DANJIANGKOU, China — North China is dying.

How China's capital got in over its head, and what the city is doing to get its water crisis under control.

(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.

Feb-15-11
 

A general view of the new PS20 solar plant which was inaugurated last month at ''Solucar'' solar park in Sanlucar La Mayor, near Seville, October 7, 2009.
 

The world added about 16 gigawatts of new solar photovoltaic (PV) power in 2010, double the growth seen a year earlier, the European Photovoltaic Industry Association told Reuters on Monday.

Uncertainty about Italian figures made a precise figure difficult, after an end-of-year rush to qualify for a higher solar power price premium, called a feed-in tariff.