For the first time in roughly 2 million years, melting Arctic sea ice is connecting the north Pacific and north Atlantic oceans. The newly opened passages leave both coasts and Arctic waters vulnerable to a large wave of invasive species, biologists assert.
For the first time in roughly 2 million years, melting Arctic sea ice is connecting the north Pacific and north Atlantic oceans. The newly opened passages leave both coasts and Arctic waters vulnerable to a large wave of invasive species, biologists assert.
The A.T. Kearney/FOREIGN POLICY Globalization Index is an annual study that assesses the extent to which the world's most populous nations are becoming more or less globally connected. Find out who's up, who's down, and who's the most global of them all.
"Want to find the hidden center of the global economy? Take a drive along
Taiwan's Sun Yat-sen Freeway. This stretch of road is how you reach the
companies that connect the vast marketplaces and digital powerhouses of the U.S.
with the enormous manufacturing centers of China."
Last year, important internet cables connecting Europe to Asia were mysteriously severed, resulting in days of outages for millions of internet users. It was a stark reminder that, no matter how instantaneously our information seems to travel, it is, in fact, moving through cables on the bottom of the ocean. And, while the internet might seem like the cutting edge of technology, it's interesting to note that information has been traveling this way since the first telegraph cables were laid across the Atlantic ocean in the 19th century.
A new high-speed undersea cable connecting East Africa with the rest of the world is poised to go live, Kenya's top internet official has told the BBC.
THE Horn of Africa is one of the last populated bits of the planet without a proper connection to the world wide web. Instead of fibre-optic cable, which provides for cheap phone calls and YouTube-friendly surfing, its 200m or so people have had to rely on satellite links. This has kept international phone calls horribly overpriced and internet access equally extortionate and maddeningly slow.
Starting next July, every person in Finland will have the right to a one-megabit broadband connection, says the Ministry of Transport and Communications. Finland is the world's first country to create laws guaranteeing broadband access.