submitted by Samuel Bendett

by Zack Whittaker - zdnet.com - February 13, 2012

Summary: A new Forrester research report sees over 1 billion smartphones being used by 2016, while app store spending increases and ‘bring your own’ device becomes the norm.

In a world where already you cannot travel on the subway without someone flipping out their cellphone, or stand at a Starbucks without someone yapping away on their iPhone, imagine what’ll happen with 1 billion smartphones out there?

Forrester seems to think so. Analysts at Forrester believe that by 2016 — only four years away, and in time for the following Olympics — there could be as many as 1 billion smartphones on the planet. This isn’t to say that everyone will have two or more smartphones, that is.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

Revolutionaries, anti -government activist  are tearing down signs and renaming "streets, bridges and boulevards" and replacing them with their heroes.
It seems it began from Social Media using Facebook to gain support, and now they are electronically renaming the same in Google maps.

(ARTICLE FOUND HERE) by Colum Lynch, The Washington Post with Foreign Policy,WORLD,National Security February 14,2012

Gabon at the Congo Basin, the second largest tropical forest in Africa

Loango Lodge at Gabon,Loango National Park.

Tourism needed to save Gabon,the park, the land, the animals and to utilize its natural resources.
Political issues cause setbacks for Gabon and its Eco-Tourism vision ,new President new outlook.

(ARTICLE FOUND HERE) BBC NEWS, by David Baron,PRI's The World, February 7,2012

The Washington Post - February 2, 2012

Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images - Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, right, walks with U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in Tel Aviv last October. Barak said that time is running out for stopping Iran’s nuclear advance, as the country’s uranium facilities disappear into newly constructed mountain bunkers.

submitted by Albert Gomez

un.org - January 30, 2012

Report

The High-level Panel on Global Sustainability presents its report to the Secretary-General on 30 January 2012 in Addis Ababa.

The 22-member Panel, established by the Secretary-General in August 2010 to formulate a new blueprint for sustainable development and low-carbon prosperity, was co-chaired by Finnish President Tarja Halonen and South African President Jacob Zuma. The Panel's final report, "Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Future Worth Choosing", contains 56 recommendations to put sustainable development into practice and to mainstream it into economic policy as quickly as possible.

submitted by Janine Rees

Image Gallery - REUTERS / Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah

by Terry J. Allen, from In These Times - utne.com - January-February 2012

A 21st-century land rush is on. Driven by fear and lured by promises of high profits, foreign investors are scooping up vast tracts of farmland in some of the world’s hungriest countries to grow crops for export.

As the climate changes and populations shift and grow, billions of people around the globe face shortages of land and water, rising food prices, and increasing hunger. Alarm over a future without affordable food and water is sparking unrest in a world already tinder-dried by repression and recession, corruption and mismanagement, boundary disputes and ancient feuds, ethnic tension and religious fundamentalism.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

     A major international conference focusing on solutions to the global sustainability challenge.

Planet under Pressure Registration deadline extension

The Planet Under Pressure management team is extending the oral presenters registration deadline to Friday 9 December and poster author registration deadline to 20 January 2012. This is in response to feedback from some delegates who require more time to identify funding opportunities.

Registration Fees

£275 + UK VAT @ 20% = £330.00 Earlybird Delegates
(delegates registering up to and including 20 January 2012)

£375 + UK VAT @ 20% = £450.00 Standard Delegates
(delegates registering after 20 January 2012)

£250 + UK VAT @ 20% = £300.00 Students

All above fees are subject to a £35 per person carbon offset contribution. This additional fee will be included on registration.

Argil carries water to her family who are fleeing after fighting broke out, near the Blue Nile state capital al-Damazin (Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah Reuters, REUTERS / September 5, 2011)

dailypress.com - Andrew Quinn - Reuters -  January 24, 2012

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States fears a large-scale famine in Sudan's restive border states of Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile and is boosting pressure in Khartoum to accept aid or face a unilateral assistance operation, a senior U.S. official said on Tuesday.

"We are feeling a lot of pressure, if there's no international access, to look at ways in which assistance would be carried across the border without their approval," Princeton Lyman, the Obama administration's special envoy for Sudan, told reporters.

Preliminary results of assessments done in South Sudan . . . CERF allocates $104 million to 13 underfunded crises (including South Sudan and Haiti) . . .

(Juba, 7 January 2012): Humanitarian agencies are mounting a major emergency operation in Jonglei State in South Sudan to help people affected by the recent wave of inter-communal violence. “The Government of South Sudan has declared Jonglei a disaster zone and asked humanitarian agencies to accelerate life-saving assistance. We’re responding to that call,” said the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in South Sudan Ms. Lise Grande.
. . .

First, there is great value in a systems approach as a heuristic for understanding interlocked social-ecological-technological processes, and in analysis across multiple scales. Yet we need to move beyond both systems as portrayed in resilience thinking, and the focus on actors in work on vulnerability, to analyse networks and relationships, as well as to attend to the diverse framings, narratives, imaginations and discourses that different actors bring to bear.

For More:

http://resilienturbanism.tumblr.com/post/7573475902/reframing-resilience

There are many definitions of resilience from simple deterministic views of resilience anchored in Newtonian mechanics to far more dynamic views of resilience from a systems perspective, including insights from quantum mechanics and the sciences of complexity.  One baseline perspective of resilience sees it in terms of the viability of socio-ecological systems as the foundation for sustainability.  For those that are ready to look beyond resilience as the ability to return to the "normal state" before a disaster, take a look at:

http://www.resalliance.org/

What does it take to become a smart city?  Why are mesh cities important to sustainability?

For more information:

<http://www.meshcities.com/>