Unsustainable urban sprawl continues to spread through the world responding to massive population growth and poor planning practices, as people clamor to escape the crowded, contaminated, crime-ridden urban miasma like Cairo.
International Issues
BP Dead-Zone in the Gulf, Delta Mass Fish-Kill
Keep in mind the ongoing scientific research regarding the undersea plume of oil and dissolved methane gas in the Gulf of Mexico from 3,200 to 4,300 feet below the surface. Studies estimated it more than a mile wide, 650 feet thick and at least 35 kilometers (22 miles) long, but probably longer, as the researchers had to break off because of Hurricane Alex.
Crackdown on Teachers in Tegucigalpa Looking Like Dictatorship, Not Unity and Reconciliation
A non-violent road-block protest by teachers at the National Pedagogical University “Francisco Morazan” in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, calling for increasing the minimum wage, reinstatement of fired workers, and payment of past-due contributions to a pension and benefits fund, ended with teargas, beatings, and arrests.
Planned Petrodollar Utopia for Kazakhstan?
Called Astana, it is the world’s latest example of a rare but persistent type, the capital built from zero. It is in a line that includes St Petersburg, Washington DC, Canberra, Ankara and Brasilia and like them it provokes a question: can a city, in all its teeming complexity, really be planned? Or does the attempt lead only to a synthetic simulacrum, a kind-of city that is not quite the real thing?