My countries

Geography quiz

2007-02-21T23:34:00.000+01:00

Quake sounds reveal Earth 'ripping apart'

2007-01-26T19:13:00.000+01:00

Scientists may get clues for tsunami warning systems
Thursday, July 21, 2005
(CNN) -- Scientists are gaining insight about December's devastating earthquake and tsunami from the actual sounds of the magnitude 9.3 quake in the Indian Ocean.

"It's really quite an eerie sound to hear the Earth ripping apart like that. We hear it on smaller earthquakes quite frequently but something of this scale that goes on for eight minutes is very much unprecedented," said Maya Tolstoy, a marine geophysicist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

"It really gave me the chills when I first heard it," she said. The dramatic soundtrack of the rupture of the Sumatra-Andaman Fault comes from a little known, and sometimes hard- to- access resource. The microphones that captured the sound are part of a global network of instruments that monitor compliance with the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. More

Climate Changes Milestones

2007-01-26T18:45:00.000+01:00

http://wikimapia.org/

2007-01-19T15:35:00.000+01:00

2004 Tsunami with photogallery

2007-01-06T11:22:00.000+01:00

Problematic Earth's Hotspots

2007-01-06T11:12:00.000+01:00

Greenhouse effect

2007-01-06T10:49:00.000+01:00

Literacy rate in Africa

2006-11-27T15:44:00.000+01:00

Africa in 1990 and 14 years later in 2004 - the literacy rate of youthbetween 15-24 years of age

Indonesia - Aceh

2006-06-06T21:42:00.000+02:00

The Indian Ocean tsunami caused colossal death and destruction when it smashed into northern Indonesia, but it also helped galvanise a peace process to end one of Asia's longest running wars.

Rebels, who had been fighting for 30 years for independence in the province of Aceh, signed a peace deal with the government eight months after the disaster. Challenges remain but progress has so far exceeded all expectations.

Around 15,000 people, mostly civilians, were killed in the war and hundreds of thousands uprooted. Most have now returned home.

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The war began in 1976 when the Gerakan Aceh Merdeka (GAM), or the Free Aceh Movement, launched its campaign for independence. At its helm was Hasan Muhammad di Tiro, who was descended from a family with close ties to Aceh's former sultans and had worked in Indonesia's mission to the United Nations in the 1950s.

Fierce reaction from government troops forced Tiro and other GAM leaders to flee to Sweden, where they set up a self-styled government in exile.

The separatists accused Jakarta of grabbing too much of the revenue from the province's abundant natural resources like gas.

GAM maintained Jakarta was an occupying power in Aceh whose people were culturally and linguistically different from other Indonesians. (This could be claimed by many in a country made up of hundreds of ethnic groups with their own cultures and languages.)

Aceh is more solidly Muslim and more orthodox than the rest of the country. About 98 percent of Aceh's 4 million people are Muslim. Its location on the western end of the archipelago made it a gateway for Islamic influence and its main city Banda Aceh is known as "The Veranda of Mecca" (Islam's holy city).

In late January 2005 the two sides met face to face in Helsinki for the first peace talks in nearly two years.

Both parties made important compromises leading to the signing of a peace pact on Aug. 15. GAM dropped its independence demand and the government agreed to let GAM members participate in politics.

Elections in Indonesia's volatile Aceh province may be held in August if the parliament passes a bill on governing the region by next month, Vice President Jusuf Kalla said on Sunday.

Elections are a key component of a landmark Finnish-brokered peace pact signed between Indonesia and the separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM) last year.

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Capital: Jakarta
Area size: 1811570 sq. km

Language:
Bahasa Indonesia is the official language. There are hundreds of regional languages, among them Javanese. English is widely used for business purposes.

Ethnic groups:
The main ethnic groups include Malay, Javanese, Sundanese, Madurese and Papuan. There are also Chinese and Indian minorities.

Religion:
Islam is the main religion, accounting for 86 percent of the population. Nearly 10 percent are Christian, while Buddhist and Hindu minorities making up most of the rest.

