BBC NEWS Online MIGRATION

LINK

BBC NEWS | Health | Bed-blocking 'on the rise again'

Delayed discharges from hospitals - so-called "bed-blocking" - rose sharply last year, according to figures released in Parliament.

In total, more than a million "bed days" were lost, with an increase of almost 30% in acute hospitals.

Link to BBC NEWS | Health | Bed-blocking 'on the rise again'

Global food crisis looms as climate change and fuel shortages bite | Environment | The Guardian

Empty shelves in Caracas. Food riots in West Bengal and Mexico. Warnings of hunger in Jamaica, Nepal, the Philippines and sub-Saharan Africa. Soaring prices for basic foods are beginning to lead to political instability, with governments being forced to step in to artificially control the cost of bread, maize, rice and dairy products.

Record world prices for most staple foods have led to 18% food price inflation in China, 13% in Indonesia and Pakistan, and 10% or more in Latin America, Russia and India, according to the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO). Wheat has doubled in price, maize is nearly 50% higher than a year ago and rice is 20% more expensive, says the UN. Next week the FAO is expected to say that global food reserves are at their lowest in 25 years and that prices will remain high for years.

Link to Global food crisis looms as climate change and fuel shortages bite | Environment | The Guardian

Migrants stories -CASE STUDIES

4 case studies
Catherine Chuungwe, 43, from Zambia, settled in Northern Ireland three years ago
Narina Shorland, 24, from St Petersburg, works at Riverford Organic Vegetables in Devon
Grzegor Jagienak, 22, from Poland, has been in the UK for three months working full-time as a bartender at Cargo, a club in Shoreditch, east London
Victoria Patricio, 28, born in Botswana, has Portuguese nationality and has been in Thetford, Norfolk, for three years. She is a facilitator with Meta, a project working with migrants

Link to Labour accused of failing to tackle misinformation | The Guardian | Guardian Unlimited

New 'disaster' movie warns world of oil apocalypse | Environment | The Observer

Oil is 'the bloodstain of the earth's economy' and will soon trigger a global conflict that will cost millions of lives. That is the stark claim of a controversial new film, which says a crash in oil production is about to set off worldwide recession and economic collapse.

LINK to the films website

Link to New 'disaster' movie warns world of oil apocalypse | Environment | The Observer

Multinationals lead India's IT revolution

GLOSSARY

Outsourcing: Moving company functions from internal departments to external firms

Offshoring: Relocating corporate activities overseas.

Nearshoring: Relocating offshore activities nearer the client's home country

BPO: Business processing outsourcing - moving white collar tasks like accounting or invoicing. to an external firm

Captive firms: Companies owned by foreign multinationals who perform outsourcing services for the parent firm

UK call centres/US contact centers: Offices where workers provide telephone customer services like sales

Link to BBC NEWS | Business | Multinationals lead India's IT revolution

Climate Change website

Link to Home page of Climate Change website

Mass exodus from Mexico flooding

Hundreds of thousands of people are fleeing severe flooding in the southern Mexican state of Tabasco.

The state capital, Villahermosa, has been largely abandoned after the Grijalva river burst its banks late Thursday, submerging much of the city.

Link to BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Mass exodus from Mexico flooding

Three Gorges Dam

Interactive site from FT.com

Link to 571cc608-87e4-11dc-9464-0000779fd2ac.swf (application/x-shockwave-flash Object)

Tread Lightly

If we all Tread lightly we can make a difference

Guardian launches unique website to help readers to reduce carbon footprint.

If Guardian readers...

Switched to energy-efficient light bulbs this week, we could turn off a coal-fired power station for one day, one hour, 46 minutes and 1 second.

Turned off all appliances for a week instead of leaving them on standby, the power station could be turned off for 15 hours, 12 minutes and 43 seconds.

Turned down their thermostat by 1C for a week, we could turn off a coal-fired power station for 22 hours, 21 minutes and eight seconds.

Link to Tread Lightly | Environment | Guardian Unlimited

Globalisation Guide

Useful site that poses a series of questions.

Section onwho are the players is especially useful

Link to Globalisation Guide

Population

This resource pack describes and explains what are the global patterns of population change through:

• interpretation of world population distribution
• interpretation of the demographic transition model
• interpretation of differing population structures

These materials support the Global Citizenship and Interdependence element of the WJEC GCSE geography (A - mainstream) specification, in particular the key question "What are the global patterns of population change?" The materials also offer the learning experiences of interpreting maps and graphs.

Animation and graphics are used to show the dynamic nature of population change. A set of background notes is provided as guidance for the teacher.

Link to Introduction

A380 superjumbo lands in Sydney

The world's largest passenger plane, the Airbus A380, has landed in Sydney on its first commercial flight, after a seven-hour journey from Singapore.Singapore Airlines took delivery of the huge plane, dubbed the Superjumbo, just over a week ago. Passengers bought seats in a charity online auction. It can carry some 850 passengers, but took about 450 to Sydney.

The superjumbo's advent ends a reign of nearly four decades by the Boeing 747 as the world's biggest airliner.

Link to BBC NEWS | Business | A380 superjumbo lands in Sydney

Humans failing the sustainability audit

With its Geo-4 report, the United Nations tells us that most aspects of the Earth's natural environment are in decline; and that the decline will affect us, the planet's human inhabitants, in some pretty important ways.

