News In Brief
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US to send wheat reserves to starving African nations
Three hundred thousand metric tons of wheat from federal grain reserves will be sent to Ethiopia and other African nations where drought is causing widespread starvation, the White House said Wednesday.
Following the Soviet grain embargo imposed by President Jimmy Carter in 1980, Congress set up a 4 million-metric-ton food reserve to ease the impact on American farmers of losing their Soviet grain market. That wheat has remained in storage and last year Congress adopted legislation to authorize the administration to distribute up to 300,000 tons of the reserve in any one year for emergency humanitarian relief.
