Free Republic

The China coronavirus and COVID-19 outbreaks, deaths and responses continue to dominate US, European and Asian news. Meanwhile, an equally or even more serious infestation is devastating East African crops and leaving tens of millions at risk of starvation and death. If COVID hits these weakened populations, amid their malaria and other systemic diseases, it would bring tragedy on massive scales. “Across Somalia, desert locusts in a swarm the size of Manhattan have destroyed a swath of farmland as big as Oklahoma,” the Wall Street Journal’s Nicholas Bariyo reports. “In Kenya, billions-strong clouds of the insects have eaten through 800...

Bloomberg so link only - just in case

ANGLICAN Archbishops and Bishops across Africa and Pakistan are uniting with Barnabas Fund and calling for donations after ravenous locust swarms, originating in Oman, swept across East Africa, with a devastating impact, as well as spreading east to Iran and now Pakistan. Thousands of Kenyan Christians facing food shortages in the badly hit Pokot region have just sent an urgent call. Uganda is also badly hit. Lord Carey, Archbishops Stanley Ntagali (former Archbishop of Uganda), Stephen Kaziimba (Uganda), Jackson Ole Sapit (Kenya), Masimango Katanda (Congo), Laurent Mbanda, (Rwanda) and Benjamin Kwashi (Jos, Nigeria) have issued an appeal. The UN is...

At a Glance A mature swarm of locusts entered South Sudan this week.Warmer temperatures and more rain have contributed to the outbreak.Some swarms are the size of cities and can move up to 90 miles a day. The locust outbreak plaguing East Africa has now reached South Sudan as swarms the size of cities continue to move across several countries, fueled by extreme weather and changing climate patterns. "Studies have linked a hotter climate to more damaging locust swarms, leaving Africa disproportionately affected — 20 of the fastest warming countries globally are in Africa," Richard Munang, United Nations Environment Programme...

All of a sudden, really crazy things are starting to happen all over the world. Giant swarms of locusts are absolutely devastating entire regions, extremely unusual storms are confounding meteorologists, earthquake and volcanic activity are both on the rise, and five very dangerous diseases are sweeping across the globe. So far in 2020, it has just been one thing after another, and many are speculating about what could be ahead if events continue to escalate. The other day my wife mentioned that one of her friends suggested that I should put together a list of all the weird stuff that...

Locust armies numbering in the billions are absolutely ravaging large portions of eastern Africa and vast stretches of the Middle East. We are being told that these locust armies “are unprecedented in size and scope”, which means that we have never seen anything like this before. And as you will see below, the UN continues to warn that the number of locusts could get “500 times bigger” by June. But even if this plague ended right now, millions of people would still be facing a devastating famine in the months ahead. These locusts travel in swarms up to 40 miles...

What we are witnessing in east Africa and across much of the Middle East right now is hard to believe. 360 billion locusts are eating everything in sight, and UN officials are warning that this plague of “Biblical proportions” could get many times worse over the next several months. Desert locusts can travel up to 93 miles a day, and each adult can consume the equivalent of its own weight in food every 24 hours. These voracious little creatures are traveling in absolutely colossal swarms that are up to 40 miles wide, and they continue to push into new areas....

Over the last several decades, have we ever seen a year start as strangely as 2020 has? Global weather patterns have gone completely nuts, large earthquakes are popping off like firecrackers, it looks like the plague of locusts in Africa could soon develop into the worst in modern history, and a massive plague of bats is severely terrorizing parts of Australia. On top of all that, African Swine Fever is wiping out millions upon millions of pigs around the globe, the H1N1 Swine Flu is killing people in Taiwan, there have been H5N1 Bird Flu outbreaks in China and in...

Billions of locusts, in swarms the size of cities, are eating "everything in sight" in East Africa, and experts fear the plague could get "500 times" worse. The ZeroHedge blog reported "ravenous locust swarms that are 'the size of cities' are consuming crops at a staggering pace, and this could potentially cause famine on the African continent that is unlike anything we have ever seen before." Al Jazeera previously reported locusts "dense clouds of the ravenous insects, each of which consumes its own weight in food every day" that have spread from Ethiopia and Somalia into Kenya. "The U.N.'s Food...

