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"THE best quality of life of any of the world's urbanites is still enjoyed by Melburnians, according to the latest Liveability report by the Economist Intelligence Unit, our corporate sibling. For the third year in a row Australia's second city has kept a hair's breadth ahead of Vienna and Vancouver, which spent almost a decade in first place before Melbourne's reign began. The ranking scores 140 cities on a scale of zero to 100 for each of 30 factors such as the quality of public healthcare or the threat of military conflict. These 30 values are then combined to create scores in five areas: stability, infrastructure, education, health care, and culture and environment. A weighted average of those five numbers gives each city its final score."

"The west has in recent years undergone a prolonged and painful financial crisis. In contrast, much of Africa has experienced relatively more rapid economic growth. While there are questions about the environmental impact, sustainability and quality of Africa's growth, what accounts for these different economic trajectories? Part of the explanation lies in the growth of the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) economies. These are largely responsible for higher African economic growth through increased demand for primary commodities and investment in mining, infrastructure and other sectors. They are also changing the nature of globalisation."

This is so COOL . The National Library of Scotland's (NLS) Map Department has recently completed a huge georeferencing exercise, taking a set of Six-Inch-To-Mile (1:10560) maps for the whole of England and Wales, scanning them in to create high-quality images, and lining them up with Google Maps and OpenStreetMap modern maps. The maps were drawn between 1888-1913 and so represent a complete picture of the countries a hundred years ago. They have developed a side-by-side tool to allow for easy comparison between the old and new maps.

"Throughout the 20th century, and continuing into the 21st century, governments have tried to develop the world's poor countries. Development efforts have sought to increase national income, lift poor people out of poverty and improve their quality of living. However, people have had different ideas about how to best develop poor countries.  This resource considers six of those approaches."