Ever wonder what's happening around the world? This weekly column for Storeboard.com will give you a global perspective of interesting, entertaining, and newsworthy happenings around the planet Earth!
The columns focus on what's happening on planet Earth continent by continent during the coming week and also include important events from the previous week. This is the eighth weekly column.
Here's what's happening from Monday, Dec. 9 through Sunday, Dec. 15, 2013:
STOREBOARD SALUTES NELSON MANDELA
Mandela passed away Thursday as I was writing the Africa item. The leading emancipator of South Africa and its first black president was 95. He could accurately described as a statesman, dissident, and liberator.
Here is what The New York Times said about him -- “Mr. Mandela’s quest for freedom took him from the court of tribal royalty to the liberation underground to a prison rock quarry to the presidential suite of Africa’s richest country. And then, when his first term of office was up, unlike so many of the successful revolutionaries he regarded as kindred spirits, he declined a second term and cheerfully handed over power to an elected successor, the country still gnawed by crime, poverty, corruption and disease but a democracy, respected in the world and remarkably at peace.”
THE CONTINENTS
Africa: It was a bad week in Africa. I read two stories about dying species. Salon magazine reported that all of the Sahara Desert’s 14 species are endangered or extinct in the desert. The Bubal hartebeest, the scimitar horned ornyx, the African wild dog and the African lion are extinct. The 10 endangered species include the dama gazelle, the addax, the leopard and the Saharan cheetah. In the other article, Scientific American reports that the okapi, which looks like a zebra but is related to the giraffe, is endangered because of the civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the only nation where it exists.
Antarctica: Metallica is the only band that has played on all seven continents. That’s because it’s the only band to ever play in Antarctica. Actually, the band’s performance was scheduled for Dec. 8, which is after this was written but I’m going to assume that the concert wasn’t cancelled because of bad weather because Metallica kind of knew it was going to be cold. The concert was indoors near the heliport of the Argentine Antarctic Base Carlini. The audience was people taking a cruise from Tierra del Fuego, a chain of islands of about 135,000 people that is partly in Argentina and partly in Chile.
Asia: John Glenn once yelled at me. That anecdote has nothing to do with Asia, but this brief reminded me of that incident. It’s an out-of-the-world brief. China is interested in the moon. India is interested in Mars. Last week, China began its first attempt to land a spacecraft outside the Earth when it launched a spacecraft into, well, space. China hopes to land a robot on the moon by next week. Last month, India began its first attempt to land on Mars. No one’s first attempt succeeded, but the United States, the Soviet Union and Europe eventually landed on Mars. Altogether, 17 of 40 attempts to land on Mars succeeded.
Australia/Zealandia: I thought New Zealand was on the continents of Asia or Australia, which includes the nations of East Timor and Papua New Guinea and part of Indonesia. After one hour of research, I learned that it isn’t on any continent. It’s part of Zealandia, a microcontinent. The nation has fewer than five million people, but it was the defending Rugby League World Cup champion, having won in 2008. Last week, the Kiwis were dethroned, losing to the Australia Kangaroos in the 2013 championship 34-2 in Manchester, Great Britain. The other 12 nations in the tourney were Great Britain, the Cook Islands, Fiji, France, Ireland, Italy, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Scotland, Tonga, the United States and Wales.
Europe: The world’s biggest brainiacs will be in Stockholm, Sweden, and Oslo, Norway, on Tuesday to receive their Nobel Prizes. The winners in Chemistry, Economics, Literature, Physics and Physiology or Medicine will be in Stockholm while the Peace Prize winner, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), will accept its prize in Oslo. The Stockholm recipients will be Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt and Arieh Warshel in Chemistry; Eugene F. Fama, Lars Peter Hansen and Robert J. Shiller in Economics; Alice Munro in Literature; François Englert and Peter W. Higgs in Physics; and James E. Rothman, Randy W. Schekman and Thomas C. Südhof in Physiology/Medicine.
North America: Did you know that the first full day of Chanukah was on the same day as Thanksgiving for the first time since 1888 this year and that won’t happen again for another 77,798 years? This topic could be the subject of humor at Chicago’s Royal George Theatre Center in a show called “Old Jews Telling Jokes” that will run until Jan. 26, 2014. The show features “actual old Jews -- no comedians, no actors,” according to Chicago Reader magazine. It is on Tuesdays through Fridays at 7:30 p.m., Saturdays at 5 p.m. and 8 p.m., and Sundays at 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. It costs $49-$59.
South America: The next World Cup will be from June 12 through July 13, 2014 in 12 cities in Brazil -- Belo Horizonte, Brasília, Cuiabá, Curitiba, Fortaleza, Manaus, Natal, Porto Alegre, Recife, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador and São Paulo. Rio will host the title game. The pairings for the 32 teams were announced on Dec. 6. Spain, which won the last World Cup in 2010, is ranked first. The rest of the top 10 is Germany, Argentina, Colombia, Belgium, Uruguay, Switzerland, Netherlands, Italy, and England. Brazil is ranked 11th, the USA 13th. Argentina was the last South American nation to host the World Cup -- in 1978.
Here are the previous seven columns in chronological order. The first one covered Oct. 21 through Oct. 27.
http://newyork.storeboard.com/blogs/news/whats-happening-around-the-world/222550
http://newyork.storeboard.com/blogs/news/whats-happening-around-the-world--oct-28-nov-3/233783
http://newyork.storeboard.com/blogs/news/whats-happening-around-the-world--nov-4-nov-10/236105
http://newyork.storeboard.com/blogs/news/whats-happening-around-the-world--nov-11-through-nov-17/237804
http://newyork.storeboard.com/blogs/news/whats-happening-around-the-world--nov-18-through-nov-24/239456
http://newyork.storeboard.com/blogs/news/whats-happening-around-the-world--nov-25-through-dec-1/242035
http://newyork.storeboard.com/blogs/news/whats-happening-around-the-world--dec-2-through-dec-8/244013
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