• Herve Ladsous claims 'third element' involved in violence
• Muslim Brotherhood slumps ahead of Egyptian elections
• Injured protesters in Bahrain forced into secret clinics

11.13am: Bahrain: Activist Abdul Hadi al-Khawaja has appeared in court in a wheelchair, Gulf News reports via AFP.

Khawaja staged a hunger strike after being sentenced to life imprisonment by a military court on charges of plotting to overthrow the government. He is now being re-tried in a civilian court.

11.01am: Libya: Interesting development in Benghazi following the local elections on Saturday. Brown Moses (in the discussion thread below) highlights the success of a female candidate, Najat Rashid Mansur al-Kikhia, who defeated male contenders in al-Birka district.

She secured 7,784 votes – more than any other candidate in the city. Asma Magariaf has been tweeting about her background, and here is a photo:

Dr, Najat Al Kikhia,winner of the fourth district, got 80% of total votes in her district. Congrats! #BenghaziElect2012 twitter.com/StayStrongLiby…

— Nahla Elsubeihi ☪ (@StayStrongLibya) May 21, 2012

10.44am: Syria: The government news agency, Sana, has published photographs from the scene of last night's explosion in al-Qaboun district of Damascus.

It says: "An explosive device, planted by an armed terrorist group, went off causing the martyrdom of the civilians who were at the site of explosion." There are no details about the building where the explosion occurred.

10.12am: Yemen: The annual National Day ceremony has gone ahead peacefully this morning in Sana'a, despite the bomb attack during yesterday's rehearsal.

Fazil Corman, the Turkish ambassador in Yemen, has been tweeting from the ceremony. He says the venue was changed at the last minute but he thinks it was the "right decision" to go ahead with it.

President Hadi arrives at the Yemen National Day ceremony. Solemn atmosphere but good participation in solidarity. twitter.com/FazliCorman/st…

— Fazli Corman (@FazliCorman) May 22, 2012

Reuters adds that President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who replaced President Saleh earlier this year, watched the parade from behind a bulletproof glass screen at the hastily rearranged and heavily protected new location – the air force academy in Sana'a.

9.56am: Yemen: "Covert" strikes by American drones in Yemen are not as covert as they used to be – thanks to Twitter. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ) has documented what is thought to be the first-ever drone strike monitored in real time on Twitter.

It started when Haykal Bafana (@BaFana3) reported drone sightings:

#Yemen | Hearing multiple claims of drone sightings in Hadhramaut, especially in Shibam/Qatn directorates (KSA route). No attacks so far.

— Haykal Bafana (@BaFana3) May 15, 2012

The BIJ article continues:

When the deadly attack finally came in the early hours of Thursday morning, the target itself was hardly a secret.

Earlier, Arabic-language online media in the provincial capital of al-Mukalla had reported that a convoy of alleged al-Qaida rebels was heading north. That news was also swiftly tweeted.

Others were clearly also charting the convoy's progress. As the vehicles approached Shibam at around 1am local time, at least one car, a Toyota Hilax, was destroyed by missiles from above.

A few minutes later, after receiving a phone call from relatives who witnessed the explosion, Sana'a-based lawyer Bafana was tweeting the news:

#Yemen NOW | Missile strike on car in Wadi Hadhramaut. Near city of Shibam. Suspected US drone attack.

— Haykal Bafana (@BaFana3) May 16, 2012

9.37am: Egypt: Veteran Egyptian blogger Sandmonkey (well, six years is a long time in blogging) questions whether the two "frontrunners" in the presidential election will make it to the run-off. The trouble with Amr Moussa and Abdel Moneim Abul Fotouh, he says, is that they are both grey men appealing to the centre ground – but "Egyptians do not vote for centrist parties".

A centre is formed when two opposing forces of equal power and clearly different ideologies are fighting for control, thus creating the political balance that allows a centre to emerge. This doesn't exist in Egypt, which is why Abul Fotouh is turning more and more Islamist to appease his new Salafi supporters, and Moussa is finding himself up in shit-creek without a paddle.

