PRI's The World » Geo Quiz

A West African Dust Storm

The World — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 13:30:09 +0000

A dust plume spanning hundreds of kilometers blew off the coast of western Africa on February 6, 2012. Click to enlarge. (Photo: NASA)

For the Geo Quiz, we are not looking for a country, but for the name of a weather phenomenon.

It is a dry and dusty trade wind that is causing a vast Saharan dust cloud to hover over West Africa.

Yellowish-brown dust falls like rain and covers the sidewalks and drivers have to use headlights to see through the haze.

So, there won’t be picnics in Dakar, Senegal anytime soon.

Locals are used to this. It is seasonal, but this year’s sand storm is worse than usual.

Harmattan is the answer to the Geo Quiz.

It is blowing from the Sahara Desert across a swath of West African countries including Senegal.

The Environment Ministry of Senegal said Wednesday the air quality in the crowded capital Dakar was “bad” and poses a public health risk.

Anchor Marco Werman talks to journalist Hamadou Tidiane, who lives in Dakar.

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Charles Dickens’ American Tour

The World — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:30:54 +0000

Today’s Geo Quiz feels about 200 years old.

English novelist Charles Dickens was born 2 centuries ago Tuesday, but he remains relevant even now said Archbishop of Canterbury because his books and characters explore what it means to be human.

In January 1842, Dickens sailed to America for the first time.

He wanted to see the Niagara Falls with his own eyes and also the American prisons and asylums.

He also traveled to a historic American city near Boston to see how textile workers, especially women, were treated in the busy and crowded mills.

And we want you to name that 19th century industrial city.

Lowell, Massachusetts is the answer to the Geo Quiz.

It was a place that Dickens sought out in 1842 when he first came to America.

Anchor Marco Werman talks to Natalie McKnight about Dickens’ American tour to chronicle the injustices of the Victorian age.

Reflections on Dickens visit to America from Mike Cataruzolo who conducts tours of the Perkins School focusing on history. Mike, incidentally, is blind.

Jan Seymour-Ford, a Research Librarian at Perkins, reflects on Charles Dickens.

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Facebook’s Fastest Growing Markets

The World — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:10:30 +0000

Everyone is buzzing about Facebook on Wednesday, thanks to its planned $5 billion initial public offering.

A lot of investors will soon be scrambling to pick up some shares.

The social media giant has hundreds of millions of users around the globe.

But for our Geo Quiz we are looking for Facebook’s fastest growing markets.

In other words, we want to know which countries are experiencing an explosive growth of Facebook users?

Brazil and India are the answers to the Geo Quiz.

Anchor Marco Werman talks to Zeynep Tufekci, professor at the University of North Carolina. Tufekci teaches the social impacts of technology at the University.

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Elephants as Possible Solution to Stop Australia’s Wildfires

Rhitu Chatterjee — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 13:10:55 +0000

A NASA image showing fires(red marks) in the Northern Territory in Australia. (Photo: NASA). Click to enlarge.

For the Geo Quiz we are looking for a vast, but sparsely-populated territory of Australia.

It is summertime there with temperature averaging around 95 degree Fahrenheit.

The place we are talking about borders the Timor Sea to the north and to the south it abuts South Australia.

The southern region is mostly a desert with little rain in the forecast at least until March.

European miners arrived in this area in the 17th century, but long before they arrived, indigenous Australians had settled dating back as far as 40,000 years ago.

Nowadays there is a nickname for folks living there: territorians.

Australia’s Northern Territory is the answer to the Geo Quiz. It is a federal territory of Australia occupying much of the center of the mainland continent, as well as the central northern regions.

The Northern Territory is a vast region and has experienced an unusually high number of wildfires in recent years. One cause is an exotic grass that is a major fuel for fires.

An Australian scientist is now proposing a controversial solution: importing elephants and rhinoceroses to eat the grass.

