Fast forward to 2050: this geo-graphic from Statista looks at the anticipated number of retirees per 100 working people, in selected countries, in 2020 vs. 2050.  Numbers in 2050 range from 40.4 retirees per 100 working people in the U.S. to 80.7 (!) retirees per 100 working people in Japan.  The length of the bar highlights the change in value from 2020 to 2050.  www.statista.com/chart/30831/evolution-of-the-number-of-retirees-per-100-working-people

Cantonese is the primary language of southern China, including Hong Kong, and Cantonese has been a tool for anti-regime satire and solidarity since the 2019 protests in Hong Kong. This article from Quartz looks at Beijing's attempts to crackdown on Cantonese publishing outlets and promote the teaching of Mandarin in Hong Kong's schools: qz.com/hong-kong-s-new-public-enemy-the-cantonese-language-1850780591

This map and geo-graphic from Statista looks at extreme poverty -- defined by the World Bank as a daily income of $2.15 or less -- in selected countries before the COVID epidemic. www.statista.com/chart/30742/people-living-in-extreme-poverty-country-share/

China recently indicated President Xi Jinping will skip the G-20 economic summit in India later this month. That decision comes on the heels of a new standard map released by China's ministry of natural resources last week that shows India's state of Arunachal Pradesh, in the far northeastern part of the country, and all of the Aksai Chin plateau, part of which is in Kashmir, as Chinese territory. Although the Himalayan border between India and China has been poorly defined, disputed, and the source of military conflict for decades, the new map is viewed with concern as part of a tendency for China to claim territory in print before trying to assert its claims in other ways. qz.com/india-china-border-dispute-map-arunachal-pradesh-1850786461

If you're thinking about an exotic fall getaway, September and October are usually the peak months for the Maldives' bioluminescent beaches. Vaadhoo Island at the northern end of the archipelago is the best known spot to see the "sea of stars," but this tourism piece highlights a number of other possible, and less remote, locations as well: samudramaldives.com/maldives-glowing-bioluminescence-beaches/

Indonesia has about 14,000 islands, and Bali is often thought of as the "party island." Because the windy season begins in July each year, one of Bali's key festivals during July and August is the Bali Kite Festival. Kite making and kite flying play an important role in Balinese Hindu culture, and these kites are BIG: up to 10m long and 4m wide, with tails that can exceed 100m! www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/color-and-magic-fill-balis-skies-with-the-return-of-a-beloved-kite-festival

Two express trains collided in India's Odisha state yesterday, resulting in more than 200 deaths as of this writing. Odisha borders the Bay of Bengal, southwest of Kolkata.  The trains were on the main rail line connecting the megacities of Kolkata and Chennai. The pin on this map marks the approximate location of the crash.

Although it's been widely reported that India will overtake China as the world's most populous country at some point this year, what has received less attention are the divergent trends in fertility rates within India: the birth rate in northern India is nearly twice that of southern India. In southern India, the total fertility rate is 1.8 children per woman, on a par with the U.S. and most of Europe. In northern India, the total fertility rate is about 3 children per woman, on a par with Namibia and Libya, among other countries. "Not only are southern [Indian] states providing women better access to contraceptives and family planning services, experts say, but they’re also affording women better educations, more jobs and higher relative social status — crucial, intangible factors that have led to smaller family sizes and greater prosperity. 'Demographically, we have two Indias,' said Arvind Subramanian, the Indian government’s chief economic adviser between 2014 and 2018. 'The India of the south already resembles East Asia. It’s actually in the early stages of aging. But the Hindi heartland is still very much booming.' ... The north-south gap in birthrates and overall development is stirring frequent debates about how to apportion federal spending and how to allocate seats in Parliament. It’s also sparked efforts by government leaders and development experts to provide enough jobs to the poor, northern states — and lift up women like Malika [a woman profiled in the story from the northern state of Bihar], who are left behind even as India’s surging economy looks destined to overtake Germany’s later this decade. ... According to the 2021 national family survey, 84 percent of Tamil Nadu women are now literate, compared with 55 percent in Bihar, the lowest in India. Forty-six percent of married women in Tamil Nadu were employed in the last 12 months, versus 19.2 percent of married Bihari women. ... Increasingly, India’s failure to close its north-south demographic and economic divide is leading to political consequences. In Bihar, the pressure on public-sector employment is so great that cuts to government job openings or in military recruitment often spark riots. Meanwhile, southern states such as Tamil Nadu, which is expecting to see its population decline sometime in the next decade, has seen an influx of northern migrant laborers, occasionally leading to friction."
www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/04/14/india-china-population-most-populous/

Just 29 countries (shown in yellow) contribute more than half of the world's maternal deaths, newborn deaths, and stillbirths: reliefweb.int/map/world/map-2023-countries-un-humanitarian-appeals-contribute-global-maternal-deaths-newborn-death-and-stillbirths

