Brittle and gritty - and as revolting as they sound - these are "mud cakes". For years they have been consumed by impoverished pregnant women seeking calcium, a risky and medically unproven supplement, but now the cakes have become a staple for entire families.
Mumbai - according to the UN - has a population of 19 million. And the UN forecasts that total will rise to more than 26 million by 2025. At that point, it would be the most heavily populated "urban agglomeration" in the world, apart from Tokyo and its surroundings. Mumbai's increase in population will partly be caused by increasing life expectancy and partly by migration from other, poorer, parts of India. Although Mumbai is India's commercial capital and rents for luxury apartments are some of the highest in the world, it is estimated that more than half the city's population live in slums. And controversial plans to redevelop the slums highlight some of the problems faced by mega-cities around the world.
In 1956 the town mayor approved plans to build the now famous
avenues along the Levante which would welcome at first Spanish
tourists and later those from Holland, Germany and Britain. The first
package holidays to Benidorm for as little as 21 euro for a week
half board in the four star Delfin Hotel including air travel to
Valencia airport which opened in 1933. In those early years the
coach trip from Valencia took four and a half hours. Late evening
arrivals when hotel kitchens were closed necessitated a stop at a
road side Tapas bar where a bottle of wine would only cost 9
pesetas and dinner 15 pesetas.
Alicante airport did not open until April1967. Once opened this
was the biggest contributing factor to Benidorm´s success as a
holiday resort, together with the introduction of modern jet airliners.
These made flying more cost effective and for the first time
enabled the ordinary family to enjoy a basic holiday abroad. This
was the beginnings of the end for many seaside destinations in
Britain such as the channel islands which saw tourist numbers
decline rapidly. Passenger numbers reached 8.9 million in 2005
and a new terminal is due to open in 2009 to cope with the
increased air traffic of which 80% arrives from foreign destinations.
Health Profiles Interactive is a service new to Health Profiles 2008. It was designed to allow users to select indicators and areas for comparison through a map or list in an intuitive visual interface including the Health Profiles spine chart format.
The interactive atlases have been produced at several different geography levels to allow indicator comparisons over these geographies.
Full scale work by the Chinese begins to rebuild 2,050 miles of roads in the Democratic Republic of Congo, left to rot in the rainforest after the Belgian colonialists pulled out 48 years ago and further shattered by seven years of war.
The vast project, which will triple Congo's current paved road network, is part of China's largest investment in Africa, a £4.5 billion infrastructure-for-minerals deal signed in January.
Recordings of all sorts of UK dialects and accents
This is a map showing the location of news correspondants. Great for Geography in the news items
We throw out 4.1m tonnes of food each year - the equivalent of £420 for every home. The government wants us to cut back, but how can we break our habit? Laura Barton and Jon Henley ask the experts for tips
A Canadian fossil park, an Icelandic volcanic island and an archipelago in Yemen are among the latest sites to be added to the World Heritage list of natural wonders. Each year the IUCN World Conservation Union evaluates hundreds of nominated sites for the list in a bid to protect and preserve natural heritage around the world that is considered to be of outstanding value to humanity. There are 855 properties on the World Heritage list: 663 are of cultural importance, 166 of natural value and 26 are mixed sites
For the first time in human history more people are living in urban than rural places. Over the summer of 2008 URBAN EARTH will be travelling on foot across Mexico City, London and Mumbai to witness our increasingly URBAN EARTH.
Go to the website and click CREATE.
Move and zoom the map until it shows an interesting place. Provide some hints for the person / friend who will try to solve the puzzle (a number of hints can be provided) and a message that they will see if the riddle is solved. After saving the quiz you can send it by mail to a friend or embed it in your homepage as a picture. The task is to find the place shown in your picture on a second google map.
The website has 6638 different quizzes stored. 108274 quizzes were solved and
927275 opened.
Denmark is the happiest country in the world, according to the latest World Values Survey published by the United States National Science Foundation.
The annual study surveyed people in 97 countries to discover who is happiest.