One achievement of the Egyptian presidential election, he says, is that it has killed all ideologies:

We have leftists supporting an Islamist candidate, liberals supporting a Nasserite leftists, A revolutionary workers-rights crusader candidate who didn't get the support of the workers and ended up only getting nominated by MP signatures from parties that he considered anti-revolutionary ...

It's a fine mess that will surely leave analysts and pundits scratching their head for years to come to make any sense of its one million and one questions, where ironically all the answers so far are as clear as grey.

Another Egyptian blogger, Zeinobia, discusses the wildly varying opinion polls. One, for example, places Moussa on 31.7%, another on 14.6%. She wonders how accurately their sampling reflects Egypt's social and geographical make-up.

An article from the Brookings Institution also points out that the polls are
not a reliable guide to who will win:

It is important to keep in mind that it is not possible at this point to develop a good predictive model of electoral behaviour in Egypt, as the experiment is new, coalitions are still forming, and little information is available about likely voters. Therefore, polls ... can give a hint of the trends in public opinion about the presidential candidates but cannot provide accurate predictions ...

We know that political machinery is essential in getting out the vote and that the political environment in Egypt is changing almost by the day.

9.20am: Syria: The UN supervision mission in Syria is looking for new recruits.

There is no mention of the potential dangers involved.

9.01am: Syria: There's been another bomb near the capital Damascus, Reuters reports:

Five people were killed when an explosive device detonated at a restaurant in the Syrian capital Damascus on Tuesday, Syrian state media and activists said.

The northern Damascus neighborhood of Qaboun where the bomb went off has been a centre of protests demanding the end of President Bashar al-Assad's rule and has also seen fighting between Assad loyalists and rebels.

State television blamed the explosion on "terrorists," a term the Syrian government uses when referring to the armed opposition. It said the bomb exploded in a restaurant and showed footage of a burnt-out kitchen and a room full of debris.

The state news agency Sana blamed an "armed terrorist group" without elaborating.

8.27am: (all times BST) Welcome to Middle East Live.

Here's a roundup of the latest developments:"

Syria

• The UN's peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous claimed a "third party" is involved in the violence in Syria after a visit to the opposition stronghold of Homs, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.

He was referring to extremist groups, but didn't name any specific one. Ladsous affirmed that the focus in the Syrian crisis now "should be on building dialogue and confidence between the parties".

• Lasdous and Robert Mood, head of the UN monitors, were filmed meeting activists in Homs.

Later one of the activists, Khaled Abu Salah, was filmed briefing the UN officials.

• The Guardian's Martin Chulov has spent five days with the rebel fighters from the Free Syrian Army in Jebel al-Zawiya in north-west Syria, one of four key opposition strongholds. Here are the main points of what he found:

- Rebels admitted that the government had succeed in exacerbating the the sectarian nature of the crisis. Mohammed Faisal, a defector from Aleppo, said: "There is no escaping that this has become sectarian in nature, but it's not what we want, it's what the regime wants. I have Alawite friends. I can't talk to them since I have left, even though I think I can still trust them. I just have to be careful now. A valley is between us and there is nothing we can do."

- The rebels were poorly armed. Due to scarcity rifles are worth $4,000, bullets $4 each, and RPG heads $1,000 each.

- Rebels bristle at regime claims that they are linked with al-Qaida but are frustrated that the regime's narrative is starting to prevail.

- The fighters don't expect help from the international community. One said: "Nothing will happen before the American elections, will it? And the French are too busy at home. Turkey and Saudi Arabia will do nothing without America, so it will come down to us."

Yemen

• Local press reported that al-Qaida carried out Monday's suicide bombing that killed more than 90 soldiers at a military parade rehearsal in the Yemeni capital. But none of the group's senior members has yet verified the claim, writes Tom Finn in Sana'a.

Yemen's newly installed president, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who was due to attend the celebrations, responded to the bomb attack by firing two senior commanders, both allies of his predecessor, Saleh. One of them, a nephew of Saleh's, was the head of national security, an elite intelligence gathering unit that works closely with the CIA.

