The ongoing drought across East Africa is pushing regions to the brink of famine as forecasters issue dire warnings for a fifth consecutive failed rainy season, the Wall Street Journal reports. An official “famine” means one of every 5,000 people in an area is dying of starvation every day and one third of children are acutely malnourished. Officially, about 730 children have starved to death in Somalia so far this year, but most who die are never counted because they do not reach clinics or nutrition centers. “I don’t remember it ever being so bad,” 71 year-old Amina Hageya Barisa told the Wall Street Journal in Tana River County, Kenya. The crisis is proximately caused by drought and is exacerbated by global food price increases, driven in large part by the Russian war in Ukraine. (Wall Street Journal $; Climate Signals background: Drought)