While collecting doom-laden images for 2011, Desdemona experienced a bit of déjà vu: another year of record flooding in the Philippines, and another year of record flooding in Pakistan. The Texas drought stretched on through all of 2011, causing record agricultural losses and depopulating the center of the state. Again, record-breaking wildfires swept through North […]
By George Webster, CNN28 October 2011 (CNN) – On the last day of October 2011, the U.N. says the world population will hit seven billion people – an increase of one billion since 1999. To show some of the impacts of this vast human upheaval, Canadian anthropologist Felix Pharand has created a series of visualizations […]
Nairobi, December 30 (allafrica.com) – Severe drought, exacerbated by poverty and conflict, hit at least four countries in 2011 – Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia – displacing hundreds of thousands of people. Thousands in Somalia and Ethiopia began the year by making the dangerous journey to Yemen. Others from these two countries headed for South […]
Video by David Blair22 December 2011 The United Nations says that 250,000 Somalis are suffering from famine in three regions including Mogadishu, a fact that Abdiweli Mohammed Ali, who leads Somalia’s officially recognised government, has denied. “I don’t believe there’s a famine in Mogadishu. Absolutely no,” he told The Daily Telegraph. “You know the aid […]
Contact: Dr Michael Taylor, m.taylor@landcoalition.org, Programme Manager, Global Policy and Africa International Land Coalition Secretariat at IFAD, Tel: +39 065459 2267 The most comprehensive study of large land acquisitions in developing countries to date — published online on 14 December by the International Land Coalition (ILC) — has found more evidence of harm than benefits. […]
By Jonathan Fahey, AP Energy Writer30 December 2011 ALAMINOS CANYON BLOCK 857, GULF OF MEXICO – Two hundred miles off the coast of Texas, ribbons of pipe are reaching for oil and natural gas deeper below the ocean’s surface than ever before. These pipes, which run nearly two miles deep, are connected to a floating […]
[Is the Chinese real estate bubble bursting?] By Gus Lubin6 December 2011 Home prices in China most notorious “ghost city,” a city called Kangbashi constructed outside Ordos, have fallen from $1,100 per square foot in 2006 to $470 per square, according to the Hong Kong Standard. In the past few months alone prices have plunged […]
By Larry Copeland, USA TODAY27 December 2011 Nighttime stretches of road across the USA are being left dark by the theft of copper wiring from streetlights, and police are investigating whether the darkness contributed to some crashes. Copper thieves also are hitting traffic lights. The problem is particularly acute for localities where the sour economy […]
By Rana Foroohar 26 September 2011 It’s official: There are now more poor people in America than at any other time in the 52 years records have been kept. We knew that the 2010 poverty numbers, released by the Census Bureau on Sept. 13, weren’t going to be good. They turned out to be, in […]
By Bill Rigby27 December 2011 SEATTLE – Scientists in Alaska are investigating whether local seals are being sickened by radiation from Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant. Scores of ring seals have washed up on Alaska’s Arctic coastline since July, suffering or killed by a mysterious disease marked by bleeding lesions on the hind flippers, irritated […]
