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Evidence of continental drift and Pangaea 

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Evidence of continental drift and Pangaea 

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First coal-free day in Britain since Industrial Revolution

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First coal-free day in Britain since Industrial Revolution

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Britain went a full day without using coal to generate electricity for the first time since the Industrial Revolution, the National Grid says.

The energy provider said Friday's lack of coal usage was a "watershed" moment.

Britain's longest continuous energy period without coal until now was 19 hours - first achieved last May, and again on Thursday.

The government plans to phase out Britain's last plants by 2025 in order to cut carbon emissions.

Friday is thought to be the first time the nation has not used coal to generate electricity since the world's first centralised public coal-fired generator opened in 1882, at Holborn Viaduct in London.

Cordi O'Hara of the National Grid said: "To have the first working day without coal since the start of the industrial revolution is a watershed moment in how our energy system is changing.

"The UK benefits from highly diverse and flexible sources of electricity. Our energy mix continues to change and National Grid adapts system operation to embrace these changes."

But Ms O'Hara says that while the country makes the transition to a low carbon system, coal remains an important source of energy.

According to Gridwatch.co.uk, around half of British energy on Friday came from natural gas, with about a quarter coming from nuclear plants.

Wind, biomass, and imported energy were also used.

Analysis
By John Moylan, BBC industry correspondent
Coal has powered Britain for more than a century.

But Friday's landmark moment - the first 24 hour period without any coal powered generation - is a sign of how the once mighty fuel is being consigned to history.

Part of the reason is that solar panels and wind turbines now provide much more electricity to factories and homes. Lower power demand is a factor too - that's normal on a Friday.

And as older, uneconomic coal fired plants have closed in recent years, the fossil fuel has been playing a much smaller role in our energy system.

The last deep coal mine in the UK, Kellingley Colliery in North Yorkshire, closed in December 2015, bringing to an end centuries of deep coal mining in Britain.

Hannah Martin, from Greenpeace UK, said: "A decade ago, a day without coal would have been unimaginable, and in 10 years' time our energy system will have radically transformed again."

Coal remained a dominant part of the energy supply until the 1990s, but its use has fallen in recent years, as plants closed or switched to burning biomass such as wood pellets.

It accounted for just 9% of electricity generation in 2016 - down from 23% the year before.

However, there have been claims that using wood pellets to generate electricity is actually speeding up, not slowing down, climate warming.

A study published by Chatham House in February said wood is not carbon neutral and emissions from pellets are higher than coal, making pellet use a flawed policy.

The energy industry rejected the report, saying that wood energy cuts carbon significantly compared with fossil fuels.

Key moments for coal-fired power

1882 - The world's first public coal-fired generating plant is opened at Holborn Viaduct in London

1956 - The Clean Air Act (1956) is introduced to tackle the smog created by coal fired stations. Coal-burning power stations are moved out of cities

1970s - Coal for heating homes is increasingly replaced by natural gas from the North Sea

1980s - Nuclear power grows to around 25% of electricity generation

1990s - 'Dash for gas' as natural gas grows to around 30% of electricity generation, largely substituting for coal

2015 - Renewables account for 25% of power supply

2016 - Government says it wants Britain's last coal power plants to close by 2025

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First coal-free day in Britain since Industrial Revolution - BBC News

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Britain went a full day without using coal to generate electricity for the first time since the Industrial Revolution, the National Grid says. The energy provider said Friday's lack of coal usage was a "watershed" moment. Britain's longest continuous energy period without coal until now was 19 hours - first achieved last May, and again on Thursday.

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he London Olympics claimed that its most enduring legacy would be "the regeneration of an entire community for the direct benefit of everyone who lives there". It is clear however, four year on, that without a rethink the housing legacy will be marked by the rapid gentrification of Stratford and surrounding areas and a negligible gain of genuinely affordable housing.

From the start there was a degree of vagueness about what the housing legacy would be, though terms such as "much" and "many" were used in reference to the proportion of affordable housing that would be provided and this won over opposition to the demolition of existing housing. There was also tension between the vision of the Greater London Authority with ambitions for 50% affordable housing on new developments and the London Borough of Newham which while supportive was keen to encourage more market housing in Stratford.

The conversion of the Athletes' Village into East Village stands as a marker of success while highlighting the tensions in delivering genuinely affordable housing. It is a mixed-tenure development that includes 49% affordable housing. Half of this is for social rent and the rent formula was agreed under previous targets for social renting that make it genuinely affordable. The other half is "intermediate", including a mix of shared ownership and units for rent at costs more closely linked to the market and at odds with local incomes. In 2015, median household incomes in Newham were just under £29k, yet a two-bedroom intermediate unit required a minimum household income of £48k and a three-bedroom shared ownership property a minimum household income of £73k.

It was always assumed that the Olympic Park itself would be a key dimension of housing legacy. However, targets for affordable housing there have been revised down from 35%-40% in 2010 to a minimum of 20% and maximum of 35% in 2011, and a maximum of 31% in 2013. These cuts have been justified by the need to pay back debts and the loss of an uplift in land values following plans to accelerate development of two neighbourhoods.

It was also expected that hosting the games would accelerate the regeneration of the Lower Lea Valley and in 2005 "planning gain" was an important mechanism for levering affordable housing on new developments. However with concerns about the viability of schemes, there is evidence of developers making minimal contributions. Five towers being built or recently completed in Stratford include only 8% on-site affordable housing, all of which is intermediate. Some of these schemes do include financial contributions to off-site housing for social rent, yet this excludes low income families from taking advantage of the area's improvements. These contradictions have led to local campaigns such as the Focus E15 Mums and Boleyn 100.

Overall then we are not on track for an inclusive housing legacy. The policy context of 2016 is very different from 2005. Key instruments crucial to deliver affordable housing a decade ago no longer apply. Cuts to housing subsidy; the introduction of the 80% of market rates as the "affordable rent" model (in addition the introduction of the benefit cap and universal credit) and the declining value of planning gain will make it increasingly difficult for families on low incomes to live in high value areas. Plans for affordable housing have been diluted despite the increasing need for it. With a new London mayor committed to increasing affordable housing in the park is there a chance to return to the original promises? Since 2012, Newham has recorded the largest property price rises of any London borough and the area around the East Village has emerged as a "buy to let" hotspot. Rental costs have also shot up and a combination of rising rents and the benefit cap make it increasingly difficult for households on low incomes to find accommodation in the area.

Housing built on the park and in surrounding areas could become a test bed for new models of housing finance and delivery, with a minimum of 50% affordable housing. A key challenge for the London Legacy Development Corporation is the need to repay debts, yet some of these should be written off and the substantial increase in land values could be levered to fund genuinely affordable housing. The legacy could capitalise on the extensive construction knowledge in East London and establish its own building company guaranteeing decent wages and cross-subsidising housing for sale with housing for rent. The legacy has to be lasting and should be exempt from "right to buy". This would remain in perpetuity as a gift to the people of London. Above all what is needed to realise the housing legacy promised by the London Olympics is the political will to achieve it.

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London Olympics has brought regeneration, but at a price locals can't afford | Penny Bernstock

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he London Olympics claimed that its most enduring legacy would be "the regeneration of an entire community for the direct benefit of everyone who lives there". It is clear however, four year on, that without a rethink the housing legacy will be marked by the rapid gentrification of Stratford and surrounding areas and a negligible gain of genuinely affordable housing.

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Thames Water fined £20m for sewage spill

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Thames Water fined £20m for sewage spill

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Thames Water has been fined a record £20m after pumping 1.9 billion litres of untreated sewage into the River Thames.

The company admitted water pollution and other offences at sewage facilities in Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire.

Fish and birds died following the spills in 2013 and 2014.

The £20.3m fine is the largest penalty handed down to a water utility for an environmental disaster.

Judge Francis Sheridan said the scale of the problem was such that it must have been known up the chain of command.

He told Aylesbury Crown Court it was inconceivable that all the individual managers made the same decisions to run pumps at half levels, calling it a "shocking and disgraceful state of affairs".

He added: "It should not be cheaper to offend than to take appropriate precautions."

The spills occurred at four Thames Water Utilities Ltd sewage treatment works, at Aylesbury, Didcot, Henley and Little Marlow, as well as a large sewage pumping system in Littlemore in Oxford.

Hundreds of fish were killed and sewage spilled into nature reserves, while nappies and other debris went into the Thames and the adjoining River Thame.

Manholes also overflowed and fewer dragonflies were reported.

Environmental damage was caused in the riverside towns of Henley and Marlow.
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Company director Richard Aylard said: "We have failed in our responsibility to the environment and that hurts both personally and professionally, because we do care.

"We've also failed in our responsibility to our customers who pay us to provide an essential public service all the time, every day and not just some of the time, and we apologise for all of those failings."

Judge Sheridan said the company had a "history of non-compliance" and that managers had ignored warnings and "risks identified by employees and others".

Staff recorded a "failure waiting to happen", he said.

Robert Davis, from the Environment Agency, called it some of the worst pollution he had witnessed.

He added: "I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The river was visibly polluted bank to bank with sewage.

"It was grey, it was lifeless, it had fish floating along it, and was polluted as far as the eye can see both downstream and upstream. It was really sad to see such a beautiful river so badly polluted."

Farmer Michael Woodford built a 3km [1.9 mile] fence to make sure his cattle did not access the water at the time.

He said: "We were very concerned about the welfare of our cattle.

"This type of pollution is very harmful to livestock and could be fatal to animals.

"It was shocking because the river was a haven of wildlife. There were always fish and crayfish in there. The whole of the wildlife was being destroyed by all this pollution."

Chief executive of Thames Water Steve Robertson said he deeply regretted the spills but claimed things at the company had improved since it had increased staff in key roles.

"We understand our huge responsibilities to the environment, have learned from these serious events and continue to invest at the rate of around £20m a week on continually improving our service to our customers and the environment."

'Parlous works'

The company has 21 days to pay the fine.

The previous largest fine handed down by a court was £2m, given to Southern Water in December after sewage was discharged into the sea near Margate.

Anne Brosnan, chief prosecutor for the Environment Agency, said: "Thames Water was completely negligent to the environmental dangers created by the parlous state of its works.

"Our investigation revealed that we were dealing with a pattern of unprecedented pollution incidents which could have been avoided if Thames Water had been open and frank with the Environment Agency as required by water company industry protocol."

Jeremy Stern, BBC News, at Aylesbury Crown Court

This is by far the largest fine Thames Water, or any UK water company, has ever been landed with.

However, the record sentence is not a surprise.

Fines for these types of offences have been going up since new guidelines were introduced in England and Wales in 2014.

Also Judge Francis Sheridan said more than once during this case that he wanted to send a message to shareholders that pollution on this scale is not acceptable.

However, the fine amounts to a tiny proportion of the company's annual income. Thames Water makes an operating profit of around £2m every day.

Louise Bowe, River Thame Conservation Trust chief executive, said: "We have been shocked as the catalogue of events from 2013 have come out in court.

"It was much worse than we thought and explains how the devastating damage to the river came about.

"Poor quality sewage effluent being released reduces oxygen in the water. Fish and other aquatic wildlife struggle to survive and the whole ecosystem can be damaged for many years.

"Some large fish that were killed cannot be replaced as species like large mature chub and roach are simply not available."

Doug Kennedy, from Cuddington, set up the Save the River Thame project after being "appalled" by the spills.

He said: "I was very shocked to find large dead fish on the river. The river was black. It had rather horrid little black flies bouncing over it. You couldn't see into it, it was just horrible.

"It's absolutely disgusting what was going on [at the sewage treatment works]... but we weren't aware of it.

"[There was] floating disgusting material - raw sewage - on the River Thames, as well as on the Thame."

Rose O'Neil, water policy manager at the WWF, said it was "not an isolated issue".

She added: "There are around 15,000 sewer overflows across England releasing raw sewage into our rivers.

"This case highlights the need for water companies to invest in solutions that manage the whole local catchment area such as green infrastructure and sustainable drainage systems. They simply can't continue treating our rivers as their dumping ground."

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Thames Water fined £20m for sewage spill

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Thames Water has been fined a record £20m after pumping 1.9 billion litres of untreated sewage into the River Thames. The company admitted water pollution and other offences at sewage facilities in Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire. Fish and birds died following the spills in 2013 and 2014.

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Peru has been experiencing floods - confirmed the worst for two decades

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Peru has been experiencing floods - confirmed the worst for two decades

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more than 100 injured after heavy rain continued its wave of destruction since the rainy season began earlier this month.

The Peruvian government said more than 60,000 people have been displaced and several cities have declared states of emergency.

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Updated March 19, 2017 16:18:58

Sorry, this video has expired

Authorities in Peru have declared that the intense rains, overflowing rivers, mudslides and flooding being experienced in the country are the worst seen in two decades, with the death toll since the beginning of the year having hit 72.

The highly unusual rains follow a series of storms that have struck hard along Peru's northern coast, with voracious waters inundating hospitals and leaving some small villages isolated.

The storms are being caused by a warming of the surface waters in the Pacific Ocean and are expected to continue for another two weeks, with the disaster affecting more than half the nation.

The Peruvian Government said that 374 people were killed in 1998 during a similar period of massive rains and flooding blamed on the El Nino climate pattern.

On Saturday, Prime Minister Fernando Zavala updated the number of dead from the latest flooding to 72.

Fumigation targets dengue-carrying mosquitoes

The rains have overwhelmed the drainage systems in cities along Peru's Pacific coast and the health ministry has started fumigating around the pools of water that have formed in the streets to kill mosquitoes that carry diseases like dengue.

Peru's capital city, Lima, has been without a water service since the beginning of the week.

The Government has deployed the armed forces to help police control public order in the 811 cities that have declared an emergency.

"The prices for lemons have gone up, as well as for potatoes and cooking oil," said Sara Arevalo, a mother of five who was shopping at a market in northern Lima.

The Government has acknowledged that prices have shot up some 5 per cent because of the flooding.

Inmates escape juvenile detention centre

In the Lambayeque region, 22 inmates at a juvenile detention centre took advantage of the rains to escape.

Rains flooded a cemetery in the city of Trujillo with the waters carrying bones through the streets.

Even in Lima, where a desert climate seldom leads to rain, police had to help hundreds of residents in an outer neighbourhood cross a flooded road on Friday, by sending them one-by-one along a rope through choppy waters.

The muddy current channelled down the street after a major river overflowed. Some residents left their homes with a single plastic bag carrying their belongings.

The presidents of Chile, Bolivia and Venezuela offered to send help to Peru.
AP
First posted March 19, 2017 16:15:23

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Death toll hits 72 in Peru's worst floods for two decades

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Updated March 19, 2017 16:18:58 Sorry, this video has expired Authorities in Peru have declared that the intense rains, overflowing rivers, mudslides and flooding being experienced in the country are the worst seen in two decades, with the death toll since the beginning of the year having hit 72.

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I disagree building on Greenfield sites because Brownfield sites aren't being used and wouldn't effect the population as building on greenfield sites.Green belts purpose is to stop expansion of cities.

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I disagree because it has been argued that there are enough brownfield sites to accommodate 1.5 million homes in east of London. According to the CPRE (The Campaign to Protect Rural England), more than half of the British countryside are at risk of 'urban sprawl' if planning permission are relaxed

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I disagree building in greenfield for many reasons like it can pollute the greenfield sites also why pollute greenfield sites if u have brown field sites and also don't use greenbelt  because people are actually trying ti stop the expansion of city

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I disagree with development on greenfield sites due to a variety of reasons

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I disagree with development on greenfield sites due to a variety of reasons

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As Industries and housing in the UK need to expand their manufacturing and warehousing operations, the need to consider between relocating to a greenfield site or a brownfield site where there is existing buildings is increasing. although I believe that building on brownfield sites is the better option

I believe that we shouldn't build on green field sites includes:
- Some sites are not fully developed and have additional development costs such as headworks costs for sewer and water
- Council approval time frames may be longer for new sites
- High demand of industrial sites may mean that sites available have difficulties

Wheres I believe that building on brownfield sites is the better option due to the fact that:
- It may include existing environmental licences and council approvals
- Existing infrastructure may already be in place
- Total project may cost less, but depends on how extensive the fit-out or modifications are, and whether existing structures and services can be utilized without major upgrades (ie electrical, drainage)

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i dsagree with building on the greenbelt because they can use brownfield sites and not destroy the green belt. If they start building on the  green belt then there wont be a purpose for it. teh whole idea of a green belt is to stop the city from expanding, however if they start building there then it doesnt serve a purpose.

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I disagree with this act as I believe that the green belt should be protected. The green belt is put in place not only to stop over-expansion of cities but also to conserve the environment, meaning that urban development of these areas will have a negative impact on the environment and wildlife.

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Building on the greenbelt - do you agree? do you disagree? Is this the only way to solve the UKs housing issues?

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Building on the greenbelt - do you agree? do you disagree? Is this the only way to solve the UKs housing issues?

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The green belt is being "sacrificed" to make way for new homes as councils face pressure to help the Government hit a target of 200,000 new properties a year, countryside campaigners are warning.

A report by the Campaign to Protect Rural England has revealed 275,000 homes are currently planned for the green belt - up 25% on last year.

Close to half of those are in the area around London, including Central Bedfordshire where residents are concerned about the rate at which protected land is being earmarked for development.

"We are set to lose five square miles of green belt and provide on it something like 13,000 additional homes," said rural campaigner Thurstan Adburgham.

"It's a huge tract of green belt countryside... Once the sacrifice on this scale has been made, obviously the principle has been lost that green belt is supposed to be sacred and sacrosanct and more could go."

Part of the problem, according to the CPRE, is that councils are using certain clauses in the Government's National Planning Policy Framework to change green belt boundaries at the fastest rate for two decades.

Paul Miner, the organisation's planning campaign manager, says this is being done to meet "unrealistic and unsustainable housing targets".

"To build the affordable homes young people and families need, the Government should empower councils to prioritise the use of brownfield sites. Brownfield land is a self-renewing resource that can provide at least one million new homes," he said.

But the Government says it has made it clear demand for housing alone is not enough to justify altering a green belt boundary and that the strongest of protections are in place.

"Our planning reforms have put local people at the heart of deciding where developments should and shouldn't go through local and neighbourhood plans," said a spokesman for the Department for Communities and Local Government.

"It means that in 2014-15 just 0.02% of green belt was converted to residential use, and the green belt is actually 32,000 hectares bigger than it was in 1997."

But while the decision to build on such land is rarely popular, there are those who believe it is necessary as first time buyers struggle to find a way onto the housing ladder.

"It's in areas where the green belt constraints are tightest - around London, Cambridge and Oxford - that the housing crisis and the house price affordability crisis is most acute," said Ryan Bourne, head of policy at the Institute of Economic Affairs.

"The Government has left it to local councils to decide but I do think as the affordability crisis bites there will be pressure on the boroughs, particularly around London, to release more green belt land for development.

"We're not talking about huge amounts here. If just 4% of around 500,000 hectares of land, which is close to stations and of no environmental designation, were released then we could build a million homes in London."

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Green Belt Being 'Sacrificed' For Housing

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The green belt is being "sacrificed" to make way for new homes as councils face pressure to help the Government hit a target of 200,000 new properties a year, countryside campaigners are warning. A report by the Campaign to Protect Rural England has revealed 275,000 homes are currently planned for the green belt - up 25% on last year.

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The Kibera ballet school is part of the Anno's Africa and www.onefineday.org projects working in slum areas in Kenya. Weekly ballet classes are held by the teacher and former dancer Mike Wamaya. In collaboration with a ballet studio in Karen, an upperclass area in Nairobi, young dancers are given the opportunity to be part of productions at the city's national theatre

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Kenya's slum ballet school - in pictures

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The Kibera ballet school is part of the Anno's Africa and www.onefineday.org projects working in slum areas in Kenya. Weekly ballet classes are held by the teacher and former dancer Mike Wamaya.

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Rainstorms and landslides in Chile have contaminated a major river

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Rainstorms and landslides in Chile have contaminated a major river

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Rainstorms and landslides in Chile have contaminated a major river forcing the authorities to cut off drinking water to at least four million people in the capital, Santiago.

Officials said the water supply from the Maipo river would be cut to most of the city until the water flowed clear.

At least three people have been killed and 19 are missing as rivers overflowed and bridges were washed away.

Almost 400 people have been cut off in the Cajon del Maipo mountainous area.

"Emergency teams are working on the ground to connect with isolated persons and re-establish the water supply wherever possible," Chilean President Michelle Bachelet wrote on Twitter [in Spanish].

Aguas Andinas, which provides the capital with drinking water, said continuing rain was making repairs difficult. The company said it did not know yet when the water supply could be restored.

Regional governor Claudio Orrego said weather conditions in the mountains near Santiago remained "very bad".

"We had many landslides in a very short space of time," he said.

A 12-year-old girl was killed when the car she was travelling in with her family was swept away by a landslide in the O'Higgins region, south of Santiago.

Two more people died in Cajon del Maipo.

Mr Orrego said the heavy rains which had fallen since Saturday were "absolutely anomalous" for the summer period.

Stocking up

More than 60% of households in Santiago woke up on Sunday to find their taps running dry.

Many queued to fill buckets and pans with water provided by the authorities.

Some shops ran out of bottled water and a number of supermarkets reported scuffles between people eager to stock up.

Restaurants and businesses in the affected areas were ordered to stay closed and schools were also told to delay the start of the school year, scheduled for Monday.

The flooding follows months of drought and a series of deadly wildfires which burned for weeks.
Are you affected by the water cuts? How are you dealing with the situation? Email haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk with your experiences.
Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist. You can also contact us in the following ways:

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Chile floods: Millions without water in capital Santiago - BBC News

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Rainstorms and landslides in Chile have contaminated a major river forcing the authorities to cut off drinking water to at least four million people in the capital, Santiago. Officials said the water supply from the Maipo river would be cut to most of the city until the water flowed clear.

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Tribal Clashes Improved Health care Lack of Resources Effects of Rapid Urbanization Due

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Alex,Charlie,Zac and George Kibera - Case Study Why Socio - Economic deprivation occurs The Social and Economic differences existing in Urban Areas The Characteristics of Urban Deprivation Due to a rapid increase of population in Cities. Population Growth Urbanization Natural increase caused by a decrease in death rates while birth rates remain high.

