The desert locust, dubbed “the most destructive migratory pest in the world” by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Locust Watch

As the world continues to combat COVID-19 novel coronavirus, millions in Africa and the Middle East are expected to also be hit with the ever-worsening desert locust crisis, which experts say has the ability to grow at an unprecedented rate due to favorable breeding conditions triggered by climate change.
The desert locust, dubbed “the most destructive migratory pest in the world” by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Locust Watch , is positioned to wreak havoc on the food security of millions of people after recently disrupting the lives of individuals in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia.
Keith Cressman, senior locust forecasting expert for the FAO, told The Guardian this week that while the desert locust swarms should be decreasing in the foreseeable future as they historically have, climate change has created a new normal that endangers the food security of some 25 million people.
The FAO official explained that desert locust populations begin to expand as a response to moist conditions and continue to thrive in areas that are plentiful in vegetation. He noted that it was May 2018’s Cyclone Mekunu that created an ideal environment in the desert between Saudi Arabia, Oman and Yemen for the desert locust, which can eat roughly the equivalent of its own mass in fresh food a day.

LOCUST WATCH/UN FAO
Desert Locust plagues can develop in a recession area that extends from West Africa to India; an area equivalent to about 16 million square km. Scattered solitarious locusts breed on winter, spring and summer rains that fall sporadically in this area. If heavy rains fall in successive seasonal breeding areas, the locusts will gregarize and, unless prevented by control, drought or migration to unsuitable habitats, plagues can form.
“Just about when those conditions are drying out and the breeding is coming to an end, a second cyclone came to the area,” Cressman said. “That allowed the conditions to continue to be favorable and another generation of breeding, so instead of increasing 400-fold, they increased 8,000-fold.”
Cyclone Sagar, the strongest recorded cyclone to hit Somalia, came about just days prior to Mekunu, and both were followed by Cyclone Luban mere months later in October 2018.
“Usually a cyclone brings favorable conditions for about six months, and then the habitat dries out, and so it’s not favourable for reproduction, and they die and migrate,” the FAO official explained about the insects.
However, warmer seas from climate change bring about an increase in cyclones and subsequent rainfall that create conditions conducive to desert locust breeding. The FAO highlights that “moist sandy or sandy/clay soil” is prime breeding ground for the insects.
“This analogous forecasting methodology used to work pretty good up until five years ago, and it’s just not working very well any more at all because of the rainfall, the timing, the distribution. It’s very different,” Cressman confessed.
According to current Locust Watch reporting , a total of 10 countries have seen substantial desert locust swarms recently: Kenya, Ethiopia, Yemen, Iran, Sudan, Eritrea, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Oman.
“The situation remains extremely alarming in the Horn of Africa, specifically Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia where widespread breeding is in progress and new swarms are starting to form,” the FAO stressed.
The UN organization filed an appeal in February which called for $138 million in funding to provide aid to countries impacted by the ravenous desert locusts. As of a March 16 news release , a total of $105 million has been pledged.

Jack ma of Alibaba and his foundation has offered help of Corona virus test kits to Rwanda!!! Let us pray hard that this disease gets of the poor country

A week of tension between Zambian and Congolese naval forces on the border of Moliro

Tension has been observed for a week between the Zambian and Congolese naval forces on the border of Moliro, 400 km in Moba territory southeast of Kalemie (Tanganyika). According to local sources, this tension was caused by the tracking of Congolese fishermen who use prohibited mesh nets. The Tanganyika provincial government has just dispatched the provincial interior minister to Zambia.
According to a witness, Congolese fishermen hunted in Moba territory have found refuge in Zambia to carry out their fishing activities on Lake Tanganyika, which shares the two countries.
“The Zambian soldiers came to Kibanga-Zambia to tell the fishermen to return to the Congo. To return to the Congo, the fishermen are afraid of the Congolese soldiers who are in Kibanga-Congo. Zambian soldiers took speedboats from Zambia to Kibanga-Congo. They wanted to force the Congolese soldiers out by force; they stole the Congolese flag. They started to confront each other, "he said.
MPP Jean Manda says the problem has never been resolved for several years.
"Can a foreign force easily enter our country and take the insignia of the country, the flag? This is very serious. We never managed to solve the Kapingu problem, on the Moliro side in Moba. The population never returned several years ago because the Zambian army intervened. Who are we ? "He wonders.
The provincial interior minister arrived in the Zambian capital Lusaka last Thursday for peace talks between the two Zambian and Congolese territories

Ugandan,Ministry of healthy clarification on covid 19 virus

We need UPDF at Entebbe airport!!!! We are tired of these goons who do not love uganda

We need updf in Entebbe ASAP. Entebbe is becoming susceptible to foreigners from high risky countries affected by covid19. If this is not done quickly, Entebbe could turn into an epicenter of the Wuhan virus. Ruth Achieng is doing a great job but she's needs surport. The Chinese used their military to manage stiuations that wu'd compromise their efforts and now they are wining the war over covid19.

And these extortionist will be the ones to start blaming the gorvenment!!!!

