A blog for Ralph Allen geographers
At the end of another of Kinshasa’s potholed roads, lined with shacks and crumbling matchbox houses, comes a sudden clearing. It is a sandy patch of land surrounded by water in which bare-chested boys in dugout canoes paddle among the hyacinths. A giant pump is working day and night, reclaiming land from the sandbanks and river beds, expanding the city in defiance of nature.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/25/africas-middle-class-hope-continent?newsfeed=true
Brazil has overtaken the UK to become the world’s sixth-largest economy, according to a team of economists. The banking crash of 2008 and the subsequent recession has relegated the UK to seventh place in 2011, behind South America’s largest economy, which has boomed on the back of exports to China and the far east.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/dec/26/brazil-overtakes-uk-economy
A tropical storm has hit the southern Philippines, triggering flash floods that officials say have killed more than 430 people and left many missing.
Animals may sense chemical changes in groundwater that occur when an earthquake is about to strike. This, scientists say, could be the cause of bizarre earthquake-associated animal behaviour. Researchers began to investigate these chemical effects after seeing a colony of toads abandon its pond in L’Aquila, Italy, in 2009 – days before a quake.
With Christmas three weeks away, an undercover investigation has revealed the bleak realities of life in Chinese toy factories serving a market worth £2.8bn a year in the UK alone. Big brands such as Disney, Lego and Marks & Spencer pay only a fraction of the shop price of products to the factories that make their toys. Last summer – as factories geared up to cope with demand for the Christmas period – investigators spent three weeks in the industrial cities of Shenzhen and Dongguan.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/04/chinese-toy-factories-christmas-disney
Hundreds of metres under one of Iceland’s largest glaciers there are signs of a looming volcanic eruption that could be one of the most powerful the country has seen in almost a century
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15995845Iceland volcano eruption
An undersea volcano erupting just south of Spain’s Canary Islands may be the beginnings of a new island, or an extension to an existing one. For some, it’s a colourful spectacle – for others a major blow to their livelihood.
A brand new Canary island is emerging from the sea as an underwater volcano bubbles to the surface. Magma off the Canary Island of El Hierro has been spewing 20 metres high as the sea boils with a smell of sulphur. As it grows and gets closer to the surface, more and more debris such as stones start to shoot out of the volcano which, until now, has only shown its explosive power below the surface. It is now just 70 metres from the surface and islanders are already trying to come up with a name for the new island. It is quite close to El Hierro and if it continues to erupt it could eventually meet up with the mainland.
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