Nobel Peace Prize 2007
The Nobel Peace Prize 2007 was awarded today to 2 winners, Al Gore and the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Find out the other winners in Medicine, Economics, Literature, Physics, Chemistry and Peace through the history of the Nobel Prize.
Google zooming in on Darfur
Google Earth has updated satellite images of the Darfur region of Sudan to document destroyed villages, displaced people and refugee camps. Using icons to represent destroyed villages with flames and refugee camps with tents, users can click on the icons to get more information about the extent of the destruction. Google Earth has high resolution satellite images for parts of the region so that users can zoom in to see the burnt remains of homes.
This article in Australia's Herald Sun paper discusses the project as a partnership between Google and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum to document the genocide, human rights violations and other atrocities in Darfur. Estimates from the United Nations state that more than 2.5 million have been displaced and 200,000 people killed over four years.
World Heritage List
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has chosen to natural and cultural sites for protection, and inclusion on the World Heritage List. The criteria specify that they must "represent a masterpiece of human creative genius", "be areas of exceptional natural beauty", "contain the most important and significant natural habitats for in-situ conservation of biological diversity" or represent some other equally outstanding characteristics. In essence, the sites on the World Heritage List are judged to be the very best that our planet has to offer.
Currently, there are 830 sites, with at least 1 in every country, and many countries having many sites. There are many of the most famous sites, including the Great Pyramids, Machu Picchu, Angkor, and the Grand Canyon. There are also many lesser known sites, such as: the city of Pienza in Italy, the Japanese island of Yakushima, and the American Pueblo de Taos.
You could do a lot worse than using the UNESCO sites as your ultimate global travel checklist.
