UNITED NATIONS: A global hunger crisis has left more than 700 million people starving — and demand for food is rising relentlessly while humanitarian funding is drying up, the head of the United Nations food agency said.

World Food Programme executive director Cindy McCain told the UN security council that because of the lack of funding, the agency has been forced to cut food rations for millions of people.

SOUTH AFRICA: US pharmaceuticals company Johnson & Johnson is being investigated in South Africa for charging excessive prices for a key tuberculosis drug, the country's anti-trust regulator said today.

The watchdog said it opened the investigation this week based on information that the firm “may have engaged in exclusionary practices and excessive pricing” of the tuberculosis drug bedaquiline, sold under the brand name Sirturo.

YEMEN: A delegation from Yemen's Houthi rebels has flown to Saudi Arabia for talks with the kingdom on ending the war that has been tearing at the Arab world's poorest nation since 2014.

The trip comes after regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran reached a China-mediated ceasefire earlier this year and follows a flurry of diplomatic activity between the different parties in the proxy war.

ITALY: A bus carrying recently arrived migrants hit a lorry north of Rome early today, killing the two drivers and leaving ten people injured.

Italy has accelerated the transfers of migrants north to try to relieve pressure on the Sicilian island of Lampedusa.