There is a link tothe PDF file which is downloadable.

BEWARE is huge

Link to BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Humans failing the sustainability audit

Air-freight food must pass fair trade test to retain organic label in future

Food air-freighted to Britain from developing countries will only bear an organic label in future if it can be shown that it was produced to fair trade standards as well as high environmental standards, the Soil Association said yesterday.

The move by Britain's leading organic inspectors follows concern about the climate change impact of food flown long distances and fears that some developing countries are in danger of losing markets due to new "green" protectionism.

The association rejected calls from the public, environmentalists and some of its own producers for a ban on all air-freighted organic food, deciding this would penalise many poor countries which benefit in terms of jobs and wages from growing organic food for British consumers.

Link to Air-freight food must pass fair trade test to retain organic label in future | Environment | The Guardian

Country Information

Maps and information available

Link to Countries of the World : geography, tourism, politics, economy, culture

Katine

With the right flight connections, a journey from the 21st century to the 14th century can take just over 12 hours. It begins in the hot, crowded duty-free hell of Heathrow's terminal 3 and ends - through the bushes down a snaking mud track - by the marshes under a cloudless blue African sky.

This is Katine, in northern Uganda, which for the next three years will be the centre of a unique experiment between a newspaper, its readership, a bank and an NGO. Together, we're going to try to help the people who live here to make a significant difference - harnessing the power of 21st century communications, expertise, resources and good will to help change lives still trapped in the 14th century.

There are excellent videos on some of the issues :

Improving income generating opportunities Most people in Katine are subsistence farmers. Farmers generally lack knowledge or capacity to add value to their crops and live hand to mouth

Improving access to quality primary education

Drop out rates are high in Katine and schools lack basic facilities such as latrines, clean water and textbooks

Empowering communities to engage in local governance

In the decentralised administration structure in Uganda, communities are meant to run their own affairs – in reality they lack the resources to participate

Improving access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene

The lack of safe water in Katine makes people sick. Diarrhoea, typhoid and bilharzia are common, preventable diseases

Improving community health

Preventable diseases cause 75% of premature deaths in Katine. The key health problems include malaria and maternal health.

The site aslo includes a VIRTUAL VILLAGE. What is it?
This is an interactive experience of the village of Katine. This site will evolve and change over the coming years, alongside the development project. So please visit now and come back every week or two to follow the updates and get to know your favorite characters, places and stories. See for yourself what development in Africa means, not only for donors and aid agencies, but also for the people it is intended to help.

Link to Katine Katine Guardian Unlimited

OS Explore

EXPLORE is a new beta application from Ordnance Survey, allowing you to create and share your routes with the world, and join in with ones that already exist

Link to OS Explore

Climate change controversies: a simple guide

The Royal Society has produced this overview of the current state of scientific understanding of climate change to help non-experts better understand some of the debates in this complex area of science.

• Misleading argument 1 : The Earth's climate is always changing and this is nothing to do with humans.
• Misleading argument 2 : Carbon dioxide only makes up a small part of the atmosphere and so cannot be responsible for global warming.
• Misleading argument 3 : Rises in the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are the result of increased temperatures, not the other way round.
• Misleading argument 4 : Observations of temperatures taken by weather balloons and satellites do not support the theory of global warming.
• Misleading argument 5 : Computer models which predict the future climate are unreliable and based on a series of assumptions.
• Misleading argument 6 : It's all to do with the Sun - for example, there is a strong link between increased temperatures on Earth with the number of sunspots on the Sun.
• Misleading argument 7 : The climate is actually affected by cosmic rays.
• Misleading argument 8 : The scale of the negative effects of climate change is often overstated and there is no need for urgent action.

Link to Climate change controversies: a simple guide

Sustainable Cities Index

How do UK cities really measure up?

The race to be a truly ‘sustainable city’ is increasingly competitive, with Manchester determined to become ‘the Greenest City in Britain by 2010’, Bristol wanting to become a ‘Green Capital’ and London aiming for nothing less than the status of ‘most sustainable city in the world’.

Aiming to cut through the rhetoric, this report brings rigour to the debate by using current data to determine who’s sustainable and who’s not. In it, each of the UK’s 20 largest cities are analysed according to three criteria – their ‘environmental impact', ‘quality of life’ and ‘future proofing’ – and given an overall ranking which summarises the results.

The data reveals that Brighton and Hove is the most sustainable city followed by Edinburgh in second place and Bristol in third. Liverpool comes bottom of the list, after Hull in 18th place and Birmingham in 19th.

In the UK, around nine in ten people live in towns and cities. Globally, we are now a majority urban world. We have no choice but to learn to live together in sustainable ways in cities. This will mean providing a high quality of life for all residents. It will also mean reducing the wider environmental impact of cities.

We chose three baskets of indicators against which to rank the cities.

• The Environmental Impact of the city – the impact of the city on the wider environment in terms of resource use and pollution
• The Quality of Life for residents – what the city is like to live in for all its citizens.
• Future Proofing – how well the city is preparing itself for a sustainable future.

We selected these index categories to reflect the sustainability of each city in a fair and balanced way. We used a total of 13 indicators, spread across the three baskets. The indicators use existing data on aspects of performance on which cities are already expected to make improvements. We intend to measure these indicators year-on-year.

Link to Sustainable Cities Index | Forum For The Future