UK - The Bank of England has warned that the UK economy is heading towards its sharpest recession on record. The coronavirus impact would see the economy shrink 14% this year, based on the lockdown being relaxed in June. Scenarios drawn up by the Bank to illustrate the economic impact said Covid-19 was "dramatically reducing jobs and incomes in the UK". Bank governor Andrew Bailey told the BBC there would be no quick return to normality.

USA - Have you noticed that people are a lot more emotional these days? People are angry about the lockdowns, people are angry because others are not “properly” observing the social distancing rules, people are angry about losing their jobs, people are angry about the shortages in the stores, and more than anything else people are angry at our politicians. Even before COVID-19 came along, I was repeatedly warning my readers that anger was rising to a very dangerous level in this country, and now this pandemic has made things far worse.

USA - Nearly one in five young children in the US are going hungry. That’s according to a new survey of households by the Brookings Institution, which found that 17.4 percent of children were not eating enough. The level is three times as high as in 2008, during the Great Recession.

Disruptions in school meal programs during the pandemic may be part of the problem, the lead researcher said, with some families unable to reach distribution sites and older siblings at home competing for limited food. As hunger rises, Democrats in Washington are seeking to raise food stamp benefits for the duration of the economic crisis, but Republicans have balked at a long-term expansion of the program.

UK - Almost 80 mobile towers have reportedly been burned down in the UK due to coronavirus conspiracy theories that blame the spread of COVID-19 on 5G. The arson attacks began in early April, with 77 towers now damaged, Business Insider reported Wednesday citing industry group Mobile UK. "Daily attacks are very low now but have not stopped entirely," a Mobile UK spokesman told Business Insider. As of April 21, 40 employees of one UK carrier have also been attacked physically or verbally, according to BT CEO Philip Jansen. "We've even had one Openreach engineer stabbed and put in hospital," Jansen said. The conspiracy theory is wrong - radio waves cannot cause a virus. Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have all committed to taking down misinformation posts saying otherwise. UK carriers have also asked people to stop burning mobile towers, and the UK's national medical director called the 5G conspiracy theory "complete and utter rubbish."

AFRICA - Think of locusts as giant, hormonally charged, very hungry grasshoppers. They can move more than 100 miles in a day, depending on the wind. Governments and UN agencies have repeatedly warned that locusts will cause calamitous food shortages if they end up on cropland. "It is a race against time to ensure these new swarms do not breed," said Hamisi Williams, a senior Food and Agriculture Organization official in Kenya. "When this happens, we will be talking about the locusts at plague level."

Tens of thousands of liters of pesticides have been delayed in reaching the region because of border closures caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Regional governments have appealed for financial assistance, but with attention almost totally consumed by the COVID-19 pandemic, locusts have tumbled down the priority list. The locusts and the coronavirus seem to be converging toward a catastrophe if a third generation is able to hatch in June and July.

UNITED NATIONS - The head of the United Nations called for global leaders to “use the pandemic recovery” to roll out their global climate change agenda, including allowing fossil fuel companies to collapse and using taxpayer stimulus money to fund green jobs. UN Secretary-General António Guterres said during the Petersberg Virtual Dialogue, a two-day international conference on global warming, in Berlin, Germany that the economic turmoil caused by the coronavirus pandemic presents a “rare and short window of opportunity” to accelerate their globalist 2030 Agenda project.

USA - The 1918 Spanish flu pandemic was linked to the rise of the Nazi party, a federal paper has revealed - sparking fresh fears of American division over the nation's response to COVID-19. The Nazi party's ascension to power was in part triggered by the fallout from the pandemic, which killed more than 50 million people and infected one-third of the global population, according to a research paper written by bank economist Kristian Blickle and published by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The shocking connection raises concerns over life post-coronavirus pandemic, with tensions visibly mounting between the far-right and the liberals and deep divides already emerging across the US. The stark research paper released Monday found extremist parties - notably the Nazi party - gained a spike in voters following the 1918 pandemic.

EUROPE - EU officials have forecast "the deepest economic recession" in the bloc's history as a result of the coronavirus. Failure to agree on common solutions for the post-pandemic recovery could undermine the European project. European Commissioner for the Economy Paolo Gentiloni told reporters on Wednesday that the bloc is headed for "a recession of historic proportions this year" as a result of the novel coronavirus pandemic. "It is now quite clear that the EU has entered the deepest economic recession in its history," Gentiloni said. "Economic activity in the EU dropped by around one-third practically overnight." The novel coronavirus pandemic has hit the global economy hard. Governments have enacted tough restrictions on mobility along with social distancing measures aimed at curbing the pandemic. However, those measures have also severely limited business operations and economic activity.

VATICAN - Pope Benedict has been accused of "doing his absolute best to sabotage Francis" after his shocking comments linking gay marriage to the Antichrist were exposed in a bombshell new book. The former pope, who stood down in a controversial move in 2013, claimed that people who oppose homosexual unions in today’s world are “excommunicated from society”.

USA - California's San Joaquin Valley is an agricultural powerhouse in the US, producing more than $17 billion a year in crops on some 7 million acres of fields. The region is also home to CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation) animals, including cattle. At the valley's largest feedlot, Harris Ranch, 100,000 cattle are packed in over a stretch of 800 acres.

USA - When the COVID-19 pandemic is over and systems are in place for any reoccurrences, the world will still not be out of the woods. Experts are predicting that food disruptions and even a famine could follow. COVID-19 was said to be an "equalizer," affecting poor and rich countries alike. Certainly, the infection did not spare high-profile figures like UK's Prince Charles and Prime Minister Boris Johnson, US Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky and Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, even as it affected the poor and members of minorities.

USA - Just a few days ago we marveled as wholesale beef prices had soared over 60% from their February lows to a record $331 per 100 pounds. Well, that was then, because today alone, the wholesale price soared by 8.6% or $32.60 to a new all time high of $410.05, almost doubling in less than a month. The reason: an unprecedented collapse of the nation's food supply chain as over a dozen meat processing plants have been shuttered due to the coronavirus pandemic. Beef prices are soaring even after Trump issued an executive order to address meat shortages, however with food workers scared and unwilling to return to work, Trump's attempt to normalize prices has backfired, because all it has achieved was a frantic scramble by consumers to hoard beef resulting in even bigger shortages and higher prices.

USA - A Sioux Falls meatpacking plant was forced to close when it became the epicenter of COVID-19 in South Dakota. Three weeks after executives from its Chinese owner, WH Group, visited the plant, a month after President Trump's ban on travel from China, nearly 600 of Smithfield Foods' 3,700 employees tested positive for the virus, as have 135 additional people in close contact with employees.

USA - Could it be possible that the stage is being set for horrific famines that the Bible has been warning us about for nearly 2,000 years? A few years ago, any talk of “coming famines” would have seemed absolutely ludicrous to most people in the western world, but the events of the last several months have changed everything.

NORTH KOREA - Kim Jong-un deliberately faked his own death to expose traitors in his circle and who had hopes of taking power from the leader's "death", it has been claimed. Sky News Australia has said that Kim, 36, may have deliberately pretended to be dead so that he could figure out if there were leaks in his inner circle in North Korea. Over the past week stories circulated that Kim had died following heart surgery or that he was gravely unwell. Those rumours were squashed after the leader was seen at an event last weekend, as he attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the inauguration of a fertiliser plant. It is now possible that the leader will use the responses from his long period of absence to begin “purging” those he believes colluded to take over.