This article, by a pair of academics specializing in the study of Korea, considers three myths they believe essential to understanding North Korea's negotiation goals and limitations: geographical.co.uk/opinion/item/2660-north-korea-busting-common-myths

"Pegged as the most ambitious infrastructure megaproject of all time, China's One Belt, One Road initiative (OBOR) will stretch from the very edge of East Asia to East Africa and Central Europe, connecting nearly two thirds of the world's population" via a "continuous network of highways, railways, ocean routes and ports." This map shows the projected routes. www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/one-belt-one-road.html

"The question that dominates my waking hours now is: When Day Zero arrives, how do we make water accessible and prevent anarchy?" says the mayor of Capetown, South Africa, in a recent National Geographic article on Capetown's water crisis. [As I noted in a different post a few weeks ago, Capetown is expected to have to turn off its public water supplies in two months (more or less, depending on the success of water conservation efforts) because the water level in the city's reservoir is approaching, functionally, zero. The army is on standby to maintain order.] This article from the BBC (UK) looks at 11 other major cities likely to run out of drinking water (Cairo? London? Bangalore? Sao Paulo? Beijing? Istanbul?): www.bbc.com/news/world-42982959

One of my geography classes recently explored patterns in apparel manufacturing. Uzbekistan is not a major textile producer, but it is one of the world's top cotton-producing countries. Because Uzbekistan is one of only two countries in the world that is doubly landlocked -- it is landlocked and all of its neighbors are also landlocked -- most Uzbek cotton, which is one of the country's major exports, goes by rail to ports in other countries (including Ukraine, Latvia, and Iran), much of it bound for textile mills in Bangladesh. 

An Iranian tanker on the way to China with a cargo of condensate, a light liquid oil, collided with a freighter earlier this month and, after burning for several days, eventually sank in the East China Sea. This graphic from Reuters (UK) looks at the likely path of the oil leaking from the wreck, based on the currents and other physical geography of the region, and overlays it with fishing grounds and coral reefs. fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/CHINA-SHIPPING-SPILL/010060NC166/index.html

The black pepper we eat today is actually not the black pepper that spurred the spice trade more than 2,000 years ago. This interesting article looks at the reasons why Europeans switched from one Indian pepper to another. (Geographically relevant hint: sea routes result in cheaper goods than overland routes.)  www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-black-pepper-won-europe-from-a-better-pepper

Sea-level rise isn't the only thing causing flooding in coastal cities: in many cities, the land is literally sinking as drinking water is drained from underground aquifers. Jakarta, for example, is sinking by 6.7" per year due to subsidence.  Inland areas like Mexico City and California's San Joaquin Valley are also sinking, differentially, causing major water infrastructure problems. This BBC (UK) article looks at  subsidence and what communities can do to stop it. www.bbc.com/future/story/20171130-the-ambitious-plan-to-stop-the-ground-from-sinking

As the U.S. is scaling back both its support for UNESCO and its domestic protection for unique wilderness and cultural sites, China is devoting resources to pass Italy in 2018 as the country with the most UNESCO World Heritage Sites. For China, this is a matter of tourist dollars and national pride, but the road has not been without potholes, as this article from The Economist (UK) points out. (I believe the article's accompanying photo is from the South China Karst UNESCO World Heritage Site.) www.theworldin.com/article/14432/edition2018now-cultural-supremacy

The U.S. has now been militarily engaged in Afghanistan for more than 16 years, but most Americans don't know a whole lot about the people of Afghanistan. This map, created by the U.S. Army in September 2001, shows Afghanistan's assumed ethnic geography at the beginning of the war. (Over the last 16 years, though, Afghanistan has created more refugees than any country except Syria, which has undoubtedly changed the substance of this map. Afghanistan's 2013 census pointedly did not ask questions about language or ethnicity.)
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/US_Army_ethnolinguistic_map_of_Afghanistan_--_circa_2001-09.jpg

This remarkable geo-graphic compares the economies of 31 Chinese cities to 31 countries with similar economic output.  If you scroll down, it also compares the economies of 3 Chinese mega-regions to countries. For example, the cities of the Pearl River delta have a combined economy larger than Italy's. www.visualcapitalist.com/31-chinese-cities-economies-big-countries/

Last weekend marked the 200th anniversary of the birth of the founder of the Baha'i religion, which today has five to seven million adherents. Founded in Iran, the Baha'i faith has its world headquarters in Haifa (Israel) with other architecturally distinctive houses of worship in Delhi (India), Santiago (Chile), and Wilmette (Illinois). Shown is the Baha'i's Lotus Temple in Delhi. res.cloudinary.com/himanshujain/image/upload/v1455976179/activity/lotus-temple-new-delhi_ohir7q.jpg

This map compares climates within the U.S. with those in other parts of the world.  Like southern California? Visit Malta :-). Wondered what Kabul is like? Lubbock, TX, apparently.
i.redditmedia.com/SdqHC4SFT1yFu8Gu0ZOhCbQ7ospG_CaegvFnaMXvDtQ.jpg?w=1024&s=89b0c312484a365d37507e71d0aff82e