Libya

• Muammar Gaddafi's former intelligence chief, Abdullah Senussi, who is wanted by France, the international criminal court and Libya, has been charged by Mauritania's public prosecutor in a secret court hearing for entering the country illegally. His trial is expected to start soon, writes Monica Mark in Nouakchott.

Egypt

• Thousands of supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood gathered for a show of strength before polls open tomorrow for the presidential election, but the movement has suffered a decline in popularity and its candidate Mohamed Morsi is uninspiring, writes Ian Black in Cairo.

Egyptian journalists shook their heads in despair as Morsi finally spoke – only to utter a catalogue of unquotable platitudes. The hope is that ideology and discipline will win out over personality ...

"In football can't a substitute come on with 10 minutes to go and score the winning goal?" asked Sheikh Mohammed Abdel-Maqsud.

• Ian Black will be answering questions about the elections live from 2pm BST on Tuesday 22 May. Please post a question here.

Bahrain

• A heavy security presence at Bahrain's largest public hospital, Salmaniya, has forced injured protesters to seek treatment in a network of secret clinics in people's homes, the New York Times reports. Its reporter described how three protesters with birdshot wounds sought help.

The men travelled to one of dozens of houses that are scattered throughout this island nation, where a secret and growing network of caregivers — doctors, first-aid medics or people with no medical experience at all — wait daily for the casualties from the protests. The houses are not really field hospitals, but rather sitting rooms, often equipped with nothing more than bandages and gauze.

Kuwait

• A Kuwaiti man has pleaded not guilty to charges that he insulted the prophet Muhammad and the rulers of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain in messages on Twitter, the BBC reports. Hamad al-Naqi, a Shia Muslim, said his Twitter account had been hacked and that he had not written the messages.

• Christine Lagarde: Bank of England should ease policy now
• Austria blasts François Hollande's proposals as 'nonsense'
• Financial markets rally early
• Today's agenda

10.58am: The IMF's call for the Bank of England to launch more monetary policy easing (see 10.35am) comes at a very interesting time. Tomorrow, the minutes of the last meeting of the Bank's monetary policy committee will be released, showing whether any members of the MPC voted for more quantitative easing (last month one member did, and eight did not).

In the longer term, it comes amid speculation over Sir Mervyn King's successor. The message from Christine Lagarde is that the IMF wants to see a governor prepared to ease monetary policy when needed.

An ambush on Threadneedle Street, by the IMF and the Treasury? The Wall Street Journal's Simon Nixon suspects as much:

I suspect Lagarde comments on BOE bank funding coordinated with her friend George. HMT exerting max pressure BOE ahead of new Guvnor appt.

— Simon Nixon (@Simon_Nixon) May 22, 2012

10.39am: These are the key quotes from Christine Lagarde on the UK economy:

The quality of fiscal adjustment can be improved to provide support for growth, and this includes budget neutral shifts towards more infrastructure spendings and measures to shield the poor.

In other words, the UK government could adjust its current economic programme today, without altering the pace at which it is lowering the deficit.

If the economy turns out to be significantly weaker than forecast, fiscal easing should be considered.

Ie, Osborne's Plan A may have to be torn up if the UK economy does not recovery strongly enough from its double-dip recession.

10.35am: On monetary policy, Christine Lagarde reiterated that the Bank of England should do more now to protect and stimulate the UK economy.

What we are saying now is that more tools can be used.... in terms of quantitative easing.

We also believe there is room in interest rates that could be used as well.

That is a clear shot at Sir Mervyn King and the rest of the Bank of England's monetary policy committee, which has left UK interest rates at their record low of 0.5% for more than three years, and recently stopped its quantitative easing programme at £325bn.

10.26am: The UK government should take advantage of its record low borrowing costs to stimulate the British economy, if growth continues to disappoint, says IMF chief Christine Lagarde.

As her press conference in London continues (see 10.02am onwards), Lagarde argued that extra borrowing could needed to avoid a recessionary spiral.

She argued that the UK government should use its current "extremely favourable financing costs" to provide new financing for small businesses and households.