Urban population: 45%

Percentage of population living on less than US$1 a day: 7.5 percent (1990-2003 )

Year women granted right to vote: 1945

Net percentage of girls enrolled in primary education: 92 (2002-2003)

Percentage of undernourished population: 6 percent (2000-2002 average)
Population with access to improved water: 78 percent (2000)
Population with access to improved sanitation: 55 percent (2000)

Literacy - average: 87.9 percent (2003)
Literacy - male: 92.5 percent (2003)
Literacy - female: 83.4 percent (2003)
(Human Development Report 2005)

GDP:
2004 - 257.6 current US$ billions (World Bank Data Profile Tables 2006)

Annual GDP growth:
2004 - 5.1 percent (World Bank Data Profile Tables 2006)

Percentage HIV+ (adults aged 15-49):
2005 - 0.1 percent (U.N. Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) 2006)

Number of refugees originating here: 16240 (2003)

Number of internally displaced people\Estimate: 342000 - 600000 (2005)

Percentage of GDP spent on military: 1.5 percent (2003)
Percentage of GDP spent on education: 1.2 percent (2000-2002)
Percentage of GDP spent on health1.2 percent (2002)

Angola

2006-04-27T22:14:00.000+02:00

Although Angola is Africa’s second-largest oil producer and rich in diamonds, it faces huge obstacles to its recovery from a 27-year civil war which killed 1.5 million people and uprooted more than 4 million.

Nearly 70 percent of the population lives below the national poverty line. A quarter of children in Angola die before the age of five, and at least 700,000 people are dependent on food aid for survival.

Angola has been the scene of war for more than 40 years, beginning with its war for independence from Portugal which ended in 1975.

Soon after independence, civil war broke out between the ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA).

The Cold War played a large part in Angola's civil war. The Soviet Union and Cuba supported the then-Marxist MPLA, while the United States and South Africa backed UNITA. But when the Cold War ended Angola's conflict continued. UNITA rebels funded themselves through diamonds, while the Luanda-based government relied heavily on oil sales.

In 1991 the two sides signed a peace deal. Elections were held in 1992 but UNITA rejected the results and resumed the war. Another peace deal was signed in 1994, but fighting broke out again in 1998 despite the presence of U.N. peacekeepers from 1995-99.

The war finally ended in 2002 when UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi was killed by government troops. The Angolan army and UNITA rebels signed a peace deal in April that year. Many former UNITA soldiers have since been integrated into the national army.

Conflict has continued, however, in the oil-rich enclave of Cabinda involving the separatist rebel group FLEC-FAC and government troops.

José Eduardo dos Santos has been president of Angola since 1979. The next general elections are due to take place in 2006.

Infrastructure
Poor infrastructure is one of the key obstacles to Angola's economic recovery. Large parts of Angola are almost completely inaccessible - roads, bridges and railways are either mined, washed away or were destroyed during the war. Poor infrastructure is also hampering the delivery of humanitarian aid and basic health and education services.

Landmines
Angola is the most heavily mined country in sub-Saharan Africa, and one of the most mined in the world. It is not yet known how many landmines there are but estimates vary from 500,000 to six million - cca 35% of the land.
The presence of landmines means:
transport by road and rail is dangerous or impossible.
it is difficult to build health clinics and schools - the land may be mined
it is dangerous to farm new land.

Oil and diamonds
Angola is Africa's second-largest oil producer after Nigeria. In 2003 the government earned $3.89 billion from oil revenues, according to IMF figures. The IMF predicts that oil production will double to 2 million barrels per day by mid-2007.

Angola is one of the world's largest diamond producers. Partnership Africa Canada says that despite a projected income of $900 million in 2005 from diamond mining, many people living in the diamond-rich provinces of Lunda Norte and Lunda Sul still have no drinking water, electricity or roads.

Corruption
Angola is one of the most corrupt countries in the world. Transparency International ranks it 151 out of 159 countries.