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Case study of a squatter settlement - kibera, nairobi

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Case Study of a Squatter Settlement - Kibera Shanty Town in Nairobi, Kenya

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More than 180,000 people in northern California have been told to evacuate after two overflow channels at the US's tallest dam were found to be damaged.
The 770ft (230m) high Oroville Dam is not itself at risk of collapsing, but its emergency spillway was close to caving in, officials said.

Officials feared the damaged spillway could release large amounts of floodwater downstream.

The excess water has now stopped flowing.

However, late on Sunday, Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said the evacuation orders remained in place.

Water levels in the reservoir have risen following heavy rain and snow after years of severe drought.

It is the first time that Lake Oroville, which lies 65 miles (105km) north of Sacramento, has experienced such an emergency in the dam's near 50-year history.

The evacuation order came after water levels in the reservoir rose sharply last week. The dam's main spillway, also known as an overflow channel, was found to be damaged.

As the water rose even higher, the dam's emergency spillway was activated for the first time since its completion in 1968.
'Evacuees welcome at my home'
However, this secondary slipway was also found to be damaged.

An evacuation unlike any other

It wasn't just the people who needed to be moved out of harm's way - the emergency has prompted a relocation of fish on a scale never before attempted in a flood situation. Downstream from Oroville Lake, workers have transferred five million baby fish at the state-operated Feather River Hatchery for the endangered Chinook salmon.

Deadly amounts of silt, sand and mud are spewing into the ponds. The hatchery raises about eight million salmon a year, or 30% of the $4bn salmon-fishing industry in the state, said Andrew Hughan, spokesman for California Department of Fish and Wildlife. About three million of those fish are still at risk because of the eroding spillway.

With water visibility at zero, dozens of workers have been scooping up the fish, one net at a time, and moving them by truck to a holding pond. One million steelhead trout eggs have had to be left behind and are unlikely to survive in the turbid water.

In a statement posted on social media on Sunday afternoon, Mr Honea ordered residents to evacuate, repeating three times that it was "NOT a drill".

The California Department of Water Resources warned that the emergency spillway next to the dam was "predicted to fail".

There was gridlock on roads heading out of Oroville, a town of 16,000 people, with some evacuees complaining that they should have been given more warning.

One evacuee, Nancy Borsdorf, told AP she "panicked" and was in such a hurry to leave she "grabbed some wet laundry. Can you believe that?"

Several hours after the evacuation order, the emergency spillway was still standing.

However, California Fire Incident commander Kevin Lawson said officials stood by the decision to evacuate residents, rather than risk thousands of lives.

He said if the situation was not dealt with they were looking at "a 30ft wall of water coming out of the lake".

The California Department of Water Resources said it was releasing as much as 100,000 cubic feet (2,830 cubic metres) of water per second from the main spillway to try to lower the lake's level and relieve the pressure.

Helicopters were dispatched to drop boulders to try to block the eroded area in the spillway.

Butte County's official Twitter feed shared news of emergency shelters, and reported that many hotels were fully booked in the wider area.

One local resident, Javier Santiago, moved his family to the dam's visitor centre, which sits at the top of the structure and away from the flow of water.

"We're going to sleep in the car," he told Reuters news agency, adding that he had packed blankets, pillows and a little food for himself, his wife and their two children.

Gurtej Singh, a manager at a Sikh centre in Sacramento, said the local mayor's office contacted his organisation to ask if they would host evacuees.

"We, in turn, put a call out to members of our community to see if they could provide food, bedding etc, so that around 50 people could stay at our centre," he told the BBC.

Sheriff Honea said that the evacuation was declared to avoid a "worst-case scenario".

He added that no decision had been made as to when people would be allowed back into their homes, as the authorities were still assessing the risks.

Doug Carlson, from the California Department of Water Resources, told the BBC that the situation was looking positive, as the lake level had dropped during the night after the emergency measures were taken.

"That's very good news for the people downstream," he said.

After a long period of drought, California has been experiencing heavy rain and increased snowfall, which has led to flooding and mudslides.

On Friday, California Governor Jerry Brown asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency to declare a major disaster.
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.

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US dam risk prompts California evacuation

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More than 180,000 people in northern California have been told to evacuate after two overflow channels at the US's tallest dam were found to be damaged. The 770ft (230m) high Oroville Dam is not itself at risk of collapsing, but its emergency spillway was close to caving in, officials said.

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Enjoy a TED talk?? Check out these 20 TED videos!

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TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an amazing initiative that organizes events where inspiring people share their inspiring research, work and ideas. For the upcoming holidays we've rounded up 20 of the most inspirational and interesting TED talks about maps and geography out there. No matthew if you want it or not watching YouTube videos will most likely end up in your Christmas break's agenda. This compilation will make it not a total waste of time.

1. Hans Rosling: The best stats you've ever seen

3. Aris Venetikidis: Making sense of maps

4. Daniele Quercia: Happy maps

5. Eric Sanderson: New York - before the City

6. Parag Khanna maps the future of countries

7. Frederic Kaplan: How I built an information time machine

8. Dan Berkenstock: The world is one big dataset. Now, how to photograph it ...

9. Ben Wellington: How we found the worst place to park in New York City - using big data

10. Steven Johnson: A guided tour of the Ghost Map

11. Blaise Aguera y Arcas demos augmented-reality maps

12. Stephen Lawler: Look! Up in the sky! It's Virtual Earth!

13. Eric Berlow and Sean Gourley: Mapping ideas worth spreading

14. Dave Troy: Social maps that reveal a city's intersections - and separations

15. Parag Khanna: How megacities are changing the map of the world

16. Allan Jones: A map of the brain

17. Lalitesh Katragadda: Making maps to fight disaster, build economies

18. Derek Sivers: Weird, or just different?

19. Greg Asner: Ecology from the air

20. Danny Dorling: Imagining the world anew - redrawing the world map

I'm a professional always thinking outside the box and a self-confessed gadget addict. As a son of a professor of cartography I was surrounded by maps all my life and as a result spatial way of thinking and seeing reality is naturally embedded in who I am.

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Top 20 most inspiring TED videos about maps and geography - Geoawesomeness

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Tweet Share on Facebook Share Share Email Pin Pocket Flipboard TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an amazing initiative that organizes events where inspiring people share their inspiring research, work and ideas. For the upcoming holidays we've rounded up 20 of the most inspirational and interesting TED talks about maps and geography out there.

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Mega-cities resources - complete the mind map

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Mega-cities resources - complete the mind map

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•Describe the characteristics of  megacities.

•The location and names of the Megacities.

•The causes of why they developed

•Reasons why they are emerging now

•The problems of megacities

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Find the short questions you did in class and mark them

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http://greenfieldgeography.wikispaces.com/IGCSE+Rivers+and+GCSE+Rivers

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BBC bitesize - do these tests over the weekend

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BBC bitesize - do these tests over the weekend

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/geography/water_rivers/

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World Amazing Technology Emergency Water Power Dam Discharge USA

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Largest Dams in The World http://largest-dams-1.blogspot.com

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Want an update on the Yangtze Dolphin?? Read the article!!

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Chinese conservationists believe they may have caught a rare glimpse of a freshwater dolphin that was declared functionally extinct a decade ago having graced the Yangtze river for 20 million years.

Scientists and environmentalists had appeared to abandon hope that China's baiji, or white dolphin, could survive as a species after they failed to find a single animal during a fruitless six-week hunt along the 6,300-km (3,915-mile) waterway in 2006.

But a team of amateur conservationists now claims it spotted the so-called "goddess of the Yangtze" last week on a stretch of Asia's longest river near the city of Wuhu in Anhui province.

"No other creature could jump out of the Yangtze like that," Song Qi, the leader of that expedition told Sixth Tone, a government-backed news website. "All the eyewitnesses - which include fishermen - felt certain that it was a baiji."

Song told the Guardian the unconfirmed sighting occurred during a seven-day search mission down the Yangtze that began in the city of Anqing on 30 September.

At just after 9.20am on 4 October he recalled spotting a "white dot" emerge from the river. Soon after a "white light" appeared to puncture the surface of the water for a second time. Seconds later Song spotted what he believes was the baiji for the third and final time, swimming towards the river's eastern bank.

The amateur conservationist, whose day job is as a publisher in Beijing, admitted he was not a baiji specialist and could not be totally sure the animal he had seen was the aquatic mammal. His group captured no images that might conclusively identify it.

But Song said local fisherman who had also seen the creature were "100% certain" it was the baiji.

With the apparent confirmation of its demise, the narrow-beaked river dolphin has become a symbol of the devastating environmental price China has paid for decades of unbridled development.

In the 1950s, the Yangtze is thought to have been home to thousands of such animals. But by the end of the 1980s that number had fallen to perhaps 200 thanks to a lethal cocktail of dam-building, over-fishing, pollution and boat traffic. By the turn of the century just 13 remained, according to one survey.

In his book about the baiji's plight, Witness to Extinction, biologist Samuel Turvey described how thousands of years of human activity had decimated the Yangtze basin, a bio-diverse area once regarded as the Amazon of the East. As well as the baiji, the ecosystem was once home to two species of rhinoceros, elephants, gibbons and giant pandas. All have now disappeared.

During the Great Famine of the late 1950s, when tens of millions of Chinese people starved to death as a result of Mao Zedong's rule, "the goddess of the Yangtze became lunch", Turvey wrote.

"It was the dolphins or it was our children," one Yangtze fisherman is quoted as telling a Hong Kong journalist. "Which would you choose?"

More recently, shipping and catastrophic levels of industrial pollution have taken their toll. China's official news agency, Xinhua, this week reported that more than 400,000 "chemical enterprises" were operating on the Yangtze's middle and lower reaches - around half the country's total.

Song said he hoped his team's unconfirmed baiji sighting would prompt renewed efforts to save the species. He vowed to launch another expedition along the Yangtze early next year. "I want society to realise that the baiji is not extinct," he said.

However, Turvey, a senior research fellow at the Zoological Society of London who took part in the unsuccessful 2006 search mission, said he was skeptical about the supposed sighting.

"Extreme claims for the possible survival of probably extinct species require robust proof, and while I would deeply love there to be strong evidence that the baiji is not extinct, this isn't it," the conservation biologist said in an email.

"Ecologically, the question is: if this is a baiji, where has the species been hiding for the past decade?" Turvey added, pointing out that a previous sighting, in August 2007, had turned out to be a finless porpoise.

Turvey said that rather than chasing "the ghosts of baiji" he believed the world should instead focus on the plight of the Yangtze finless porpoise which was now critically endangered.

"This animal needs urgent media interest and conservation attention in order to combat its total population collapse, while there is still time to do something about it."

Additional reporting by Christy Yao.

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China's 'extinct' dolphin may have returned to Yangtze river, say conservationists

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Chinese conservationists believe they may have caught a rare glimpse of a freshwater dolphin that was declared functionally extinct a decade ago having graced the Yangtze river for 20 million years.

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Case study sheet, add ideas to your notes

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Case study sheet, add ideas to your notes

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/geography/tourism/tourism_ledc_rev2.shtml

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Kenya is located in East Africa, its capital city is Nairobi and it has a population of approximately 30 million people.

- it has an attractive climate (tropical) with sunshine all year round, hot and humid at the coast; temperate inland and dry in the NE (rainy season - April-June and Oct-Dec, heavy rainfall in the afternoon and early evening)
Why have numbers of tourists visiting Kenya increased?

- Kenya was one of the first LEDC countries to acheive mass tourism and in the 1970s and 1980s there was a rapid increase in the numbers of tourists, particularly following the release of the films Born Free and Out of Africa.

- Tourist numbers have also increased as larger aircraft in the 1980s brought prices of air travel down.

Advantages of Tourism to Kenya:

- Safari holidays are popular - e.g. in the Maasai Mara / Nakuru National Park - Kenya has spectacular wildlife - including the big 5 - Lion, Elephant, Rhinoceros, Leopard and Buffalo

- Cultural experience - many tourists visit local tribes such as the Maasai to find out more about their lifestyle and traditions

- Coastal Holidays - SE of Kenya has fine sands and coral reefs with spectacular marine life - e.g. Mombassa

Why visit Kenya?

- Tourism encourages the building of new roads and better communications

- Jobs in tourism have helped develop people's business skills

- Tourism has created all year round jobs for Kenyans

- Tourism is Kenya's biggest earner of foreign exchange

-Tourism has stimulated farming, by creating a demand for local food from farmers

- National Parks have been created - encouraging people to protect the environment.

Disadvantages of Tourism for Kenya:
- there is leakage of income - with a lot of the money paid for holidays never actually reaching Kenya (travel companies and foreign owned hotels get it instead)

- Safari minibuses disturb animals - often getting too close (e.g. can be 30-40 buses around a single animal in the Maasai Mara), they also cause soil erosion as the wheels churn up the grass

- many Maasai are traditionally nomadic, but many have been forced out of the National Parks - losing their land and also losing their traditional lifestyles.

- Hot air balloons in parks disturb animals - by casting shadows and from the noise of the burners.

- Coastal Environments such as those in Mombassa have been damaged - e.g. destruction of coral reefs as tourists step on the coral and also take souvenirs.

- Drugs and crime has increased and AIDS is a major problem

Working towards sustainable tourism in Kenya - KIGO CONSERVANCY - An example of ECOTOURISM.

Kigio Conservancy was set up in 1997 on an old beef / dairy ranch with the aim of providing a wildlife sanctuary and a sustainable eco-tourism destination.
The accommodation at Kigio is in "cottages" built of mud, timber and thatch, using local and reclaimed materials and methods. The furniture is built from re-claimed timber from the ground and there is no electricity, oil lamps are instead used.

Kigio has a number of ecotourism activities it is involved in:

- partnerships with local communities - helping to fund and work on community projects

- provides links with local schools with schools in the UK, raising money for new classrooms and other projects (e.g. water tanks)

- partnerships with conservation organisations such as the Tusk Trust - which has involved setting up conservation centre for use by local schools and providing sustainable development education for local communities

- employees local people - e.g. guides and other workers

- conservation activities - e.g. looking after orphaned wildlife - e.g. 2003 relocation of giraffe into the area - including a baby giraffe from the Karen Blixen Giraffe Orphange in Nairobi.

Links:

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A Case Study of Tourism in an LEDC - Kenya

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Kenya is located in East Africa, its capital city is Nairobi and it has a population of approximately 30 million people. - it has an attractive climate (tropical) with sunshine all year round, hot and humid at the coast; temperate inland and dry in the NE (rainy season - April-June and Oct-Dec, heavy rainfall in the afternoon and early evening) Why have numbers of tourists visiting Kenya increased?

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countriesThe reason they use a lot of water is due to the fact large hic use water for domestic industrial and agricultural reasons such as cleaning and farming

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Just one map showing the movement of people! #migration

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The world's movement of people - in one map

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This interactive map shows five years of the global movement of people.

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OX Bow lakes are a river feature found in the lower course of the river. This is when a meander causes so much erosion, leading to the neck of the river to disappear. This creating massive amounts of deposition, due to the new and fast river course.

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The Plitivce Waterfalls are located in Croatia. They are surrounded by 120 different species of birds as well as wolves, bears, deer, wildcats and wild boars. The tallest and widest water fall out of the Plitivce Waterfalls is called the Great Waterfall, which is 70m tall.

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One feature of the lower course of a river is the floodplain. It is the part of the vallley floor over which a river spreads during seasonal floods 

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One feature of the lower course of a river is the floodplain. It is the part of the vallley floor over which a river spreads during seasonal floods 

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Population in the world is currently (2016) growing at a rate of around 1.13% per year. The current average population change is estimated at around 80 million per year. Annual growth rate reached its peak in the late 1960s, when it was at 2% and above.

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Hurricane Sandy was the deadliest and most destructive hurricane of the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season, and the second-costliest hurricane in United States history

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Hurricane Sandy's historical destruction to the Eastern Seaboard of the United States began with its landfall on October 29, 2012, and continued for nearly a week's time, across a dozen states, which resulted in billions of dollars of cumulative damage. The widespread effects led to federal declarations of disaster in the states of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and New Hampshire.

Several geographical implications, both physical and cultural, were perhaps the main culprits in causing the destruction to each of these states. Hurricane Sandy is the only category one hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale to list among the top five costliest Atlantic hurricanes in United States history. However, Sandy's size in diameter was the largest ever recorded among Atlantic storms and it therefore affected a much larger geographic area. Below we will cite many physical and cultural geographical characteristics of different communities that influenced the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy.

The New York Bight: Staten Island and the New York City Borough Damage

Staten Island is one of New York City's five boroughs and it is the least populated among the other boroughs (The Bronx, Queens, Manhattan, and Brooklyn). Staten Island's unique geography made it extremely vulnerable to Hurricane Sandy's storm surge and consequently one of the more damaged areas throughout the storm's path.

The New York Bight is an extraordinary geographical landform of the eastern seaboard that approximately extends from the eastern tip of Long Island to the southern tip of New Jersey. In geography, a bight is a significant curvature or bend along a coastal area. The coastline of the New York Bight forms nearly a 90-degree angle at the mouth of the Hudson River where the borough of Staten Island is located. It forms the area of Raritan Bay as well as the New York Harbor.

This extreme bend in the coastal landform is what makes Staten Island, as well as New York City and New Jersey, vulnerable to the storm surge and flooding of a Hurricane making landfall to the south. This is because the eastern-side of a hurricane, with a counterclockwise circulation, pushes the seawater from east to west. Hurricane Sandy made landfall in Atlantic City, south of the mouth of the Hudson River, and south of the 90-degree, perpendicular intersection.

The eastern-side of Hurricane Sandy entered the Hudson River and pushed water from the east to the west into the area where the land makes a 90-degree angle. The water that pushed into this area had nowhere to go but into the communities along this 90-degree bend. Staten Island is positioned at the head of this 90-degree bend and was overcome by storm surge on nearly all sides of the island. Across the mouth of the Hudson lies Battery Park on the southern tip of the borough of Manhattan. The movement of the storm surge breached the walls of Battery Park and poured into southern Manhattan. Underground, below this area of Manhattan, are numerous forms of transportation infrastructure linked through tunnels.

These tunnels filled with Hurricane Sandy's storm surge and dismantled nodes of transportation including rails and roads.

Staten Island and the nearby boroughs are built among thousands of acres of tidal wetlands. These natural phenomenon provide numerous ecological benefits, especially in protecting coastal areas from flooding. The wetlands act like sponges and soak up the excess water from rising seas to protect the inland area. Unfortunately, the development of the New York City area throughout the past century has destroyed much of these natural barriers. The New York Department of Environmental Conservation has concluded that Jamaica Bay lost more than 1800 acres of wetlands between 1924 and 1994 and it measured an average loss of wetlands at 44 acres per year as of 1999.

Atlantic City Landfall: A Direct Hit

Atlantic City lies on Absecon Island, a barrier island with an ecological purpose of protecting the mainland from rising waters of storm events and occasional swells. The barrier island of Atlantic City is highly vulnerable to storms such as Hurricane Sandy. The north and east side of the island, near Abescon Inlet, received a greater amount of damage because of its exposure in position to rising waters from both the Atlantic Ocean waters and the inlet-bay waters.

Homes throughout Atlantic City experienced extensive flooding from Hurricane Sandy. Storm surge pushed water past the boardwalk of Atlantic City and into residential districts where homes were not constructed high enough off the ground to avoid the rising water. Many of Atlantic City's homes were constructed during the boom of the early 20th century and builders did not worry about the possibility of widespread flooding. Today, nearly 25 percent of existing homes were built prior to 1939 and nearly another 50 percent were built between 1940 and 1979. The age of these homes, and the materials used in construction, were not built to withstand swift movement of water and high wind speeds. The Atlantic City Boardwalk and Steel Pier were hardly damaged in the storm. In recent years, local government approved structural renovations to protect the boardwalk and pier from hurricane storm surge events. The dissimilarities between damage was largely due to the age of the city's infrastructure.

Hoboken, New Jersey

Hoboken, New Jersey, was perhaps one of the most seriously affected areas of disaster. Hoboken is located in Bergen County on the west bank of the Hudson River, across from New York City's Greenwich Village and northeast of Jersey City. Its geographic position on the western bank of the Hudson River in the area of the New York Bight made it prone to storm surge from a counter-clockwise rotating hurricane. Areas throughout Hoboken lie below sea level or at sea level because the two-mile geographic area was once an island surrounded by the Hudson River. The movement of landforms created changes in sea levels where the town was built. Hoboken's position to Hurricane Sandy's landfall made for a worst-case scenario because it experienced counter-clockwise winds and surge that pushed water over the banks of the Hudson River directly into Hoboken.

Hoboken regularly experiences flooding and had recently constructed a new flood pump; a long needed upgrade to the city's former aging pump. However, the single flood pump was not enough power to pump the floodwaters that Sandy caused. The flooding damaged homes, businesses, and transportation structures throughout the city. More than 45% of Hoboken's occupied housing stock was built prior to 1939 and the aged structures were easily removed from their foundations under the swift moving floodwaters. Hoboken is also known for its transportation infrastructure and it boasts some of the highest public transportation use throughout the United States. Unfortunately, the floodwaters in Hoboken entered these systems and destroyed underground electrical systems, rail tracks, and trains. The old underground tunnels exposed a need for transportation infrastructure to be upgraded with watertight closures, ventilation systems, or other flood prevention actions.

The angle of Hurricane Sandy's landfall and the geographical positioning of the landforms in Sandy's path contributed to widespread destruction in the United States northeast corridor. The aging infrastructure throughout New York and New Jersey led to costly bills needed to rebuild transportation routes, power lines, and homes damaged by Hurricane Sandy. The New York Bight has created a geographical precedence for the New York and New Jersey area when it is put in the path of Mother Nature's destruction.

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Areas Impacted by Hurricane Sandy in NY and NJ

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Hurricane Sandy's historical destruction to the Eastern Seaboard of the United States began with its landfall on October 29, 2012, and continued for nearly a week's time, across a dozen states, which resulted in billions of dollars of cumulative damage. Learn about the geographic factors that led to the destruction.