Half a million British expatriates living on Spain's Costa Blanca are to lose their right to free healthcare under a radical new law introduced by the provincial government.
The Spanish authorities say that providing for 500,000 Britons - most of whom are over 50 - and other European residents living in the Valencia region is placing an impossible burden on the country's health service.
The huge fashion store Primark sacked three of its suppliers last week after an investigation for the BBC's Panorama and The Observer uncovered children labouring in Indian refugee camps to produce some of its cheapest garments. Here we reveal the brutal reality of a supply chain that sees children as young as 11 sewing T-shirts which cost shoppers just a few pounds to buy on high streets across Britain. Watch the Panorama preview here
An interactive simulation designed to teach students about
natural resources and the issues surrounding globalisation
This site provides lots of different games, most of which are against the clock. The games revolve around locating places or features on maps. Most suitable for A,G&T students at KS3 or GCSE and A-Level students.Wide variety available
World Maps - click on the countries you want so they are shown on a world map
Mercer Consulting's annual roundup of the global cities with the best quality of life is here, and Zurich once again comes out on top. The best place in the U.S.? Honolulu at No. 28.
New York, London, and Paris are internationally renowned cities but consultants at Mercer Consulting have picked Zurich, Switzerland, as the best place to live in the company's annual survey.
More from BusinessWeek.com:
• World's Most Expensive Real Estate Markets
• World's Most Affordable Housing Markets
• Countries With Most Millionaire Households
Consultants rated each city on a variety of factors including the level of traffic congestion, air quality, and personal safety reported by expatriates living in more than 600 cities worldwide. In the top 25, U.S. cities such as San Francisco, Boston, and Chicago were all edged out by Geneva, Switzerland, Vancouver, B.C., and Auckland, New Zealand. The highest-scoring U.S. city is Honolulu, which came in at No. 28.
The-World's-Best-Places-to-Live-2008: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance
Global food crisis http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/7432583.stm UN food response http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10926579 rising food prices http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/09/food.unitednations - global food crisis http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/7284196.stm food facts http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/12/egypt.food http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/polit ics/the-other-global-crisis-rush-to-biofuels-is-driving-up-price-of-food-808138.html http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/news/events/gecafs-0408.php food stories http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7432972.stm rural people fight back in Lesotho
Nasa scientists have said they could be on the verge of a breakthrough in their efforts to forecast earthquakes.
Researchers say they have found a close link between electrical disturbances on the edge of our atmosphere and impending quakes on the ground below.
The crisis will require a complex package of policy responses over the short to long term
Food aid Seeds Fertilisers Export Bans Free trade
BioFuels Agricultural Investment GM Crops Sustainabiity
Interactive VIDEOS on the food crisis from China, Egypt, Scotland and the Phillipines.
INTERACTIVE Global food crisis
People in the South West are more likely to live into their mid 70s than those living elsewhere in England and Wales, official data shows.
The cost of cleaning-up the UK's ageing nuclear facilities, including some described as "dangerous", looks set to rise above £73bn, the BBC has learned.A senior official at the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority said the bill would rise by billions of pounds. Nineteen sites across the country, some dating from the 1950s, are due to be dismantled in the coming decades.
The last two decades of the 20th century produced mounting evidence that climate change posed significant risks to society. At the beginning of the 21st century, climate change has become a defining issue of our time. The importance of this issue is underscored by its magnitude and complexity: it is a global problem with wide geographic and economic disparity between the largest sources of the problem and those who will experience the greatest impacts. Many solutions often run counter to powerful entrenched interests and long-held patterns of individual behavior. All of this is happening amidst a global community that is increasingly connected by flows of information, people, commerce and environmental change. This collection brings together some of the world’s leading scientists and organizations and presents the essential knowledge underlying the issue of climate change.
There are going to be 19 cities with over 20 million people in the 21st century.
