The World Food Program talks of a famine of Biblical proportions.

The WFP says the coronavirus crisis will push more than  a quarter of a billion people living in conflict zones to the brink of starvation.

That’s twice the number of people suffering acute food shortage last year.

The WFP’s chief economist Dr Harif Husain tells the UN Security Council  COVID 19 is catastrophic for people already hanging on by a thread.

It’s a hammer blow for millions who can only eat if they earn a wage.

Lockdowns and the economic recession has decimated their nest eggs. COVID 19 will drive them over the edge

More than 20 million people  are driven to starvation by the desert locust infestation in East Africa and the Horn.

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No fewer than 3 500 delegates have been accredited to Conference of the Parties to the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species known as CITIES

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The fate of the savannah elephant, poached at a rate of 35 000 a year for their tusks, and the rhino, more than a thousand of which are illegally slain every year for their horns rests with the policymakers, activists and academics meeting in Sandton for the next ten days.

It’s the first time CITIES is being held in the country that houses the largest number of rhinos and second largest elephant population on the planet.

Participants from 182 countries will  regulate the status of 500 species of endangered animals and plants.

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The 15-year-old tanker Kalamos was awaiting fresh cargo from an oil terminal in Nigeria’s south eastern region.

The Malta-flagged vessel’s operated by ExxonMobil. Most of the crew are Greek.

Pirates boarded it in the Gulf of Guinea, which has overtaken the Horn of Africa as Africa’s epicentre for buccaneers.

In the first nine months last year the area recorded at least 33 incidents of piracy and armed robbery, according to the International Maritime Bureau .

It said the pirates operating off the coast of Nigeria, Togo and Benin are heavily armed and violent, and often hold crews hostage for several days.

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