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Pistyll Rhaeadr is a waterfall often described as one of the seven wonders of Wales. The waterfall is located a few miles away from the village of Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant. The waterfall falls more than 230ft in three different stages

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Which cities will shrink and which will grow??

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The world is experiencing rapid urbanisation, but not every city is growing. Population is likely to decline in 17% of large cities in developed regions and 8% of cities across the world from 2015 to 2025, according to a McKinsey report

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Shrinking cities: the rise and fall of global urban populations - mapped

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The world is experiencing rapid urbanisation, but not every city is growing. Population is likely to decline in 17% of large cities in developed regions and 8% of cities across the world from 2015 to 2025, according to a McKinsey report

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River Erosion: Dharla River in Bangladesh

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River Erosion: Dharla River in Bangladesh

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Due to river erosion, 200 families' have been left homeless. This article links to the unit about rivers as it discusses the causes and the effects of  river erosion on the environment and the people.

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The Financial Express (FE) is the first financial daily of Bangladesh in English under the ownership of company -- International Publications Limited which was incorporated under the Companies Act in the year, 1993. The FE started its journey in 1993.

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CASE STUDY: Mexico to the U.S.A. Migration

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CASE STUDY: Mexico to the U.S.A. Migration

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A Feature of the Lower Course of a River: Levées

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A Feature of the Lower Course of a River: Levées

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Niagra Falls
Is inbetween  Canada and the US
It borders Ontario and New York and annually it is visited by 30million tourists !

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(and Jasmin) River bank erosion.::Floods and erosion destroy schools 

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(and Jasmin) River bank erosion.::Floods and erosion destroy schools 

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By Bangladeshi standards, the Banari Multilateral School is very old. More than 500 students from nearby villages are enrolled, mostly from very poor families, their parents being fishermen or agricultural labourers, with only a handful having small plots of land.

Located along the banks of the Padma River in the Tongibari sub-district of Bangladesh's central Munshiganj region, 40km from the capital, Dhaka, Banari typifies Bangladesh's struggle against floods and river bank erosion.

In the local language, Padma is called "Kirtinasha", meaning "destroyer of establishments", and for Banari this is particularly true.

Since its establishment in 1900, the school has been hit six times by the river and each time it has had to relocate to safer ground.

The last time the school was struck was in 1972. After this year's particularly heavy monsoon season, the Padma hit again.

"Large-scale erosion began from mid-July. The river began to move toward the school. We were worried about the movement of the river, but could not anticipate that it would tear the whole school down," Anisur Rahman, the acting headmaster, said.

"The mid-term examination was scheduled for 8 August. But on the night of 7 August the river swallowed up the entire playground and half the two-storied school building," he added.

Yet that did not stop school administrators from holding classes.

"We salvaged some of the benches and teaching material. After a three-day break we were able to resume classes at a makeshift house in nearby Hasail village. With the support of the local community, we made a temporary tin shed where classes are now held," Rahman said.

Collapse of schools continues

Along this part of the Padma - the primary distributary of the Ganges that originates in the Himalayas of India - such stories are common.

Munirul Alam, sub-district executive officer for Jajira, told IRIN that river erosion, which has long been a problem in the area, had grown more severe in the past weeks.

"We don't have material and resources to prevent or fight erosion," added Habibur Rahman Khan, district executive officer of Shariatpur, noting that sub-district officers and staff had been instructed to distribute relief to the affected people where possible.

According to media reports, 400 families lost their homes and 600 hectares of agricultural land due to erosion in Jajira, Bhederganj and Naria sub-districts of Shariatpur.

Mohammad Amirul Islam, education officer of Shaghata sub-district of northwestern Gaibandha district, watched a primary school disappear into the Brahmaputra river, which passes through Jamalpur and Mymensingh districts and later forms the largest river delta in the world.

"It was midday on 24 September. I stood about 50 yards away watching helplessly as the Kanaipara Government Primary School disappeared into the river," Amirul Islam recalled.

A recent report by Bangladesh's Ministry of Primary and Mass Education revealed that 2,571 primary schools across the low-lying nation of 150 million-plus inhabitants had been affected by this year's floods.

Of them 45 had been fully and 1,920 partially damaged. An additional 318 primary schools had been used as flood shelters.

Ekramul Huq, Deputy Director of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education, said 12 high schools, one college and two madrasas (religious schools) had also been completely damaged.

$75 million IDA credit

The government has signed a credit agreement for US$75 million with the World Bank International Development Association to help finance the immediate needs for livelihood support and reconstruction after the floods, which affected more than 10 million people.

"Donor funding for the rehabilitation of flood-damaged educational institutions may be available by next January after completion of the negotiations and approval by the development partners," remarked Subodh Chandra Dhali, a senior information officer at the Bangladeshi Ministry of Education.

sa/ds/mw

see also
Over 4,000 primary schools closed by floods

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By Bangladeshi standards, the Banari Multilateral School is very old. More than 500 students from nearby villages are enrolled, mostly from very poor families, their parents being fishermen or agricultural labourers, with only a handful having small plots of land.

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Australia is one of the largest waste producers in the world. This waste is deposited into their environment this is caused by urbanisation as the city grows so does the residents needs. The problem for the Australians is finding a suitable waste disposable system without effecting the Australians lifestyles. this links in to the urbanisation chapter as urbanisation is the cause for the problem in hand.

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Acid rain is made when water droplets become acidic via being in a polluted atmosphere. Act rain happens in two ways, wet and dry. Wet deposition is when it removes the acid from the atmosphere to the earths surface by precipitation. Dry deposition is cause when there is a lack of rain, polluting particles and gases stay on the ground by smoke and dust. Acidity is measured in PH. This links into river environments as PH indicator is a measuring mechanism used in river skills. Acidic rain occurs in Northeastern USA, Southeastern Canada, Sweden and Norway.

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Both of the USA presidents election are stopping TPP, Trans-Pacific Partnerships. This links in with Globalisation due to the facts that one of the biggest globalised country in the world

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IN SEPTEMBER 1843 the Liverpool Mercury reported on a large free-trade rally in the city. The Royal Amphitheatre was overflowing. John Bright, a newly elected MP, spoke eloquently on the merits of abolishing duties on imported food, echoing arguments made in The Economist, a fledgling newspaper. Mr Bright told his audience that when canvassing, he had explained "how stonemasons, shoemakers, carpenters and every kind of artisan suffered if the trade of the country was restricted." His speech in Liverpool was roundly cheered.

It is hard to imagine, 173 years later, a leading Western politician being lauded for a defence of free trade. Neither candidate in America's presidential election is a champion. Donald Trump, incoherent on so many fronts, is clear in this area: unfair competition from foreigners has destroyed jobs at home. He threatens to dismantle the North American Free Trade Agreement, withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and start a trade war with China. To her discredit, Hillary Clinton now denounces the TPP, a pact she helped negotiate. In Germany, one of the world's biggest exporters, tens of thousands took to the streets earlier this month to march against a proposed trade deal between the European Union and the United States (see article).
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The backlash against trade is just one symptom of a pervasive anxiety about the effects of open economies. Britain's Brexit vote reflected concerns about the impact of unfettered migration on public services, jobs and culture. Big businesses are slammed for using foreign boltholes to dodge taxes. Such critiques contain some truth: more must be done to help those who lose out from openness. But there is a world of difference between improving globalisation and reversing it. The idea that globalisation is a scam that benefits only corporations and the rich could scarcely be more wrong.

The real pro-poor policy

Exhibit A is the vast improvement in global living standards in the decades after the second world war, which was underpinned by an explosion in world trade. Exports of goods rose from 8% of world GDP in 1950 to almost 20% a half-century later. Export-led growth and foreign investment have dragged hundreds of millions out of poverty in China, and transformed economies from Ireland to South Korea.

Plainly, Western voters are not much comforted by this extraordinary transformation in the fortunes of emerging markets. But at home, too, the overall benefits of free trade are unarguable. Exporting firms are more productive and pay higher wages than those that serve only the domestic market. Half of America's exports go to countries with which it has a free-trade deal, even though their economies account for less than a tenth of global GDP.

Protectionism, by contrast, hurts consumers and does little for workers. The worst-off benefit far more from trade than the rich. A study of 40 countries found that the richest consumers would lose 28% of their purchasing power if cross-border trade ended; but those in the bottom tenth would lose 63%. The annual cost to American consumers of switching to non-Chinese tyres after Barack Obama slapped on anti-dumping tariffs in 2009 was around $1.1 billion, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics. That amounts to over $900,000 for each of the 1,200 jobs that were "saved".

Openness delivers other benefits. Migrants improve not just their own lives but the economies of host countries: European immigrants who arrived in Britain since 2000 have been net contributors to the exchequer, adding more than £20 billion ($34 billion) to the public finances between 2001 and 2011. Foreign direct investment delivers competition, technology, management know-how and jobs, which is why China's overly cautious moves to encourage FDI disappoint (see article).

What have you done for me lately?

None of this is to deny that globalisation has its flaws. Since the 1840s advocates of free trade have known that, though the great majority benefit, some lose out. Too little has been done to help these people. Perhaps a fifth of the 6m or so net job losses in American manufacturing between 1999 and 2011 stemmed from Chinese competition; many of those who lost jobs did not find new ones. With hindsight, politicians in Britain were too blithe about the pressures that migration from new EU member states in eastern Europe brought to bear on public services. And although there are no street protests about the speed and fickleness in the tides of short-term capital, its ebb and flow across borders have often proved damaging, not least in the euro zone's debt-ridden countries.

As our special report this week argues, more must be done to tackle these downsides. America spends a paltry 0.1% of its GDP, one-sixth of the rich-country average, on policies to retrain workers and help them find new jobs. In this context, it is lamentable that neither Mr Trump nor Mrs Clinton offers policies to help those whose jobs have been affected by trade or cheaper technology. On migration, it makes sense to follow the example of Denmark and link local-government revenues to the number of incomers, so that strains on schools, hospitals and housing can be eased. Many see the rules that bind signatories to trade pacts as an affront to democracy. But there are ways that shared rules can enhance national autonomy. Harmonising norms on how multinational firms are taxed would give countries greater command over their public finances. A co-ordinated approach to curbing volatile capital flows would restore mastery over national monetary policy.

These are the sensible responses to the peddlers of protectionism and nativism. The worst answer would be for countries to turn their backs on globalisation. The case for openness remains much the same as it did when this newspaper was founded to support the repeal of the Corn Laws. There are more-and more varied-opportunities in open economies than in closed ones. And, in general, greater opportunity makes people better off. Since the 1840s, free-traders have believed that closed economies favour the powerful and hurt the labouring classes. They were right then. They are right now.

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IN SEPTEMBER 1843 the Liverpool Mercury reported on a large free-trade rally in the city. The Royal Amphitheatre was overflowing. John Bright, a newly elected MP, spoke eloquently on the merits of abolishing duties on imported food, echoing arguments made in The Economist, a fledgling newspaper.

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(and Jasmin) Human-environmental interaction in Paris,river environme

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(and Jasmin) Human-environmental interaction in Paris,river environme

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Humans interacted with the environment of Paris as far back as the third century BCE when the Parisii Gauls chose to settle the area because of its location on the now-named Seine river. Not only was the river critical for water, but it also served as a trading route to help the new settlement grow and thrive. The river provided strategic protection for the city until the Romans moved in and occupied it. The Romans built baths in the area, piping in water from the underground Bievre river.

Not only did people take from the environment, but they also gave back and modified it. For instance, in 1852, Prefect Haussman oversaw the planting of 90,000 trees and the construction of a 5,000-acre woodland preserve. However, the environment has also interacted with people, on the few occasions that the Seine flooded the city.

Some of the human-environment interactions were not benign, such as the air pollution that resulted from transportation and manufacturing during the time of the industrial revolution.
Learn more about France

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What Is the Human-Environmental Interaction in Paris, France?

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Humans interacted with the environment of Paris as far back as the third century BCE when the Parisii Gauls chose to settle the area because of its location on the now-named Seine river. Not only was the river critical for water, but it also served as a trading route to help the new settlement grow and thrive.

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The Nuclear bombings  of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

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The Nuclear bombings  of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

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This area is still considered a man-made hazardous area.

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On August 6, 1945, during World War II (1939-45), an American B-29 bomber dropped the world's first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion immediately killed an estimated 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure. Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people. Japan's Emperor Hirohito announced his country's unconditional surrender in World War II in a radio address on August 15, citing the devastating power of "a new and most cruel bomb."

The Manhattan Project

Even before the outbreak of war in 1939, a group of American scientists-many of them refugees from fascist regimes in Europe-became concerned with nuclear weapons research being conducted in Nazi Germany. In 1940, the U.S. government began funding its own atomic weapons development program, which came under the joint responsibility of the Office of Scientific Research and Development and the War Department after the U.S. entry into World War II. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was tasked with spearheading the construction of the vast facilities necessary for the top-secret program, codenamed "The Manhattan Project " (for the engineering corps' Manhattan district).

Over the next several years, the program's scientists worked on producing the key materials for nuclear fission-uranium-235 and plutonium (Pu-239). They sent them to Los Alamos, New Mexico, where a team led by J. Robert Oppenheimer worked to turn these materials into a workable atomic bomb. Early on the morning of July 16, 1945, the Manhattan Project held its first successful test of an atomic device -a plutonium bomb-at the Trinity test site at Alamogordo, New Mexico.

No Surrender for the Japanese

By the time of the Trinity test, the Allied powers had already defeated Germany in Europe. Japan, however, vowed to fight to the bitter end in the Pacific, despite clear indications (as early as 1944) that they had little chance of winning. In fact, between mid-April 1945 (when President Harry Truman took office) and mid-July, Japanese forces inflicted Allied casualties totaling nearly half those suffered in three full years of war in the Pacific, proving that Japan had become even more deadly when faced with defeat. In late July, Japan's militarist government rejected the Allied demand for surrender put forth in the Potsdam Declaration, which threatened the Japanese with "prompt and utter destruction" if they refused.

General Douglas MacArthur and other top military commanders favored continuing the conventional bombing of Japan already in effect and following up with a massive invasion, codenamed "Operation Downfall." They advised Truman that such an invasion would result in U.S. casualties of up to 1 million. In order to avoid such a high casualty rate, Truman decided-over the moral reservations of Secretary of War Henry Stimson, General Dwight Eisenhower and a number of the Manhattan Project scientists-to use the atomic bomb in the hopes of bringing the war to a quick end. Proponents of the A-bomb-such as James Byrnes, Truman's secretary of state-believed that its devastating power would not only end the war, but also put the U.S. in a dominant position to determine the course of the postwar world.

'Little Boy' and 'Fat Man' Are Dropped

Hiroshima, a manufacturing center of some 350,000 people located about 500 miles from Tokyo, was selected as the first target. After arriving at the U.S. base on the Pacific island of Tinian, the more than 9,000-pound uranium-235 bomb was loaded aboard a modified B-29 bomber christened Enola Gay (after the mother of its pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets). The plane dropped the bomb-known as "Little Boy"-by parachute at 8:15 in the morning, and it exploded 2,000 feet above Hiroshima in a blast equal to 12-15,000 tons of TNT, destroying five square miles of the city.

Hiroshima's devastation failed to elicit immediate Japanese surrender, however, and on August 9 Major Charles Sweeney flew another B-29 bomber, Bockscar, from Tinian. Thick clouds over the primary target, the city of Kokura, drove Sweeney to a secondary target, Nagasaki, where the plutonium bomb "Fat Man" was dropped at 11:02 that morning. More powerful than the one used at Hiroshima, the bomb weighed nearly 10,000 pounds and was built to produce a 22-kiloton blast. The topography of Nagasaki, which was nestled in narrow valleys between mountains, reduced the bomb's effect, limiting the destruction to 2.6 square miles.

Aftermath of the Bombing

At noon on August 15, 1945 (Japanese time), Emperor Hirohito announced his country's surrender in a radio broadcast. The news spread quickly, and "Victory in Japan" or "V-J Day" celebrations broke out across the United States and other Allied nations. The formal surrender agreement was signed on September 2, aboard the U.S. battleship Missouri, anchored in Tokyo Bay.

Because of the extent of the devastation and chaos-including the fact that much of the two cities' infrastructure was wiped out-exact death tolls from the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain unknown. However, it's estimated roughly 70,000 to 135,000 people died in Hiroshima and 60,000 to 80,000 people died in Nagasaki, both from acute exposure to the blasts and from long-term side effects of radiation.

Fact Check

We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate.

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Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - Causes, Impact & Lives Lost

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On August 6, 1945, during World War II (1939-45), an American B-29 bomber dropped the world's first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima, immediately killing 80,000 people. Three days later, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people.

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1908: Europes largest recorded earthquakes struck Messina 

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1908: Europes largest recorded earthquakes struck Messina 

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On December 28 1908, most powerful earthquake struck Messina strait causing a tsunami which destroyed the city

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Russia to send back migrants to their mother country

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Russia to send back migrants to their mother country

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Russian immigrants called to be sent back to Russia. With no reason broadcasted through channels yet.

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In Europe, when it gets serious, you have to lie... at least if you are an unelected bureaucrat like Jean-Claude Juncker. In Russia, however, when it gets serious, attention immediately turns to the children.

Which is why we read a report in Russian website Znak published Tuesday, according to which Russian state officials and government workers were told to bring back their children studying abroad immediately, even if means cutting their education short and not waiting until the end of the school year, and re-enroll them in Russian schools, with some concern. The article adds that if the parents of these same officials also live abroad "for some reason", and have not lost their Russian citizenship, should also be returned to the motherland. Znak cited five administration officials as the source of the report.

The "recommendation" applies to all: from the administration staff, to regional administratiors, to lawmakers of all levels. Employees of public corporations are also subject to the ordinance. One of the sources said that anyone who fails to act, will find such non-compliance to be a "complicating factor in the furtherance of their public sector career." He added that he was aware of several such cases in recent months.

It appears that the underlying reason behind the command is that the Russian government is concerned about the optics of having children of the Russian political elite being educated abroad, while their parents appear on television talking about patriotism and being "surrounded by enemies."

While we doubt the impacted children will be happy by this development, some of the more patriotic locals, if unimpacted, are delighted. Such as Vitaly Ivanov, a political scientist who believes that the measure to return children of officials from studying abroad, is "long overdue." According Ivanoc, the education of children of the Russian elite abroad is subject to constant ridicule and derision against the ruling regime. "People note the hypocrisy of having a centralized state and cultivating patriotism and anti-Western sentiment, while children of government workers study abroad. You can not serve two gods, one must choose."

On the other hand, political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky quoted by Znak, believes that such decisions should be approached with more pragmatism. Such a recommendation is more likely to lead to an outflow of officials from the state, rather than allow the return of the children studying at elite foreign universities. He also warned of attempts to recreate an echo chamber such as that experienced after the failed July coup attempt on Turkey's President Erdogan.

But what he said next was more disturbing: "On the one hand, this is all part of a package of measures to prepare the elites for some 'big war' even if it is rather conditional, on the other hand - this is another blow to the unity of President Putin with his own elite" Belkovsky said. He adds that the Western sanctions launcedh in March 2014, had sought to drive a wedge between Putin and elites. In response, the Kremlin began to act precisely according to the logic of these sanctions. "But while a ban for having assets in the West is one thing, and understanable, when it comes to a ban for offshore health and education services, the blowback will be far greater, as it represents a far more important element of the establishment's life strategy."

Ultimately the motivation behind Putin's decision is unclear: whether it is to show Russia's high-ranking oligarchs who is boss, to boost a sense of patriotism among the nation by sending a symbolic message that the west is no longer a welcome destination for Russia's rich kids, or just a preemptive move of repatriating of any individuals affiliated with Russian politics for other unknown reasons; however it underscores the severity of the ongoing diplomatic crisis and just how significant the upcoming isolation between Russia and the West is likely to become in the coming months - unless of course tensions deescalate dramatically in the very near future - resulting in even greater collapse in global commerce and a further slowdown to world economic growth, which may ultimately lead to an armed conflict, whether regional or global, as the only possible outcome.

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Russian Government Officials Told To Immediately Bring Back Children Studying Abroad

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Accoding to Russian media, Russian state officials and government workers were told to bring back their children studying abroad immediately, even if means cutting their education short and not waiting until the end of the school year, and re-enroll them in Russian schools,

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Immigrants from India first arrived in the United States in small numbers during the early 19 th century, primarily as low-skilled farm laborers. In recent decades the population has grown substantially, with 2.4 million Indian immigrants resident in the United States as of 2015. This makes the foreign born from India the second-largest immigrant group after Mexicans, accounting for almost 6 percent of the 43.3 million foreign-born population.

In 1960, just 12,000 Indian immigrants lived in the United States, representing less than 0.5 percent of the 9.7 million overall immigrant population. Migration from India swelled between 1965 and 1990 as a series of legislative changes removed national-origin quotas, introduced temporary skilled worker programs, and created employment-based permanent visas. In 2016, Indians were the top recipients of high-skilled H-1B temporary visas and were the second-largest group of international students in the United States.

Today, the majority of Indian immigrants are young and highly educated, and have strong English skills. Many work in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. From 1980 to 2010, the population grew more than eleven-fold, roughly doubling every decade (see Figure 1). In 2013, India and China supplanted Mexico as the top sources of newly arriving immigrants in the United States.
Figure 1. Indian Immigrant Population in the United States, 1980-2015
Sources: Data from U.S. Census Bureau 2010 and 2015 American Community Surveys (ACS), and 1980, 1990, and 2000 Decennial Census.

The United States is the third most popular destination for Indian migrants worldwide, after the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan, according to mid-2015 estimates by the United Nations Population Division. Other top destinations include Saudi Arabia (1,894,000), Kuwait (1,062,000), Oman (778,000), and the United Kingdom (777,000).

Click here to view an interactive map showing where migrants from India and other countries have settled worldwide.

Compared with the overall foreign- and native-born populations, immigrants from India on average are significantly better educated, more likely to be employed in management positions, and have higher household incomes. In fiscal year (FY) 2015, nearly half of Indians who obtained lawful permanent residence in the United States (also known as receiving a green card) did so through employer sponsorship. The remainder qualified as immediate relatives of U.S. citizens or through other family-sponsored channels.

