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Taiwan
Chinese Military Drills
Taiwan deployed its military forces on Wednesday in response to Chinese joint combat drills involving 32 aircraft and warships near the island, according to Taipei’s defense ministry. The drills included live-fire exercises about 40 nautical miles off Taiwan’s southern coast. According to Taipei’s defense ministry, China’s People’s Liberation Army violated international norms by conducting live-fire exercises without prior warning. Taipei defense officials are concerned at the potential danger to the safety of international flights and vessels at sea and declared this to be a provocation to regional security and stability. Meanwhile, China’s Ministry of National Defense has not commented on Tuesday’s drills.
This map depicts Chinese military activity around the island from the morning of February 26 to the morning of February 27. Click on the map to learn more.
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Graphic Source: Reuters
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Democratic Republic of the Congo
M23 Rally Blast Kills 11 in Bukavu
At least 11 people were killed and 65 wounded by explosions in the city of Bukavu during a rally for the M23 rebel group and their supporters. Corneille Nangaa, the leader of the Congo River Alliance, which includes M23, was present at the rally. The meeting was the first to be attended by Nangaa since his forces seized control of Bukavu, the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) second largest city, nearly two weeks ago. M23 fighters have swept through the eastern DRC, seizing key cities and killing about 7,000 people. There are reports of sexual abuse of children and recruitment of minors as soldiers. The advance has been described as the gravest escalation in more than a decade of the long-running conflict in the eastern DRC, which is rooted in the spillover of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide into the DRC and the struggle for control of the DRC’s vast mineral resources.
This map depicts M23 advances in North and South Kivu Province, in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Click on the map to learn more.
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Ivory Coast
Earliest Humans in Rainforests
A new study in Nature journal shows that humans lived in rainforests at least 150 thousand years ago in Africa and argues that human evolution occurred across a variety of regions and habitats. Our species originated in Africa around 300 thousand years ago, but the ecological and environmental contexts of our evolution are still little understood. In the search for answers, rainforests have often been overlooked, generally thought of as natural barriers to human habitation. In this study, researchers challenge this view with the discovery that humans were living in rainforests within the present-day Ivory Coast much earlier than previously thought. The location was first discovered in the 1980s on a joint Ivorian-Soviet mission, revealing a deeply stratified site containing stone tools. Using state-of-the-art methods, this new study successfully dated the site. This pushes back the oldest known evidence of humans in rainforests by more than double the previously known estimate.
This map depicts the African study sites dated between 130-190 ka (ka = thousands of years ago). Click on the map to learn more.
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Q: Which Chinese city was once referred to as the “city of 100 lakes”?
A: Wuhan
Known as the “city of 100 lakes,” Wuhan has been defined by its relationship to water for centuries—a vast mosaic of rivers, lakes, and harbors account for nearly a quarter of its total area, which over 8 million people call home. Located at the confluence of the Yangtze and Han rivers and a vast alluvial plain, the city is also surrounded on three sides by forested mountains and deep river valleys. Wuhan is home to 165 rivers and 166 lakes, and about 162,000 hectares of wetlands, certifying it an “international wetland city.” The megacity plays a significant role as not only a transport hub for humans, but also a transfer station for migratory birds that usually make a stopover during their long migration.
Source
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Q: What country is home to the largest glacier in the Alps?
Stay tuned for the answer to today’s question in Monday’s DailyGeo.
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