Tag: disaster

World on the brink of worst food crisis in 50 years, UN warns

– June 10, 2020

Food systems are failing and the pandemic is mitigating the situation, said UN secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, on June 9, 2020.

“Unless immediate action is taken, it is increasingly clear that there is an impending global food emergency that could have long term impacts on hundreds of millions of children and adults.”

Although harvests of crops are holding up and export bans and protectionism have been largely avoided so far, the worst of the pandemic’s impacts and the recession that will follow is yet to be felt.

This year, about 49 million more may fall into extreme poverty due to the coronavirus as the number of people who are severely food insecure will rapidly expand.

“Even in countries with abundant food, we see risks of disruptions in the food supply chain,” Guterres pointed out. “We need to act now to avoid the worst impacts of our efforts to control the pandemic.”

The secretary-general plotted a three-point plan to restore the world’s ailing food systems and avoid further harm.

First, countries must focus aid on the worst-affected regions to ward off immediate disaster and for governments to prioritize food supply chains.

“That means designating food and nutrition services as essential while implementing appropriate protections for food workers. It means preserving critical humanitarian food, livelihood, and nutrition assistance to vulnerable groups.”

“And it means positioning food in food-crisis countries to reinforce and scale up social protection systems,” he added.

https://watchers.news

Congo Now Faces 2nd Ebola Outbreak in Northern Province

Newsmax – June 2, 2020

Health officials have confirmed a second Ebola outbreak in Congo, the head of the World Health Organization said Monday, adding yet another health crisis for a country already battling COVID-19 and the world’s largest measles outbreak.

Congo also has yet to declare an official end to Ebola in its troubled east, where at least 2,243 people have died since an epidemic began there in August 2018.

Now Congolese health authorities have identified six cases in the north near Mbandaka in Equateur province, including four fatalities, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus tweeted Monday.

“The country is also in final phase of battling Ebola in eastern DRC, COVID19 & the world’s largest measles outbreak,” he tweeted.

This marks the second time Ebola has hit Equateur province in as many years: A 2018 outbreak there killed 33 people before the disease was brought under control in a matter of months.

The last known patient in Congo’s eastern outbreak was released in mid-May but the country now must go about another month without any new cases before an official end to the outbreak can be declared.

https://www.newsmax.com

DR Congo announces fresh Ebola outbreak in country’s northwest

Al Jazeera – June 1, 2020

Health officials in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have reported a fresh Ebola outbreak in the country’s northwest, just weeks before they hoped to declare the end of another Ebola epidemic in the country’s east.

The appearance of the deadly disease on the other side of the vast country comes as an added blow as the DRC attempts to also battle the coronavirus pandemic.

Health Minister Eteni Longondo said on Monday “four people have already died” from Ebola in a district of the northwestern city of Mbandaka.

“The National Institute of Biomedical Research (INRB) has confirmed to me that samples from Mbandaka tested positive for Ebola,” Longondo told a news conference.

“We will send them the vaccine and medicine very quickly,” the minister said, adding that he planned to visit the site of the outbreak at the end of the week.

The capital of Equateur Province, Mbandaka is a transport hub on the Congo River with a population of more than a million.

Equateur Province was previously hit by an Ebola outbreak between May and July 2018, in which 33 people died and 21 recovered from the disease.

https://www.aljazeera.com

Magnitude 5.5 quake hits shaky California desert region

Associated Press – June 3, 2020

RIDGECREST, Calif. (AP) — A magnitude 5.5 earthquake has jolted the region of California desert where a powerful quake last summer was followed by thousands of aftershocks.

The U.S. Geological Survey says Wednesday’s quake hit at a fairly shallow depth shortly after 6:30 p.m. and was centered 13.6 miles (22 kilometers) north of the small city of Ridgecrest.

A dispatcher with the Ridgecrest Police Department said there were no immediate reports of damage or injury.

The quake was felt as a bump and rolling motion in a high-rise building in downtown Las Vegas. Local television news broadcasts stopped as anchors reported seeing lights sway in their studios.

It also shook buildings in downtown Los Angeles.

A magnitude 7.1 quake on July 5, 2019, and a magnitude 6.4 foreshock the day before strongly shook the region.

Damage from those quakes occurred to facilities on the sprawling Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake as well as in the nearby communities of Trona and Ridgecrest.