Using data from the U.S. Census Bureau (the most recent 2015 American Community Survey [ACS] and pooled 2011-15 ACS data), the Department of Homeland Security's Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, and the World Bank's annual remittance data, this Spotlight provides information on the Indian immigrant population in the United States, focusing on its size, geographic distribution, and socioeconomic characteristics.

Click on the bullet points below for more information:
Distribution by State and Key Cities
In 2011-15, more than half of immigrants from India resided in five states: California (20 percent), New Jersey (11 percent), Texas (9 percent), New York, and Illinois (7 percent each). The top four destination counties were Santa Clara County in California, Middlesex County in New Jersey, Cook County in Illinois, and Alameda County in California. Together, these four counties accounted for about 15 percent of the total Indian population in the United States.
Figure 2. Top Destination States for Indian Immigrants in the United States, 2011-15
Note: Pooled 2011-15 ACS data were used to get statistically valid estimates at the state level for smaller-population geographies. Not shown are populations in Alaska and Hawaii, which are small in size; for details, visit the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) Data Hub for an interactive map showing geographic distribution of immigrants by state and county, available online.
Source: MPI tabulation of data from U.S. Census Bureau pooled 2011-15 ACS.

Click here for an interactive map that shows the geographic distribution of immigrants by state and county. Select India or another country from the dropdown menu to see which states and counties have the most Indian immigrants.

As of 2011-15, the metropolitan areas with the most Indian immigrants were the greater New York, Chicago, San Jose, and San Francisco areas. These four metro areas were home to one-third of Indians in the United States.
Table 1. Top Concentrations by Metropolitan Area for Immigrants from India, 2011-15
Source: MPI tabulation of data from the U.S. Census Bureau pooled 2011-15 ACS.

Click here for an interactive map showing the concentration of immigrants by metropolitan area. Select India or another origin country from the dropdown menu to see which metro areas have the most immigrants.
English Proficiency
Though they come from diverse linguistic backgrounds, immigrants from India were more likely to be proficient in English than the overall foreign-born population. In 2015, just 26 percent of Indian immigrants (ages 5 and over) reported limited English proficiency, compared to 49 percent of the total foreign-born population.

Approximately 11 percent of Indian immigrants spoke only English at home (versus 16 percent of all immigrants), while the rest spoke a variety of languages, including Hindi (25 percent), Telugu (13 percent), Guajarati (12 percent), Tamil (9 percent), and Punjabi (8 percent).
Note: Limited English proficiency refers to those who indicated on the ACS questionnaire that they spoke English less than "very well." Age, Education, and Employment
The median age for Indian immigrants was 39 years, younger than the overall foreign-born population (44 years) and older than the U.S. born (36 years).

Both Indians and the overall immigrant population were much more likely than the native born to be of working age. In 2015, 82 percent of Indian immigrants were between ages 18 and 64, compared to 60 percent of the U.S. born (see Figure 4).

Click here to view an interactive chart showing the age and sex distribution of top origin groups, including the Indian born.

Overall, Indian immigrants have much higher educational attainment compared to the foreign- and U.S.-born populations. In 2015, 77 percent of Indian adults (ages 25 and over) had a bachelor's degree or higher, compared to 29 percent of all immigrants and 31 percent of native-born adults. Notably, among college-educated Indian immigrants, more than half had an advanced degree.

The high educational attainment of Indian immigrants is a result of the specific channels they use to enter the United States. Many Indians arrived either as international students or H-1B workers, to fill jobs that usually require a university degree, and often stay to pursue permanent residence. Indian citizens were the top recipients of H-1B visas, accounting for 74 percent of the 345,000 petitions (initial and for continuing employment) approved by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) in FY 2016.

Nearly 166,000 Indian immigrants were enrolled in U.S. higher education institutions in the 2015-16 school year, comprising 16 percent of the 1 million international students overall. Students from India were the second-largest foreign group after Chinese (328,000), according to the Institute of International Education. Approximately 80 percent of Indian immigrant students were enrolled in STEM majors. Students from India accounted for 14 percent of all temporary visa holders earning doctorates at U.S. colleges and universities in 2015, 85 percent of whom intended to stay in the United States after receiving their degrees, according to the Survey of Earned Doctorates.

The foreign born from India participated in the labor force at a slightly higher rate than the overall immigrant and native-born populations. In 2015, about 68 percent of Indian immigrants ages 16 and over were in the civilian labor force, compared to 66 percent and 62 percent of the foreign- and native-born populations, respectively. Indian immigrants were roughly twice as likely to be employed in management, business, science, and arts occupations, at 73 percent, compared to the overall foreign- and native-born populations, at 31 percent and 38 percent, respectively.
Figure 5. Employed Workers in the Civilian Labor Force (ages 16 and older) by Occupation and Origin, 2015
Source: MPI tabulation of data from the U.S. Census Bureau 2015 ACS.
Income and Poverty
The median household income for Indian immigrants in 2015 was much higher than that of the overall foreign- and native-born populations. Households headed by Indian immigrants had a median income of $107,000, compared to $51,000 and $56,000 for overall immigrant and native-born households, respectively.

Just 7 percent of Indian immigrants lived in poverty in 2015, a much lower rate than the foreign-born population overall and the U.S. born (17 percent and 14 percent, respectively).
Immigration Pathways and Naturalization
In 2015, 45 percent of the 2.4 million Indian immigrants in the United States were naturalized U.S. citizens, compared to 48 percent of the overall foreign-born population.

Indians are more likely to have arrived in the United States recently, compared to immigrants overall. Thirty-one percent of Indian immigrants arrived in 2010 or later, versus 16 percent of the total foreign-born population. Another 31 percent arrived between 2000 and 2009, and 38 percent before 2000 (see Figure 6).
Figure 6. Indian Immigrants and All Immigrants in the United States by Period of Arrival, 2015
Source: MPI tabulation of data from the U.S. Census Bureau 2015 ACS. Numbers may not add up to 100 as they are rounded to the nearest whole number.
Figure 7. Immigration Pathways of Indian Immigrants and All Immigrants in the United States, 2015
After Mexico and China, India was the third largest country of origin for new lawful permanent residents (LPRs) in FY 2015. More than 64,000 new LPRs, 6 percent of the 1,051,000 total, were from India. Indians who obtained green cards were much more likely to use employment-based preferences than new LPRs overall: Forty-three percent compared to 14 percent, respectively (see Figure 6). Meanwhile, Indian immigrants were less likely than new LPRs overall to obtain green cards as immediate relatives of U.S. citizens (32 percent, compared to 44 percent).

Notably, there were significant backlogs for Indian citizens applying for LPR status through employment-based and family-sponsored channels, due to the annual per-country quota of immigrant visas available for these categories. According to the most recent visa issuance data, in August 2017 the State Department was processing visa applications filed by Indians in September 2003 for some family and employment preferences.

Notes: Family-sponsored: Includes adult children and siblings of U.S. citizens as well as spouses and children of green-card holders. Immediate relatives of U.S. citizens: Includes spouses, minor children, and parents of U.S. citizens. Diversity Visa Lottery: The Immigration Act of 1990 established the Diversity Visa Lottery to allow entry to immigrants from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States. The law states that 55,000 diversity visas in total are made available each fiscal year. Indians are not eligible for the lottery.
Source: MPI tabulation of data from Department of Homeland Security (DHS), 2015 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics (Washington, DC: DHS Office of Immigration Statistics, 2016), available online.
Health Coverage
Although the vast majority of Indian immigrants in the United States are legally present, there were approximately 267,000 unauthorized Indian immigrants in the 2010-14 period, according to Migration Policy Institute (MPI) estimates, comprising less than 3 percent of the 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States.
Diaspora
MPI also estimated that, in 2016, approximately 15,000 Indian youth were immediately eligible for the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. However, as of March 31, 2017 (the latest data available from the U.S. government), just 3,741 Indian youth had applied for the DACA program, and 3,182 had been approved.

Indian immigrants were much more likely to have private health insurance than both the overall foreign- and native-born populations (83 percent compared to 55 percent and 69 percent, respectively). They were also less likely to be covered by public health insurance programs and to be uninsured than immigrants overall and the U.S. born.
Remittances
The Indian diaspora in the United States is comprised of approximately 3.9 million individuals who were either born in India or reported Indian ancestry or race, according to tabulations from the U.S. Census Bureau pooled 2011-15 ACS.

Click here to read an in-depth profile of the Indian diaspora in the United States.
Sources
While remaining the world's top recipient of remittances, India experienced a decline in remittance inflows in 2016 for a second consecutive year. Global remittances sent to India via formal channels fell to approximately $63 billion in 2016, a 9 percent decrease from $69 billion in 2015, according to data from the World Bank. The drop owes to low oil prices and weak economic growth in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, where millions of Indian migrants work on temporary contracts. Remittances represented less than 3 percent of India's gross domestic product (GDP) in 2015. However, at the Indian state level, dependence on remittances varies substantially. For instance, remittances account for an estimated 36 percent of net domestic product in Kerala, and contribute significantly to household consumption.

Visit the Data Hub's collection of interactive remittances tools, which track remittances by inflow and outflow, between countries, and over time.

Institute of International Education. N.d. Open Doors 2015. Accessed August 31, 2017. Available online.

National Science Foundation and the National Center for Science and Engineering Centers. 2017. Doctorate Recipients from U.S. Universities: 2015. Arlington, VA: National Science Foundation and the National Center for Science and Engineering Center. Available online.

United Nations Population Division. N.d. International Migrant Stock by Destination and Origin. Accessed August 23, 2017. Available online.

U.S. Census Bureau. N.d. 2015 American Community Survey. American FactFinder. Accessed August 31, 2017. Available online.

---. N.d. 2011-2015 ACS. Accessed from Steven Ruggles, Katie Genadek, Ronald Goeken, Josiah Grover, and Matthew Sobek. Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 6.0 [Machine-readable database]. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota. Available online.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). 2017. Characteristics of H-1B Specialty Occupation Workers: Fiscal Year 2016. Washington, DC: USCIS. Available online.

---. 2017. Number of Form I-821D, Consideration of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, by Fiscal Year, Quarter, Intake, Biometrics and Case Status Fiscal Year 2012-2017 (March 31). Accessed August 23, 2017. Available online.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Immigration Statistics. N.d. 2015 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics. Accessed August 31, 2017. Available online.

U.S. Department of State. 2017. Visa Bulletin for August 2017. Available online.

World Bank. 2017. Migration and Development Brief 27. Washington, DC: World Bank. Available online.

World Bank Prospects Group. 2017. Annual Remittances Data, April 2017 update. Available online.

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Jie Zong, Jeanne Batalova Jie Zong and Jeanne Batalova

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Immigrants from India are the second-largest foreign-born group in the United States, after Mexicans. Indian immigrants tend to be far more highly educated and have greater English proficiency than the foreign-born population overall. This Spotlight article offers the latest data on Indian immigrants, focusing on population size, state- and city-level distribution, occupation, educational attainment, and more.

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Exploring the latest in scientific discoveries from prehistoric life to missions to Mars.

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This talks about Forced Migration and what causes there are

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Forced migration in the 21st century: urbanised and unending

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More than 70 million people have been uprooted across the world, and an increasing number will never go home

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This article is about the urban growth, also known as urbanization and how it has dramatically changed during these years and how it will change in the future

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Cities have existed for thousands of years and can be traced back to the river valley civilizations of Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq), Egypt, India, and China. At first, these settlements depended largely on agriculture and domestic cattle, but as they grew in size they became centers for merchants and traders.

Urban growth, also known as urbanization, accelerated dramatically with the advent of industrialization some 200 years ago. At that time, large numbers of people moved to cities in search of jobs, mostly in factories. But the most rapid growth has taken place over the past 50 years. While less than one-third of the world's population lived in cities in 1950, about two thirds of humanity is expected to live in urban areas by 2030. Most of that urbanization is taking place in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

What does it mean to be urban?

Urban is defined as "that which is characteristic of a city." But what exactly is a city? In the past, walls may have defined a city. But today's city boundaries are often blurred. Are suburbs, which are often called metropolitan areas, part of cities? Depending on the boundaries used, Tokyo can have a population of anywhere between 8 and 40 million people.

Cities make a lot of sense for humans. People are concentrated in a small space rather than being spread out over a large territory. This allows the government and others to provide services such as water, electricity, and transportation to a larger number of people. Schools and shops are more easily accessible than in rural areas.

Cities have always been at the center of economic growth and technological advances. The promise of jobs and prosperity pulls people to cities. But their rapid growth has also brought with it many negative things: violence, poverty, overcrowding, health problems, and pollution. Many cities in developing countries in particular are growing too rapidly for their own good, with many residents unable to find jobs and forced to live in slums.

Urban expansion is also encroaching on wildlife habitats everywhere. Increasingly people live and work in close proximity to wild animals whose native habitats have been lost or broken up. Many animals-from mice and cockroaches to pigeons and squirrels-have adapted to city life, taking advantage of abundant food and warmer temperatures.

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Cities have existed for thousands of years and can be traced back to the river valley civilizations of Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq), Egypt, India, and China. At first, these settlements depended largely on agriculture and domestic cattle, but as they grew in size they became centers for merchants and traders.

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This article is about the Typhoon that hit Hainan, China, and the people that had to witness it. Over 520,000 people were evacuated.

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India has one of the world's most diverse and complex migration histories. Since the 19th century, ethnic Indians have established communities on every continent as well as on islands in the Caribbean and the Pacific and Indian oceans.

The composition of flows has evolved over time from mainly indentured labor in far-flung colonies to postwar labor for British industry to high-skilled professionals in North America and low-skilled workers in the Middle East. In addition, ethnic Indians in countries like Kenya and Suriname have migrated to other countries, a movement called secondary migration.

This profile provides a broad overview of Indian migration flows and major populations worldwide, both in the past and more recently, as well as their remittances and contributions to India.

It then discusses India's policies toward its diaspora, India's own immigration policies, and immigration to India, including economic migrants from Nepal, refugees and asylum seekers from the region, and illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
Emigration during Colonial Rule
In ancient times, Indian traders established bases around the Indian and the Pacific oceans, especially in East Africa and Western and Southeast Asia. However, those flows were not the basis for Indian migration in the 19th century or the global dispersion seen today.

Rather, flows of the last 175 years began with the era of British colonial rule. The British had strategic portions of India under their control by the end of the 18th century and gained control over more territory in the 19th century.

Following the abolition of slavery, first by the British in 1833 and subsequently by other colonial powers such as France, the Netherlands, and Portugal, the colonies urgently needed manpower, particularly on sugar and rubber plantations. To meet this demand, the British established an organized system of temporary labor migration from the Indian subcontinent. On the labor-supply side of the equation, poverty among the South Asian peasantry accounted for the principal reason to leave the subcontinent.

In 1834, Britain began exporting Indian labor to Mauritius. The Netherlands and France, which replicated the British system, also relied on Indian workers. By 1878, Indians were working in Guyana, Trinidad, Natal (South Africa), Suriname, and Fiji.

Workers for plantations in Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Fiji, and Mauritius were mainly recruited in the present-day states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. In Guyana and East Africa, laborers originated mainly from Punjab and Gujarat.

Given the proximity of Tamil Nadu to French possessions in India, the bulk of workers in most French colonies, such as Guadeloupe, Martinique, and La Reunion, as well as the majority of indentured laborers in Natal (South Africa) were Tamils.

This system remained in place for 80 years. Despite variations in the way the indenture system operated, some common characteristics can be discerned.

Laborers, mostly from rural areas, would initially sign up for a five-year contract. Many renewed their contracts, and a significant portion chose to stay permanently, deciding to accept a piece of land or a certain payment in lieu of their right to be shipped home.

Isolated from the rest of the local population, colonial rulers housed the workers in barracks and regulated their lives in almost every regard, with severe punishments for disobedience and "insufficient work." The poor living conditions and almost unlimited employer control led historian Hugh Tinker to label the system a "new form of slavery."

In response to severe criticism, the British Imperial Legislative Council abolished the indenture system in 1916. By that time, more than 1.5 million Indians had been shipped to colonies in the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, and Oceania, according to estimates by the historian Brij V. Lal.

During roughly the same period, another form of labor migration was taking place. Tapping the labor surplus of South India, mostly in Tamil Nadu, the managers of tea, coffee, and rubber plantations in Sri Lanka, Malaya (part of present-day Malaysia), and Burma authorized Indian headmen, known as kangani or maistry, to recruit entire families and ship them to plantations.

Thus the system is commonly referred to as the kangani system for Sri Lanka and Malaya, and the maistry system for Burma. India, Malaya, and Sri Lanka played a role in this system by licensing the recruiters and partly by subsidizing transportation to the plantations. In Malaya, kangani migration took place in addition to the indentured labor system and mostly replaced it from 1900 onwards.

Indian workers in these three locations had close ties to India, partly because of the relatively short travel distance. Especially in Sri Lanka, however, the host society prevented any settling or mingling with the local Sinhalese. Compared to indentured laborers, the lives of kangani migrants were less regulated and provided the comfort of having moved with their families and village contacts.

Sociologist Chandrashekhar Bhat estimates that about 6 million people had left Indian shores when the system was abolished in 1938: about 1.5 million to Sri Lanka, 2 million to Malaya, and 2.5 million to Burma.

In addition to low-skilled workers, members of India's trading communities settled in many countries where indentured laborers had been brought or where business opportunities in the British Empire were promising. For example, Gujarati merchants became shop owners in East Africa, and traders from present-day Kerala and Tamil Nadu provided rural credits for peasants in Burma, Ceylon, and Malaya or were involved in retail trade.
Minor Migration Flows to Northern America and the United Kingdom
Emigration to the United Kingdom and Northern America started during colonial rule in India. However, the number of emigrants was insignificant, both in relation to emigration from India, and to total immigration to those countries.

Between 1820 and 1900, no more than 700 persons moved from India to the United States. In the following 30 years, this number rose to a still insignificant 8,700; most were Punjabi Sikhs who worked in agriculture in California. Anti-Asian legislation in 1917 and 1924 banned immigration from south or southeast Asia, including India, and ensured that Asians would not qualify for naturalization or land ownership.

In 1904, there were about 100 Indians in Canada, also part of the British Empire at that time. This number rose by 5,000 in the following three years, before a restrictive immigration policy required whoever landed in Canada to make a continuous journey from the country of one's citizenship. Since no steamships traveled directly from India to Canada, Indian immigrants were intentionally excluded.

During the time of the British Raj, small-scale migration from the subcontinent to Britain consisted largely of educated Parsees and Bengalis. Between World War I and World War II, the number of Indians in Britain increased although the population remained small; estimates range from 5,000 to 8,000. Many worked in unskilled jobs for low wages.

The historian Rozina Visram states that from 1930 onwards, India restricted the issuance of passports in order to limit the migration of less-educated Indians to Britain. Unlike Indians of "good character and established position," the less-educated were required to have a definite employment offer in Britain and to prove they would be unlikely to become destitute.
Post-Independence Migration to High-Wage Economies
Until a decision by the Indian Supreme Court in 1966, the issuance of passports was considered a discretionary instrument of the Indian government to conduct its foreign relations.

The Supreme Court established the "right to travel" as a fundamental right under the Indian constitution, following which the Indian parliament enacted the Passports Act of 1967. However, the act contains several provisions to refuse the issuance of a passport if the government thinks this would not be in "public interest."

In the first decades after independence, unskilled, skilled, and professional workers (mostly male Punjabi Sikhs) migrated from India to the United Kingdom. This is commonly attributed to Britain's postwar demand for low-skilled labor, postcolonial ties, and the United Kingdom's commonwealth immigration policy, which allowed any citizen of a Commonwealth country to live, work, vote, and hold public office in the United Kingdom.

Before the British Commonwealth Immigration Acts of 1962 and 1968, Indian nationals, as Commonwealth citizens, had an unrestricted right to enter the United Kingdom. Many settled in London as well as industrial cities like Leicester and Birmingham.

By the mid-1960s, most Indians coming to the United Kingdom were dependents according to government statistics; dependents made up 75 percent of all Indians entering in 1965 and 80 percent in 1966. Flows peaked in 1968, at just over 23,000. Between 1970 and 1996, an average of 5,800 Indian immigrants landed every year in the United Kingdom. Indian immigration sharply increased again between 1995 and 2005 (see Table 1).

Census data reveals that the India-born population in the United Kingdom tripled from 166,000 in 1961 to 470,000 in 2001. It has to be noted, however, that these numbers include white British born in India. Social geographers Ceri Peach and S.W.C. Winchester estimate the number of ethnic Indians in 1961 at 50,000. The ethnic Indian community as of 2007 stood at 1.3 million. In 2001, it counted 1 million members, with one-fifth born in South Africa or an East African country (see the section on secondary migration).

Being the only major European destination for Indians until the 1990s, the United Kingdom hosted about two-thirds of Europe's ethnic Indian population in 2001. As Table 1 shows, other countries in Western Europe, and increasingly in Eastern Europe, have also witnessed an influx of Indian migrants.

Between 1995 and 2005, half of the Europe-bound Indian immigrants headed to the United Kingdom. The other half opted for other EU countries, primarily Germany and Italy, which received 18 percent and 12 percent of the flows, respectively.

Flows into Belgium and Sweden have also slowly increased since the mid-1990s, and about 1,000 Indians come to France each year. However, the Indian community in France, about 65,000 people, is largely composed of ethnic Indians from Madagascar, the Seychelles, La Reunion, and Mauritius.

In many cases, the increased flow of Indians was triggered by European governments' attempts to tap India's highly skilled labor force. For example, Germany's temporary migration scheme, labeled "green card" and in place between 2000 and 2005, deliberately targeted Indian IT professionals. On the other hand, the Indian community in Italy consists largely of formerly illegal migrants, now being regularized. Most of the Indians in Italy are from Punjab and tend to work on dairy farms and in agriculture.

Substantial Indian migration to Northern America started only in the late 1960s. Both in the United States and Canada, major changes in immigration policy affected immigration flows generally, and Indian immigration specifically.

In the United States, the 1965 Immigration Act, which came fully into force in 1968, abolished national-origins quotas and made it possible for high-skilled immigrants, including Indians, to gain permanent residence and bring their family members.