Important to note that Lagarde is not criticising George Osborne's performance to date. Indeed, she reiterated that the UK would not be in a position today to consider such as fiscal stimulus, if the UK deficit was higher.

Lagarde said:

The UK authorities' policy approach has reinforced credibility at a time of intensified global uncertainty.

Lagarde added that she "shivers" when she considers what would happen if the UK's record deficits of a couple of years ago were in place today.

10.11am: Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF, has stated that the British government should ease the pace of its austerity progaramme if the UK economic recovery fails to take off.

Announcing the conclusions of the IMF's review of the UK economy, Lagarde
said that the need for fiscal consolidation needs to be balanced against the danger of several years of lost growth.

In a frank assessment of the UK, Lagarde said:

Growth is too slow and unemployment, including youth unemployment, is too high. Policies to bolster to demand before low growth becomes entrenched are needed.

Should things deteriorate, the government's current plan (George Osborne's Plan A) may need to be revised, Lagarde said, stating:

If the economy turns out to be signifciantly weaker than forecast, the pace fiscal consolidation should be eased...and fiscal stimulus should be considered.

Lagarde did also give the UK government credit for its approach to Britain's budget deficit, saying its policy approach had "reinforced credibility at a time of global uncertainty."

But she was clear that action should be taken to avoid low growth becoming entrenched in the UK.

10.08am: Chancellor George Osborne and Christine Lagarde are holding a press conference in London now, to discuss the final stage of the IMF's review of the UK economy.

Osborne speaks first, saying he welcomes the fall in UK inflation this morning. He went on to warn that the eurozone crisis has now reached a "critical point", telling a press conference that:

The eurozone needs to stand behind their currency or risk Greece exit, with all the dangers that holds.

Osborne added that while Britain hopes for the best, we prepare for something worse...

10.02am: Breaking news -- the International Monetary Fund has called on the Bank of England to launch more quantitative easing or cut interest rates to stimulate economic growth.

In its latest assessment of Britain, the IMF also warned that there are large dangers to the UK economy, mainly from the escalation of the euro crisis.

More to follow!

9.52am: Spain has seen its borrowing costs rise again, an auction of €2.5bn of short-term debt this morning.

The Spanish Treasury sold €1.5bn of three-month bills, at an average yield* of 0.846% – up from 0.63% at an auction last month. The yield on €1bn of six-month bills also rose to 1.737%, from 1.58% last month.

Rising yields is a sign that investors are pricing Spanish debt as more risky. More reassuringly, though, Spain received bids for over €10bn of debt, so was able to sell the full amount on offer.

Reaction to follow...

* - effectively the interest rate that Spain will pay to bond buyers

9.33am: Quick bit of UK economic data -- the Consumer Prices Index came in at 3% for April, lower than expected (and sharply down on March's 3.5%).

That's the lowest CPI since February 2010, which means that Sir Mervyn King will not have to write another letter to the chancellor explaining why the cost of living is racing well ahead of target.

The Retail Price Index, though, only fell back a little, to 3.5% year-on-year.

9.27am: The OECD also slashed its forecast for the eurozone economy in 2012 this morning to a contraction of 0.1%, from growth of 0.2%.

Within that forecast, the OECD expects Europe's two-speed economy to continue, with peripheral countries in the south suffering deep recessions.

OECD chief economist Pier Carlo Padoan told Reuters:

We also see flat growth in the euro area which hides important differences, with northern countries growing and southern countries in recession.

9.19am: The spiraling eurozone crisis - and the region's focus on austerity - risks blowing the world's economic crisis off course, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has just warned in its latest assessment of the global economy.

In an important intervention, the OECD signal to Germany that it should drop its resistance to new measures to ease the crisis, or risk dragging the global economy back into a repeat of the recent downturn.

Pier Carlo Padoan, the OECD's chief economist, said:

The risk is increasing of a vicious circle, involving high and rising sovereign indebtedness, weak banking systems, excessive fiscal consolidation and lower growth.

It added that further easing was possible in Europe -- pointing out that the euro area could move toward common euro bonds, and that its firewall could be used to directly recapitalise banks.

More to follow...