The world produces enough food to ensure every person a healthy and productive life, yet more than 800 million people suffer from chronic malnutrition, while large numbers of others suffer from obesity. The UN’s Millennium Development Goals seek to reduce the percentage of hungry people by half by the year 2015. Considering the plentiful resources available and the terrible consequences of starvation, hunger and malnutrition, it is a very modest commitment. Political leaders of virtually every country have endorsed the goal. But these same leaders are doing very little to build a strategy or to implement required change.
The noise maps on this site have been produced by Defra to meet the requirements of the Environmental Noise (England) Regulations 2006, and are intended to inform the production of noise action plans for large urban areas, major transport sources, and significant industrial sites in England.
Two Asian countries reeling from the horror of tens of thousands of people probably dead and hundreds of thousands more made destitute and homeless.
And two governments, one a military junta and the other a Communist oligarchy, both traditionally suspicious of outside intervention.
But what a contrast between the different ways they are handling their situations.
A massive search and rescue operation is under way in south-western China after one of the most powerful earthquakes in decades.
Troops have arrived in Wenchuan county at the epicentre, which was largely cut off by the quake - but heavy rain is hampering rescue operations.
Barcelona has begun the unprecedented move of shipping in drinking water as the region experiences its worst drought in at least 60 years.
China kills more than 8,500 in one region (Financial times) http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/06c839fc-1ff2-11dd-80b4-000077b07658,dwp_uuid=9c33700c-4c86-11da-89df-0000779e2340.html?nclick_check=1
* Thousands feared dead as strong quake hits China (New York Times) http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/world/asia/13china.html?_r=1&partner=MOREOVERNEWS&oref=slogin
* Thousands feared dead in China Quake (LA Times) http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-chinaquake13-2008may13,0,6114570.story
* Frantic search for 900 buried schoolchildren as massive China earthquake kills 7000 (Daily Mail) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=565912&in_page_id=1811
* In Pictures – China earthquake (BBC News) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/7396502.stm
* ‘Buried teenages crying for help’ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7396650.stm
* China earthquake kills thousands (The Guardian) http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/12/china?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront
* At least 7,000 are killed in China earthquake http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article3917473.ece
* Red Cross on Death toll (BBC News video) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/7396786.stm
* China Earthquake – News and Videos about China Earthquake (iReport) http://www.ireport.com/ir-topic-stories.jspa?topicId=21421
o Thousands dead in Chinese Quake (BBC News) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7396400.stm
o China kills more than 8,500 in one region (Financial times) http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/06c839fc-1ff2-11dd-80b4-000077b07658,dwp_uuid=9c33700c-4c86-11da-89df-0000779e2340.html?nclick_check=1
o Thousands feared dead as strong quake hits China (New York Times) http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/world/asia/13china.html?_r=1&partner=MOREOVERNEWS&oref=slogin
o Thousands feared dead in China Quake (LA Times) http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-chinaquake13-2008may13,0,6114570.story
o Frantic search for 900 buried schoolchildren as massive China earthquake kills 7000 (Daily Mail) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=565912&in_page_id=1811
o In Pictures – China earthquake (BBC News) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/7396502.stm
o ‘Buried teenages crying for help’ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7396650.stm
o China earthquake kills thousands (The Guardian) http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/12/china?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront
o At least 7,000 are killed in China earthquake http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article3917473.ece
o Red Cross on Death toll (BBC News video) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/7396786.stm
o China Earthquake – News and Videos about China Earthquake (iReport) http://www.ireport.com/ir-topic-stories.jspa?topicId=21421
A landslip described as "the worst for 100 years" has destroyed more than 400 metres (1,312 ft) of Dorset's World Heritage Jurassic Coast.
The earth movement blocked a stretch of beach between Lyme Regis and Charmouth at 2031 BST on Tuesday.
A Coastguard spokeswoman said the site was "still rumbling" when crews left for the night. It was too dark to see but work resumed at first light.
Boulders "the size of cars" are still at risk of falling onto the beach.
The area is part of 95 miles (153 km) of Dorset and east Devon known as the Jurassic Coast, with rocks recording 185 million years of the earth's history.
FILM CLIP available
INTERACTIVE site with calculator