The Immigration Act of 1990, effective from 1995, facilitated this process further by introducing the H-1B temporary worker category. This visa category allows U.S. businesses to hire foreigners with at least a bachelor's degree in "specialty occupations" including scientists, engineers, and IT specialists. Indian citizens are by far the top recipients of H-1B visas each year.

H-1B visas, which are tied to a specific employer, are valid for three years and may be renewed for another three years. At that point the employer can decide to apply for lawful permanent residence for the H-1B visa holder.

According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, from 1986 to 2005, the annual total influx of Indian immigrants more than tripled from 27,000 to 85,000, while the share in total immigration flows rose from 4.4 to 7.4 percent. Indian citizens accounted for 5.7 percent of all persons obtaining lawful permanent resident status in 2008.

Overall, the Indian foreign born are highly skilled: The U.S. Census Bureau's 2008 American Community Survey found that 74.1 percent held at least a bachelor's degree, and 68.9 percent reported working in management, professional, and related occupations.

The total size of the Indian community - meaning those born in India, the foreign born of Indian ethnicity (e.g., those born in Fiji or Trinidad), and the U.S.-born children of Indian immigrants - surpassed 2.5 million in 2007 (see Figure 1).

Temporary workers from India have received much attention, both from mainstream politics as well as research. Economist B. Lindsay Lowell observed that the number of Indian H-1B visa holders grew fivefold between 1989 and 1999 and peaked in 2001 with 160,000 issuances. In that year, 82 percent of all computer-related H-1B visas were given to Indians and 85 percent of all Indian H-1B beneficiaries were counted as computer related.

In 2007, India received one-third or 158,000 of all H-1B visas (including new visas and renewals). The second largest number went to Canadian citizens, accounting for 26,000 visas only.

India's domination of computer-trained temporary workers is mainly attributed to the large supply pool in India and to the fact that prior waves of Indian IT workers had successfully established a significant presence in that industry.

As in the United States, significant immigration flows of Indians to Canada were triggered by new immigration legislation that opened the door to high-skilled immigrants. In 1968, Canada introduced its points system, which assigns value to qualifications rather than a person's ethnic or national background.

By the 2006 census, Canada was home to 443,690 Indian foreign born, or 7.2 percent of all immigrants. The ethnic Indian community of 963,000 includes those born in Canada, as well as in East Africa, Guyana, Fiji, and Trinidad.

According to Statistics Canada, one-quarter of adult ethnic Indians were university graduates in 2001, better than the overall population. Also, 8 percent of all workers of Indian origin were employed in the natural and applied sciences compared with 6 percent of the total workforce.

However, 13 percent of the Indian labor force held manufacturing jobs, and the average income of Canadians of Indian origin was about 10 percent less than the corresponding national figure.

Since the 1990s, Australia and New Zealand have become important destination countries for Indians. Australia had 147,101 foreign born from India according to the 2006 census, 3.3 percent of all immigrants and the third-largest group from Asia, after the foreign born from China and Vietnam. From 1999 to 2007, the number of admitted immigrants from India grew 25 percent each year.

In New Zealand, the Indian-born population nearly doubled from 6,500 in 1986 to 12,800 in 1996, more than tripling by the 2006 census to 43,300 (4.9 percent of all immigrants).

Three factors can account for the increase in Indian immigration to Australia and New Zealand. First, both countries aim to attract English-speaking, highly qualified professionals, often to supply their IT industries.

Second, Australia and New Zealand have become important destinations for Indian students who, upon graduation, increasingly decide to stay on. This has been facilitated by Australian policies since 1998; these policies allow them to change their status without having to leave the country.

And third, a growing ethnic Indian community in both countries has led to increased family-sponsored immigration.
The Indian Diaspora in Malaysia, Singapore, and Fiji
Malaysia's population consists largely of ethnic Malays, ethnic Chinese, and ethnic Indians, who numbered 1.8 million according to a report issued by Malaysia's prime minister. Most of the ethnic Indians in Malaysia are descendants of kangani labor migrants.

The report also states that Indians have slightly higher household incomes than Malays but lower than Chinese. Although a quarter of Malaysia's lawyers and doctors are ethnic Indians, the majority of Indians are engaged in lower-skill occupations.

Despite their numbers and some political representation, the community faces severe discrimination, fueled also by religious tensions between the predominantly Muslim Malays and the predominantly Hindu Indians. In addition, Malaysia consistently favors "bumiputeras," the so-called sons of the soil, in its economic policies, its distribution of government funds, and in its hiring for government positions.

In 2004, 8.4 percent (293,000) of Singapore's population reported Indian ethnicity. Many Indians settled there over the last 150 years; they are mainly laborers and domestic workers. As a result of Singapore's immigration policy, low tax rates, and economic growth, the country has witnessed a large influx of Indian professionals since the 1990s.

Fiji had been a major destination of indentured laborers in the 19th century. After its independence from the United Kingdom in 1970, more than 98 percent of the 300,000 Fiji-born ethnic Indians accepted Fijian citizenship but were still referred to as "Indians," a term that several Fijian constitutions uses.

The ethnic Indian population in Fiji has decreased over two decades: in 2007 there were 313,800 Indian Fijians, or 37.5 percent of the population. Apart from a small group of prosperous Gujarati merchants, the majority of Indian Fijians are less well-to-do cane farmers.

Several military coups, significant racial tensions between ethnic "Fijians" and Indian Fijians, and a long tradition of discriminatory legal provisions for land ownership, political representation, and public funding led to many challenges for the community and a significant level of emigration, especially to Australia and New Zealand.

In contrast to other destination countries, ethnic Indians have had some political representation in Malaysia and Fiji and have held high-level government positions in Singapore. These include two presidents of Singapore, including Sellapan Ramanathan, the current president, and numerous cabinet ministers and members of parliament.
Indian Student Migration
The absolute number of Indian students abroad tripled from about 51,000 in 1999 to over 153,000 in 2007, according to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (see Table 2). Thus, India ranks second among the world's largest sending countries for tertiary students, after China.

Five countries accounted for 90 percent of all Indian tertiary students abroad. The United States is by far the most important destination country, receiving more than half of the worldwide expatriate Indian student force in 2006-2007, followed by Australia (16 percent) and the United Kingdom (15 percent).

The Institute of International Education reports that India has been the leading source of foreign students in the United States since 2000-2001. In the 2007-2008 academic year, 15 percent of all foreign students admitted were from India, corresponding to almost 95,000 people. The majority of these Indian students pursue graduate studies, as did three out of four Indian students in 2006-2007.

However, the number of Indians submitting applications to U.S. graduate schools shrunk 12 percent for the 2008-2009 school year compared with 2007-2008, according to a report from the Council of Graduate Schools.

Studying in the United Kingdom has been a tradition for many Indian middle-class families. After a temporary slow down, this movement gained momentum again in the last decade when British universities started to hold student fairs in India and recruit students directly. For this purpose, at least 14 British universities have opened full-time offices in India.

In 2007, Indians made up 6.4 percent of the country's 374,000 foreign student enrollments, as reported by the Atlas Project - up from 4 percent in 2003. The UK Higher Education Statistics Agency reports that the majority of them are enrolled in graduate programs, the biggest number in business studies, followed by engineering and technology, and computer science.

Student migration is often the gateway for permanent stay in the country. This is eased by policies in many destination countries that allow students to convert their student status into a residence permit if they find a job within a certain time after graduation.
Secondary Migration of the Indian Diaspora
Due to racial pressures and economic instability in some of the countries where Indians settled in the colonial era, many of them and their descendants went to India or to other counties. These types of flows, known as secondary migration, took place from East Africa, Fiji, and some Caribbean countries.

Particularly significant was the exodus of ethnic Indians from Uganda after Idi Amin came to power in a military coup in 1972. Black Ugandans had long resented Asians' economic dominance. Amin, seeking to give economic power back to Africans, set a deadline of 90 days for all persons of Asian origin to leave the country for good, including the 80,000-strong ethnic Indian community.

Although many Ugandan Indians were British passport holders, they did not have the right to settle in the United Kingdom because the UK Commonwealth Immigration Act of 1968 limited immigration. Apart from 28,000 who entered Britain via a quota system, Canada accommodated some highly skilled Ugandan Asians who qualified under the Canadian points system. Smaller numbers were accepted by the United States, West Germany, and Sweden.

Even though Kenya and Tanzania did not force ethnic Indians to leave, their Africanization policies (though not as severe as those of Uganda) led to a significant emigration of ethnic Indians from these countries as well. The High Level Committee on the Indian Diaspora reports that about 70,000 ethnic Indians from Mozambique relocated to Portugal.

As stated earlier, large numbers of Indians in Fiji have emigrated to Australia and New Zealand. In Australia's 2006 census, almost 30,000 Fiji-born persons (56 percent of all Fiji-born) reported Indian ancestry, while the number in New Zealand was 5,600 according to its 2006 census.

From Suriname, a former Dutch colony in Latin America, ethnic Indians - who were the descendents of indentured laborers - migrated to the Netherlands in large numbers before Suriname's independence in 1975. Ethnic Indians left Suriname because they feared Creole domination and the loss of Dutch citizenship.

In contrast, ethnic Indians from other Caribbean countries have migrated to the United States and Canada and continue to do so, mainly for economic reasons. According to the 2008 American Community Survey, 4 percent of all ethnic Indians in the U.S., or 97,000 persons, were born in the Caribbean.
Temporary Labor Migration to West Asia
Significant migration from India to the Persian Gulf began in the 1970s, following the oil boom. Since then, an increasing number of semi- and unskilled workers from South India have worked in the gulf countries on temporary migration schemes in the oil industry and in services and construction.

Most come from the South Indian states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Andhra Pradesh. These states have a historic connection with the gulf countries, plus they have large Muslim populations and were experiencing high unemployment rates when migration picked up in the 1970s. Successful migrants, with their increased earnings, then served as role models for many others in their villages and districts.

These workers' contracts typically last between two and five years; generally, after finishing their contractual employment, they must return to India before they are eligible for a new contract. The gulf countries offer little scope either for family migration and unification or for permanent residency and citizenship.

India's Emigration Act of 1983 regulates emigration of Indian workers for overseas employment on a contractual basis and seeks to safeguard their interests and ensure their welfare. The act requires all recruiting agents to register with the Protector-General of Emigrants before they can recruit for overseas employment.

To protect vulnerable categories of unskilled, semi-skilled workers, and women going abroad, the Protector-General of Emigrants checks their labor contracts before they depart to ensure the contracts ensure fair wages and decent working and living conditions. This process is called an emigration clearance check.

However, large groups of people are exempted from this check, for example, certified nurses, professionals, and persons who have been staying abroad for more than three years. Further, for migration to 54 countries, such as the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and most European countries, but also Thailand and Singapore, an emigration clearance check is not required.

The annual number of semi- or unskilled Indian workers going to the gulf countries more than quadrupled between 1999 and 2007, from about 160,000 to 777,000 (see Figure 2). Those going to the gulf countries in 2007 made up 96 percent of all workers requiring an emigration clearance check.

Sociologist P.C. Jain estimates that about 4.5 million Indians were living in the gulf countries in 2008, 70 percent of them in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Although most Indians in the gulf hold unskilled or semiskilled jobs, the High Level Committee on the Indian Diaspora estimates that 20 percent are white-collar workers and another 10 percent belong to the professional category.
The Full Picture: The Global Indian Diaspora
According to 2001 estimates by the High Level Committee on the Indian Diaspora, the 18.5 million-strong diaspora (including descendants of Indian migrants) is widely dispersed. The Indian government claims diaspora communities in as many as 110 countries; however, three-quarters of the diaspora population live in 12 countries (see Table 3).

Since 2005, the Indian government claims that the community numbers approximately 25 million.

In 2001, the largest number of diasporic Indians (35 percent) lived in Asia (see Figure 3). A fifth of the diaspora were in the gulf region, with 14 percent in Northern America, 13 percent on the African continent, and 10 percent in Europe. The Caribbean and Oceania accounted for only a small share, 6.5 percent and 3.3 percent, respectively.

Figure 3. The Indian Diaspora by World Region in Percent and Millions, 2001

Note: The numbers are estimates of the diaspora populations including both actual migrants and descendants of migrants.

Source: High Level Committee on the Indian Diaspora (2002). Sri Lanka and Nepal: 2001 Census.

While ethnic Indians are a minority in most countries, they constitute around 40 percent of the population in Fiji, Trinidad, Guyana, and Suriname. They make up 70 percent of the inhabitants of Mauritius.

The Indian diaspora in developed countries, especially in the United States, is highly organized with many regional and pan-Indian cultural, professional, religious, and charity organizations. In recent years, advocacy groups, political ambitions of individuals like Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, and the Congressional India Caucus have demonstrated Indians' increasing political influence.

Other countries, however, have seen more Indians elected to national legislative bodies. In Canada, eight ethnic Indians - all of them Sikhs - were elected to the House of Commons in October 2008. Currently, six elected Members of the British Parliament and eight Members in the House of Lords are of Indian descent.

In Mauritius, where 70 percent of the population is of Indian descent, the prime minister has been an ethnic Indian except for between 2003 and 2005. As noted earlier, Singapore's current president is an ethnic Indian. Seven cabinet members and 27 parliamentarians in Fiji are of Indian descent; in Malaysia, the count goes to one cabinet minister and three members of parliament. In Germany, two ethnic Indians are elected representatives in the central parliament, as is one India-born person in New Zealand.
The Diaspora's Economic Contributions to the Homeland
Since 2003, India has been the world's largest recipient, at least in absolute terms, of remittances, defined as the inflow of private transfers. From a modest US$2.1 billion in 1990-1991, remittances through formal channels were pegged at US$52 billion in 2008 (see Figure 4).

Generally, it is assumed that remittances through informal channels are significant as well. Despite the lack of data on such channels, it is believed that for India, informal channels do not play a major role. Professional migrants to industrialized countries are more likely to use formal channels and temporary labor migrants often hold special accounts with Indian banks that have established a presence in the gulf countries.

Also, in relative terms, remittances gained considerable importance since they now make up a larger chunk of India's gross domestic product: 3.3 percent in 2007 according to the World Bank versus 0.7 percent in 1990-1991 according to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

As economist Deepak Nayyar points out, remittances increased from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s largely because of remittances from temporary migrants in the oil-exporting gulf countries.

But over the last decade, data from RBI shows, the migration of professional migrants to Western countries drove the sharp increase in remittances. Between 1997 and 2004, two-thirds of all received funds came from the United States, Canada, and Europe, and more than half of all transferred funds received in 2003 and 2004 originated from Northern America alone.

There is no systematic data on the regional destinations of remittances in India. However, economists K.P Kannan and K.S. Hari estimate that for the South Indian state of Kerala, the origin of many temporary gulf migrants, remittance inflows averaged 22 percent of the state's income.

In addition to remittances, India has seen growth in capital inflows. In the 1970s, the government authorized special deposit schemes for non-resident Indians (NRIs) to increase its foreign-exchange reserves; depositors can hold their money in foreign currencies or in Indian rupees. NRI deposits grew steadily from US$14 billion in 1991 to US$ 43.7 billion in 2008.

When India has urgently needed foreign exchange, it has used diaspora bonds - debt instruments for raising money from a country's diaspora. In total, India received US$11.3 billion in foreign exchange from the three schemes, each under different circumstances: during the balance of payment crisis in 1991, when it suffered from sanctions in 1998 in response to its nuclear tests, and during adverse global economic conditions in 2000.
The Indian IT Industry and the Diaspora
Although no reliable statistics exist, anecdotally it appears an increasing number of Indians have returned in recent years. Returnees can benefit their home countries by contributing enhanced skills, which can be used in the country of origin (human capital); access to business networks abroad (social capital); and financial capital and investment.

The Indian information technology (IT) industry is widely regarded as a showcase for this triple-benefit formula. Figures from India's national software association NASSCOM show that North America (predominately the United States) accounted for two-thirds of India's IT exports from 2004 to 2007.

While the industry's success is attributable to other factors, the impact of the diaspora and returnees from the United States particularly is believed to be important for three reasons.

First, several studies have shown that Indians who returned from the United States have founded and managed successful IT companies in India.

Second, some Indians who founded companies in Silicon Valley have subcontracted work to companies in India. These entrepreneurs often serve as intermediaries between the markets.

Third, the success of Indian IT professionals in the United States has created trust in the country's intellectual abilities abroad. It has been a major factor in branding India as a source of well-educated and hard-working professionals, rather than a poverty-ridden country of snake charmers.

This new "India brand" explains several countries' increased interest in recruiting Indian graduates and professionals. However, this image has repercussions for India's attractiveness as a partner for trade and investment. It also contributes to the willingness of U.S. and other companies to collaborate with and outsource to Indian companies.
India's Diaspora Policies
Within the last decade, the Indian government has shown significant interest in the diaspora and established a number of diaspora policies. India's increasing interest in its diaspora has three major factors.

First, India once had a closed economy that did not encourage foreign contributions, businesses, or investment. When the government liberalized the economy in 1991, diasporic Indians became more useful as agents of trade, investment, and technology.

Second, Indian foreign policy began to recognize the value of the diaspora in industrialized countries, especially the United States, for public diplomacy.

And third, only from the mid-1990s, ethnic Indians started surfacing as high-level executives of multinational corporations. The general success of the community, especially in the United States and Canada, and the community's positive influence on the overall idea of Indian qualities led successive Indian governments to take a more proactive approach.

Since 2003, the government has hosted an annual diaspora conference, the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, that is designed to serve as a platform for interaction between overseas Indians, the Indian government, and interested segments of the Indian society, such as businessmen and cultural and charity organizations.

High-level political leaders, including the prime minister, the president, and union ministers, address 1,000 to 1,500 overseas Indians on topics such as investment and philanthropic activities in India as well as concerns of the diaspora communities the world over.

Established in 2004, the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs coordinates activities aimed at reaching out to the diaspora. These include the "Know India Program" for diaspora youth and annual awards for eminent diaspora personalities.

The government also set up a Global Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, consisting of diasporic scholars, scientists, politicians, and businessmen, in 2009.

In 1999, India introduced the Person of Indian Origin Card (PIO card) and in 2005 Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI). Both grant practical parity with Indian citizens but do not permit voting, standing for election, or government employment.

PIO cards are available to former Indian citizens and their non-Indian-born descendants (up to four generations) while OCI is limited to those whose parents or grandparents once had or were eligible for Indian citizenship on January 26, 1950. Also, OCI grants a lifelong visa and does not require reporting to the police for stays longer than 180 days.

As of March 2009, the Indian government had granted almost 400,000 OCI cards, 43 percent of them through Indian consulates in the United States and 13 percent in the United Kingdom.

With the financial resources of the diaspora in mind, the government amended investment laws and established the Overseas Indian Facilitation Centre in 2007 to make it easier for Indians abroad to invest. In addition, the Reserve Bank of India has procedures in place so that NRIs and PIOs can invest in Indian companies.
Temporary Labor Migration Policies
Temporary low- and semiskilled labor migration, mainly to the gulf region but also to Malaysia and increasingly to other parts of the word, prompted the Indian government to institute important new policies.

Key focus areas are preparing migrants before they leave, controlling and monitoring the licensing of agents and brokers, safeguarding migrants' rights in countries of temporary residence, maximizing their remittance potential, and facilitating reintegration upon their return. The Protector-General of Emigrants at the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs monitors migrant welfare.

Since 2003, there is a compulsory insurance system for Indian workers moving overseas, the Pravasi Bharatiya Bima Yojana. Further, the government has established a welfare fund for overseas workers and negotiated bilateral agreements on the transferability of their social security contributions. The welfare fund covers boarding and lodging for distressed overseas Indians in the domestic sector and unskilled laborers.
Open Border with Nepal
According to a bilateral friendship treaty signed between India and Nepal in 1950, citizens of both countries can travel and work freely across the border and are to be treated the same as native citizens. Nepali migration to India dates back to the 19th century, when many Nepalis migrated to Punjab and joined the British army in India. They also came to work on tea plantations in Assam and Darjeeling.

The Nepal Living Standard Survey, as well as scholars who have studied Nepali migration, have estimated that 1 million Nepalis work in India. Most are unskilled permanent or seasonal laborers and domestic workers, living almost exclusively in Northern India.

Nepal's 2001 census reported 584,000 persons born in India of which only 100,000 were registered as Indian citizens. Other estimates include the majority of the settlers of south Nepali provinces, such as the Terai, as ethnic Indians.
Foreigners, Refugees, and Asylum Seekers
The Foreigners Act of 1946 regulates the entry and stay of foreigners in India. It requires all foreigners to register with the local police if they are in the country for longer than 180 days.

The Home Ministry reports that 352,000 foreigners were registered in India as of December 31, 2007, just 0.03 percent of the population. Students (8.2 percent) accounted for the highest percentage of foreigners in 2006, followed by employees (5.2 percent).

The 2001 census revealed that more than 6 million residents were born outside the country (including Indian citizens born abroad), but almost all (5.7 million) were from the neighboring countries of Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Nepal; Sri Lanka and Burma accounted for another 243,000. Only 227,000 individuals were born outside of the region: 28 percent of them in Africa, 25 percent in the Middle East, and only 20 percent in Northern America, Europe, and Oceania combined.

However, anecdotal evidence from Mumbai, Delhi, and Bangalore suggests that the real number of non-South Asian foreigners in India is significantly higher.

India has traditionally treated refugees well even though it is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol. Most famously, India granted refuge to the Dalai Lama when he fled Tibet in 1959 and permitted him to set up a government-in-exile in Dharamsala. The Indian government allows the Central Tibetan Administration autonomy in public education, for example, but does not officially recognize it as a government.

Today, about 110,000 Tibetans live in India according to the Ministry of Home Affairs' annual report, which cites the Dalai Lama. The approximately 80,000 Tibetans who arrived in the first and largest wave received resident permits and were offered low-paying public works jobs by the Indian government. However, more recent Tibetan refugees have not been as welcome, with many denied residence permits.

An estimated 60,000 Afghans fled to India after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Thousands more came when the Taliban took power in 1992. Since 2001, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has helped some 500 return and 650 to resettle to third countries, mostly to the United States, Canada, and Australia.

In 2007, 9,200 Afghanistan refugees (92 percent of them Hindu or Sikh) were living in India, according to a spokesperson for UNHCR. More recently, the Indian government has agreed to naturalize many of these Hindu and Sikh Afghans who have lived in India since 1979.

