AFRICA - Billions upon billions of voracious desert locusts are ravenously devouring crops over a vast portion of the globe that stretches from eastern Africa all the way to India. This unprecedented plague was supposed to be subsiding by now, but instead a fourth generation of locusts has emerged that is producing swarms that are “up to 8,000 times larger” than what we witnessed earlier this year.

Some of these swarms are the size of major cities, they can travel up to 150 kilometers a day, and when they descend upon a farm they can literally eat everything there in as little as 30 seconds. Because these swarms are not affecting the United States, most Americans don’t understand the immense devastation that is happening on the other side of the globe right now. The UN is warning that mass starvation is coming, and we are being told that it is going to begin by the end of this calendar year.

USA - National Public Radio (NPR) posted a tweet Saturday urging every reader to begin “decolonizing your bookshelf.” According to NPR, “white voices have dominated what has been considered canon for eons.” The public broadcaster advises fans to begin “decolonizing your bookshelf” by removing the works of white authors. NPR suggests that “decolonizing your bookshelf” is about “actively resisting and casting aside the colonialist ideas of narrative, storytelling, and literature that have pervaded the American psyche for so long.”

SUDAN - Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia will resume negotiations on Tuesday over the filling of a controversial mega-dam Addis Ababa is building over the Nile, Khartoum said. Irrigation and water ministers from the three Nile basin countries will meet via videoconference, Sudan's irrigation ministry said in a statement.

USA - The coronavirus pandemic inflicted a "swift and massive shock" that has caused the broadest collapse of the global economy since 1870 despite unprecedented government support, the World Bank said Monday.

USA - Have you been watching the madness that has been unfolding on Wall Street? Even though we are in the middle of the worst global pandemic in 100 years, and even though rioters and looters have been turning our major cities into war zones, stock prices have been going up day after day. In fact, the Nasdaq closed at an all-time record high on Monday. Sometimes people ask me to explain this rationally, and I can’t, because the Federal Reserve has transformed our “financial markets” into a total mockery at this point.

GERMANY - While some in the German establishment fumed over the US presumably keeping Berlin uninformed about plans to withdraw thousands of troops, others envisioned it as a chance to loosen ties with their turbulent NATO ally. Washington didn’t bother to inform Berlin of its intent to redeploy thousands of troops from Germany to other locations, with the news coming out of the blue for the government, German media reported on Saturday.

UK - Boris Johnson has ordered ministers to lift the lockdown quickly to avoid the possible loss of three million jobs. In a significant shift in the government’s approach to Covid-19, the prime minister signed off new measures to open up the economy at a meeting with Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, on Friday night. Johnson stepped in after a crunch meeting on Tuesday where he was warned by Alok Sharma, the business secretary, that failure to reopen the hospitality sector in time for the summer could cost up to 3.5 million jobs. It came as Britain’s death toll rose by 77, the lowest jump since lockdown began on March 23, although reporting of deaths is often lower on weekends.

USA - Residents in Solano County, California have been ordered to flee their homes after a large vegetation fire broke out just miles from two cities. Firefighters are using aerial retardants to protect neighborhoods. The blaze broke out Saturday near the cities of Winters and Vacaville, and quickly doubled in size to 1,200 acres, authorities told local media. Officials said the fire has been five percent contained. Those living in the fire’s direct path have been ordered to evacuate to a center in Vacaville. Firefighter units have deployed planes to drop aerial retardants in an effort to protect residential areas. So far there have been no reports of casualties.

USA - Suffocated to death for the color of your skin: That is "the terrifying reality of what it really means to be black in America right now," said Piers Morgan at the Daily Mail (UK). The entire world has seen the video of the arrest and killing of George Floyd. For nearly nine excruciating minutes, white Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin crushed the life out of the handcuffed, defenseless Floyd. "Even by the dreadful standards of police violence against black people in America," this heartless murder was a new low.

UK - Japan and the UK are poised to begin talks aimed at thrashing out the details of a bumper post-Brexit trade deal to come into effect by the start of next year, in what would be a massive boost to Boris Johnson as negotiations with the EU drag on. International Trade Secretary Liz Truss and Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi will begin their discussions on Tuesday, Japanese newspaper Nikkei claimed.

The ministers, who will speak via video conference, intend to strike a deal which would come into force from the start of 2021, Nikkei said. Japan is hoping to clinch favourable deals in areas including automobiles, while the UK is keen to focus on the financial sector, the paper added. Speaking at the time, Ms Truss said: "Japan is one of our largest trading partners and a new trade deal will help to increase trade, boost investment and create more jobs following the economic challenges caused by coronavirus.

USA - The United States will cut its troop presence in Germany by more than 25 percent, former American officials said on Friday, as the Trump administration sends a frosty message to a major NATO ally and shrinks a military footprint long resented by the Kremlin. The new cap, approved by President Trump and Defense Secretary Mark T Esper, will limit American troops in Germany to 25,000, said a former senior official with knowledge of the decision. That would mean a reduction of 9,500, or more than one quarter, from current levels. The move — which blindsided German officials and many American military leaders in Europe — is in keeping with Mr Trump’s “America First” vision of limited US deployments overseas, and with his insistence that allies must shoulder more of the burden for their own defense.

GERMANY - President Donald Trump’s directive to pull 9,500 troops from Germany hits home hard for friends of America like Edgar Knobloch, whose Bavarian town has been home to US service members for seven decades. Like Chancellor Angela Merkel, the mayor of Grafenwoehr was caught off guard. It’s the latest sign of the US’s deterioration of ties with a loyal ally, one that not only hosts most of its troops in Europe but also has seen them fuel the local economy.

ITALY - Seventh-day Adventists, Roman Catholics and Evangelicals Signed a Historic ‘Ecumenical Charter’ that Affirms Faith in ‘One, Holy, Catholic Apostolic Church’. On Saturday, January 25, 2020 a historical “Ecumenical Charter” was signed by Seventh-day Adventists, Roman Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans, Evangelicals and Methodists. The signing ceremony took place in the San Paolo Maggiore Roman Catholic Church in Bologna, Italy. The document that was signed is a pledge of commitment to each other. Adventists pledged a commitment to Rome, and Rome reciprocated that commitment. Make no mistake. The churches that signed this document promised to uphold the principles of the Ecumenical Charter which includes affirming an allegiance to each other. The Ecumenical Charter declares that the church is “one, holy, catholic and apostolic” and therefore the “inescapable ecumenical task consists in making visible this unity.”

PAKISTAN - A devastating invasion of crop-eating locusts has put large parts of Asia on the brink of a humanitarian crisis. Tens of millions of people are set to face food shortages on the continent after a plague of locusts embarked on a path of destruction across India and Pakistan. In Pakistan, a national emergency has been declared after an outbreak of locusts, on a biblical scale, wreaked havoc across farmland in the eastern Punjab, southern Sindh and southwestern Baluchistan provinces.

TAIWAN - The USS Russell, an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer, sailed through the Taiwan Strait on Thursday, the 31st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. It was the seventh US Navy transit of the strait in 2020, and the second such passage in the past three weeks. Taiwanese defense forces closely monitored the passage of the Russell and described it as an “ordinary mission,” according to the Defense Ministry. The US Navy has also been active in the South China Sea to counter Chinese aggression, prompting the Chinese government to issue an angry statement that America is “not a party to disputes” in the region, and is only looking to “stir up trouble” by sending warships there.