Environment

Last August, in a hilarious example of bad timing, Japan restarted its first nuclear reactor since the Chernobyl redux at Fukushima just as a nearby volcano was set to erupt.

Sakurajima, one of the country’s most active volcanos, erupts almost constantly, but experts warned the next eruption could be “the big one”, so to speak.

At the time, The Japan Meteorological Agency raised the warning level from 3 to 4.

4 means "prepare to evacuate."

Just like the global panic that gripped the world in October 2014 when the Ebola virus had spread from western Africa to many nations around the globe, including several isolated cases in the US, so a year and a half later, the world is urgently scrambling to unleash a sense of panic surrounding the Zika virus which, just like Ebola, came out of nowhere and is fast becoming the latest scapegoat for collapsing global commerce this year's invisible bogeyman.

Here are some of the latest developments.

At Least 54 People Infected in the U.S.

A strong magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck southern Taiwan early on Saturday, according to the US Geological Survey . The quake struck at 11:57 a.m. PT about 14 miles northeast of the city of Pingtung, 19 miles (31 km) east-southeast of Tainan at a depth of 6.2 miles, the agency said. The USGS  have also warned that a magnitude 6.4 quake is capable of causing a “severe damage”, though there have been no reports casualties but one official said that a building had partially collapsed No tsunami warnings have yet been issued.

Japan’s Meteorological Agency has issued an orange warning as the Sakurajima volcano erupted sending lava down its slope and spewing ash and stones into the night sky. Lightning flashed above the flowing lava as the Sakurajima erupted on the southern island of Kyushu at around 7 p.m on Friday evening The Sendai nuclear plant which is located 50 kms (30 miles) from the volcano, was the first to be restarted after 2011’s Fukushima disaster, despite local opposition and meteorologists’ warnings, following tremors in the nearby volcano.

An Indian pharmaceutical company has announced a Zika virus vaccine, and says it plans on trialling it in two weeks time.  Bharat Biotech are scheduled to begin pre-clinical trials for the world’s first Zika vaccine candidate. Good.is reports: Bharat Biotech started developing a Zika vaccine months before the current outbreak, applying lessons the company learned producing vaccines for chikungunya and dengue, which are spread by the same species of mosquito.