The latest news out of Darfur, Sudan, is bleak.

A report in today’s issue of Science estimates that 400,000 people have died in the region, since the Janjaweed milita–with the open support of the government in Khartoum–began raping, torturing and killing civilians there in early 2003.

Meanwhile, militiamen have threatened and attacked aid workers, cutting off humanitarian relief from those who desperately need it. On Monday, in fact, the World Food Programme said that 355,000 people in North Darfur “had been cut off from food aid last month,” Reuters reported.

And all this is occurring during the “hunger season, the period before the harvest when food stocks run low and prices climb.

there’s little we can do–but certainly not nothing. On Sunday, I and other Penn students will hop on a bus at 9:30 from the Hillel building to New York City for the “Save Darfur Now: Voices to Stop Genocide Rally” at 2 p.m. in Central Park’s East Meadow.

For more information about the situation in western Sudan, visit http://www.savedarfur.org/pages/background.

Check back on Monday for exclusive, on-the-scene coverage from Spin columnists Gabe Oppenheim and Stephen Morse.

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