USA - Former Assistant Treasury Secretary in the Reagan Administration Dr Paul Craig Roberts says, “We need a debt jubilee. Debt jubilees were widely used in the ancient world… Either the system goes into collapse or you write the debts down and you start over… Again, either you paper it over again or you don’t succeed and everything blows up. Again, bailing out debt with more debt is kicking the can down the road. How long can you kick it? We don’t know until we will find out you can’t kick it any further.”

RUSSIA - Forest fires that have been burning for several days in northern Ukraine are now no more than a few kilometres from the abandoned Chernobyl nuclear plant, reports say. Tour operator Yaroslav Emelianenko said one had reached the abandoned town of Pripyat, which used to serve the plant. He said it was now just 2km (1.24 miles) from where the most dangerous waste from the plant was stored. Greenpeace said the fires were much bigger than the authorities realised. The NGO's Russia branch, quoted by Reuters, said the largest fire covered 34,000 hectares, while a second fire just a kilometre from the former plant was 12,000 hectares in area. Mr Emelianenko also said that if the fire engulfed Pripyat it would be an economic disaster, as supervised tourist visits provided valuable revenue.

USA - The CEO of Smithfield Foods has claimed the country's meat supply is at risk as the company is forced to close one of the country's largest pork processing facilities until further notice due to the coronavirus. The facility in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, is closing as a number of its employees have fallen ill with Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, and is one in a list of plants that have shut down during the crisis. 'The closure of this facility, combined with a growing list of other protein plants that have shuttered across our industry, is pushing our country perilously close to the edge in terms of our meat supply,' the meat processor's CEO Kenneth Sullivan said in a statement on Sunday. 'It is impossible to keep our grocery stores stocked if our plants are not running. These facility closures will also have severe, perhaps disastrous, repercussions for many in the supply chain.'

UK - Ministers fear Britons will not obey instructions to lift the coronavirus lockdown when the time comes despite the risk of lasting damage to the economy, it was revealed today. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has moved to quash the idea of an imminent loosening, with the UK now facing restrictions until at least May 7.

USA - President Donald Trump on Saturday approved a disaster declaration for Wyoming, meaning that all 50 states are under a major disaster declaration amid the CCP virus pandemic. The declaration for the state comes about three weeks after the first disaster order in New York, the epicenter of the virus. Non-state territories including the US Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands, Washington, Guam, and Puerto Rico are all under disaster declarations. The only one that isn’t under such a declaration is American Samoa.

ECUADOR - Scientists are warning that the Tungurahua volcano in Ecuador is showing early signs of impending catastrophic collapse, after satellite data showed substantial internal damage from ongoing magma activity. Tungurahua, has been persistently active since 1999 so wear and tear was inevitable, especially given that the 'Throat of fire,' or 'Black giant' as the Quechua indigenous people named it, has already collapsed twice before thousands of years ago. Such collapses can trigger massive landslides and pyroclastic flows, which can travel for tens of kilometers. For example, the collapse 3,000 years ago is thought to have laid waste to an area of roughly 80km sq (11,000 football fields). Meanwhile, an eruption in 1999 forced the evacuation of some 25,000 people, so the impact on human life in the area should the volcano collapse again would be truly staggering.

USA - Several people died after powerful tornadoes swept through parts of southern America, damaging homes, knocking down power lines and blocking roads with uprooted trees. Louisiana and Mississippi have been hit the hardest. At least seven people were killed after tornadoes combined with severe rainstorms battered Mississippi. One fatality was confirmed in Walthall County, two in Lawrence County, three in Jefferson Davis County, and another one in Jones County as of Sunday evening. Tornadoes left a heavy trail of destruction in Monroe, Louisiana, where some 300 homes were either razed to the ground or damaged, according to local police. Monroe Regional Airport has also sustained heavy damage from at least one tornado. Earlier on Sunday, a tornado touched down in central Texas, about 50 miles east of Austin, knocking down trees and power lines in its path. Tornado warnings have been also issued for parts of Alabama, Georgia and Arkansas.

