Irish Examiner View: Swarms devour crops - Plague of locusts

The worst outbreak of desert locusts in decades is currently underway in the Horn of Africa. It is the biggest of its kind in 25 years for Ethiopia and Somalia – and the worst Kenya has seen for 70 years. Pakistan is also affected.

The potential catastrophe is of biblical proportions, redolent of the Book of Exodus in the Bible, in which God sends a plague of locusts to the pharaoh of Egypt as retribution for refusing to free the enslaved Jews.