In addition, UNHCR reports that currently, about 4,000 asylum seekers, mostly from Afghanistan and Burma, are in the process of refugee certification.

Ethnic South Indians (Tamils) from Sri Lanka began fleeing to India in response to the civil war that broke out in 1983 between the government and the Tamil Tigers, who wanted an independent Tamil state on the island.

While the Indian Government and UNHCR repatriated almost 100,000 Tamil Sri Lankans to Sri Lanka until 1995, 22,000 Sri Lankans fled to India in 2006 due to renewed fighting between the government and Tamil Tigers. As of late 2008, about 73,000 Sri Lankan refugees were living in 117 camps across southern India, mainly in Tamil Nadu.

As of 2005, UNHCR reported that India had 139,283 refugees and 303 asylum seekers. Of this population, UNHCR protects and assists some 11,000 urban refugees. More recently, India has received Iraqi and Palestinian refugees from Baghdad, some of whom have been resettled to third countries.
Refugee Policy Issues
India has not enacted any laws or regulations relating to the status of asylum seekers and refugees. Instead, those persons are governed by the general Foreigners Act of 1946. In most cases, recognized refugees do not have the right of free movement in India and are not entitled to work.

Indian law requires every person entering the country to have proper documentation denoting permission from Indian authorities. Without such permission, a person is at risk of deportation as an illegal entrant.

This situation is problematic for most refugees who often do not have passports, let alone Indian visas. The South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre reports that although the Extradition Act of 1962 provides some protection to refugees facing extradition, this act does not provide real safeguards for the majority of refugees in India whose removal falls under the category of expulsion rather than extradition.

Eminent jurist Rajeev Dhavan reports that on the positive side, the Supreme Court and various High Courts extend constitutional rights to refugees and migrants. However, following the Law Commission's 175th Report of 2000, the Foreigner Act was made stricter to treat "illegal entrants" harshly, irrespective of the circumstances underlying their migration.

Only specific refugee groups such as the Tibetans and Sri Lankan Tamils are recognized and supported directly by the Indian government. Other refugees, such as those from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia, have to obtain a "refugee status determination" directly from UNHCR. For this purpose they must travel to the UNHCR office in New Delhi, where UNHCR assesses whether they fall within the definition of a refugee.

When reform of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1955 was discussed in 2003, the Standing Committee on Home Affairs stated the following about refugees:

"India has [a] large population and land-population ratio has decreased over the period of time. Employment opportunities are not available due to increase of population manifold. In such a situation, the country is unable to undertake additional burden of refugees from other countries. Keeping in view the economic and population reasons, citizenship cannot be granted to the refugees who have come on or after 25 March 1971."

The Ministry of Home Affairs states that to prevent new, large waves of Sri Lankan refugees, several measures, including intensified coastal patrolling, collection and collation of advance intelligence, and strengthening of naval detachments in Tamil Nadu, have been undertaken.
Illegal Immigration from Bangladesh
For decades, India has received a constant inflow of unauthorized migrants from Bangladesh. According to a survey conducted by the Indian Statistical Institute in 2002-2003, most have economic reasons for migrating, such as poverty and the lack of employment opportunities, in addition to political instability.

These migrants generally find work as cheap labor in the informal sector, often as domestic helpers, construction laborers, rickshaw pullers, and rag pickers. The Bangladeshi government does not officially recognize those migrants and thus does not provide help or support. In 2003, Bangladesh's foreign minister was quoted as saying that not a single unauthorized Bangladeshi resided in India.

As with most illegal migration, data on its extent is scarce. The Home Ministry estimated the number of unauthorized Bangladeshis as of December 2001 at 12 million, residing in 17 Indian states. However, in February 2009, the Home Ministry withdrew these data as "unreliable" and based on "mere hearsay."

Political scientist Kamal Sadiq has estimated the number of illegal migrants from Bangladesh at 15 to 20 million, basing the number partly on documented growth of Muslim communities and partly on unpublished government reports.

Sadiq's research has found that many of these Bangladeshis adopt Hindu names and are able to obtain fraudulent documents that allow them access to government subsidies and even to vote in elections. Indeed, some Indian politicians have benefited from votes cast by illegally resident Bangladeshi migrants.

As recently as April 2008, the Indian Supreme Court directed the government to take all possible steps to prevent the "illegal immigration and infiltration" of Bangladeshis into India, while approving of the government's ongoing efforts, such as fencing off the India-Bangladesh border.

The Ministry of Home Affairs reports that 2,650 kilometers the Indo-Bangladesh border had been fenced by mid-2009. The fence is expected to be completed by March 2010, with a total length of 3,437 kilometers.
Outlook
The movement of Indians across the globe since the British colonial era and the development of those communities will continue to interest policymakers and scholars for decades to come.

Ethnic Indian communities, especially those in the United States and the United Kingdom, have become known for their economic success and generally peaceful integration. However, millions of ethnic Indians, including those on temporary contracts in the Middle East, have limited rights and less secure futures.

The Indian government has demonstrated its commitment to differing groups abroad. Investment and return to India have become easier for the more well-off members of the diaspora, and those on temporary contracts have benefitted from more government preparation before they leave and from more efficient remittance systems.

Further, as people who differ in skin color from the majority society in most host countries, despite their general acceptance, ethnic Indians remain potential targets of xenophobic tendencies and violence.

Such incidents have occurred not only in countries with existing ethnic tensions, like Malaysia, Fiji, and Sri Lanka, but also in the United Kingdom, when white British and persons of South Asian heritage violently clashed during the Oldham race riots of 2001.

Assaults have also occurred in Germany, when Indian petty-merchants were attacked at a market in 2007; in Kenya, where riots against Indians and Indian property struck the community in early 2008; and most recently in Australia with several attacks on Indian students in 2009.

India arguably has long served as a destination for economic migrants and refugees from neighboring countries. Yet policymakers and Indian society have yet to address head-on challenges related to illegal immigration from Bangladesh.

Even before the terrorist attacks in Mumbai in November 2008, India looked at illegal migration as a threat to internal security. In 2009, the government started a process to provide forgery-proof identity cards to all its nationals. This is one attempt to tackle the problem of future illegal immigration.

With regard to refugee-related policies, both UNHCR and India's National Human Rights Commission haves urged the Indian government for decades to ratify the refugee convention and its protocols, as well as to enact special legislation related to refugees and child refugees.

Although India is a member of UNHCR's Executive Committee, approving and supervising the agency's assistance programs, India is not willing to sign the refugee convention because - as political analyst Anuj Nair argues - it regards the convention as too Euro-centric.

Also, as Nair points out, the refugee convention does not take into account mass movements of refugees in developing countries. Furthermore, including refugee issues into multilateral relations and international agreements could constrict India's freedom of action in these areas. For all these reasons, it does not seem likely that India's view of the refugee convention will change in the near future.

After a nongovernmental commission, chaired by former Chief Justice of India P.N. Bhagwati, had drafted a "model law on refugee protection" in 1997, India's National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) established an expert group on refugees.

Efforts of the expert group and nongovernmental organizations, especially the New Delhi-based Public Interest Legal Support and Research Centre, culminated in the Refugees and Asylum Seekers (Protection) Bill of 2006. Until recently, the government of India was reluctant to adopt a special legal framework because this would limit its powers to deal with refugees on the basis of mere political convenience and because it argues that it treats refugees well regardless of their legal status.

Since 2008, the refugee bill has been under consideration by an interministerial committee, including NHRC. The committee's outcome will decide the legal status of present and future refugees in India.

It is expected that India will be the most populous country by 2050, with a largely young and thus mobile population. Given India's expanding middle class and continuing poverty, international labor, highly skilled migration, and illegal migration are likely to grow, as is the scale of internal mobility.

Further, it is not clear yet how climate change could affect India's migration scenario. Neighboring Bangladesh regularly suffers from severe flooding, adding to the migration pressure for its nationals to search for opportunities in India.

India will need to revise its existing laws governing foreigners and eventually prepare to see itself as a country people also come to, rather than only a country people leave.
The author thank Dietrich Thränhardt, Muzaffar Chishti, and the editorial team of the Migration Information Source for valuable comments and suggestions on an earlier draft of this country profile. Sources
Atlas Project. Data on international Student Mobility. Institute of International Education, New York. Available online.

Bhat, Chandrashekhar. 2003. India and the Indian Diaspora: Inter-linkages and Expectations. In Indian Diaspora: Global Identity, ed. Ajay Dubey, 11-22. New Delhi: GOPIO International, Kalinga Publications.

Canada Statistics. 2007. Ethnic diversity and immigration, Overview 2007.

Dubey, Ajay, ed. 2003. Indian Diaspora. Global Identity. New Delhi: GOPIO International, Kalinga Publications.

Hill, K., W. Seltzer, J. Leaning, S.J. Malik, S.S. Russell, and C. Makinson. A Demographic Case Study of Forced Migration: The 1947 Partition of India. Available online.

Hunger, Uwe. 2004. Indian IT-Entrepreneurs in the U.S. and India: An Illustration of the Brain Gain Hypothesis. Journal of Comparative Policy-Analysis 6 (2): 99-109.

Indian Ministry of Home Affairs. 2005. Annual Report 2004/05. New Delhi: Government of India. Available online.

Indian Ministry of Home Affairs. 2008. Annual Report 2007/08. New Delhi: Government of India. Available online.

Indian Standing Committee on Home Affairs. 2003. 107th Report on The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2003. New Delhi: Rajya Sabha Secretariat. Available online.

Jain, Prakash C. 2008. Globalisation and Indian Diaspora in West Asia and North Africa: Some Policy Implications. In India and West Asia in the Era of Globalization, ed. Anwar Alam, 161-87. New Delhi: New Century Publications.

Jain, Ravindra K. 1993. Indian Communities Abroad: Themes and Literature. New Delhi: Manohar Publishers & Distributors.

Markovits, Claude. 1999. Indian Merchant Networks outside India in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: A Preliminary Survey. In Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 33 (4), 883-911.

Masih, Archana. 2007. 'Most Afghan refugees are Hindus, Sikhs.' Rediff News, September 13, 2007. Available online.

Naujoks, Daniel. 2009. India and its Diaspora. Changing Research and Policy Paradigms. In National Paradigms of Migration Research. Dietrich Thränhardt and Michael Bommes, eds. Göttingen: V&R unipress.

Naujoks, Daniel. India's New Membership Concepts: Policy Change in the Light of Migration and Development. PhD diss., University of Münster. [forthcoming]

Nayyar, Deepak. 1994. Migration, remittances and capital flows: The Indian experience. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

New Zealand Statistics. 2002. Asian People. 2001 Census of Population and Dwellings. Wellington.

Sadiq, Kamal. 2009. Paper Citizens: How Illegal Immigrants Acquire Citizenship in Developing Countries. New York: Oxford University Press.

Tinker, Hugh. 1974. A New System of Slavery: The Export of Indian Labour Overseas 1830-1920. London: Oxford University Press.

UK Office for National Statistics. 2004. Focus on Ethnicity and Identity. London. Available online.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. 2008. UNHCR and India hold key meeting to strengthen cooperation. UNHCR website, January 31, 2008. Available online.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. 2008. Eight Sri Lankan refugees drown while returning home. UNHCR Briefing Notes, September 16, 2008. Available online.

United Nations Global Migration Database. United Nations Population Division. Available online.

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Emigration, Immigration, and Diaspora Relations in India

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The world's second most populous country also has a vast diapora spread across nearly every continent. Daniel Naujoks provides a broad overview of Indian migration flows and major populations worldwide, and discusses India's diaspora policies, refugees and asylum seekers from the region, and illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

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Sudden seismic waves after 2 earthquake hits : Italy

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Sudden seismic waves after 2 earthquake hits : Italy

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Earthquake hits central Italy, shocking unaware residents. No fatalities but hundreds left with ruined homes

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Hundreds of people in central Italy woke up in makeshift shelters in a state of shock and exhaustion after the region was hit by two earthquakes that brought back memories of the disaster that hit the area two months ago.

While no fatalities were reported - one man reportedly died from a heart attack that was possibility related to the shock - locals were on Thursday carrying out a grim assessment of major damage to homes and churches in towns across Marche and parts of Umbria. The two regions were also hit in the 24 August quake that killed 300 people.

The area continued to be hit by aftershocks - about 200 of them, according to seismologists - throughout the night, even as first responders struggled through a torrential rainstorm and mud and debris to make door-to-door checks on residents' safety. Another earthquake, measuring 4.5 on the Richter scale, hit an area about 70km from Perugia on Thursday morning.

None of the aftershocks was as strong as the quakes that hit the area on Wednesday night, which measured 5.4 and 6.1 on the Richter scale and struck two hours apart, at 7:10pm and then 9:18pm. The vibration could be felt as far north as Veneto and far south as Caserta.

The situation on Thursday morning was described as "dramatic" in Italian press reports, as thousands of displaced people who live across the mostly rural area spent the night in temporary shelters or in their cars, either unable or too afraid to return home.

"We have about 2,000 or 3,000 homeless people," Cesare Spuri, the head of the civil protection department in the central Marche region, told Ansa.

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A child sleeps in a secured area in Visso. Photograph: Tiziana Fabi/AFP/Getty Images

The epicentre of both quakes was near the town of Visso, central Marche, where residents could be seen in television footage walking around dazed and inspecting major damage to property. In some cases, entire walls lay on the ground in heaps of rubble.

"I've felt a lot of earthquakes but that was the strongest I've ever felt. Fortunately everyone had already left their homes after the first quake. so I don't think anyone was hurt," said.

Ussita, Visso, and a town called Castelsantangelo sul Nera were the most affected by the quakes.

Initially, experts believed that the tremors were technically aftershocks linked to the August quake. But on Thursday Mario Tozzi, from the national institute for environmental geology and geo-engineering, said the "double-hit" quake was a new earthquake.

"What we do not know is whether it was a dormant section of the Amatrice fault or a parallel structure, a close cousin of this fault," Tozzi told AFP.

The quakes were typical for the region and would Tozzi said more aftershocks ought to be expected in coming months, though they should be getting weaker. He added, however, that one could not rule out another major quake in the near future.

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Rescuers assist people sheltering in a bus hangar in Camerino. Photograph: Roberto Alimonti/AP

Schools were closed in several towns on Thursday as a precaution, and a handful of hospitals and one prison evacuated after suffering damage.

In Castelsantangelo sul Nera, near the epicentre, two bar owners opened their businesses to locals, believing it was far more secure to stay in the premises than to return to their home in Visso.

It was ultimately transformed into a shelter, with entire families, elderly people and parents with young children settling down on chairs and stools for the long night of aftershocks.

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Italy earthquakes rattle buildings and residents two months after disaster

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Hundreds of people in central Italy woke up in makeshift shelters in a state of shock and exhaustion after the region was hit by two earthquakes that brought back memories of the disaster that hit the area two months ago.

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This article talks about the hundreds of deaths caused while migrating from Libya to Italy. This links  to migration as people are driven (forced) out of their country because of the conflict between Libya's dictator and the rebel fighters.

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The mood aboard the boats had gone from hope to horrific tragedy. After hundreds of migrants left the north coast of Libya earlier this week in a large wooden boat and several smaller rubber crafts, they made it just 12 miles offshore before rescuers rushed to find the boats crowded, some five times beyond their capacity. And among the crowds, 32 dead bodies.

Aris Messinis, a photographer for Agence France-Presse, was aboard the rescue boat. When he and rescuers from Proactiva Open Arms, a Spanish aid organization, came upon the scene, many of the migrants began to shout frantically. Some jumped into the water.

"We tried to calm them down. We tried to tie their boat and drag it closer to the area where the rescue operations were happening," says Messinis. "We were shouting, 'Don't jump, don't jump!' They were very panicked."

Both 2015 and 2016 have seen steep rises in migrations of refugees fleeing from unstable humanitarian and political conditions in Africa and the Middle East. Last year, more than a million refugees left ports in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and Turkey to travel by sea to seek refuge in Spain, Italy, and Greece. The number of arrivals by sea has dropped in 2016 to roughly 300,000, but the numbers remain higher than historical averages. In all, over the past 20 months, the UN Refugee Agency has declared 3,521 people dead or missing while attempting Mediterranean crossings.

The scene on Tuesday off the coast of Libya-an area where political instability has made it a common embarkation point for refugees-started hopeful, with a stretch of good weather. But by the time rescuers had secured the boats, nearly three dozen refugees had died, either from drowning or asphyxiation in such crowded conditions.

Messinis compared the condition of overpacked boats to overcrowded slave ships that left Africa hundreds of years ago. Yet despite the migrant boats being in a different century and under a different context, he found the scene no less awful. "It's not the first time this has happened," he says, "and I think it probably won't be the last."

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Tragedy Strikes Hundreds of Migrants Bound for Italy

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The mood aboard the boats had gone from hope to horrific tragedy. After hundreds of migrants left the north coast of Libya earlier this week in a large wooden boat and several smaller rubber crafts, they made it just 12 miles offshore before rescuers rushed to find the boats crowded, some five times beyond their capacity.

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Resources are running out while population is still growing

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As World’s Population Booms, Will Its Resources Be Enough for Us?

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As world population projections soar, there are rising concerns about the impact billions more people will have on the planet.

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The Great Barrier Reef is in critical conditio

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The Great Barrier Reef is in critical conditio

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The Reef is being effected by a bleaching event caused be the warming water temperatures climbing due to pollution and global warming. This links into a man-made hazard as this disrupts the ecosystem and cause an extinction of endangered animal and an overpopulation of pests.

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Reports of the death of the Great Barrier Reef have been greatly exaggerated, scientists have said, after the publication of an "obituary" for the vast coral ecosystem.

The famed 1,400-mile network of reefs "passed away in 2016 after a long illness", wrote food and travel writer Rowan Jacobsen in an article for Outside magazine. According to Jacobsen, the reef's demise followed the "most catastrophic bleaching event in its history, from which it would never recover".

Despite the rather tongue-in-cheek nature of the obituary various news outlets, including the Sun in Britain and the New York Post in the US, and social media users have rushed to mourn the supposed passing of the Great Barrier Reef. The ecosystem lies off the east coast of Australia and is the largest living entity on the planet.

But scientists have stressed that while the Great Barrier Reef, like most coral structures around the world, is under severe stress, it hasn't quite snuffed it yet.

"This is a fatalistic, doomsday approach to climate change that isn't going to engage anyone and misinforms the public," said Kim Cobb, a coral reef expert at Georgia Tech. "There will be reefs in 2050, including portions of the Great Barrier Reef, I'm pretty confident of that. I'm put off by pieces that say we are doomed."

A mass bleaching event, fueled by warming oceans, has swept corals around the world but has proved most visibly destructive on the Great Barrier Reef. Almost a quarter of the reef's coral has died off, with the previously pristine areas of the ecosystem's north the worst affected.

Bleaching occurs when prolonged high temperatures cause coral to expel their symbiotic algae, turning them into snow-white skeletons. Corals can recover from this but some simply die. Divers on the Great Barrier Reef have spotted large areas with degraded coral, with some reporting the smell of rotting, dying coral when they emerge from the deep.

While almost all parts of the Great Barrier Reef suffered bleaching, not all have died. Scientists hope that large parts of the ecosystem will recover, although the long-term warming and acidifying of the oceans pose a grave threat to reefs around the world.

Research has shown that some corals may be able to adapt but the pace of the warming means that genetic engineering may be required to repopulate reefs, which are critical for thousands of marine species and a drawcard for millions of tourists.

Media coverage suggesting that the Great Barrier Reef is finished may even prove harmful. Russell Brainard, head of the coral reef ecosystem Program at Noaa's Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, told the Huffington Post that some people "are going to take it at face value that the Great Barrier Reef is dead".

Cobb added: "I have studied corals off Christmas Island in the Pacific where 85% of them have died, it was a graveyard. But even there, I was shocked to see remarkable resilience. Amid the graveyards of the reefs there were areas that looked like nothing had happened.

"There is a lot we can do to minimize climate change and we need to get going on that. To say reefs are finished and we can't do anything about it isn't the message we need going forward."
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The Great Barrier Reef is under severe stress - but not dead yet

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Reports of the death of the Great Barrier Reef have been greatly exaggerated, scientists have said, after the publication of an "obituary" for the vast coral ecosystem. The famed 1,400-mile network of reefs "passed away in 2016 after a long illness", wrote food and travel writer Rowan Jacobsen in an article for Outside magazine.

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The fall of Communism and the Berlin Wall freed many people to travel and migrate

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Milestones: 1989-1992 - Office of the Historian

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On November 9, 1989, thousands of jubilant Germans brought down the most visible symbol of division at the heart of Europe-the Berlin Wall. For two generations, the Wall was the physical representation of the Iron Curtain, and East German border guards had standing shoot-to-kill orders against those who tried to escape.

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This is an article about a girl who was able to escape slavery from Nepal and immigrated to New York.
This links to Migration, an example of forced migration

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KATHMANDU, Nepal - WHEN readers hear about "modern slavery" in America or abroad, they may roll their eyes and assume that's an exaggeration. Slavery? Really? Modern slavery?

If you're one of the doubters, then listen to Poonam Thapa, a teenage girl I met here in Nepal, where she is putting her life back together after being sold to a brothel.

And if you think, as Amnesty International suggested recently, that the solution is to decriminalize the commercial sex trade around the world, then pay special heed.

Poonam was poor and uneducated when a woman offered an escape in the form of a well-paying job. "You can have a better life," Poonam remembers the woman saying. "And if you make good money, you will be respected by your father. You can help your family."

So Poonam, then age 12, ran off with the woman. When Poonam was eventually deposited in a brothel in Mumbai, India, she was puzzled. "I didn't even know what a brothel was," she recalls.

The brothel owner, a woman, dolled her up in a skimpy dress, equipped her with falsies, and gave her heels. Then the owner sold Poonam's virginity to an older man.

"The man raped me," Poonam says. "I didn't know what he was doing. But I was bleeding and hurting and crying."

The brothel owner sternly told Poonam to buck up - she had paid $1,700 for Poonam and needed to recover her investment. So Poonam was locked inside the brothel, forced to have sex with 20 to 25 men a day, and more on Sundays and holidays. There were no days off, no trips outside the brothel, and, of course, no pay.

