KEY POINTS:
Authorities in Liberia have set up a command post and called on international experts to help fight an invasion by millions of crop-devouring caterpillars that are eating their way across the country with dire economic consequences. The 2-3cm caterpillars are clogging wells and waterways with excrement and devouring banana, coffee and cocoa crops. They swarmed around a clinic in one town, preventing people from accessing it. The plague has now affected 65 towns.