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Poland
Trump Pledges 5,000 More Troops
United States President Donald Trump has announced plans to deploy an additional 5,000 troops to Poland. Trump announced the surprise deployment on social media late on Thursday, citing his friendship with Polish President Karol Nawrocki. The decision appeared to take both Polish and U.S. authorities by surprise, as the announcement followed U.S. declarations of plans to reduce military support to Europe. The Pentagon announced a week ago that it was scrapping the planned deployment of 4,000 troops to Poland. It remains unclear whether the deployment to Poland announced yesterday includes the same soldiers as those the Pentagon said would no longer be deployed to the Central European country, or if they will include redeployments from Germany.
This map depicts U.S. military bases in Europe. Click on the map to learn more.
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Graphic Source: BBC
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Cuba
Fuel Crisis and Mass Blackouts
Cuba has exhausted its oil supplies, leaving hospitals struggling to keep lifesaving equipment running amid blackouts that last up to 20 hours, with senior United Nations officials calling for immediate humanitarian support. Severe shortages of electricity, fuel, medicine, and medical supplies are part of a broader U.S. pressure campaign aimed at driving significant economic and political change on the communist-led island. The campaign appears to have entered a new phase, accelerated by the visit by CIA chief John Ratcliffe to Havana, the U.S. indictment of former Cuban leader Raúl Castro, and the deployment of an aircraft carrier in Caribbean waters near the island. The current U.S. embargo on Cuba puts the nation in a dire economic situation, as it derives 83% of its energy production from oil, most of it imported from Venezuela and Mexico. Oil imports from both countries have been cut off due to U.S. removal of Venezuela’s leader Nicolás Maduro and economic pressure on Mexico.
This map depicts Cuba’s electrical network and its sources of power, including oil and fuel, gas, hydroelectric, and solar power. Click on the map to learn more.
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Graphic Source: La Nación
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Space
Shortcut to the Moon
An international team of astronomers and physicists believe they’ve found a new route to the Moon that will save fuel. The new route, while more fuel-efficient, is not actually the shortest. Running over 30 million simulations on the trip from the Earth to the Moon, the results highlighted ways to economize how the spacecraft enters the L1 Lagrange point, where the gravitational forces of the Earth and Moon cancel each other out. At L1 a spacecraft can hold a stable position before using thrusters to head towards the Moon to carry out its mission. Perhaps counter-intuitively, in this newly-proposed route the spacecraft does a close lunar fly-by before heading back to L1. Despite the greater distance, this new route allows the spacecraft to take advantage of complex gravitational forces to get to L1 instead of consuming fuel to get there with thruster burns. Saving fuel is one of the most critical efficiencies to maximize in the massively expensive efforts to send humans into space.
This map depicts the newly-discovered route by which a spacecraft can take advantage of complex gravitational forces to reduce fuel consumption on a mission from the Earth to the Moon. Click on the map to learn more.
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Q: What national park in Southern California represents an area of convergence of two distinct desert ecosystems?
A: Joshua Tree National Park
Joshua Tree National Park is a national park of the United States in southeastern California, east of San Bernardino and Los Angeles and north of Palm Springs. It is named after the Joshua trees (Yucca brevifolia) native to the Mojave Desert. Originally declared a national monument in 1936, Joshua Tree was redesignated as a national park in 1994. Straddling San Bernardino and Riverside Counties, the park includes parts of two deserts, each an ecosystem whose characteristics are determined primarily by elevation: the higher Mojave Desert and the lower Colorado Desert. The Mojave receives less summer rainfall and endures longer periods of freezing temperatures in the winter than the Colorado Desert with its more southern location, lower elevation, and exposure to a summer monsoon rainfall pattern.
Source
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Q: What country’s coast is home to the Colchic Rainforests and Wetlands, a UNESCO World Heritage Site?
Stay tuned for the answer to today’s question in Monday’s DailyGeo.
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