Pakistanis go hungry as economic troubles bite

[phantom power]

ISLAMABAD (AFP) — Until this year Fakharuz Zaman's Pakistani government salary was enough to get by on but now his weary wife lets their two-year-old son scrabble in the dirt for pieces of mouldy fruit.

A wave of economic woes has plunged millions of families like Zaman's below the poverty line, posing a new challenge for the fragile coalition government and even overshadowing the threat of Islamic militancy.

Spiralling food and fuel prices, power outages lasting at least six hours a day, a plummeting stock market and soaring inflation have all caused mounting anger in the unstable nuclear-armed nation of 160 million people.

(...)

His 7,000-rupee (98-dollar) monthly wage as a government stenographer renders them middle-class by Pakistani standards. But now he cannot afford to buy fruit -- the only treat his elder son Taha and seven-month-old Talhar used to have.

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5h33zklAEALDEmi-bejQ-EzwHh6-A

[dkf]

1. We seriously need to rethink our ethanol policy.

Using corn for gas to drive our SUVs is morally unacceptable when people around the world are going huntry.

[Muttocracy]

2. "unstable nuclear-armed nation of 160 million people" - I thought that was Iraq or Iran????nt