What Telecom companies are saying about Corona virus

Rwandan and Corona virus today...Pray for our neighbors

7 promising Corona virus vaccine trials

Despite World Health Organisation warning last month that the first COVID-19 vaccine trials would come no sooner than after three to four months, quite a few pharmaceutical enterprises have ramped up efforts to attempt to roll out their much-coveted brainchildren ahead of schedule.
Here are the most discussed COVID-19 vaccine options that are approaching clinical tests and which will be conducted on people (if they are not already) sometime soon.
1. Russia's 'Vector'
The Russian consumer rights watchdog
Rospotrebnadzor announced on 20 March that its Novosibirsk-based research centre "Vector" had already started testing vaccines in the country, so the mass production of them could be launched in the fourth quarter of 2020. Although the substance hasn’t yet been named, the prototypes are mRNA, peptide, and subunit vaccines.
There are quite a few promising ventures by other countries, predominantly China, which have already entered stages 1-3 of clinical testing, or are just on the verge of doing so.
2. Chinese Gilead Sciences’ Remdisivir
The vaccine is tasked with easing patients’ fever and helping them to get out of hospital after no more than two weeks, Statnews wrote. The drug, which was also previously used in an Ebola virus study, is applied intravenously and is currently being tested by China (in phase 3) on 1,000 patients diagnosed with the coronavirus infection.
3. Ascletis Pharma's Venture
Somewhat less close to clinical testing is a development by another Chinese drug maker, Ascletis Pharma - a hybrid of two antiviral medicines: one approved for HIV and one approved for hepatitis C - anoprevir and ritonavir respectively. The company recently enrolled 11 patients with coronavirus-induced pneumonia and administered the combination, later boasting that the patients were successfully cured.
4. Moderna Therapeutics' MRNA-1273
Another Chinese enterprise, Moderna Therapeutics, has meanwhile entered phase 1 of clinical tests with its mRNA-1273, a vaccine candidate identified within just 42 days of tracking the novel coronavirus. The synthetic strand of the messenger known as mRNA is to convince human cells to release natural COVID-19 antibodies into the blood. The company is working with the National Institutes of Health and if mRNA-1273 proves to be safe, Moderna will enrol more patients to determine whether the vaccine safeguards from the infection. Among those who received the first jab were four American volunteers at the Kaiser Permanente research facility in Seattle, Washington.
5. Tianjin-headquartered CanSino Biologics Project
The marketer of the Ebola vaccine, this company is yet another entity scrambling to compete with all the rest in the development of an effective preventive measure against COVID-19. More specifically, it is trying to marry the coronavirus’ genetic code with a less dangerous virus and clinical tests, already approved by the Chinese authorities, are due to start in the near future.
6. CureVac: US-German Apple of Discord
There has reportedly been a tug of war lately between the US and Germany over a promising firm called CureVac, which is based in Tübingen, but also has branches in Frankfurt and the US state of Massachusetts. US President Donald Trump has reportedly been offering hefty sums to German scientists working on a vaccine in a bid to secure rights to their prospective brainchild, while other reports stated that Berlin has likewise tried to offer the promising company financial incentives for it to proceed with research in its home country. Last Friday, co-founder Florian von der Mülbe, who is in charge of the firm’s production, told Reuters that they had begun to pore over a slew of possible vaccines, with the two most viable ones expected to be picked later on for clinical testing, with human trials preliminarily expected in late summer.
7. San Diego-based Arcturus Therapeutics' RNA Editing
The company is working on a vaccine that heavily relies on engineering RNA, so that the edited version of the virus would encode proteins that would protect against infection and load it into a liquid nanoparticle. The approach is believed to promise a better immune response at a lower vaccine dose than mRNA approaches. The company is planning to kickstart human trials as quickly as possible.
As per Worldometrics.info, the overall number of coronavirus infections has topped 245,850 around the globe, with the death toll exceeding 10,000. Italy has become the new epicentre of the pandemic with 3,405 having died of coronavirus-related illnesses, overtaking China’s death toll by more than 150. To date, 88,441 people are registered to have recovered around the world.

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Numerous countries have imposed travel bans and introduced 14-day quarantines for citizens coming home amid growing numbers of infected. Outside China, where the COVID-19 was originally registered back in December, the worst-hit countries are Italy, Iran, and Spain, with Germany and the US also reporting mass increases in numbers.
Worldwide, the virus has infected more than 255,300 people in 163 nations, with 10,444 deaths, Johns Hopkins University reported on its global virus tracking website.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), there are at least 209,000 coronavirus cases in over 120 countries, with the death toll surpassing 8,700. At the same time, around 90,000 of those infected have already recovered from the disease.

The Tsirkon hypersonic missile will be test-fired for the first time this year in spring from the Admiral Gorshkov frigate, a source in the Russian defence industry said.

For the first time, the Tsirkon was test-launched from the Admiral Gorshkov in January in the Barents Sea, home to Russia’s Northern Fleet.

“The second test – but the first one this year – is scheduled for this spring. The missile will be test-fired from Admiral Gorshkov frigate. The tests are underway”, the source said.

The Tsirkon, a scramjet-powered maneuverable anti-ship cruise missile capable of accelerating to speeds of up to 11,100 km an hour, is one of half-a-dozen or so strategic systems being developed by Russia’s military.

The Tsirkon is believed to have a flight range of over 1,000 km, and is expected base aboard both surface ships and marine ships, including vessels equipped to carry existing Kalibr-class cruise missiles. The missile is also widely expected to be fitted aboard the new Husky class fifth-generation nuclear submarine presently in development