Landmines often persist long after a conflict ends. This map, based on data from an NGO that monitors landmines and operations to clear them, shows where landmines still exist, more than 25 years after a UN treaty that bans their use: cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/26209.jpeg

The AidData lab at the College of William & Mary has found 22 countries that have relied on often-opaque emergency lending from China since 2000, either via liquidity swaps with China's central bank or lines of credit from state-owned Chinese banks. This emergency lending is often at higher interest rates than emergency loans from the IMF, for example, and may not be recorded as external debt, concealing a country's actual debt load. www.statista.com/chart/29603/chinese-emergency-bailouts

Scientists associated with China's Institute of Oceanology have deployed a long-term ocean observation platform to study cold seeps in the South China Sea. What are cold seeps, you might ask? This useful pair of videos from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) explains what a cold seep (also known as a methane seep) is, what a hydrothermal vent is, and how they are different: oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/facts/seeps-vents.html

NASA has released this map showing the world's major carbon dioxide emitters (in brown, with 3D shading) and absorbers (in green) from 2015-2020. Because this map is based on data collected by satellite, it includes measures for countries that have not reported emissions data in years. The major carbon-absorbing countries have large swaths of forest, particularly the taiga (or boreal forest) of Canada and Russia. news.yahoo.com/nasa-map-shows-which-countries-are-releasing-and-absorbing-co2-123341959.html

This map from Geographical (UK) is a reminder that the Eurasian plate, from Italy through Iran, is intensely seismically active: geographical.co.uk/science-environment/danger-zones-mapping-earthquakes-in-europe

The biogeography of Siberia is changing as melting permafrost in the tundra is exposing viruses previously unknown to science, some of which have been trapped in the ice for tens of thousands of years. www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/12/02/zombie-virus-russia-permafrost-thaw/

As this map shows, thus far, the winter has proved warmer than usual in most of Europe, which has allowed natural gas and other energy prices to fall back to more normal levels. But a colder-than-usual winter in parts of Asia is creating natural gas shortages and heating problems in China, in particular.   (Map from www.nytimes.com/2023/01/25/business/china-natural-gas-shortages.html.)

Megacities are generally defined as metropolitan areas of at least 10 million people. There are currently 33-35 megacities, depending on who is counting and who is being counted. This map looks at cities expected to reach megacity status by 2050: bucket.mlcdn.com/a/2764/2764870/images/0d7ca37bc55b1c8101a1a5e77cb243aae75162b2.jpeg

The U.S. Department of State and Google Maps are now on board with Turkey's request to spell the name of the country "Türkiye." (To make the necessary ü in Word, use control-: and then the u.)

This geo-graphic from Statista looks at "land grabs" in the developing world, defined as "the buying, leasing or concession land use for commercial purposes by companies from abroad, affecting land that had previously been used communally, by small-scale shareholders or was natural environment." (Until 2019, the country experiencing the most land grabs was Peru, but Peru is not on this list because it has been reclassified as an upper-middle income country.) cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/19044.jpeg

Working on behalf of a free press and the public's right to know is often a dangerous job. War zones figure into this map showing where the most journalists were killed in 2022, but Mexico continues to be the most dangerous place to be a journalist: cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/1181.jpeg

Electric vehicles are dependent on a variety of minerals. This article from The Wall Street Journal includes maps that show where cobalt and manganese, as well as lithium and nickel, are mined and refined: www.wsj.com/articles/electric-vehicles-scarce-parts-supply-chain-11668206037

Yes, climate change is making some natural disasters worse, but is it also becoming a tidy way of letting governments off the hook for bad planning?  The recent floods in Pakistan are a case in point. An international team of researchers analyzed the flooding in Pakistan and found that rainfall in the southern provinces of Sindh and Balochistan was "about 75% more intense than it would have been had the climate not warmed by 1.2C." But the report also found "The devastating impacts were also driven by the proximity of human settlements, infrastructure (homes, buildings, bridges), and agricultural land to flood plains, inadequate infrastructure, limited ex-ante risk reduction capacity, an outdated river management system, underlying vulnerabilities driven by high poverty rates and socioeconomic factors (e.g. gender, age, income, and education), and ongoing political and economic instability." Although solving climate change will remain out of the purview of any single country, that does not mean governments do not need to address in-country zoning, infrastructure, economic and political issues to mitigate the impacts of climate change. www.worldweatherattribution.org/climate-change-likely-increased-extreme-monsoon-rainfall-flooding-highly-vulnerable-communities-in-pakistan/

This topological map from Visual Capitalist shows the number and percentage of each country's population deemed to be at high risk from once-in-a-century flooding, like the floods that inundated more than one-third of Pakistan earlier this fall, killing more than 1,700 people, destroying buildings and crops, and creating lasting crises in food security, education, and waterborne disease. www.visualcapitalist.com/countries-highest-flood-risk/ 

Geography journalist Tim Marshall takes a look at the emerging naval rivalry between India and China in this article from Geographical (UK): geographical.co.uk/geopolitics/indias-ocean-rivalry-with-china?