Colin Farrell helps UN hunger fight

ROME, Feb. 25 (UPI) -- Actor Colin Farrell has recorded a public service announcement to support a United Nations global hunger program, the U.N. said Friday.

Farrell -- the star of "Alexander" and "S.W.A.T." -- appears in a new 30-second announcement on behalf of the United Nations World Food Program. The spot draws a parallel between the South Asia tsunami and the chronic problem of hunger that affects hundreds of millions of people daily.

"Every week a tsunami rips through poor towns and villages all over the world," Farrell says in the PSA. "It claims 25,000 lives a day, 175,000 a week. It sweeps children from the arms of their mothers, robs hundreds of millions of any hope for the future. That tsunami is hunger."

World Food Program officials said international assistance following the tsunami has been so substantial that it has raised concern whether funding for other, less high-profile crises will be affected.

The organization said donations to its operations in Africa have dropped this year compared to 2004, and it is calling for a "tsunami response" to appeals for Africa, where it said food needs represent two-thirds of the global needs that it addresses.