USA - At least 25 people are dead after tornadoes swept through Middle Tennessee on the morning of March 3. Putnam County officials said at least 18 people were killed, including some children, and 88 others were hurt. Two people were killed in Davidson County, and at least 156 people have been treated for injuries. One person was killed in Benton County with at least 25 homes damaged. Three people were killed in Wilson County, with one of the victims suffering a medical emergency during the tornado. The NWS said one EF-4 tornado swept through Davidson, Wilson and Smith counties. It was on the ground for 60.13 miles. There were at least four tornadoes in Middle Tennessee total, the NWS said.

AFRICA - Weeks before the coronavirus spread through much of the world, parts of Africa were already threatened by another kind of plague, the biggest locust outbreak some countries had seen in 70 years. Now the second wave of the voracious insects, some 20 times the size of the first, is arriving. Billions of the young desert locusts are winging in from breeding grounds in Somalia in search of fresh vegetation springing up with seasonal rains. Millions of already vulnerable people are at risk.

INDONESIA - Krakatoa has erupted, sending a plume of ash 47,000ft into the air, while elsewhere in the world Iceland is seeing a dramatic increase in volcanic activity. Center for Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation (PVMB) recorded two eruptions at the site, once at 9.58pm and another at 10.35pm on Friday, April 10, West Indonesia Time. Due to the coronavirus outbreak, many residents in the region had stopped activity, which meant the volcano’s rumble was heard very clearly in West Java and Indonesia's capital of Jakarta.

TAIWAN - The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) held military drills featuring warplanes near Taiwan on Friday as part of “military struggle preparations against the island,” Chinese state media reported on Friday. Global Times, a Communist Party propaganda newspaper, said multiple PLA warplanes – including H-6 bombers, KJ-500 early warning aircraft, and J-11 fighter jets – conducted a far-sea, long-range drill above southwestern waters near the island of Taiwan. The PLA warplanes were seen flying over waters southwest of Taiwan and then entering the skies over the Bashi Channel – located between Taiwan and the Philippines – before returning to base via the same route, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense (MND) confirmed on Friday. Taiwan’s armed forces are closely monitoring the country’s surrounding waters and airspace, Taiwanese military spokesman Shih Shun-wen said.

JAPAN - Japan has allocated $2.2 billion (US) of its $993 billion emergency stimulus package to help manufacturers relocate production out of China amid the COVID-19 pandemic which began in the communist nation. According to SCMP, $2 billion (US) will be set aside for companies shifting production back to Japan, while roughly $223.5 million will be spent on helping companies move production to other countries, according to SCMP. Under normal circumstances, China is Japan's largest trading partner - however imports from China plummeted nearly 50% in February as the coronavirus pandemic resulted in closed factories and unfilled orders. Meanwhile, a planned visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to Japan early this month - the first such trip in a decade - was postponed with no date rescheduled.

USA - Several meat processing plants around the US are sitting idle this week because workers have been infected with the coronavirus. Tyson Foods, one of the country’s biggest meat processors, says it suspended operations at its pork plant in Columbus Junction, Iowa, after more than two dozen workers got sick with COVID-19. National Beef Packing stopped slaughtering cattle at another Iowa plant, and JBS USA shut down work at a beef plant in Pennsylvania.

USA - Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H Powell said Thursday the US economy is in an emergency and is deteriorating “with alarming speed.” His remarks came shortly after the central bank unveiled over $2 trillion in new loans to keep the economy afloat as much of the nation goes into a lockdown to fight the spread of the deadly coronavirus.

UK - The government will not be lifting the coronavirus lockdown imminently - meaning it will stretch beyond the initial three week period, it has been confirmed. This evening Dominic Raab - who is deputising for Boris Johnson while the PM is in intensive care - said the worst thing the country could do would be to “take its foot off the pedal”. He said it is too early to consider lifting the restrictions - which state Brits can only leave their homes for essential trips and exercise. When the lockdown was announced on March 23, Mr Johnson said the unprecedented measure would be reviewed after three weeks - meaning it could have been lifted at the start of next week. But the UK is not in a position where it is safe to change the rules, Mr Raab said. Nevertheless the government’s chief scientific officer, Sir Patrick Vallance, said there were encouraging signs that the lockdown was working.