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Haiti
Port-au-Prince in Chaos
Violent gangs have stormed the main port of the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince, cutting off one of the last conduits for food and other humanitarian aid to the impoverished country. Haiti’s Prime Minister, Ariel Henry, went missing abroad for a few days this past week, after making a trip to Kenya to try to come to an arrangement for Kenyan peacekeepers to help impose order at home. With the capital city’s main airport coming under attack from the gangs, Henry tried to fly into the Dominican Republic to find a land route into Haiti, only to be turned away, forcing his plane to land in Puerto Rico. The largest faction of gangs, called the G9, is led by a former police officer, Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier, who has demanded Henry step down to prevent a civil war. The fighting in Haiti, which has already killed thousands and displaced tens of thousands, is still in danger of becoming an even larger humanitarian disaster.
This map depicts areas of conflict and major targets of the gangs that are close to completely overrunning Haiti’s capital of Port-au-Prince. Click on the map to learn more.
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Graphic Source: Reuters
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United States
Measles Outbreak Expands
Seven more states have been added to the list of places in the US where at least 18 infections of measles have been reported. Seventeen states have reported increases in cases of measles, the worst outbreak since 2019. Vaccination rates are also at their lowest levels in a decade. As of last week, 41 new cases of measles have been reported, on track to exceed last year’s 53 total cases. The U.S. risks losing its status as a country where the disease has been considered eliminated, which it achieved in 2000. Officials at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) state measles can be prevented with vaccines, but communities with low vaccination rates are at the most risk. The virus is highly contagious and 90 percent of unvaccinated people who are exposed to the disease will contract it.
This map depicts several states with increases in cases of measles, following an emergency warning by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Click on the map to learn more.
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Graphic Source: USA Today
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Australia
Great Barrier Reef Mass Bleaching
The Great Barrier Reef, the world’s largest reef system, is undergoing its fifth mass coral bleaching event in just under a decade as a result of heat stress. The Australian government-run Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority conducted aerial surveys of over two-thirds of the nearly 133,000 square mile area. They found prevalent shallow water coral bleaching consistent with patterns of heat stress. When the animals that constitute coral are stressed, the algae that live within their tissues as their primary food source, leaves. The algae provide the coral with their usual vibrant color, which is why the animals turn white, or become bleached, when the algae leave. Bleached coral is not dead, but they are significantly more vulnerable. If the water temperatures continue to be higher than normal, bleached corals can die from stress or starvation. As global temperatures rise, sea surface temperatures also rise, highlighting the risk to coral reefs not just in Australia, but around the world.
This map depicts the mass bleaching events of the past five years in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Click on the map to learn more.
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Q: Where can you find the world’s largest deposits of amber?
A: Baltic Sea
Amber can be best defined as the fossilized resins of extinct tree trunks. One of the oldest forms is Baltic Amber. It comes mainly from around the shores of the Baltic Sea, from today’s Lithuania, Latvia, Russia (Kaliningrad), Poland, southern Sweden, northern Germany, and Denmark. Today, more than 90% of the world’s amber comes from Kaliningrad Oblast of Russia. The richest deposits are on and around the Samland peninsula, a large, fan-shaped area that corresponds to the delta region of a river that once drained an ancient landmass that geologists call Fennoscandia. This ancient continent now lies beneath the Baltic Sea and the surrounding land. In antiquity, most amber from the Baltic shore was harvested from shallow waters and beaches where it had washed up, especially during autumn storms that agitated the seabed. It was only in the early modern period that amber began to be mined.
Source
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Q: In what two modern-day Central American countries did England establish a kingdom?
Stay tuned for the answer to today’s question in Monday’s DailyGeo.
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