While there are many aspects to your Bwindi safari, the vast number of tourists that visit every year come to spend time with mountain gorillas – one of Africa’s most famous animals. 

For many, this is a once-in-a-lifetime, spiritual experience with these sentient great apes. 

Once on the verge of extinction, mountain gorilla numbers have been steadily increasing in the last decade, with the most recent estimate putting the number of wild mountain gorillas at over 1,000 individuals. 

Over 450 of these individuals are found in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, making it one of the population’s strongholds.

Uganda is one of the most exceptional birding destinations in Africa and home to half of all of Africa’s bird species, with a count of about 1,065 species. 

The Bwindi Impenetrable Forest ecosystem alone offers a chance to spot 350 species, including 23 of the 24 Albertine Rift endemics.

The underlying aim, Surkov says, is not to win the war, but to use the conflict to create a constant state of destabilised perception, in order to manage and control

Conclusions

We have entered a Surkov moment in the US 

Barr told prosecutors that “fanciful or far-fetched claims” should not be a basis for investigation and that his letter did not indicate the Justice Department had uncovered voting irregularities affecting the outcome of the election.

But he did say he was authorizing prosecutors to “pursue substantial allegations” of irregularities of voting and the counting of ballots.

Richard Pilger, who for years has served as director of the Election Crimes Branch, announced in an internal email that he was resigning from that post after he read “the new policy and its ramifications.”

Biden’s campaign said Barr was fueling Trump’s far-fetched allegations of fraud.

The World has spun at dizzying speed in 2020 and is bookended with the Decapitation of Qasem Soleimani and then the Political decapitation of President Trump by the [not so] ''Sleepy'' Joe Biden and who exits stage left twittering into the wilderness or is it Trump TV?

The demise of the Reality TV Star turned seriously vaudeville with Mr. Giulani mounting the last stand from the Four Seasons Total Landscaping next to Fantasy Island Adult Books across the street from the Delaware Valley Cremation Center.

Some Folks seem convinced that the Prophet of Populism Donald J. Trump is going to lead his 70m Disciples into some major 5th generational chess moves but surely just as likely is an Unfolding psychological breakdown played out in front of our eyes on TV like Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's Death of Salesman

“You can't eat the orange and throw the peel away - a man is not a piece of fruit.”

Biden has stayed on Point and his pithiness has been the clearest Signal in the Noise. The American Electoral System has emerged unscathed and in fact looks robust.

“My take on Trump is that he is an inevitable creation of this unreal normal world,” Adam Curtis says. 

“Politics has become a pantomime or vaudeville in that it creates waves of anger rather than argument. Maybe people like Trump are successful simply because they fuel that anger, in the echo chambers of the internet.”

The CCP appears to have modeled its lockdown fraud on Event 201, so Gates, Hopkins, and the WEF would play into their hands [@MichaelPSenger]

That‘s right, we, We the People, for [as I have previously said] how can we let ourselves ―survive no better than swine; fawn upon the power-holders like curs; and live in vile filth like maggots?

#Coronavirus how the @WHO is leading the social media fight against misinformation @DrTedros @SCMPNews http://j.mp/32gPzxX

And the Virus is not going away anytime in fact it is now exponential.

Martin Aglo, a law student from Benin, told Reuters: “After the Arab Spring, this is the Black Spring”.We need to ask ourselves; how many people can incumbent shoot stone cold dead in such a situation – 100, 1,000, 10,000?

This is another point: there is a threshold beyond which the incumbent can’t go. Where that threshold lies will be discovered in the throes of the event.

The Event is no longer over the Horizon.

“The only thing worse than COVID-19 would be BIDEN-20,” wrote Saudi Twitter user Dr Muna, while many other Saudi users of the social media platform simply ignored the result in the initial hours after U.S. networks called the election for Biden.

A Saudi political source played down the risk of a falling out between the kingdom and the United States, pointing to Riyadh’s historic ties with Washington.

But Saudi Arabia’s Okaz newspaper offered a sense of the uncertainty about how the future plays out for the kingdom. “The region is waiting ... and preparing ... for what happens after Biden’s victory,” it wrote in a front page article.

The kingdom may not have to wait long. Neil Quilliam, associate fellow at Britain’s Chatham House think-tank, said the Biden administration would likely seek to signal early on its discontent with Saudi domestic and foreign policies.