One day Poonam was hurting and refused a customer. She says the brothel-owner beat her and burned her with cigarettes; she showed me the scars.

Poonam thus became one of 20.9 million people worldwide - a quarter of them children - subjected to forced labor, according to the U.N.'s International Labor Organization. In the United States, tens of thousands of children are trafficked into the sex trade each year.

Men visiting Poonam's brothel paid $2.50 for sex and were sometimes oblivious to the brutality, flattering themselves that the girls liked their work. They see girls who often smile; no one is holding a gun to their heads.

Poonam responded with what so many others have said: The smiles are on the outside, even as girls are crying inside.

"We were told to smile, because a smile is money and will pull in customers," Poonam said. The girls were also ordered to say that they were over 18 and working voluntarily.

Then one day police raided the brothel. Warned by the brothel owner that the police would torture her if they found she was a child or trafficked, Poonam claimed that she was 23 and working voluntarily, but the police could see that she was a child and took her to a shelter.

Indian authorities returned Poonam to the care of Maiti Nepal, a leading anti-trafficking organization. Now Poonam is studying to be a social worker in hopes of helping other trafficked girls. A new study suggests that post-traumatic stress disorder is frequent among those who have been trafficked.

Anuradha Koirala, founder of Maiti Nepal, notes that there has been a bit of progress against sex trafficking of Nepali girls. A crucial step, whether in Nepal or the United States, is ending the impunity for pimps and traffickers, and Koirala says that Maiti Nepal has helped prosecute 800 people for involvement in trafficking. In America as well, we need to prosecute traffickers rather than their victims.

Plenty of well-meaning people back Amnesty International's proposal for full decriminalization of the sex trade, including of pimps and brothels, and it's certainly true that some women (and men) work in the sex trade voluntarily. Yet in practice, approaches similar to Amnesty's have ended up simply empowering pimps. And while under these proposals human trafficking would remain illegal, the police would no longer have a reason to raid brothels to search for girls like Poonam. Both Poonam and Koirala think that full decriminalization is a catastrophic idea; if it were in place, Poonam might still be enslaved.

"There is no protection to the powerless," Koirala said of full decriminalization. "All the benefits go to the perpetrators and exploiters."

The blunt truth is that no strategy works all that well against trafficking. But maybe the most successful has been Sweden's, cracking down on traffickers and customers while providing social services and exit ramps for women in the sex trade.

I'm in South Asia on my annual win-a-trip journey, taking a student - this year it's Austin Meyer of Stanford University - with me to report on neglected social issues. That's what human trafficking is, an ugly form of exploitation that at its worst amounts to modern slavery. In the 21st century, isn't it finally time to abolish slavery forever?

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KATHMANDU, Nepal - WHEN readers hear about "modern slavery" in America or abroad, they may roll their eyes and assume that's an exaggeration. Slavery? Really? Modern slavery? If you're one of the doubters, then listen to Poonam Thapa, a teenage girl I met here in Nepal, where she is putting her life back together after being sold to a brothel.

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Display by Y10

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Its all a matter of size...

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Your view of the world is distorted. This interactive map will show you just how much

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This interactive map shows the true relative size of countries.

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Nissan to manufacture new cars in Sunderland, UK

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Nissan has confirmed it will build both the new Qashqai and the X-Trail SUV at its Sunderland plant following government "support and assurances".

The Japanese company's commitment to Britain's biggest car plant had been in doubt following the EU referendum.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the government must make public any deals struck with the firm.

However, Business Secretary Greg Clark said there was "no question of financial compensation" for Nissan.

The company's decision comes as economic growth in the three months after the Brexit vote confounded expectations, increasing by 0.5% - slower than the 0.7% in the previous quarter but higher than analysts' estimates of about 0.3%.

Nissan's decision is the first major development for the car industry since the Brexit vote and secures 7,000 jobs.

"The support and assurances of the UK government enabled us to decide that the next-generation Qashqai and X-Trail will be produced at Sunderland," said Carlos Ghosn, Nissan's chief executive, adding that he welcomed Prime Minister Theresa May's "commitment to the automotive industry in Britain".

Last month, he warned that Nissan might not invest in the Sunderland plant unless the government guaranteed compensation for costs related to any new trade tariffs resulting from Brexit.

Mrs May described the announcement as "fantastic news", adding: "This vote of confidence shows Britain is open for business."

Mr Clark said: "The fact Nissan have not only made a long-term commitment to build the next generation Qashqai and X-Trail at Sunderland, but decided to upgrade their factory to a super-plant, manufacturing over 600,000 cars a year, is proof of the strength of the sector."

A Nissan spokesman said making the X-Trail at Sunderland could lead to hundreds of new jobs being created in the coming years. It will be the first time the model has been made outside Japan.

The production line was stopped at 11am on Thursday so workers could be told about the decision.

A senior Nissan Europe executive, Colin Lawther, said the company had received "no special deal".

"It's just a commitment from the government to work with the whole of the automotive industry to make sure the whole automotive industry in the UK remains competitive," he told the BBC.

"We would expect nothing for us that the rest of the industry wouldn't be able to have access to. We see this as a whole industry thing, not a Nissan thing."

Analysis: Russell Hotten, business reporter

We don't know the details of the "support and assurance" that Nissan extracted from the UK government. But it was clearly enough to secure a commitment from Nissan to build not one, but two new cars at the Sunderland plant.

The promise to shield Nissan from the impact of Brexit will not be lost on rival manufacturers, both those already in the UK as well as those that might be tempted to come.

Will other carmakers with big investment decisions to make now favour Britain? It's possible - but now only after securing a few government guarantees.

The UK car industry has been vocal in warning about the impact of an exit from the single market.

Although the cheaper pound makes their exports more attractive, a hard Brexit and the prospect of trade tariffs will add to their costs.

It seems likely that the government has now promised some sort of financial support to cushion Nissan against such an impact. That will be controversial, of course. But once outside the EU, it won't necessarily be illegal.

Building the X-Trail SUV is an unexpected addition to the model line-up at Sunderland, which makes almost one in three cars built in Britain and produced 475,000 vehicles last year - 80% of which were exported.

The Sunderland plant opened in 1986 and has produced almost nine million cars over the past three decades.

Export growth

Production of the next Qashqai model is expected to begin in 2018 or 2019.

Mike Hawes, chief executive of industry body the SMMT, said Nissan's announcement was good news for the UK's automotive sector.

But he added: "We need government to provide public assurance to investors that our advantages will be maintained - namely, a competitive business environment, the ability to recruit talent from abroad and the continuation of all the benefits of the single market as we leave the EU."

Figures released by the SMMT on Thursday showed the UK's car industry is performing strongly, with almost 1.3 million vehicles produced in the nine months to September - a 10.5% increase on the same period last year.

Just over one million vehicles were produced for export markets.

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Nissan to build new models in Sunderland

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Nissan has confirmed it will build both the new Qashqai and the X-Trail SUV at its Sunderland plant following government "support and assurances". The Japanese company's commitment to Britain's biggest car plant had been in doubt following the EU referendum. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the government must make public any deals struck with the firm.

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Strong earthquake in Italy overnight

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Two strong earthquakes have hit central Italy, damaging buildings and injuring dozens of people.

A 5.5-magnitude quake struck at 19:10 (17:10 GMT) near Visso in Macerata province, followed two hours later by a 6.1 magnitude tremor in the same area.

Emergency teams have worked through the night. In August an earthquake killed about 300 people south of Visso.

There are few reports of serious injuries but bad weather has been hampering efforts to assess the damage.

August quakes: Why so many buildings collapsed

History of deadly earthquakes

Can quakes be predicted?

Visso is 70km (45 miles) from Amatrice, which was badly damaged in the 6.2 magnitude quake in August.

Wednesday's earthquakes were felt across central Italy, including in the capital, Rome, where buildings shook and doors and windows rattled.

"Tens" of people were hurt, but only four people suffered serious injuries, Italy's civil protection chief Fabrizio Curcio said.

The second earthquake was considerably stronger than the first and numerous smaller aftershocks have occurred. One witness told Italian TV he saw part of a building collapse in front of him.

The town of Camerino is thought to have been badly damaged, and one resident told the BBC: "Everyone is leaving Camerino by foot or car to seek safety. Two churches are destroyed and many houses [have] fallen."

In Campo, near Norcia in the Umbria region, the late 15th century San Salvatore church collapsed. It had been weakened by the earthquake in August.

There are also reports of downed power lines, damage to historic buildings and a landslide on a main road north of Rome.

The first earthquake, 7km south-west of Visso, was relatively shallow, at a depth of 9km (nearly six miles). The second, at 21:18 local time, was 2km northwest of Visso, at a depth of 10km.

These tremors were linked to the August earthquake, Italian officials said.

"Aftershocks can last for a long time, sometimes for months," AFP news agency quoted Mario Tozzi of Italy's National Institute of Geophysics as saying.
Are you in an area affected by the earthquake? Tell us about your experience by emailing haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk .
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Two strong earthquakes have hit central Italy, damaging buildings and injuring dozens of people. A 5.5-magnitude quake struck at 19:10 (17:10 GMT) near Visso in Macerata province, followed two hours later by a 6.1 magnitude tremor in the same area. Emergency teams have worked through the night.

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World to lose 2/3 of its animals by 2020

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The number of wild animals living on Earth is set to fall by two-thirds by 2020, according to a new report, part of a mass extinction that is destroying the natural world upon which humanity depends.

The analysis, the most comprehensive to date, indicates that animal populations plummeted by 58% between 1970 and 2012, with losses on track to reach 67% by 2020. Researchers from WWF and the Zoological Society of London compiled the report from scientific data and found that the destruction of wild habitats, hunting and pollution were to blame.

The creatures being lost range from mountains to forests to rivers and the seas and include well-known endangered species such as elephants and gorillas and lesser known creatures such as vultures and salamanders.

The collapse of wildlife is, with climate change, the most striking sign of the Anthropocene, a proposed new geological era in which humans dominate the planet. "We are no longer a small world on a big planet. We are now a big world on a small planet, where we have reached a saturation point," said Prof Johan Rockström, executive director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, in a foreword for the report.

Marco Lambertini, director general of WWF, said: "The richness and diversity of life on Earth is fundamental to the complex life systems that underpin it. Life supports life itself and we are part of the same equation. Lose biodiversity and the natural world and the life support systems, as we know them today, will collapse."

He said humanity was completely dependent on nature for clean air and water, food and materials, as well as inspiration and happiness.

The report analysed the changing abundance of more than 14,000 monitored populations of the 3,700 vertebrate species for which good data is available. This produced a measure akin to a stock market index that indicates the state of the world's 64,000 animal species and is used by scientists to measure the progress of conservation efforts.

The biggest cause of tumbling animal numbers is the destruction of wild areas for farming and logging: the majority of the Earth's land area has now been impacted by humans, with just 15% protected for nature. Poaching and exploitation for food is another major factor, due to unsustainable fishing and hunting: more than 300 mammal species are being eaten into extinction, according to recent research.

Pollution is also a significant problem with, for example, killer whales and dolphins in European seas being seriously harmed by long-lived industrial pollutants. Vultures in south-east Asia have been decimated over the last 20 years, dying after eating the carcasses of cattle dosed with an anti-inflammatory drug. Amphibians have suffered one of the greatest declines of all animals due to a fungal disease thought to be spread around the world by the trade in frogs and newts.

Rivers and lakes are the hardest hit habitats, with animals populations down by 81% since 1970, due to excessive water extraction, pollution and dams. All the pressures are magnified by global warming, which shifts the ranges in which animals are able to live, said WWF's director of science, Mike Barrett.

Some researchers have reservations about the report's approach, which summarises many different studies into a headline number. "It is broadly right, but the whole is less than the sum of the parts," said Prof Stuart Pimm, at Duke University in the US, adding that looking at particular groups, such as birds, is more precise.

The report warns that losses of wildlife will impact on people and could even provoke conflicts: "Increased human pressure threatens the natural resources that humanity depends upon, increasing the risk of water and food insecurity and competition over natural resources."

However, some species are starting to recover, suggesting swift action could tackle the crisis. Tiger numbers are thought to be increasing and the giant panda has recently been removed from the list of endangered species.

In Europe, protection of the habitat of the Eurasian lynx and controls on hunting have seen its population rise fivefold since the 1960s. A recent global wildlife summit also introduced new protection for pangolins, the world's most trafficked mammals, and rosewoods, the most trafficked wild product of all.

But stemming the overall losses of animals and habitats requires systemic change in how society consumes resources, said Barrett. People can choose to eat less meat, which is often fed on grain grown on deforested land, and businesses should ensure their supply chains, such as for timber, are sustainable, he said.

"You'd like to think that was a no-brainer in that if a business is consuming the raw materials for its products in a way that is not sustainable, then inevitably it will eventually put itself out of business," Barrett said. Politicians must also ensure all their policies - not just environmental ones - are sustainable, he added.

"The report is certainly a pretty shocking snapshot of where we are," said Barrett. "My hope though is that we don't throw our hands up in despair - there is no time for despair, we have to crack on and act. I do remain convinced we can find our sustainable course through the Anthropocene, but the will has to be there to do it."
Topics

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World on track to lose two-thirds of wild animals by 2020, major report warns

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The number of wild animals living on Earth is set to fall by two-thirds by 2020, according to a new report, part of a mass extinction that is destroying the natural world upon which humanity depends. The analysis, the most comprehensive to date, indicates that animal populations plummeted by 58% between 1970 and 2012, with losses on track to reach 67% by 2020.

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How the importance of Geography is changing as a subject

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A star is born. Geography, for so long a Cinderella subject, the easy option for students who found physics or chemistry too daunting, is soaring in popularity. According to the Royal Geographical Society, 13% more took the subject at A-level this year than last, up to 37,100 - the biggest jump of any of the major subjects.

Part of the explanation is Michael Gove's determination to make schools focus on more traditional academic subjects at GCSE and A-level, rather than general studies or critical thinking. That is good for those who can benefit from a narrower academic focus, but not so much for those who struggle. It may be, however, that the bigger reason is that geography is a subject for our times. It is inherently multidisciplinary in a world that increasingly values people who have the skills needed to work across the physical and social sciences. Geographers get to learn data analysis, and to read Robert Macfarlane. They learn geographic information systems. They can turn maps from a two-dimensional representation of a country's physical contours into a tool that illustrates social attributes or attitudes: not just where people live, but how, what they think and how they vote. They learn about the physics of climate change, or the interaction of weather events and flood risk, or the way people's behaviour is influenced by the space around them.

All these are not just intrinsically interesting and valuable. They also encourage ways of seeing and thinking that make geographers eminently employable, which is why, according to the latest information from the Higher Education Careers Services Unit, only 5.8% of geography graduates were still job-hunting six months after they graduated, against an average of 7.3%. So, year 9, globalisation: good or bad? And for whom?
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The Guardian view on geography: it's the must-have A-level | Editorial

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A star is born. Geography, for so long a Cinderella subject, the easy option for students who found physics or chemistry too daunting, is soaring in popularity. According to the Royal Geographical Society, 13% more took the subject at A-level this year than last, up to 37,100 - the biggest jump of any of the major subjects.

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Child refugees in Turkey making goods for M&S and Asos.

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Syrian refugee children have been making clothes for British shoppers, an undercover BBC investigation has found.

Panorama investigated factories in Turkey and found children had been working on clothes for Marks and Spencer and the online retailer Asos.

Adult refugees were also found working illegally on Zara and Mango jeans.

All the brands say they carefully monitor their supply chains and do not tolerate the exploitation of refugees or children.

The kids who have to sew to survive

Marks and Spencer says its inspections have not found a single Syrian refugee working in its supply chain in Turkey.

But Panorama found seven Syrians working in one of the British retailer's main factories. The refugees often earned little more than a pound an hour - well below the Turkish minimum wage. They were employed through a middleman who paid them in cash on the street.

'Unacceptable'

One of the refugees told Panorama they were poorly treated at the factory. He said: "If anything happens to a Syrian, they will throw him away like a piece of cloth."

The youngest worker was 15 years old and he was working more than 12 hours a day ironing clothes before they were shipped to the UK.

A spokesperson for Marks and Spencer said the programme's findings were "extremely serious" and "unacceptable to M&S". It is offering permanent legal employment to any Syrians who were employed in the factory.

"Ethical trading is fundamental to M&S. All of our suppliers are contractually required to comply with our Global Sourcing Principles, which cover what we expect and require of them and their treatment of workers.

"We do not tolerate such breaches of these principles and we will do all we can to ensure that this does not happen again."

But critics say the retailers are not doing enough to stop the problems highlighted by Panorama.

Danielle McMullan, from the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, says the brands need to understand that they are responsible: "It's not enough to say we didn't know about this, it's not our fault.

"They have a responsibility to monitor and to understand where their clothes are being made and what conditions they are being made in."

'Pitiful wages'

Many clothes are now made in Turkey because it is close to Europe and used to dealing with last-minute orders. This allows retailers to get new designs into shops more quickly than if they are made elsewhere.

But Turkey is a challenging place to do business. Concerns are rising about the exploitation of workers after the arrival of almost three million Syrian refugees.

Most of the refugees do not have work permits and many of them are working illegally in the garment industry.

Panorama reporter Darragh MacIntyre spoke to dozens of Syrian workers who felt they were being exploited. He said: "They speak of pitiful wages and terrible working conditions. They know they are being exploited but they know they can do nothing about it."

In one back-street workshop in Istanbul, the programme team found several Syrian children hard at work. They also discovered an Asos sample in the office.

Asos accepts its clothes were made in the factory, but says it is not an approved factory. The company has since inspected and found 11 Syrian adults and three Syrian children under 16 at work.

Hazardous chemicals

Asos says the children will be financially supported so they can return to school and the adult refugees will be paid a wage until they have been found legal work. A spokesperson for the company said: "We have implemented these remediation programmes despite the fact that this factory has nothing to do with Asos."

The investigation also found Syrian refugees working 12-hour days in a factory that was distressing jeans for Mango and Zara.

The refugees were involved in spraying hazardous chemicals to bleach the jeans, but most of the workers did not even have a basic face mask.

Mango says that the factory was working as a sub-contractor without its knowledge. Its subsequent inspection did not find any Syrian workers and found "good conditions except for some personal safety measures".

Zara's parent company, Inditex, says its factory inspections are a "highly effective way of monitoring and improving conditions". It had already found significant non-compliance in an audit in June and had given the factory until December to make the necessary improvements.

In another Istanbul factory, Panorama found Syrian adults at work alongside Turkish children as young as 10.

The owner said he had been working for Next and showed the undercover team a set of Next pyjamas that he said the factory had helped produce.

Next says the pyjamas were actually made by another supplier and the pyjamas we saw may have been a sample. It says samples circulate widely and that the presence of a sample in a factory does not mean it was made there.

Panorama - Undercover: The Refugees Who Make Our Clothes is on BBC One at 20:30 BST on Monday 24 October and available on the BBC iPlayer afterwards.

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Syrian refugee children have been making clothes for British shoppers, an undercover BBC investigation has found. Panorama investigated factories in Turkey and found children had been working on clothes for Marks and Spencer and the online retailer Asos. Adult refugees were also found working illegally on Zara and Mango jeans.

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An interesting read on Bhutan and sustainability - Year 11 will be studying Bhutan soon!

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Carbon sinks, 70% forest cover, powered almost entirely by mountain streams-Bhutan is a poster child for green living.

It is the only country in the world that is carbon negative, which means it produces more oxygen than it consumes. Bhutan generates about 2.2 million tonnes of carbon annually, yet its forests absorb three times this amount, which creates a carbon sink.

Sure, it's a small country with a population of only 750,000, but other smaller countries-the Maldives, Luxembourg-haven't managed this yet.

Flying into Bhutan over the Himalayas, the first thing you notice are the trees. A thick blanket of green wraps around the mountains, a complete contrast to the denuded hills of India.

The drive from Paro airport to Thimphu-all hairpin curves and idyllic scenery-is almost unbelievably gorgeous. The streets are virtually empty, except for a few cars, and people walking about in traditional costumes, a stripy gho for the men and a long woven skirt called the kira for the women.

The buildings are all less than six storeys tall, and are uniformly in Bhutanese style. It's like an Asian version of Noddy's toy town.

How did Bhutan get where it is? Everyone I ask credits the fourth king, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, for Bhutan's green status. Rightly so. In 1972, as every neighbouring nation focused on increasing their gross domestic product (GDP), the maverick Wangchuck introduced the gross national happiness (GNH) concept.

His hypothesis: GDP ignored the basic need of every human being: happiness.

"The fourth king was a visionary," says Thinley Namgyel, chief environment officer of the climate change division at Bhutan's National Environment Commission. "He passed rules mandating that every household should get permission to extract firewood. The export of timber was banned and community forestry was encouraged. Thirty per cent of the forests were declared protected areas, and linked with corridors, so animals could travel between them."

A GNH Centre was set up, periodic surveys conducted, and indices devised to measure happiness. Fun fact: the 2015 survey found 91% of Bhutanese were narrowly, extensively or deeply happy.

Every government policy is vetted according to GNH, and what the Bhutanese call the four pillars: good governance, sustainable promotion of socioeconomic development, preservation of culture and environmental conservation. In practice, this means a deeply spartan way of life. Just one example: in many Thimphu restaurants, I found I had to order my dinner well in advance, otherwise there would be no dinner at all, to avoid food wastage.

A tightly controlled tourist policy, which makes tourists-though not Indians-pay $250 per day, has restricted the flow of visitors and kept forests unspoilt. The fourth king also chose hydropower rather than fossil fuels, fuelled by Bhutan's fast-moving mountain streams. It's now Bhutan's biggest export-70% is sold to India. (Concerns are now being raised about possible ecological damage from a growing number of dams and hydropower projects, but that's another story.)

Bhutan's hilly environment has been a friend of its forests; only 2.9% of the land is flat and arable anyway, which means it has escaped an invasion of the forests by farmers. Farmers were given free electricity to stop them plundering the forests for firewood.

"It was easier for us, than say India or China, because we have only 20 people per sq. km. We have also had political commitment," says Vijay Moktan, conservation director of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Bhutan. "In the 2000s, pressure began to build on the forests. There was a lot of demand for timber. So, when Bhutan became a democracy in 2008, a mandatory 60% forest cover was introduced in the constitution. We now have 70% cover."