Seismologist Lucy Jones tweeted that Wednesday’s quake was “a large late aftershock” of last July’s activity. Among the many aftershocks, a handful have reached the magnitude-5 level.

https://news.yahoo.com

NASA Keeping Tabs on Stadium-Sized Asteroid Headed Toward Earth

Amy Furr – June 4, 2020

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said Wednesday that it was keeping an eye on several asteroids moving closer to Earth in the next few days.

“According to the agency’s asteroid watch, the largest of the five currently being tracked is 1,100 feet wide, roughly the size of a stadium,” WMBF reported.

However, the massive asteroid, expected to be nearest the Earth on Saturday, was not supposed to be a threat because the closest it was predicted to come was 3.16 million miles away.

“There are three others the size of a plane and one the size of a house also making their way to earth over the next few days,” according to Fox 2 Now.

“Scientists also don’t believe there are any concerns from those asteroids either. The closest one is expected to come within 1,830,000 miles of earth later today,” the article noted.

On its website, NASA posted an Asteroid Watch Widget to track the asteroids and comets that would make relatively close approaches to our planet.

“The Widget displays the next five Earth approaches to within 4.6 million miles (7.5 million kilometers or 19.5 times the distance to the moon); an object larger than about 150 meters that can approach the Earth to within this distance is termed a potentially hazardous object,” the site read.

Although it was unlikely for an asteroid to collide with Earth in the near future, scientists from all over the world gathered at a 2019 conference to discuss how to respond to one big enough to destroy a major city, according to CBS News.

“All we have to do is change its speed a little faster or a little slower so that when it crosses Earth’s orbit, it crosses either in front of us or behind us,” stated Dr. Lori Glaze, who is the director of planetary science at NASA.

https://www.breitbart.com

India Is Experiencing a Heatwave, a Cyclone, a Global Pandemic, and the Worst Locust Invasion in a Quarter of a Century

ETH – May 28, 2020

(ETH) – India is dealing with unprecedented disasters that are all unfolding simultaneously. The Nation is seeing heatwaves, a killer cyclone, coronavirus, and now a locusts invasion that is unlike anything that has been seen there in over a half a century.

According to Strange Sounds, The Indian capital, of Delhi, just experienced temperatures rise to 47.6°C on Tuesday, as most of north India faced severe heatwave conditions. Churu in Rajasthan state reportedly recorded a temperature of 50°C – making it India’s highest prompting officials to warn people to stay indoors as far as possible.

These devastating temperatures are the highest that India has experienced in decades for this time of the year. In fact, the global weather tracking website El Dorado stated that the region was the hottest in the world on Tuesday. Weather officials also told the local media in India that part of the reason for the heatwave was the result of Cyclone Amphan – that struck parts of eastern India and Bangladesh last week.

“Super cyclone Amphan sucked out all the moisture from other parts of the country,” Kuldeep Shrivastava, the head of the regional weather forecasting center told the Hindustan Times newspaper. According to the report, Heatwaves over the past few years have produced a number of deaths across India.

In addition to the heatwave and the cyclone, swarms of locusts are destroying crops in parts of the country, including Rajasthan in what is being called the worst locusts invasion in a half-century threatening the livelihood of many farmers in the country.

https://endtimeheadlines.org

NC farmers start euthanizing 1.5M chickens amid pandemic

Associated Press – May 25, 2020

RALEIGH, Wake County — Coronavirus outbreaks at meat processing plants are forcing North Carolina farmers to euthanize 1.5 million chickens, according to a state official.

Assistant Agriculture Commissioner Joe Reardon told The News & Observer that this is the first time during the pandemic that North Carolina farmers have had to euthanize their animals. Roughly a third of the 1.5 million chickens already had been killed, Reardon said.

Agriculture officials said Thursday that 2,006 workers in 26 processing plants across the state have tested positive for coronavirus. Workers and their advocates said the meat industry was slow to provide protective equipment and take other coronavirus-related safety measures.

Chicken and hog farmers in other states also have been euthanizing millions of animals during the COVID-19 pandemic. In April, for example, the Baltimore Sun reported that coronavirus-related staffing shortages at chicken processing plants will lead farms in Maryland and Delaware to destroy nearly 2 million chickens.