For a foliage display outside North America, the normally green kochia bushes planted in Hitachi Seaside Park in Hitachinaka, Japan (on the main island of Honshu, northeast of Tokyo) turn a brilliant scarlet during the dry season. www.atlasobscura.com/places/kochia-hill

North Korea tests its nuclear weapons in tunnels under Mount Mantap, in the northeastern corner of the Korean peninsula. North Korea's most recent nuclear test has triggered a series of earthquakes, though, and Chinese scientists are now warning that another test may cause the 7,234-foot mountain to collapse, an event that would release the nuclear radiation currently trapped within the mountain. Mount Mantap is part of the Hamgyong range, the tallest mountain range in North Korea and on the Korean peninsula. static4.businessinsider.com/image/59b1c7bc609c301d008b534b-1252/mount-mantap-north-korea-map-google-earth.png

For at least a decade, scientists have been trying to figure out why the Karakorum mountains (home to K2, on the Pakistan-China border) have been getting colder while the rest of the Himalayan region has been warming up. The answer seems to lie in a cold air vortex that is keeping the Karakorum colder than the surrounding mountain systems, to the point that it is reducing the glacial melt that feeds the Indus River, which in turn feeds most of Pakistan. geographical.co.uk/places/mountains/item/2413-glacial-growth-cracking-the-karakoram-anomaly

As many of my geography students know, a country needs a total fertility rate (TFR) of 2.1 children per woman if it wants to have a population that is neither growing nor shrinking. China has a TFR of about 1.2, meaning that its population is both aging and (eventually) shrinking. The Economist (UK) looks at how and why fertility rates vary across China, from low (1.79 in Guangxi, bordering Vietnam) to ultra-low (0.71 in Beijing). www.economist.com/news/china/21729573-no-province-has-many-babies-some-shortfalls-are-much-worse-others-chinas-demographic

Weather patterns are usually in the purview of physical geography, but increasingly they are affected by human geography as well. A recent study of sea lightning, for example, found that lightning was twice as likely to strike major shipping lanes as nearby waters. Scientists believe cargo ships, which burn a particular sludgy form of oil, are creating trails of exhaust particles which contribute to cloud formation and lightning. www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/09/cargo-ships-may-be-creating-lightning-sea

You probably know bitcoin "mining" is a thing. You may not realize, though, that bitcoin mining has specific geographic requirements, not unlike real mining. Because bitcoin mining requires enormous amounts of electricity to run the computer banks, bitcoin mines tend to be located near cheap sources of electricity, which in China (where most bitcoin mines are located) means hydroelectric or, in the Inner Mongolia bitcoin mining operation profiled in this article, coal. qz.com/1054805/what-its-like-working-at-a-sprawling-bitcoin-mine-in-inner-mongolia

President Trump recently stirred the pot (intentionally? inadvertently?) with comments referencing arch-rivals India and Pakistan in the context of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. This map looks at who sells arms to India, who sells arms to Pakistan, and who (like the U.S.) sells arms to both. www.businessinsider.com/this-map-shows-which-countries-export-weapons-to-india-and-pakistan-2015-3

Can a good defense beat a good offense? This article from Foreign Policy looks at radar installations and missile defense systems in Japan and South Korea. foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/11/mapped-u-s-and-allied-missile-defenses-against-north-korea

If you and your kids have never watched Tibetan monks creating a sand mandala, you have an opportunity to learn about and observe this unique artistic and religious tradition Aug. 23-26 at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church in Bethesda. But don't wait too long: on Aug. 27, the mandala will be destroyed in keeping with Buddhist beliefs about the transitory nature of material life. cedarlane.org/images/Mandala_Schedule_August_23-27_2017_13.png

For the most part, the Himalayas separate India and China, but the two countries have long-standing border disputes at both the western and the eastern ends of their long border. It is the eastern end that is currently in the news. China is trying to extend a road across the Doklam Plateau, a strategic area bordering India and claimed by both China and Bhutan (an Indian ally). The Indian military has sent troops to the area, where they are presently in a high-altitude standoff with their Chinese counterparts. www.ft.com/content/d56c92b0-78e6-11e7-90c0-90a9d1bc9691

Everyone's heard of the Great Wall of China, but the Great Wall of India?? In the western Indian state of Rajasthan an enormous wall runs for roughly 22 miles around the 15th century hill fort of Kumbhalgarh. Enclosing the fort and several temples, the Kumbhalgarh wall is the second longest in the world and, like the Great Wall of China, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. www.atlasobscura.com/places/great-wall-india

China's Yellow River carries more silt per unit of flow than any other big river in the world. But silt gums up hydroelectric dams, which is why once a year, in late June or early July, the floodgates of the Xiaolangdi Dam on the Yellow River (near the Silk Road city of Luoyang) are opened to release 30 tons of silt downstream. The photo below shows people turning out to watch this dramatic annual event.