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France
Sahel Summit
At a regional summit held in the French city of Pau, representatives from Sahel countries agreed to step up military cooperation to fight growing jihadist insurgencies in West Africa. Leaders from Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad, Niger, and Mauritania, known together as G5, agreed to bring their troops under one joint command to fight Islamist militants, with France sending 220 more soldiers. Insurgent violence has grown every year since 2015, with the highest death rate in 2019. France intervened in the region in 2013 following extremist attacks in northern Mali and now has 4,500 troops in the region, the country’s largest overseas operation. Despite working to fight insurgent violence, France’s military presence in the region is faced with anti-French sentiment from citizens of the G5 nations on account of their colonial past.
This map depicts fatalities per violent incident across the G5 region over the past three years. Click on the map to expand.
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Graphic Source: Stratfor
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Ecuador
La Cumbre Volcano Eruption
La Cumbre volcano on Fernandina Island in the Galápagos erupted on Sunday night, following a 4.7 magnitude earthquake and 29 associated aftershocks. The volcano, more than 4,800 feet tall, spilled lava from a crack along its south-eastern flank towards the island’s coast. Though Fernandina is uninhabited, the island is home to numerous species including iguanas, penguins, flightless cormorants, snakes, and an endemic rat, which has very important ecological value, according to officials from the Galápagos National Park. The volcano last erupted in June 2018.
This map depicts the location of La Cumbre volcano on Fernandina Island in the Galápagos. Click on the map to learn more.
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Graphic Source: AFP
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World
Warmest Year Recorded for Ocean
Last year was the warmest year on record for the world’s ocean, according to a study released by Advances in Atmospheric Sciences yesterday. The new record set in 2019 continues a general warming trend: 2018 was the second warmest year on record, 2017 the third, 2015 the fourth, and 2016 the fifth. The study analyzes ocean heat content, which accounts for surface and deep-water ocean temperatures and is measured by 3,000 drifting floats recording both temperature and depth across the globe. This study follows an announcement last week by the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service that 2019 was the second hottest-year on record for land-surface temperatures.
This map depicts ocean heat content in 2019 compared to 1981-2010 baseline (top), and compared to 2018 (bottom). Click on the map to learn more.
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Q: Rubʿ al-Khali, the world’s largest area of continuous sand occupies more than one-fourth of which country’s total area?
A: Saudi Arabia
Located in the southern Arabian Peninsula, the Rubʿ al-Khali desert is also the largest portion of the Arabian desert. It covers approximately 250,000 square miles and is found in parts of Oman, Yemen, and United Arab Emirates.
Source
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Q: The world’s largest freshwater system is shared by which two countries?
Stay tuned for the answer to today’s question in tomorrow’s DailyGeo.
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