8.44am: In Greece, the news last night that a small splinter party has teamed up with the mainstream New Democracy party is getting plenty of attention.

As Kathimerini explains, ND's Antonis Samaras and Dora Bakoyannis (head of the liberal Democratic Alliance) plan to create a "a patriotic, pro-European front", that would focus on staying in the eurozone while "resisting and changing the course of things."

It's a clear response to the popularity of Syriza, and their charismatic leader Alexis Tsipras. Today he is heading to Berlin to meet the leaders of Germany's Left Party, Gregor Gysi and Klaus Ernst, after yesterday's meeting in Paris.

We'll have more on Tsipras shortly....

8.32am: Another event this morning - George Osborne and Christine Lagarde are meeting in London. A press conference is scheduled, so we should get an update from the International Monetary Fund chief on the state of the crisis.

Here's the full agenda:

• OECD economic outlook data: 9am BST 10am
• UK inflation data for April: 9.30am BST
• UK public finances for April: 9.30am BST
• Lagarde + Osborne press conference: from 10am BST
• Eurozone consumer confidence for May: 3pm BST / 4pm CEST

Spain, Hungary and the Netherlands are holding bond auctions too – the Spanish sale could be interesting, given the state of the crisis.

8.12am: European markets are rallying in early trading, on hopes of progress in Brussels tomorrow -- and speculation that China will take steps to keep its economy growing briskly.

FTSE 100: up 54 points at 5358, + 1%
German DAX: up 57 points at 6388 + 0.9%
French CAC: up 28 points at 3050, up 0.9%
Spanish IBEX: up 49 points at 6564, + 0.6%
Italian FTSE MIB: up 175 points at 13188, up 1.37%

Andrew Taylor of GFT warned that the merry mood could soon turn sour:

Optimism that the EU summit will produce results (haven't they learnt!) and comments that 'China will make growth a priority' have also added to positive market sentiment.

Traders need to be wary of the uplifting tone that surrounds the Summit and China as it is merely talk at this stage with no real action plan for either.

8.02am: Evidence that the eurozone crisis is casting a shadow the global financial markets: Temasek Holdings, Singapore's sovereign wealth fund, has predicted that "markets may be entering a period of stress in the next 12 to 24 months due to the eurozone crisis". More here.

German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble made a similar comment last week, saying the crisis will last another two years.

7.59am: Austria's finance minister has launched an outspoken attack on the new president of France ahead of tomorrow's summit.

Maria Fekter claimed that François Hollande's proposals, including the introduction of eurobonds, were "nonsense", and would push Europe deeper into the debt crisis. Fekter told Austrian newspaper Oberoesterreichische Nachrichten that:

Growth financed by debt? Those are the recipes from the day before yesterday.

The arguments that France's new president François Hollande is putting forward again are nonsense and got us into this whole mess in the first place.

Fekter's comments do chime with the concerns of some Germans, who fear that Hollande is planning to make them pay for the French banking sector's heavy exposure to Greece (where SocGen and Credit Agricole both own subsidies).

Fekter does have previous form on speaking out of turn - last week she managed to upset Germany by suggesting that Greece could be thrown out of the European Union.

7.45am: Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of the eurozone financial crisis.

There's just one day to go before European leaders meet in Brussels for an informal summit on growth. It's shaping up to be quite an event – with France pushing for radical new measures, and Germany resisting firmly (as reported last night).

Adding to the drama, Alexis Tsipras of Syriza will be holding talks in Berlin today, following Monday's visit to Paris – where he warned that a "wind of change" was blowing towards Europe, and that Greece's pain would soon be felt by other countries unless leaders change course.

On the economic front, we have UK inflation and public finance data this morning, and eurozone consumer confidence data this afternoon.

Financial markets are expected to open higher, on optimism that progress will be made at tomorrow's summit. So often, hopes have swiftly been dashed. But maybe this time it's different ...

Celebrations for National Day take place a day after attack on parade rehearsal left 96 soldiers dead in Sana'a

Yemeni leaders have led a sombre ceremony to mark the country's national day, scaling back the celebrations a day after a suicide bombing killed nearly 100 soldiers during a rehearsal for a military parade.

