In the county of Turkana in northwestern Kenya, one of the worst-hit areas in Africa’s locust outbreak, people serve as scouts using an app called e-Locust to report sightings of the pests in real time. They upload photos and videos with information about the location and size of locusts to a shared database. Another team uses the information to deploy pesticides to the area to prevent the insects from forming a moving swarm.

An Alaskan reader challenged us to share 10 reasons to take the coronavirus pandemic seriously—to believe that it is “not a hoax,” as she put it. Her state’s experience with the coronavirus has encouraged its residents to see it as a faraway problem: The entire state has suffered only 17 deaths so far, whereas a single nursing home in my area saw a higher death toll. 

SYRIA: Authorities reported the first confirmed case of the coronavirus in Idlib, where protracted fighting has displaced about 1 million Syrians and destroyed hospitals. Medical personnel believe they have been treating COVID-19 cases for weeks but lack testing to be sure, one nongovernmental organization leader told me.

Bolivian interim President Jeanine Áñez announced on Thursday that she has tested positive for the coronavirus. That same day, Venezuelan socialist party chief Diosdado Cabello became the highest-ranking official in that country to get infected. Áñez said she will self-quarantine and work remotely from the presidential residence for 14 days before getting retested.

The dizzying pendulum of conflicting information experts have offered during the coronavirus pandemic has revealed the perils of relying too much on computer models for scientific studies.

More than 20 scientists and experts wrote an editorial in the June 24 issue of Nature saying the politicization of COVID-19 research shows the need for change in conducting and reporting computer modeling studies. They also criticized how politicians use the results.

Even “The Most Magical Place on Earth” will show signs of the global pandemic when visitors start to return. Despite the rising number of COVID-19 cases in Florida, Walt Disney World will resume operations on Saturday, though certain areas of the park will remain closed. SeaWorld Orlando and Univeral’s three theme parks reopened last month.

WASHINGTON—Nicole Puerta works as a branch manager at Meador Staffing Services in Houston. For three years, she’s helped people get jobs. But she said the COVID-19 pandemic dealt a severe blow to temp agencies and the industry is just starting to recover.

“It just shocked us with how much business we lost,” Puerta said. “Our temps, our employees got laid off. And they couldn’t find another job; they kept calling us.”

For three months, from March to May, Puerta’s agency hardly had any work to offer.