North Carolina hog farmers have not taken steps to euthanize their animals, Reardon said.

https://wcti12.com

More than 500 earthquakes rattle western Nevada after 6.5 hit less than a week ago

Amy Graff – May 20, 2020

The ground has come alive in a pocket of western Nevada.

A magnitude-6.5 earthquake rocked a remote region 35 miles west of Tonopah on May 15 and hundreds of aftershocks have followed — an event this corner of the county hasn’t seen in over half a century.

The initial big quake struck at 4:03 a.m. last Friday east of the Sierra Nevada, roughly halfway between Reno and Las Vegas, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It was the largest to hit Nevada in 66 years and caused cracking along US 95 in Esmeralda County and broke some windows in Tonopah but, because this area is mostly unpopulated, damage was minimal.

A dozen aftershocks of 4.5 and above — and 500 quakes of 2.5 and above — have been recorded near Tonopah since the 6.5 quake. As recently as Wednesday morning, a 5.0 temblor struck.

“This is your classic shock-aftershock sequence,” said Dr. Graham Kent, director of the Nevada Seismological Laboratory. “This is similar to what you’d expect in the aftermath of the big quake.”

The 6.5 quake and following aftershocks occurred in the Walker Lane Seismic Region, a fault zone that roughly aligns with the Nevada-California border from Death Valley to Pyramid Lake.

Across time, Nevada has had an abundance of earthquakes and is considered the third most actively seismic state. The largest earthquake in state history was a magnitude 7.3 in 1915 and the next biggest was a 7.1 in 1932. In 1954 alone, the state saw five earthquakes of magnitude 6.5 or greater.

“And then it just went cold for 66 years,” Kent said. “We would tell people it’s all going to end and now it has. We knew sooner or later it would break and it broke in an area that’s not that populated.”

https://www.sfgate.com

6.5 magnitude earthquake hits Nevada near Area 51; quake felt from Utah to California

Chris Irvine, Peter Aitken – May 15, 2020

A magnitude 6.5 earthquake struck in remote western Nevada early Friday, according to the U.S. Geological Service, shaking people from Utah to California — and some pointing out it happened near Area 51.

The temblor was reported at 4:03 a.m. about 35 miles outside Tonopah, just east of the Sierra Nevada range. First recorded as a 6.4 earthquake, the USGS later upgraded it to a 6.5 magnitude.

The initial quake struck about 4.7 miles deep, the USGS said, and at least six sizable aftershocks were recorded shortly thereafter, including two with estimated magnitudes of 5.4. The USGS has advised that Nevada will continue to experience more earthquakes than usual as aftershocks continue throughout the day.

Initial reactions to the earthquake were largely humorous. Most people in the area were still asleep, meaning the earthquake woke them up.

A good number of reactions, though, noted the earthquake originated around the infamous Area 51, spurring a number of jokes that the earthquake was caused by aliens. In a year that has already included a pandemic, the threat of murder hornets and heightened hurricane activity, an Area 51 earthquake seemed to be fitting.

https://www.foxnews.com

You May Not Understand This Now, But You Need To Get Prepared For The Food Shortages That Are Coming

– May 14, 2020

I was going to write about something completely different today, but I felt that I needed to issue this warning instead.  Even before COVID-19 came along, crazy global weather patterns were playing havoc with harvests all over the globe, the African Swine Fever plague had already killed about one-fourth of all the pigs in the world, and giant armies of locusts the size of major cities were devouring crops at a staggering rate on the other side of the planet.  And now this coronavirus pandemic has caused an unprecedented worldwide economic shutdown, and this has put an enormous amount of stress on global food supplies.

On the official UN website, the United Nations is openly using the term “biblical proportion” to describe the famines that are coming.  Even if COVID-19 miraculously disappeared tomorrow, a lot of people on the other side of the world would still starve to death, but of course COVID-19 is not going anywhere any time soon.

Here in the United States, our stores still have plenty of food.  But empty shelves have started to appear, and food prices are starting to go up aggressively.

In fact, we just witnessed the largest one month increase in food prices that we have seen since 1974.

For a long time I have been warning my readers that eventually a loaf of bread in the U.S. will cost five dollars, and one of my readers in Hawaii just told me that “my wife came home with ½ loaf of bread for $2.99”.

So it appears that the day I have been warning about has already arrived for some people.

http://endoftheamericandream.com