The president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, along with top military commanders, government officials and foreign diplomats, took part in a small, symbolic parade held inside Sana'a's Aviation Academy. Hadi sat behind a bulletproof glass shield with his armoured car parked nearby.

Security concerns were paramount at the ceremony following Monday's suicide attack, when a Yemeni soldier detonated a bomb hidden in his uniform during a rehearsal for a military parade for National Day, which marks the 1990 reunification of north and south Yemen. Ninety-six soldiers were killed and at least 200 wounded in one of the deadliest attacks in the capital in years.

Al-Qaida's branch in Yemen claimed responsibility for the bombing, saying in an emailed statement that the suicide attack was intended to avenge a US-backed offensive against al-Qaida in a swath of southern Yemen seized by the militant movement last year.

Addressing the crowd on Tuesday, the chief of staff of the Yemeni military, Major General Ahmed Ali al-Ashwal, vowed the nation would not be deterred by such attacks.

"We will not let terrorism destroy our future and dreams," he said.

Ashwal was the only official to speak at the ceremony, which was drastically scaled back because of security concerns. The parade was cut from three hours to one hour, a fly-over by fighter jets was cancelled and only cadets from the police and aviation academies participated in the programme.

Yemenis were marking National Day for the first time without their longtime ruler Ali Abdullah Saleh, who held power for nearly 30 years. Saleh was forced to step down after a year-long uprising in which hundreds of thousands of Yemenis took to the streets demanding his removal.

Africa's smallest country is struggling with the combined effects of failed rains, rising food prices and poor harvests

In 2011, the rains failed in the Central River region of the Gambia, where Mawdou Danso, a farmer, struggled to raise a crop big enough to tide him over to the next harvest. He invested in an early-maturing, high-yielding rice called Nerica (New Rice for Africa), which had recently become available and promised to fit in well with the erratic rainfall patterns.

He ended up harvesting very little. "I had only two months of feed for my 48-member family from all the lands I put under cultivation, compared with last year when I had 15 [50kg] bags of Nerica and [was] able to have six months of food stock," said Danso. "I can only manage to feed my family for the rest of the year by working for other people for survival … I do not have any money to invest in the next planting season."

The rainfall has been too capricious even for Nerica. There is mounting concern that the Gambia, Africa's smallest country, could face yet another shortfall in the 2012-13 agricultural season. The failure of key crops such as rice, millet, maize and groundnuts has crippled its efforts to become food secure.

The planting season has begun, yet there is a huge seed deficit. "It is essential that farmers receive quality drought-tolerant seeds, as well as fertiliser and other production support by the end of May 2012 to start their next production campaign," said Sonia Nguyen, a spokesperson for the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in the Sahel.

The Gambia, surrounded by Senegal, is part of the Sahel zone, and it too was affected by the late, erratic and unevenly distributed rainfall during the 2011-12 growing season. Crop production is expected to drop by more than half compared with 2010, and by 50% compared with the five-year average, said Nguyen.

Patrick Ezeala, spokesman for Oxfam America in the Gambia, said there had been huge declines in the main food crops: rice (-79%), groundnut (-67%) and early millet (-53%). "Coupled with this production drop, food prices have gone higher than normal, surpassing the high food prices experienced during the 2008 global food crisis," he said. "The drop in production combined with rising prices suggests that seed insecurity will increasingly become a challenge for farmers."

A 50kg bag of rice costs at least $5 more than it did in 2011. Even though the Gambia has made tremendous progress in poverty eradication since 2003, at least 48% of its population live on little more than $1 a day. Almost 60% of its people have been affected by food shortages – 1 million of the 1.7 million population are in need – according to the agriculture ministry.

Coverage of the food crisis in the Sahel has ramped up in the past few months, but attention has eluded the Gambia. Ezeala reasoned that perhaps the crisis in the Gambia was still developing into an emergency, and so had not yet caught the attention of the international media.

Aid workers say the government issued warnings early enough – the first one jointly with UN agencies in October 2011. In January 2012, the government declared the 2011-12 agricultural season a failure and drew up a $23m plan with a list of actions to prepare farmers for the 2012-13 agricultural season.

