The Walt Disney Company has gained approval from Chinese officials to build a Disneyland theme park in Shanghai, China. Expected to open within five years, Shanghai Disneyland is expected to cost $3.5 billion, one of the largest foreign investments in China. In related news, The New York Times reports on four year-old Hong Kong Disneyland, which has not been the success that the Walt Disney Company had hoped it would be.

Eighty-five percent of the ice at the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania in 1912 has disappeared. Furthermore, the ice in the glaciers at the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro has decreased a whopping 26% since 2000. According to examination of ice cores from the glaciers, melting as we're seeing currently hasn't occurred in the last 11,700 years (that's 117 centuries and nearly 12 millennia!). The melting of the ice atop Mt. Kilimanjaro is further proof that global warming is occurring. The New York Times has the story.

In a project that reminds me a lot of the Claritas PRIZM system, Patchwork Nation is a collaboration between the Christian Science Monitor, PBS' NewsHour and local public broadcasting stations to divide the country's counties into twelve different categories. The demographic categories (such as Emptying Nests, Evangelical Epicenters, Immigration Nation, and Mormon Outposts) are being used to look at the country through various filters, much like in the PRIZM system. It's very much worth a look!

The Aral Sea, located on the border of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan might not be dying as quickly as it once was and might even be coming back to life. Kazakhstan built a dam to divert the water of the Syr Darya river into the portion of the Aral Sea located in Kazakhstan. Thus, the fishing industry along with ecosystems based on the Aral Sea are seeing some signs of recovery. It's a great story of what was once the world's fourth largest lake (and now isn't even in the top ten). The Associated Press has a fantastic story on the rebirth of the Aral Sea.

A Russian lawmaker has proposed that Russia's far eastern time zone be modified so that instead of being seven hours ahead of Moscow, it would be a mere four. The current seven hour difference between the post city of Vladivostok on the Pacific Ocean and Moscow causes difficulty in communication as the working day in Moscow begins as it ends in Vladivostok. It is not known if overall time zone changes would be made to the vast country. There is an eleven hour difference in Russia between Kamchatka in the east and Kaliningrad in the west.

A new report on the newspaper circulation numbers of the largest newspapers in the United States reveal that newspaper circulation is in decline. According to the Los Angeles Times: "The Audit Bureau of Circulations reported today that the average weekday circulation of the nearly 400 daily papers that reported sales slid 10.6% between April and September compared to the same six-month period in 2008." The largest newspapers in the United States and their circulation as of this report are:

1) Wall Street Journal - 2 million

2) USA Today - 1.9 million

3) New York Times - 927,000

4) Los Angeles Times - 657,000

5) Washington Post - 583,000

Despite a worldwide effort to cut the number of hungry people around the world, as part of the Millennium Development Goals, the number of hungry people worldwide rose more than 100 million to 1.02 billion people. Thus, more than one in seven people on the planet have serious food security issues. According to researchers, food production needs to be increased by 50% to meet the needs of the growing global population. I am a bit surprised by this fact as I had long been of the understanding that food distribution, and not production, was the issue.

Read also about the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, designed to monitor food security in 23 countries.

The Population Reference Bureau is now on YouTube and they've produced their first video on population pyramids. Its subtitle is "Population Concepts Explained in Under 10 Minutes" and that's true because the video is a mere 8 minutes and 28 seconds long. A related article here on my site covers population pyramids.

There are two new articles up today. The first is an overview of population geography from Contributing Writer Amanda Briney. The second is about the topic of rangelands from Geography Intern Katy Rudolphy. For your future reference, a listing of all of the new and updated content on my site can be found on a list at the bottom right-hand corner of every page.

Researchers who looked at the distribution of buried coins (in lieu of savings accounts) in the ancient world has led to new population data for the Roman Empire. The study concludes that the total population of the Roman Empire during the end of the first century BCE was 4 to 5 million. For related information, check out my listings of the largest cities throughout history.