“The Saudi leadership is concerned that a Biden administration and a hostile Congress will carry out a full review of relations, including re-evaluating defence ties and therefore will likely make positive sounds and moves towards ending the Yemen conflict,” he said.

Average COVID-19 cases/day

#US: 108k

#France: 53k

#India: 46k

#Italy: 32k

#UK: 22k

#Spain: 20k

#Germany: 19k

#Russia: 19k

#Brazil: 16k

#Czechia: 10k 

55 countries: >1k

101 countries: >100

April 29 1 million 

June 11 2 million

July 8 3 million

July 24 4 million

Aug 9 5 million

Aug 31 6 million

Sept 26 7 million

Oct 17 8 million

Oct 31 9 million

Nov 8 10 million

Euro 1.1828

Dollar Index 92.646

Japan Yen 104.98

Swiss Franc 0.9120

Pound 1.3178

Aussie 0.7284

India Rupee 74.1675

South Korea Won 1115.25

Brazil Real 5.3856

Egypt Pound 15.672

South Africa Rand 15.4050

He said, “Don’t get high on your ambitions. You won’t be able make money on the back of this nation. You won’t be able to make this nation kneel.” 

Conclusions

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer

https://rich.co.ke/srch/results.php?str=turning

Zambia is doing everything possible to avoid a sovereign debt default later this week, including sharing information on its Chinese debt with holders of its dollar-denominated bonds, its finance minister told Reuters on Monday.

Sources close to the main committee of bondholders, however, said little progress had been made in debt talks.

Even before the coronavirus pandemic caused a global economic slowdown, Zambia was struggling with mounting debt due to low prices for copper, its main export.

It has three outstanding dollar-denominated Eurobonds with a total face value of $3 billion.

It missed payment of a $42.5 million coupon on one of its Eurobonds last month and has asked creditors to delay interest payments until April, a request that has so far failed to receive support from bondholders.

A 30-day “grace period” on the coupon payment expires on Friday.

“We’ll wait and see. We’re doing everything possible,” Finance Minister Bwalya Ng’andu told Reuters by ‘phone. “The discussions (with bondholders) are on a continuous basis.”

When asked whether Zambia had the resources to pay the coupon within the grace period, he said his country had committed to treating all its creditors the same.

Its dollar bonds are currently trading between 44-46 cents on the dollar, according to Tradeweb data. 

With the pandemic adding to pressure on some African countries already struggling with unsustainable debt, Zambia is being closely watched as a test case for how borrowers and creditors might navigate a broader debt crisis.

Eurobond holders have cited Zambia’s lack of progress in talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and poor transparency regarding its borrowing from China as obstacles to their agreeing to its request to suspend debt payments.

Ng’andu said his government had shared requested information with creditors.

“We’ve given all the information that needs to be given concerning the Chinese debt,” he said.

However, the source close to the Zambia External Bondholder Committee - a large group of creditors holding more than 40% across all of Zambia’s bonds and a blocking stake in each issue - said they still did not have enough clarity.

“Creditors have not received detailed information on the Chinese debt,” the source said, adding that no discussions of substance had been going on.

A second source said creditors had “very low visibility on the terms, conditions and alleged arrears on Chinese or other commercial debt as well as specific proposed treatment of it.”

Zambia’s debt-to-GDP ratio is expected to top 100% this year, having ballooned from just over 30% in 2014.

Its external public debt burden is around $12 billion. Some $3.5 billion of that is bilateral debt, $2.1 billion is owed to multilaterals and $2.9 billion is other commercial debt in addition to the $3 billion of Eurobonds.

It owes about $3 billion to China and Chinese entities.

The China Development Bank agreed late last month to defer repayment on a loan to Zambia, but Eurobond holders say the deal’s announcement lacked details such as the loan’s size and terms.

Ng’andu said Zambia would continue to engage with Chinese institutions to seek further debt relief.

SARS-CoV-2 is a betacoronavirus and a close relative to the original SARS and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS) which both cause lethal diseases in human (Chen et al., 2020, Gussow et al., 2020). 

