Some children look like skeletons while others have swollen legs and hands, he adds. The US considers al-Shabab a terrorist group and last year stopped aid to the large area of Somalia it controls. 'Dangerously inadequate' Save the Children's Sonia Zambakides told the BBC the situation in Somalia was shocking. The protester accused of throwing…

Those conditions include more than 30% of children being acutely malnourished, and four children out of every 10,000 dying daily. Drought, conflict and poverty have now combined to produce the necessary conditions for famine. One woman he met arrived after a long trip, much of it on foot, carrying her one-and-a-half-year-old son on her back…

In Somalia's war-ravaged capital, Mogadishu, the BBC's Mohamed Mwalimu says more than 4,000 people are crammed into one camp, called Safety. Al-Shabab, an al-Qaeda-affiliated group which controls large swathes of south and central Somalia, had imposed a ban on foreign aid agencies in its territories in 2009, but has recently allowed limited access. UN Secretary…

In April 2010 US President Barack Obama issued an executive order naming al-Shabab a terrorist organisation, meaning no US aid could go to areas under its control, our analyst adds. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said new funds to help the country were desperately needed. "If we don't act now, famine will spread to all…

The US considers al-Shabab a terrorist group and last year stopped aid to the large area of Somalia it controls. The BBC's Africa correspondent Andrew Harding says the emotive word "famine" is used rarely and carefully by humanitarian organisations, and it is the first time since 1992 that the word has been applied to a…

Labour MP Nick Raynsford said that, when Mr Coulson was at Downing Street, the cabinet secretary was alerted to evidence of illegal phone hacking, covert surveillance and hostile media briefing against a senior government official - the cabinet secretary later denied it. Those conditions include more than 30% of children being acutely malnourished, and four…

Drought, conflict and poverty have now combined to produce the necessary conditions for famine. One woman he met arrived after a long trip, much of it on foot, carrying her one-and-a-half-year-old son on her back - only to realise, when she arrived, that he was dead. The deputy administrator of the US Agency for International…

"I was talking to mothers with children, the children looked maybe nine months to one year old - the mothers were telling the children were three and four years old, so they are absolutely tiny." During Wednesday's House of Commons debate on the phone-hacking scandal, MPs called on News International to publish the full exchanges…

News International's parent company News Corporation has also confirmed it has stopped paying the legal fees of former private detective Glenn Mulcaire, who was convicted of phone hacking on behalf of the News of the World in 2007. Prime Minister David Cameron told MPs that "with hindsight" he would not have hired ex-News of the…

In other developments in the phone-hacking saga: Meanwhile, News of the World owner News International said it had authorised law firm Harbottle & Lewis to answer any questions from Scotland Yard and the Commons home affairs committee about its work for the company. "What we need is assurances from the World Food Programme and from…