Brazil

Brazil is a country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country. The country has approximately 201 million people. The capital of Brazil is Brasília.

The climate of Brazil comprises a wide range of weather conditions across a large area and varied topography, but most of the country is tropical. According to the Köppen system, Brazil hosts five major climatic subtypes: equatorial, tropical, semiarid, highland tropical, temperate, and subtropical. The different climatic conditions produce environments ranging from equatorial rainforests in the north and semiarid deserts in the northeast, to temperate coniferous forests in the south and tropical savannas in central Brazil.

Brazil has the world's largest rainforest, the Amazon Rainforest. It makes up 40% of the country's land area. Brazil also has other types of land, including a type of savanna called cerrado, and a dry plant region named caatinga.

Brazil's large territory comprises different ecosystems, such as the Amazon rainforest, recognized as having the greatest biological diversity in the world, with the Atlantic Forest and the Cerrado, sustaining the greatest biodiversity. In the south, the Araucaria pine forest grows under temperate conditions. The rich wildlife of Brazil reflects the variety of natural habitats. Scientists estimate that the total number of plant and animal species in Brazil could approach four million, mostly invertebrates.

The most important cities are Brasília, Belém, Belo Horizonte, Curitiba, Florianópolis, Fortaleza, Goiânia, Manaus, Porto Alegre, Recife, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, São Paulo (the biggest city) and Vitória. 

Brazil is divided into 26 states plus the Federal District in five regions (north, south, northeast, southeast and centre-west):

• North: Acre, Amazonas, Rondônia, Roraima, Pará, Amapá, Tocantins
• Northeast: Maranhão, Pernambuco, Ceará, Piauí, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraíba, Alagoas, Sergipe, Bahia 
• Centre-West: Goiás, Mato grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Distrito Federal/ Federal District
• Southeast: São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Espírito Santo, Minas Gerais
• South: Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul

The country is the fifth largest in the world by area. It is known for its many rainforests and jungles.

Like other places in the tropics, deforestation in Brazil is increasingly the result of urban consumption and trade rather than subsistence agriculture. 

Today deforestation in the Amazon is the result of several activities, the foremost of which include:

• Clearing for cattle pasture
• Colonization and subsequent subsistence agriculture
• Infrastructure improvements
• Commercial agriculture
• Logging

People and culture
Brazil is the largest country in South America and the largest economy in Latin America. Its people include people of Portuguese or other European descent, African descent, and native Amerindians, as well as many people of mixed origins. Brazil also has the biggest number of Japanese descendents outside Japan.

China - population density

Asian Tigers

The Asian Tigers or Asian Dragons is a term used in reference to the highly free and developed economies of

• Hong Kong, 
• Singapore, 
• South Korea and 
• Taiwan. 

These nations and areas were notable for maintaining exceptionally high growth rates and rapid industrialization between the early 1960s and 1990s.

These regions were the first newly industrialized countries in Asia. They are known because they had very high growth rates and fast industrialization between the early 1960s and 1990s.

The four Asian Tigers countries are now rich countries. All four Asian Tigers have a lot of people who are very educated and good at their jobs. They also did different things, and tried to do them better than other countries. For example, Hong Kong and Singapore became very good at international finance, while South Korea and Taiwan became very good at information technology.

All the Asian Tigers tried to export things to rich industrialized nations. They grew rich very quickly (they had double-digit economic growth) for decades. Each nation was not a democracy, and people were not very free in the early years. All of these countries later became freer, and people now think Taiwan and Korea are liberal democracies.

Japan, the old tiger and leading goose

South Korea, Taiwan but also Hong Kong and Singapore form the group of so called Asian Tigers. Japan is left out of this group because it emerged earlier than the other four nations and the term was coined later on after the Japanese economy had already developed. However, in another such paradigm, the so-called leading goose paradigm, Japan is seen as the lead goose followed by the four Asian Tigers. In this paradigm the Asian Tigers are followed by the main ASEAN countries Indonesia, Thailand as well as Malaysia and finally by other fast developing nations in the region: China, Vietnam, Philippines etc.

Rural - Urban migration in China

The dangerous border between Mexico and the United States

The USA – Mexico border is one of the most dangerous and porous borders in the world.

Each month, assisted by smugglers working with drug cartels, thousands of Hispanic immigrants try to cross the frontier between Mexico and the United States.

On the eve of the US mid-term elections, the influx of illegal immigrants has re-opened the debate on immigration. Many are caught and try again, once, twice, ten times if necessary, while those who make it through are often hunted down by federal agents once on American soil.

On both sides of the border, our reporters met with those who want to emigrate and those who try to catch them.

VIDEO: Mexico-USA-danger-ridden-border-immigration-illegal

Discouraging coca cultivation in Columbia

A waste of time and effort?

	Helpful to achieve the objective	Harmful to achieve the objective
Internal	Strengths	Weakness
External	Opportunities	Threats

Strengths -War on drugs (destroy the plantations of coca plants) -in 2000 – 1000 tonnes of cocaine annually -in 2010 – less than 300 tonnes of cocaine annually -in 2000 – 170000 hectares of coca bushes -in 2010 – 75000 hectares of coca bushes

Weakness -Columbian government has no authority: *left wing guerrillas (FARC) *right wing paramilitary  groups -environmental pollution (spraying & toxic materials). -Farmers cannot make a living from legal agricultural activities, coca cultivation creates jobs and income for all the coca farmers in remote rural areas. - +- 1.2 % of Columbia’s GDP is spent every year on the war on drugs (1 billion dollars).

Opportunities -American support (also European support). -US provides 1.3 billion dollars mainly in military aid, to help fight the drug barons. -US provides military helicopters. -US organised a training program for  3 special army battalions. The special army battalion try to clear the area of drug traffickers.

Threats -the demand for cocaine in the US is extremely high. For example most Columbian heroin is destined for the US Market. -the international crisis in the coffee world is tempting small coffee farmers to turn to growing the coca plant. -Farmers in Columbia go bankrupt because they can’t compete with subsidised agricultural products imported from Europe and the US.

Surtsey, a new volcanic island

New islands are islands which have been created recently, whether by means of volcanism, erosion, glacial retreat, or other mechanisms. 

One of the most famous new volcanic islands is the small island of Surtsey, located in the Atlantic Ocean south of Iceland. It first emerged from the ocean surface only in 1963. 

In 1965, it was declared a nature reserve for the study of ecological succession; plants, insects, birds, seals, and other forms of life have since established themselves on the island.