Scoop.it

South Sudan On Brink Of ‘Rwanda-Like’ Genocide, Commission Warns

“In a meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Council, commission chief Yasmin Sooka reported murder and rape on an ‘epic’ scale. ‘We are running out of adjectives to describe the horror,’ she said.”

Source: www.npr.org

Since December 2013, South Sudan has been embroiled in a civil war that began as a primarily political conflict, but has since taken shape between the country’s two largest ethnic groups, the Dinka and the Nuer. One of the many tragedies has been the impact on the children living in South Sudan.

Tags: South Sudan, political, ethnicity, Africa, war.

December 18, 2016 0

Skokomish River salmon cross the road

“Watch salmon race across the road on their way to spawn; for more footage, watch this extended version.”

Source: www.youtube.com

We often see examples of how human modifications to ecosystems or watersheds have devastatingly negative impacts. This is a remarkable example from Washington’s Olympic Peninsula that shows the resiliency of natural systems to overcome human modifications to the physical landscape. If you study the world, you will always have something to both amaze and surprise you.

Tags: fluvial, biogeography, environment, geomorphology, physical, water, environment adapt, environment modify.

December 17, 2016 0

How Jane Jacobs beat Robert Moses to be the ultimate placemaker

“Jane Jacobs lacked formal training in city planning but became an urban visionary who promoted dense, mixed-use neighborhoods where people interacted on the streets. She also became the nemesis of New York master builder Robert Moses. On our inaugural episode, we’ll explore Jacobs’ legacy and how the ideas and ideals of ‘St. Jane’ hold up today.”

Source: www.slate.com

How do you create a sense of place? How can you make a neighborhood more vibrant and meaningful to the residents? These are questions that central to city planners, community organizers, activists, home owners, renters, business owners, and a wide range of local stakeholders. The Placemakers podcast has many episodes on these topics worth listening to, starting with the one about Jane Jacobs, a leading urbanist who was a proponent of “The Cheerful Hurly-Burly” of the “zoomed in” city life who fought against Robert Moses’ more sterile “zoomed out” spaces of transportation flows. In another podcast titled “the quest for the perfect place,” the series explores new urbanism and the ideas that have shaped the movement.

Tags: place, neighborhood, urban, planning, urbanism, podcast, scale.

December 16, 2016 0

China installs weapons on contested South China Sea islands

New satellite imagery indicates that China has installed weapon systems on all seven artificial islands it has built in the contested waters of the South China Sea, a move that’s likely alarm the country’s neighbors.

UPDATE: After this news, the Pentagon says a Chinese warship has seized a US Navy underwater drone collecting unclassified data in international waters in the South China Sea.

Tags: borders, political, confl ict, China, remote sensing, East Asia.

Source: www.cnn.com

December 15, 2016 0

Is being childless a taboo in Nigeria?

“Childlessness affects millions of women and couples around the world. Infertility in the man or woman is sometimes the cause, as can be the presence of a medical condition or untreated illness. Women across Africa report that not having a child is often frowned upon, and sometimes carries a stigma. Market-goers in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, share their views with BBC Africa’s Bola Mosuro.”

Source: www.bbc.co.uk

Nigeria’s population is growing–there are economic as well as cultural explanations for this and in these two videos, the BBC explores some of the cultural factors that impact family size in West Africa. Some African couples who now live in the U.K. still face some of these cultural pressures to have large families.

Tags: Nigeria, population, demographics.

December 15, 2016 0

Finding North America’s lost medieval city

Cahokia was North America’s biggest city—then it was completely abandoned. I went there to find out why.

Source: arstechnica.com

The earthen mounds of Cahokia on the flat flood plains must have been the most awe-inspiring demonstration of political power and economic wealth in its day. Like so many other civilizations before them (and many more in the future?), Cahokia probably declined from too many environmental modifications that led to unforeseen consequences.

Tags: urban ecology, indigenous, environment, environment modify, historical, North America.

December 14, 2016 0

Aleppo Is Falling

How Assad and Russia achieved a major victory at a devastating cost

Reports from Aleppo have been particularly harrowing for the past month, as Syrian government forces, supported by Russian airstrikes and Iranian-backed militias, have squeezed the remaining rebels out of the eastern portion of the city. The collapse seemed to come all at once, with fighters loyal to Bashar al-Assad making more territorial gains in the city’s rebel enclaves since mid-November than they had in the previous four years since the opposition first seized it.

As the offensive reached its final stages this week, the United Nations received reports of massacres of civilians; a spokesman for the UN high commissioner for human rights said women and children had been shot trying to flee.

Source: www.theatlantic.com

During the fighting between the Assad regime and the rebels, ISIS has taken advantage of the situation to recapture Palmyra.

Tags: Syria, war, political, terrorism, ISIS, Middle East.

December 13, 2016 0

Statehood, Politics, and Scale in D.C.

“Washington may be the political center of the free world, but its 670,000 residents don’t have a say in the national legislature. What they do have is a nonvoting delegate in the House of Representatives. Eleanor Holmes Norton can introduce legislation and vote in committee, but she can’t vote on the House floor. Over the course of 13 terms, the ‘Warrior on the Hill’ been fighting to change that.”

Source: www.slate.com

If you haven’t discovered the podcast “Placemakers” you are missing out. In this episode, they explore the competing political context of Washington D.C. Since this podcast ran, the citizens of the district voted overwhelmingly for statehood, but since the governance of the district operates more at the national scale then on the local level, statehood is not happening anytime soon.

Tags: place, podcast, political, autonomy, scale, Washington DC.

December 13, 2016 0

Mapping the World’s Migration Flows

Visualizing the flow of the world’s migrants from country to country.

Based on data from the U.N. Population Division, this map shows the estimated net migration (inflows minus outflows) by origin and destination country between 2010 and 2015.

Blue circles = positive net migration (more inflows). Red circles = negative net migration (more outflows). Each yellow dot represents 1,000 people.

Hover over a circle to see that country’s total net migration between 2010 and 2015. Click a circle to view only the migration flows in and out of that country.

For more info about this map, read the article, All the World’s Immigration Visualized in 1 Map.

Tags: migration, USA, mapping, population, unit 2 population.

Source: metrocosm.com

December 12, 2016 0