Agriculture
The majority of Angolans depend on agriculture for their survival. Before the war Angola was a major exporter of coffee and maize. But agricultural production plummeted during the war, and now more than 700,000 people are dependent on food aid.
Obstacles to recovery are:
*loss of skills among people who were forced off their land for decades
*poor infrastructure that cuts farmers off from markets, raises the cost of transport (many products have to be transported by air) and raises the cost of fertilisers and agricultural machinery
*landmines which prevent new land from being farmed
*loss of soil productivity
*periodic flooding and drought

Displaced people and refugees
Since the war ended in 2002 nearly 4 million internally displaced people (IDPs) and 333,000 refugees have returned home, or settled in their host communities. According to UNHCR, the vast majority of refugees still living abroad are in camps in Zambia.

Health and education
Angola spends less than two percent of its GDP on health and less than five percent on education. According to the World Bank, these are some of the lowest percentages in Africa (the continent average is six percent and 10 percent respectively).

Angola has some of the worst health statistics in the world:
*Life expectancy is 40.2 years (United Nations Development Programme 2002)
*A quarter of children die before the age of five (U.N. Children's Fund)
*The most deadly diseases are: malaria, diarrhoea, respiratory diseases, measles, recurrent cholera epidemics and sleeping sickness
*In 2004 and 2005 Angola experienced the worst outbreak of the rare Marburg virus, which killed 329 people, most of them in Uige Province (World Health Organisation)
*At least 45 percent of children are severely malnourished (World Food Programme)
*In the central highlands 52 percent of children under five have been permanently stunted through lack of food (WFP)
*70 percent of doctors are concentrated in the capital. Nurses and primary health care workers are in acute shortage. (WHO)
*A joint WFP/Food and Agriculture Organisation mission in 2004 found that about 80 percent of the population has no access to essential drugs

*Literacy rate: 42 percent of the population over 15 years (WFP)
*42 percent of Angola's children are out of school (UNICEF)

Source

The flag of Tuvalu

2006-04-08T23:59:00.000+02:00

Unusual Wildfire in Iceland

2006-04-08T00:11:00.000+02:00

In western Iceland in late March 2006, a large fire broke out in the grasses of a wetland area, which had been dried out by a period of persistent north winds. According to local reports, some farmers in the area had to evacuate their livestock to protect them from the fast-moving, wind-driven blaze. The fire took four days to control, and it burned somewhere around 67 square kilometers, the largest fire recorded since the island was settled in the 9th century.

In this image from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on NASA’s Terra satellite on March 30, 2006, a long plume of smoke blows westward away from the fire, whose location is marked in red in the image.

Westfjords in Iceland

2006-04-07T23:56:00.000+02:00

The West Fjords are a series of peninsulas in northwestern Iceland. They represent less than one-eighth the country's land area, but their jagged perimeter accounts for more than half of Iceland's total coastline.

I love this map

2006-04-07T23:50:00.000+02:00

The Republic of Vanuatu

2006-04-04T00:32:00.000+02:00

An island country in Melanesia, formely called New Hebrides (oh, so that is why no more news on Hebrids... ups :o)), good to know), with the capital city of Port Vila. The area is 12 190km, with the population of cca 205 thousand. This archipelago consists of some 83 islands that spread along the area of 800km -- the most famous ones being Espiritu Santo, Malakula, Efaté (with the capital city), Tanna etc. Most of the islands are mountainous or volcanic with mainly tropical climate.

In the early 17th century Spanish discovered these islands (1606), but it was only James Cook (1774) that named these islands The New Hebrides. The islands were under the French and British administration since 1887 and in 1906 it was agreed to establish Anglo-French Condominium. Since 1960s the country called for self-governance and in 1980, the independent republic was announced. There has been some political instability in 1990s, with attempted coup in 1996, and new elections were called several times since 1997.

The economy is based on agriculture (eg. fishing). Other industries are offshore financial services and tourism. There are no real mineral deposits. The economy is dependent on few commodity exports. Among the big threats to the economy belongs the frequent natural disasters, including severe earthquake in 1999 and 2002, followed by tsunami. The GDP growth is around 3% since 1990s. Vanuatu belongs among the tax havens, with no income tax, no capital gains tax etc.

Most of the population is rural, out of which some 95% are native Melanesian or Ni-Vanuatu, the rest are mainly British and French, followed by Asians and other Pacific islanders. Surprisingly only some 8% of population are of animistic religions, main part of population, cca 60%, belong to Presbyterian Church, and cca 15% being both Catholic and Anglican.