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"The overall requirement is $1.6bn (�990m) for Somalia, roughly $300m is needed in the next two months to provide an adequate response to famine-affected areas. Children and adults are dying at an appalling rate," Mr Ban said. She said the US had already provided $431m this year in emergency aid to the Horn of Africa, but that was "not enough". The UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs for Somalia said the ongoing conflict in Somalia had made it extremely difficult for agencies to access communities in the south, which are controlled by al-Shabab. He said discussions with al-Shabab about the safe distribution of food aid were taking place at a local level, and that responses were expected to differ depending on the locality. During Wednesday's House of Commons debate on the phone-hacking scandal, MPs called on News International to publish the full exchanges about e-mails examined by the legal firm. Earlier, the Met was accused by MPs of a "catalogue of failures" in the News of the World phone-hacking inquiry.