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...worst drought in more than 100 years. At 0.68 meters high, the Red River is at its lowest level since records started being kept in 1902. With virtually no rainfall since September, timber fires are burning in the north and tinder-dry conditions threaten forests in the south. Soaring temperatures in the central part of Vietnam have unleashed a plague of rice-eating insects, damaging thousands of hectares of paddies. "It's the beginning of everything," Nguyen Lan Chau, vice director of the National Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting, says gloomily. (See pictures of the world's water crisis...
...region most affected - and the one that affects the most - is the Mekong River Delta in the south. Water levels in the nation's rice bowl have fallen to their lowest points in nearly 20 years, threatening the livelihoods of tens of millions of people who depend on the river basin for farming, fishing and transportation. The biggest problem, however, is not the water. It's the salt. During the dry season, when channels and tributaries run dry, seawater can creep more than 18 miles (30 km) inland. Vietnam has installed a series of sluice gates to hold back high...
...hydropower projects on its side of the border, China frequently gets the blame for water shortages downstream. Indeed, Vietnam's neighbor has been on an aggressive campaign to damn the Mekong River, which begins on the Tibetan plateau and travels through five other countries before it empties into the South China Sea. According to the Mekong River Commission, a regional advisory agency, China has built or is planning to build eight dams along the Mekong. But while dams raise huge concerns about interfering with sediment flow and fish migration, they can also have a positive impact, says Jeremy Bird...
Bolivia's drivers cannot carry the entire blame for the country's high rate of road deaths. The South American nation is infamous for its hazardous roadways: for more than a decade it boasted the world's most dangerous road, a curvy unpaved one-laner bordered by a 500 foot drop that saw more deaths per traveler per year than any other on the planet. Even Bolivia's "highways" are narrow, hole-ridden and landslide-prone. No wonder some drivers are driven to drink. (See the 50 worst cars of all time...
...South African President Jacob Zuma received a less than cordial welcome when he stepped off the plane in London for a three-day state visit to Britain this week. The British media, renowned for their sometimes witty, often outlandish headlines and a tone that can swing between cheeky and downright rude, have vilified Zuma for having five wives, calling him everything from a "sex-obsessed bigot" to a "vile buffoon...