In rural areas, 409,000 people (of whom 67,500 are children under 15 years old) are seriously affected by the poor harvests. "Overall, vulnerability to food insecurity will continue to rise in the country," warn UN agencies. About another 192,850 people living in the poorest urban areas are still recovering from floods in previous seasons and are vulnerable to food insecurity, rising food prices and additional economic pressure from helping relatives in affected rural areas.

Shocks and funding issues

Although farming is the main source of livelihood for 75% of the population, especially rural women, Gambian farmers have to rely on rainfall; only 6% of agricultural land is irrigated, mostly for growing rice in the Central River region. Food production has fallen short of the country's consumption needs for decades, according to the FAO.

The gap has widened further in the past few years because of climatic shocks and "international donors' reluctance to support a government accused of using strong-arm tactics in the face of opposition", the agency said.

As in other parts of the Sahel, rains in the Gambia have been thin. Many climatologists have published data suggesting that the Sahel zone has not really recovered from a severe drought in the 1960s.

Can rains be thin?

Climate scientist Chris Funk, of the US Geological Survey, has been studying rain and temperature data for Senegal during the period from 1900 to 2009. "If the Gambia follows the general trend for Senegal [which seems likely] our analysis would suggest large increases in air temperatures and more-or-less flat rainfall since 1970, indicative of a failure to recover from the steep post-1960s rainfall decline," he said.

There has not been much outside help. Donor grants averaged only about 2.5% of annual gross domestic product from 2007 to 2010, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reported in December 2011. "Some potential donors have expressed concern over human rights and freedom of the press," it noted. The Gambian government has been accused by several international rights groups, including Amnesty International, of constraining people's right to freedom of expression and political freedoms.

The Gambia does not have enough money to invest. Income from tourism, its main revenue earner, has dropped because of the global recession in recent years, and the government has been borrowing heavily; Gambia's domestic debt was just more than 29% of GDP in 2010, and interest consumes nearly one-fifth of revenues.

In 2010, the government launched the ambitious five-year national agriculture investment plan, a $266m strategy to drive agriculture-led growth. The plan, scrutinised by the African Union's Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Programme, hoped to push up the contribution of its cash crop, groundnuts, to 30% of export earnings.

Almost every household in the rural areas grows groundnuts, but farmers are extremely vulnerable to price variations on international markets and the weather. Poor rains in 2011 also affected groundnut production. The IMF noted in March 2012 that while tourism seemed to have picked up in 2011, GDP growth fell because of sharp contractions in the rice, groundnut and millet harvests. UN agencies have received about $4.8m from the UN Central Emergency Response Fund to respond to the crisis in the Gambia.

Conrad Black, having been freed from jail in the United States and deported to Canada, is now fighting to stay in the country of his birth.

He finds himself as the target of several Canadian politicians who would prefer that he was not around.

The pugnacious former Telegraph owner is particularly exercised by claims that he asked for help to obtain his one-year temporary visa from the current government, led by Stephen Harper.

He called the accusation - by Thomas Mulcair, the leader of the main opposition party, New Democratic Party - "demagogic rabble-rousing".

Lord Black, who gave up his Canadian citizenship to obtain a British peerage, entered Canada on 4 May after being released from a Florida prison, where he served a 42-month sentence for fraud and obstruction of justice.

But he is still maintaining his innocence. In a CBC television interview he said he was unjustly convicted. "I was shafted," he said. "Keep in mind, I won 99% of this case."

He said he was worried that Mulcair's attack on his temporary-resident permit might result in the Harper government rescinding it.

"I deliberately had absolutely no contact direct or indirect with anyone," Black said.

Black, renowned for his turns of phrase, also said he would like to move beyond his conviction rather than being "stigmatised for life, like a medieval leper, with bells on my head to warn the unsuspecting of the approach of moral taint and turpitude."

Black was coy about his future interests, beyond writing. "There's some interesting prospects," he said. "But since they're not public companies I don't talk about them."

Source: Globe & Mail