There are four other less pathogenic human coronaviruses (HCoV), HCoV-OC43, HCoV-HKU-1, HCoV-NL63 and HCoV-229E that cause mild upper respiratory tract disease referred to as the “common cold” (Chen et al., 2020, Gussow et al., 2020).

A potential factor could be the relatively younger African populations as compared to that in America or Europe. This may result in more asymptomatic cases (Gaye et al., 2020). 

Additionally, if the onerous high infectious disease burden in SSA includes exposure to human coronaviruses, this could elicit humoral responses against conserved epitopes among coronaviruses that might engender cross-protection. 

This prior exposure to other coronaviruses may offer some level of cross-protective immune responses against SARS-CoV-2 infection, thereby, reducing either the number and/or severity of COVID-19 cases.

To investigate this hypothesis, we examined pre-COVID-19 pandemic Tanzanian, Zambian and USA plasma samples for serological cross-reactivity against the spike and nucleocapsid proteins of SARS-CoV-2 and other human coronaviruses (SARS, MERS, HCoV-OC43, HCoV-HKU-1, HCoV-NL63 and HCoV-229E), as well as whether HIV-1 infection, which is endemic in SSA, could affect the prevalence of serological cross-reactive against SARS-CoV-2. 

We found that pre-COVID-19 pandemic sub-Saharan African samples have a significantly higher prevalence of serological cross-reactivity against SARS-CoV-2 than samples from the USA. 

Additionally, SARS-CoV-2 cross-reactive plasma samples strongly recognized the spike and nucleocapsid proteins from specific human seasonal coronaviruses, suggesting prior exposure to these other coronaviruses may induce partially protective responses against SAR-CoV-2.

Among our cohort, 6.7% and 43.4% of the Tanzania and Zambia samples, respectively, were HIV-1 positive. Whereas all plasma samples collected in the USA were HIV-1 negative. 

The high prevalence of HIV-1 infection in the Zambian samples does not reflect the national HIV-1 infection rates, but rather was intended to support comparison of cross-reactivity against SARS-CoV-2 and recognition of other coronaviruses between HIV-1 positive and negative subjects.

Despite the rapid spread of SARS-CoV-2 and causing nearly a million deaths worldwide to date, the SARS-CoV-2 burden in sub-Sahara Africa remains surprisingly low. 

This is despite a high prevalence of other diseases such as HIV-1, malaria, cancer and tuberculosis, and in addition to insufficient health care and the impact of poverty. 

Coincidently, the current SARS-CoV-2 disease burden is much higher in the USA than sub-Saharan African countries. 

Whether this low prevalence of serological cross-reactivity to HCoV in the USA, as we report here, is directly associated with the outcomes of the USA COVID-19 pandemic remains unknown. 

Our data suggests that populations in sub-Sahara Africa had been pre-exposed to a spectrum of HCoVs that have provided some cross-reactivity against SARS-CoV-2 and may have limited infections or pathogenesis on the continent. 

In support of this hypothesis, our study detected serological cross-reactivity against SARS-CoV-2 antigens in pre-COVID-19 plasma samples from Tanzania and Zambia at levels nearly 8- and 6-fold, respectively, higher than the prevalence in samples from the USA. 

Representative pictures of IFA with negative control plasma, COVID-19 convalescence plasma (positive control) and pre-COVID-19 pandemic cross-reactive plasma samples 21928 and 21933. 

Sample 21928 displayed cross-reactivity against SARS-CoV-2 spike, but not its respective mock and SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid. 

Sample 21933 displayed cross-reactivity against SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid, but not its respective mock and SARS-CoV-2 spike. White arrows indicate positive cells. Scale bar represent 50 µm.

(A) Combined serological cross-reactivity against SARS-CoV-2 spike and nucleocapsid. (B) Serological cross-reactivity against SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid. (C) Serological cross-reactivity against SARS-CoV-2 spike.

Representative pictures of IFA with pre-COVID-19 pandemic cross-reactive plasma samples 21854. 

Sample 21854 strongly recognized the spike protein of HCoV-OC43, HCoV-HKU-1, HCoV-NL63 and HCoV-229E, but not SARS and MERS. 

Sample 21854 only recognized the nucleocapsid of HCoV-NL63 and not the other human coronaviruses. White arrows indicate positive cells. Scale bar represent 50 µm.