It is being called “the Great Grasshopper Invasion of 2019”, and it is really freaking out a lot of people in Las Vegas, because most of them don’t understand why this is suddenly happening. Unusually wet weather earlier this year created ideal breeding conditions, and now massive swarms of grasshoppers have descended upon Sin City. According to AccuWeather, there are “millions” of them, and it is being projected that they will be sticking around “for weeks”. The experts are assuring us that there is nothing to be concerned about, and that is probably true, but I have never heard of...

JOHANNESBURG -- Locusts by the millions are nibbling their way across a large part of Africa in the worst outbreak some places have seen in 70 years. Is this another effect of a changing climate? Yes, researchers say. An unprecedented food security crisis may be the result. The locusts “reproduce rapidly and, if left unchecked, their current numbers could grow 500 times by June,” the United Nations says. Heavy rains in East Africa made 2019 one of the region’s wettest years on record, said Nairobi-based climate scientist Abubakr Salih Bawanker. He blamed rapidly warming waters in the Indian Ocean off...

Mecca's grand mosque in Saudi Arabia was hit with a plague of biblical proportions this week when a huge swarm of locusts descended upon the Islamic holy site. A number of videos were uploaded online showing locusts creeping around the Islamic pilgrimage hub, crawling their way across the stone slabs, providing a small snapshot of what Pharaoh saw during the Passover thousands of years ago.

Andrew raises good questions. Trumps gun talk is worrying.

The beady eyes in my taco glare back amid the citrus salsa and avocado, and peek out from behind a leaf of cilantro. The first bite is crunchy, and faintly nutty, like toasted corn — if toasted corn came with six legs and a pair of wings. Before long I’m popping individual fried locusts into my mouth like peanuts. But this isn’t a street stall in Oaxaca, Mexico. I’m in my Jerusalem apartment and my girlfriend is having a conniption over the pile of disembodied grasshopper legs I’ve left on the chopping board in the kitchen. Over the phone, my...

Normally a 3.0 earthquake is no big deal...unless you are on the 2nd floor of the house. At 4am a 3.0 will wake you up. Only posting due to the extraordinary fires in our area and thought "Great. An earthquake would be probably be perfect right about now". Going back to sleep....

German Development Minister Gerd Muller warned Sunday that up to 100 million Africans could head north as economic and climate refugees. Germany is making a push to promote peace and investment in Africa at the G20 summit in Hamburg in July. Muller believes unprecedented migrant populations could head for Europe if climate goals aren’t met and the economic outlook in Africa remains the same. “If we continue as before, people in many parts of Africa have no other chance than to get to us,” Muller, a member of the Christian Social Union, told German tabloid Bild am Sonntag. “If we...

The eighth biblical plague that tortured Egypt was a plague of locusts. As described in Exodus 10:5, “And they shall cover the face of the earth, that one cannot be able to see the earth: and they shall eat the residue of that which is escaped, which remaineth unto you from the hail, and shall eat every tree which groweth for you out of the field.” Flip the aforementioned “they” from locusts to cicadas, and that’s actually a pretty apt description of what residents in some parts of Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia will experience next...

People of Europe, you are importing a regressive culture. Sure there are some civilized, intelligent, good hearted people among the refugees but the fact of the matter is that way more people are using this Syrian war crisis as an excuse to get into your countries illegally. Don't be fooled, those are not scholars, those people do not appreciate your culture, they are not thankful, they are violent and will take over your countries, count on it. Stand up for your rights! If you don't, your kids will live in a 3rd world country where white Europeans will be discriminated...

Massive swards of locusts invaded the Saudi capital Riyadh, prompting houses and companies to shut their doors and windows and halting traffic in many parts. Authorities said they were mobilizing their resources to combat the invasion which started on Thursday. The Arabic language daily Sabq, which carried a brief U-Tube film of the insects, said the locusts flew into the capital from the western part of the Gulf Kingdom, which has been a scene of locust attack over the past months. Locusts are a popular dish in Saudi Arabia, where a 10-kg bag of live locusts could be sold for...

The choppers swoop in, dumping insecticide over a plague-stricken village in Madagascar's stunning central highlands. "The goal is to break the invasion," explains Tsitohaina Andriamaroahina, head of a U.N. mission to end a locust plague threatening the crops of 13 million farmers on this island nation. n their countless billions the insatiable hordes cloud the skies as they spread across two thirds of Madagascar, affecting an area roughly the size of Germany or Japan.