North Korea's population has shrunk by as many as 3 million people in the past four years because of famine, the Associated Press reported. The survey by the North Korea's Public Security Ministry confirms widespread Western reports that more than 500,000 North Koreans have died of hunger each year since 1995. Massive floods swept much of North Korea in 1994, aggravating the country's chronic food shortage caused by decades of inefficient collective farming. Bad weather, including droughts, in successive years caused the food shortage to become acute, forcing the country to turn to the international community for help.

You heard the Dust Bowl was bad? Scientists who have studied historical records and scientific data say the Great Plains could be in for even worse droughts over the next century.

Droughts as bad as the 1930s Dust Bowl, which lasted eight years, occur once or twice a century, and there were longer, more severe "megadroughts" in the 13th and 16th centuries, according to a study released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Global warming would increase the chances there will be more droughts of that size, but even without it, "future droughts may be much more severe and last much longer than what we have experienced this century," said Connie Woodhouse, a scientist at NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center in Boulder, Colo.

By and large, droughts of the 20th century have been relatively short, the study found. The scientists say they don't know what led to the megadroughts and also don't know enough about what causes the shorter dry spells to predict when they will occur.

The continuing famine in North Korea is comparable in scale to the Ethiopian famine of the mid-1980s, and massive foreign assistance will be needed for at least three years to turn the situation around, a United Nations aid coordinator said today after arriving from Pyongyang. David Morton, chief of the U.N. World Food Program in North Korea, said the food disaster has produced a generation of stunted and dramatically underweight children and has forced scores of adults to leave their jobs in search of nourishment. His comments echoed the results of a nationwide nutritional survey conducted last year by international aid donors that found that 62 percent of children under age 7 in the Stalinist nation have stunted growth and that large numbers face mental development problems.

The United Nations World Food Programme has warned that hundreds of thousands of people in Somalia are in grave risk of starvation as a result of the continuing drought.

The agency's director, Catherine Bertini, said food aid was available, but delivery was being severely hampered by continued faction fighting, particularly in the southern Bay and Bakool region where the militia loyal to Hussein Aideed is fighting the Rahanwein Resisistance Army. She said many parts of the country were too dangerous to work in because food aid trucks were looted and stolen by militiamen.

Just when they thought things couldn't get any worse, the miners of Kopeisk have been proved wrong. These workers in the Urals region of Chelyabinsk haven't received their wages in full for over a year. What little savings they had is trapped in collapsed banks, and anyway the ruble has lost two thirds of its value. In recent years they've kept sufficient food on their tables by growing their own vegetables. But now a national potato blight has devastated the gardens of Vlasov and his co-workers. "What do they expect us to do now?" one miner asks. "Eat coal?"

Though it's hard to imagine that the world would let it come to that, Borje Sjokvist, head of the Moscow delegation of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, warns that "we can't exclude the possibility of mass starvation if the situation continues to deteriorate." To stave off disaster, the Red Cross plans to distribute emergency aid to 1.5 million Russians this winter. For the vast majority of Russians, this will be the worst winter since 1991--the year the Soviet Union collapsed. Boris Yeltsin came to power back then promising to make food shortages, power cuts, soaring prices and emergency Red Cross parcels things of the past. Instead, they loom in the immediate future.

Yeltsin's Russia had been importing 60 percent of its food, but the collapse of the ruble in August put most imports out of reach. Then came the worst wheat crop in 40 years, as well as the disastrous plague in the potato fields--a staple crop that Russians have historically relied on to get them through bitter winters. Today, 56 percent of Russia's working-age population grow some of their own food--a situation that's precarious in more ways than one. At an anti-Yeltsin protest in Moscow, nuclear scientists complained that they were too tired after working in their vegetable gardens to concentrate on their jobs and maintain safety procedures. "A hungry nuclear worker is another Chernobyl waiting to happen," read one placard.

Most threatened are Russia's vast northern provinces, which comprise two thirds of the country's territory. Much of the area is covered by barren permafrost, and the region's 12 million people are dependent on outside food supplies. They ought to be able to buy them: the gold-and-oil-rich region produces two thirds of Russia's mineral wealth. But because of bureaucratic foul-ups, chronic corruption and the government's lack of cash, the North has to date received only 45 percent of the food supplies and little more than half the coal it needs for the winter. Some remote regions have received even less--and the rivers by which they can be supplied have already frozen solid. The government now has two stark choices--either organize a mass evacuation of 1.2 million people from the farthest-flung regions, or pay for costly emergency airlifts of food and fuel. It doesn't have the money to do either.

For the government--and for many Russians--even the possibility of widespread hunger makes the humiliation of 1998 complete. At a time when Moscow still demands to be taken seriously, it seeks money and food from abroad just to get through the winter. For Yevgeny Primakov it must be a painful contradiction. But not as painful as seeing people go hungry.

Every year the United Nations Human Development Report looks for a new way to measure the lives of people. Putting aside faceless statistics like per capita gross domestic product, the report burrows into the facts about what children eat, who goes to school, whether there is clean water to drink, and so on. This year, the report takes its first look at what people have--from simple toilets to family cars--and what proportion of the world's goods and services are consumed, comparatively, by the rich and the poor. The pie is huge--the world's consumption bill is $24 trillion a year--but some servings are very small indeed.

The haves. The richest fifth of the world's people consumes 86% of all goods and services while the poorest fifth consumes just 1.3%. Indeed, the richest fifth consumes 45% of all meat and fish, 58% of all energy used and 84% of all paper, has 74% of all telephone lines and owns 87% of all vehicles.

Natural resources. Since 1970, the world's forests have declined from 4.4 square miles per 1,000 people to 2.8 square miles per 1,000 people. In addition, a quarter of the world's fish stocks have been depleted or are in danger of being depleted and another 44% are being fished at their biological limit.

The ultra rich. The three richest people in the world have assets that exceed the combined gross domestic product of the 48 least developed countries.

Africa. The average African household today consumes 20% less than it did 25 years ago.

The super rich. The world's 225 richest individuals, of whom 60 are Americans, have a combined wealth of over $1 trillion--equal to the annual income of the poorest 47% of the entire world's population.

Cosmetics and education. Americans spend $8 billion a year on cosmetics--$2 billion more than the estimated total needed to provide basic education for everyone in the world.

The have-nots. Of the 4.4 billion people in developing countries, nearly three-fifths lack access to safe sewers, a third have no access to clean water, a quarter do not have adequate housing, and a fifth have no access to modern health services of any kind.

Meat. Americans each consume an average of 260 pounds of meat a year. In Bangladesh, the average is six and a half pounds.

Telephone lines. Sweden and the U.S. have 681 and 626 telephone lines per 1,000 people, respectively. Afghanistan, Cambodia, Chad and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have one line per 1,000 people.

Ice cream and water. Europeans spend $11 billion a year on ice cream--$2 billion more than the estimated annual total needed to provide clean water and safe sewers for the world's population.

Land mines. More than 110 million active land mines are scattered in 68 countries, with an equal number stockpiled around the world. Every month more than 2,000 people are killed or maimed by mine explosions.

Pet food and health. Americans and Europeans spend $17 billion a year on pet food--$4 billion more than the estimated annual additional total needed to provide basic health and nutrition for everyone in the world.

$40 billion a year. It is estimated that the additional cost of achieving and maintaining universal access to basic education for all, basic health care for all, reproductive health care for all women, adequate food for all and clean water and safe sewers for all is roughly $40 billion a year--or less than 4% of the combined wealth of the 225 richest people in the world.