So far, so good. But then, two things happened.

One, India and China got richer. Bhutan, sandwiched between the two most populous nations on Earth, suffers for their sins. Glaciers are beginning to melt, flash floods and heavy rains-and even droughts-are common, and temperatures are climbing.

When I visit, Thimphu is hotter than Bengaluru. "Sometimes I wonder what we are trying to do here. Because climate change is happening outside, in India, China and Bangladesh, and we have no control over that," says a frustrated Moktan.

Two, Bhutan changed. "We are undergoing a demographic shift," says Namgyel, "The villages are full of the very old and the very young. We have a rising young population, and they are moving to the cities in search of jobs."

In common with India, Bhutan's young people are slowly discovering the outside world, and they want more than their fathers had.

"Nowadays, young people don't want to work on the land," says Karma Dorji, a recent business graduate, who is hoping to go overseas for studies. "And they don't want blue-collar jobs given by the government. They want white-collar jobs."

Through the Internet and social media, Bhutanese are being exposed to ways of life other than their own, and some are chafing against government controls. In Thimphu, I was asked again and again if I had cigarettes, banned by the government for locals, but allowed for foreigners.

"In 2014, the government imposed a 100% tax on the import of foreign cars, and people are still buying them," says one Thimphu taxi driver, complaining about the increased traffic (which is, of course, still negligible to the Indian eye). "Where once people were content to walk everywhere, they now want cars."

"A car for each family has become more a necessity than a luxury in Bhutan because undisputedly the public transport is not only unreliable and inefficient, it is also often expensive," writes Sonam Tashi, a lecturer, in a letter to the local paper. "The people are paying for the government's incompetence."

On the outskirts of Thimphu, new construction mushrooms. There are Toyota showrooms, gyms and pizza parlours. There is also more pressure on the forests than ever before.

Bhutan's agricultural income is declining as most of its people are subsistence farmers, and the tiny amount of agricultural land can't support the increasing population. The country is heavily dependent on imports-nearly 50% of its rice comes from India.

As Bhutan's timber requirements increase, the country is also expected to have to import timber from India. Democracy may well make it tougher to take strong measures.

Still, with all these, Bhutan is determined to maintain the 60% forest cover guaranteed by the constitution. "Saving the forests is a selfish decision for us, actually," says Namgyel, "The Himalayan ecosystem is very fragile. Water resources are critical for us-because our chief export is hydropower-and the only way to save water is to save the forests."

Namgyel was one of Bhutan's negotiators at the Paris climate change agreement in December 2015, where the world's nations committed to restrict the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The agreement has come under heavy criticism for not coming up with a clear plan to help developing nations like Bhutan and India find the funds-called climate reparations-to combat climate change.

Instead, developed countries-who mostly have been responsible for climate change with their unfettered growth-have made vague noises about a voluntary fund.

"It's not everything that we wanted, but it's something. Targets for reducing climate change have been set, now we have to figure out how to get to the target," Namgyel says diplomatically.

Meanwhile, a stubborn India has still not ratified the Paris deal, and is holding out for more climate reparations, and an entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group.

Bhutan, though, squeezed as it is, says urgent action is needed.

"We can't afford to wait for climate reparations. We are running out of time. We can work towards achieving it with other less developed countries, but we need to take our own steps too," says Moktan.

Bhutan is trying out a number of solutions. One of them is Bhutan for Life, an ambitious, though still fledgling, project in partnership with the WWF. It is a conservation plan that aims to raise $40 million from a group of donors-mostly large companies, wealthy individuals and institutions-to help Bhutan's conservation work.

The fund, which is predicted to reach its target by the end of the year, is a multi-party and single-closing deal, which means the money will not be distributed until the total fund-raising commitment goal has been reached.

Payments from the fund will be distributed annually over 15 years. During that time, the government of Bhutan will also increase its spending-in part by creating new funding sources such as ecotourism-until it fully assumes the costs of conservation.

The funds are going to be used to compensate people who have suffered because of human-wildlife conflict, manage forests and help find sources of income other than forest products. It's way too early to see how Bhutan for Life will do, but similar projects by the WWF have helped conserve wildlife in Colombia, Peru and Brazil.

The Bhutanese government has also tied up with Nissan and Mahindra Reva to push electric cars, though they have seen few takers so far. And in a very ambitious move, Bhutan plans to go zero waste 100% organic and maintain its green cover.

Can India learn from Bhutan? It can certainly wake up to the connection between forest ecology and water, for instance, which our planners have long overlooked. The disastrous result: a deforested Western Ghats, water shortages and the recent Cauvery riots in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

And it could learn from Bhutan's vigorous afforestation programme: in April, 108,000 trees were planted to celebrate the birth of the new prince. A failing, below-par hydropower sector could also be revived.

Growth, while crucial, needs to be looked at along with environmental concerns. And given that time is running out for all nations, a timeline for ratifying the Paris agreement is crucial.

At the recent Mountain Echoes literary festival in Thimphu, there was much debate over how-and how much-Bhutan should change.

"We are not here to be a pretty showpiece for foreigners," says Dasho Ugen Tsechup Dorji, a local businessman, to murmurs of agreement from the audience. "If we don't provide jobs and opportunities to our young, we will have huge problems."

"Change is inevitable. But that does not mean change has to go against our culture. We don't need to pollute our cities," says Namgyel.

A new juggling act for Bhutan remains. The world will be watching.
Kavitha Rao is a Bengaluru-based journalist and author. Comments are welcome at feedback@livemint.com

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How Bhutan became the world's greenest country

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Carbon sinks, 70% forest cover, powered almost entirely by mountain streams-Bhutan is a poster child for green living. It is the only country in the world that is carbon negative, which means it produces more oxygen than it consumes. Bhutan generates about 2.2 million tonnes of carbon annually, yet its forests absorb three times this amount, which creates a carbon sink.

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Globalisation & Development

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This story appears in the November 2016 issue ofNational Geographic magazine.

The first Cuba sighting came Monday morning, just after sunrise. The island is almost 800 miles tip to tip, and for a while there was a horizon shimmer, then hilly outlines against pink sky, and finally: rooftops. A domed shape, maybe a cupola.

The ship's topmost deck was jammed with television crews; the rest of us mashed up against the railings on the next deck down. Somebody handed out little Cuban and American flags. Now we could make out the Malecón, the seawall and walkway that serves as a collective front porch for people seeking fresh air or respite from overcrowded households. On warm evenings Cubans always populate the Malecón, but this was something new-nine in the morning, and crowds seemed to have gathered, lofting flags of their own, waving. Cheering!

None of us had known what to expect; as we left Miami on Sunday afternoon, there'd been speculation that the first U.S. cruise ship to dock in Cuba in nearly four decades might fire up anti-Castro hostilities. A lone protest motorboat had chugged around with "Democracia" painted in defiant red along the hull, but that was all. And now in Havana the celebrations were so exuberant, once we made our way into the city's passenger ship terminal, that the currency exchange booth clerk and I shouted at each other in Spanish through the glass.

Me: "IS IT ALWAYS THIS LOUD IN HERE?" Exchange clerk: "WHAT?" Me: "THE DRUMS, THE MUSIC, THE DANCERS? THEY ALWAYS GREET THE SHIPS?" Exchange clerk: "WHAT?" She slid me a pen, and I wrote on the back of a receipt: "IS THIS SPECIAL FOR THE AMERICANS?" She nodded, smiling ruefully, and rolled her eyes. The female dancers' ensembles consisted of high heels, Cuban flag swimsuits, and big silver stars affixed to their hair. We watched two of them snuggle up, beaming and posing, to a disembarking male passenger in shorts. Something flickered across the clerk's face-distaste, I think-and she lowered her gaze and went on counting pesos. Those cell phone photos of the local beauties with their torsos wrapped in the national colors were going to spread remarkably fast, and make trouble.

"Amiga, come sit between us," Javier and Lydia demanded. They are neighbors in a sagging Havana building not far from the terminal; Lydia had heard so much on the news about the histórico ship arrival that they walked over to see it for themselves. They brought a spool of line and some shrimp pieces for bait, and they were side by side on the crowded seawall with their fishing line in the water, gazing at the docked ship, when they shoved over to make room for me.

From out here, surrounded as we were by Cubans holding up tablets and smartphones to mug for selfies with the Adonia, the ship looked to me like the biggest object on the whole Havana seafront. Above the water we could count nine layers of portholes and plate glass (photographer David Guttenfelder and I had rooms on board for the week, somewhere on level four), and I thought that from a Cuban perspective the whole gleaming white hulk must loom like a massive billboard: Here Come the Americans. Brace Yourselves.

In a way everything important about this inaugural trip from Miami to Cuba-everything histórico -lay in the visuals, and the anticipation of what comes next. Cruise ships aren't new to Cuba; giant floating hotels under the flags of other nations have visited for decades. Tourism in general isn't new to Cuba, in fact. After the Soviet Union collapsed, ending its economic support and kicking off a brutal depression, state ministries approved new beach resorts that have become popular with Canadians and Europeans.

And although the U.S. embargo still prohibits U.S. residents from traveling to Cuba for what the Treasury Department calls "tourist activities," Americans started arriving in noticeable numbers about five years ago. Even before the December 2014 announcement that diplomatic relations would resume, the Obama Administration was approving tours for "people-to-people educational travel," a Cuba-specific category that continues to evolve. No lying on beaches all day with rum drinks is the idea, but you may visit the school that teaches violin to the rum-drink mixer's kids, and it's become increasingly common to see phalanxes of Americans following guides along beautifully restored streets in Old Havana or into private restaurants or organic farms.

Then this March the administration declared that Americans could start people-to-people traveling on their own, provided they sign affidavits promising to abide by embargo rules. Less than a week later U.S.-based Starwood Hotels and Resorts announced a deal to run three Cuban hotels-"the beginning of the luxury market in Havana," a company official told me. In late August the first regularly scheduled flights to Cuba began. Even before that, charter flights were leaving Florida so frequently that Miami International Airport departures boards listed Cienfuegos, Cuba, right up there between Chicago and Cincinnati.

Cienfuegos isn't even one of the biggest cities in Cuba. It now maintains an international airport and a cruise ship terminal, though, and was the second of the Adonia's three stops in its circumnavigation. All week David and I kept trailing passengers off and on the ship, and everywhere we went, we studied Cubans as they studied the Adonia-or what the Adonia was delivering into their midst. Seven hundred tourists at once makes for a lot of shepherding around a smallish city like Cienfuegos, and it was useful to keep remembering the way Javier had elbowed me, his new yanqui acquaintance, and told me he was pretty confident his country could manage the coming tsunami, a word I heard more than once from Cubans as they contemplated what's en route. "It's going to change. But little by little," Javier said. "This is going to be good for the whole country, you'll see. We'll figure it out."

Produce market, Cienfuegos: Yanet, the vegetable seller, leans on her counter in amusement as Americans troop steadily by outside, some stopping just long enough to peer in and photograph. ("They stay on the ship. They eat in the restaurants. They don't buy anything from me.") Bed-and-breakfast, Havana: Señora Martha, the landlady, says cruise ship passengers are no use to her, either, but the country needs more business desperately. ("Bring on the Americans! Just don't let any of them privatize the water system.") Taxi stand, Santiago de Cuba: Jorge, the former civil engineer who is now driving tourists around in an old Russian-made Lada because he makes so much more than he did at his former state job, says he's heard people worry that the influx will eventually bring drugs, exploitation, a surge in prostitution. ("I don't think so. I have faith in our government, in our values-and in the morality of norteamericanos.")

In Cuba resolver is a crucial verb. In its most Cuban sense it means to manage with creative dexterity the challenges of modern Cuban life, improvisando as you go. Among ordinary citizens, it's a point of national pride that so many have resolved and improvised their way through the post-Soviet crash, through the mismanagement and overreach of their own state ministries, and through the extraordinarily long U.S. embargo. Fishing with a baited piece of line, because your custodian salary won't cover the price of a rod, is a tiny way to resolver.

And so is cannibalizing parts to keep an ancient car running, not because foreigners love looking at it but because there is nothing else to drive. The paradoxes of tourism are especially loud and perplexing in Cuba now, during these tentative seasons before the tsunami truly rolls. Set aside for a moment political quarrels about whether the American embargo or the Cuban Communist Party is at fault; one of the standard enticements, in tour brochures aimed at Americans, is the islandwide absence of material modernity, of familiar commerce, of Americanness. No McDonald's-it's true. No billboards, except those exhorting socialism and good civic behavior. "Frozen in time" is a popular phrase in the brochures; so is "long forbidden." "Ninety-​nine percent of Americans planning to visit Cuba say the same," Havana architect Miguel Coyula told me. " 'I want to see Havana now.' "

Before "the urban Jurassic Park," as Coyula likes to joke, becomes ... what? Coyula's not hostile to tourism; accommodating Americans seems to him one obvious growth industry for the biggest island in the Caribbean. The perils of overadoration by visitors are plain to him, and in fact, as the Adonia was rounding Cuba, several dozen academics and officials were meeting at a conference called Turismo Sostenible y Responsable-Sustainable and Responsible Tourism. Among the presentations: A clip from Bye Bye Barcelona, a documentary making the case that hordes of tourists, especially the thousands pouring into the streets from as many as four docked cruise ships at once, have rendered the Spanish city nearly unlivable for its own residents. "A theme park," complains one angry local.

For an enormous, beachy island 90 miles from the United States, this is not an implausible comparison. Some of the ships now plying the Caribbean can hold six times as many passengers as the Adonia; Carnival Corporation, which owns the ship, has Cuba plans in the works, as does every American touring company with an interest in the Caribbean (including National Geographic Expeditions, which routinely runs people-to-people Cuba trips). On board I asked a Carnival official to guess at the potential of a fully tourist developed Cuba. Well, he replied, Carnival last year delivered nearly a million people to the Caribbean's Grand Turk Island, which is seven square miles. "Cuba is a few hundred times bigger," he said. "You can calculate the answer."

At least three million Americans a year, eventually, is what economists project. Cuba's population is 11 million, and many still resolver their way to enough powdered milk for the children, a toilet that flushes, a balcony that won't collapse. How to bring in all those Americans in a way that actually improves Cubans' lives?

"I've thought about this," said Rafael Betancourt, an economics professor at a Havana university who helped arrange the tourism conference. "There's always a risk. But I'm basically an optimist. I believe we have a tradition, a very solid culture and history of our own."

One other thing, he said: The Cuban flag bathing suits. Some of the dismay they set off, once the photos began to circulate, was magisterial in its invocation of Cuban dignity and decorum in a public space. Flags of any nation should be treated with more respect than that, essayists wrote. One in particular spoke of vergüenza, shame, and invoked the revered nationalist writer Nicolás Guillén, who in the 1930s-long before the Cuban Revolution-wrote a poem about obsequious maracas shakers scurrying to yanqui cruise ships in search of dollars.

Betancourt sighed, when I asked him about that essay, and said nobody he knew was angry with the swimsuit dancers themselves. "They didn't do it to insult the Cuban flag," he said. The whole noisy production was just somebody's idea of Welcoming, Exuberant, Friendly, Dancing Cuba, he said, and a flap like this can have a certain usefulness. "It unleashed the discussion," he said. "It was like a switch. And we have got to watch out. We have to be very careful. This is a country that will not have its identity torn away."

Cynthia Gorney wrote the November 2012 cover story, "Cuba's New Now." This was her fourth trip to Cuba. She would like to point out thatDavid Guttenfelder had a window in his berth on theAdonia, and she didn't.

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This story appears in the November 2016 issue ofNational Geographic magazine. The first Cuba sighting came Monday morning, just after sunrise. The island is almost 800 miles tip to tip, and for a while there was a horizon shimmer, then hilly outlines against pink sky, and finally: rooftops.

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Globalisation, Geography, EU, Brexit

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Marmite, PG Tips tea and Pot Noodles are among dozens of brands currently unavailable on Tesco's online site due to a dispute with Unilever.

Unilever has confirmed it is raising prices in the UK to compensate for the sharp drop in the pound's value.

Tesco is resisting the move and has removed Unilever products from its website.

Unilever's finance chief said such price increases are a "normal" reaction to shifts in currency values.

The products currently absent from Tesco's website also include Comfort fabric conditioner, Hellmann's mayonnaise and Ben & Jerry's ice cream. You can find a full list here.

The goods are still being sold in stores.
Tesco v Unilever live updates Retailers warn over Brexit price rises Unilever and Tesco at loggerheads What do we know about Brexit? 'Marmitegate' explained
Unilever is the UK's biggest food and grocery manufacturer, but many of its products are made outside the UK, so it argues it should be getting more pounds for its products.

Graeme Pitkethly, Unilever's chief financial officer, said the price rises had "landed" with other customers, implying other retailers had accepted the higher prices.

Major supermarket chains including Sainburys, Morrisons and Waitrose declined to comment on specific supplier relationships.

A spokesperson for Lidl said: "Whilst we do not discuss buying prices, we can always assure our customers that we will offer them the best quality products at the lowest retail prices."

The Food and Drink Federation on Tuesday published the results of a survey which found serious concerns and decreased confidence in the sector.

Some 75% of respondents reported seeing an increase in the price of ingredients or raw materials used in their products since the referendum vote.

Ian Wright, director general of the Food and Drink Federation, said: "Food and drink industry confidence is low. Slower revenue growth, coupled with prolonged business uncertainty, is affecting the industry's ability to invest."

Brexit impact

Negotiations over price between retailers and their suppliers are a constant feature of the industry, but those discussions rarely lead to a public argument and product de-listing.

"Clearly the scale of the negotiation is much bigger than usual, but so is the event. Brexit-sized events are rare," said Bruno Monteyne, an analyst at Bernstein.

"This is such a large event that it may simply be that the two gorillas on both sides have decided to go through the motions of the negotiation on behalf of the industry. This isn't about Tesco or Unilever but about all UK retailers and suppliers."

On Thursday Unilever released a trading update for the third quarter, which showed a growth in underlying sales of 3.2%.

Unilever said that conditions in European markets remained "challenging".

Unilever shares fell 2.5% and Tesco was more than 2% lower.

Analysis: Emma Simpson, business correspondent

Who should absorb the increase in costs as a result of the weaker pound? It's the question that retailers have consistently been asked these last few months as import prices start to rise.

Now that debate has exploded into the open with a stand-off between Britain's biggest consumer goods company and its largest retailer, Tesco.

Household staples, from Ben & Jerry's ice cream and Pot Noodles to Persil and Dove soap, are at stake. The extra spice to this story is that Tesco's boss, Dave Lewis, spent most of his career at Unilever before being poached by Tesco.

In the cut-throat world of grocery shopping, retailers are reluctant to pass on price rises to shoppers. But many suppliers are already seeing input costs rise because of the fall in the pound, although many will also have hedged their currency positions until at least the start of next year. So who ultimately takes the hit?

One grocery insider says in the case of Unilever, the weak currency was a smokescreen to raise prices, as some of the products are made in the UK.

Whatever the truth, this relationship is too important for the two sides not to reach a deal in the end. Will the other big grocers follow suit?

The former head of rival firm Northern Foods, Lord Haskins, told the BBC's Newsnight that Brexit had caused "a huge wobble" in the market, which was already suffering tensions because of the rise of online shopping and discount supermarkets Aldi and Lidl.

"Undoubtedly what Unilever is doing is justified in terms of the economics of it, but Tesco's worried that Aldi may not follow suit," he said.

"They will have to follow suit, because the costs as a result of devaluation are too big for any company to carry."

Lord Haskins, who wanted the UK to remain in the EU, forecast that food price inflation would hit 5% in about a year's time.

He added: "The moment the great British public realises that there's a real cost to pay for Brexit, then the government will have to take account of that."

Squeezed retailers

Sterling has dropped by 16% against the euro since the UK's Brexit vote.

Leading retail analyst Richard Hyman told the BBC: "The problem is that retailers can't just put up their prices and get away with it.

"Oversupply of retailers means that for the past 24 months there has been food price deflation. What makes them think they can just push prices higher?" he added.

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Marmite, PG Tips tea and Pot Noodles are among dozens of brands currently unavailable on Tesco's online site due to a dispute with Unilever. Unilever has confirmed it is raising prices in the UK to compensate for the sharp drop in the pound's value.

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This is how China's New Silk Road initiative could impact European trade

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This is how China's New Silk Road initiative could impact European trade

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Something to think about for Chapter 8 - Globalisation

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This is how China's New Silk Road initiative could impact European trade

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A Bruegel working paper looks at the impact of China's Belt and Road initiative on European trade.

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Economic Transformation | Inside China | CNBC International

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Some of the story behind China's amazing economic growth since 1978

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Rising power of India - again worth a watch!

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Rising power of India - again worth a watch!

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International Media on India 's Mini Space Shuttle RLV-TD

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Rising Military Power Fear China and Pakistan Must Watch Video

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India Rising - India's Destiny As A Great Power On The Global Stage

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Foreign Policy Association's documentary on India's rise on the global stage and why India is important for the world. Original Link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjISa9_wYLQ Follow me at https://www.facebook.com/DLXAreaOne Follow me at https://twitter.com/DLXArea1 DLX Area 1 Click to Subscribe And Watch More Videos - http://goo.gl/bZDtb

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Link to Coca Cola documentary for Y11 revision - may be worth a rewatch!

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Link to Coca Cola documentary for Y11 revision - may be worth a rewatch!

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Coca-Cola is one of the most iconic brands of both the 20th and 21st centuries, promoting itself as the drink of freedom, choice and US patriotism. But behind this carefully crafted image exists a company accused of environmental damage, human rights violations and questionable business practices.

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Information about the river's features and course - thanks for this Ali! Great case study knowledge. Miss Payne :)

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First 25 minutes looks at the River Tees from Source-Mouth.

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Case study: Coca Cola - have a read through and add extra place specific info to your notes!

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Case study: Coca Cola - have a read through and add extra place specific info to your notes!

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http://joeblakey.com/geography/case-study-of-a-tnc-the-coca-cola-company/

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http://www.geography-site.co.uk/pages/revision/revision_techniques.html