In studies in the Health Affairs and The Lancet journals, public health experts and scientists projected that if 90 percent of children in those countries were immunized, more than $151 billion in treatment costs and lost productivity could be saved in 10 years, giving economic benefits of $231 billion.

The world’s population is likely to grow to 10.1 billion by the end of this century, from the current total of about 7 billion, according to the first United Nations forecast for the year 2100.

(Reuters) - The world has to act against hunger, which affects 13 percent of the population, if it wants to strengthen global security, a candidate to run the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said on Tuesday.

Franz Fischler, an Austrian who is former EU agriculture commissioner, said during an interview the whipsaw effect of volatile food prices complicates the effort to expand local production and improve the welfare of subsistence farmers. Prices spiked in mid-2008, plunged in 2009 and hit a record high early this year.