African Elephant in Addo National Park, South Africa. (Photo: Gorgo/Wikipedia)

Australia has witnessed a growing problem with deadly wildfires in recent years.

Scientists say there are many causes. Global warming may be one. Another is a kind of exotic grass that provides fuel for the fires.

It’s called gamba grass, and it was imported from Africa in the 1930s. Scientists brought it to Australia for cattle farmers because it produces a lot more feed for livestock than native grasses do.

But over the decades, gamba grass has spread across a large portion of Australia’s Northern Territory.

“Now it’s become very rampant, and it’s producing tremendously intense fires,” said David Bowman, an environmental scientist at the University of Tasmania.

Bowman is the author of a new commentary in the journal Nature, in which he proposes this solution to Australia’s gamba grass problem: introduce elephants and rhinoceroses.

“I’m thinking of using a big animal as an ecological machine to otherwise control something for which we don’t have any other options,” said Bowman.

Once gamba grass matures and becomes tall and woody, it is no longer edible to cattle or to native species, like kangaroos.

Elephants and rhinos, on the other hand, love the grass. Bowman thinks they would slow down the spread of the grass.

The idea may make sense on some level, but Bowman’s colleagues aren’t welcoming it.

“It’s not a solution at all,” said Stephen Garnett, a conservation biologist at Australia’s Charles Darwin University.

He says Australia is already overrun by a range of exotic species, including camels and water buffaloes. The country is spending millions of dollars trying to cull these feral animals.

Garnett says Bowman’s idea is a bit like the children’s song “There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly.” The woman swallows a spider to eat the fly, then swallows a bird to eat the spider, and so on, each time creating an even bigger problem than the one she sought to solve.

“And the last verse is that she swallowed a horse, and then she died, of course,” said Garnett. “Well, David’s idea is a bit like swallowing a rhinoceros. It’d be yet another feral animal on Australian land.”

David Bowman says he is not proposing that elephants and rhinos be allowed to run wild.

“If we’re going to use these things, we’d use them in a sophisticated way,” said Bowman. He suggests sterilizing the animals, tracking them with GPS collars, and containing them with fences.

Bowman says he expected resistance to his idea, but he insists something must be done to reduce Australia’s wildfire risk. If scientists don’t want elephants and rhinos, he hopes he has at least provoked them to come up with other creative solutions.

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Illegal Ivory Market Flourishes in Cairo

The World — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:20:18 +0000

A Middle Eastern bazaar is the focus of our Geo Quiz today.

The bazaar or souk we are looking for is in Egypt’s capital, Cairo.

This marketplace in the city’s Islamic district has been continuously open since the Middle Ages and remains very popular and crowded even today.

Shoppers can wander around the narrow alleys or pop into tiny cafes serving strong coffee and haggle over prices with vendors who sell everything from chandeliers and spices to hookahs and shisha.

But there is something else that unfortunately shows up sale: illegal ivory.

Khan el-Khalili is the answer to the Geo Quiz.

Anchor Marco Werman talks to wild life expert Esmond Martin who investigated the Egyptian ivory trade for the conservation group Traffic.

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Meet Way-C: The African-Designed Tablet

The World — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 13:40:29 +0000

Have you got a glimpse of Way-C yet?

Way-C is an African-designed tablet, like an iPad and for the Geo Quiz, we are looking for the two cities where the Way-C went on sale Monday.

Both cities are in the Republic of Congo.

The cities, one capital and the other a major oil port, are the African nation’s two largest cities.

The Way-C, which means “the light of the starts” in a local northern Congo dialect, was invented by 26-year-old Verone Mankou under his company VMK.

Capital Brazzaville and oil port city of Pointe-Noire are the answers to the Geo Quiz.

It is in these cities that the $300 device went on sale.

Anchor Marco Werman talks to Global Post reporter Erin Conway-Smith, who is in Johannesburg, South Africa.

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Canadian Lego Man Goes to Space

The World — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:40:19 +0000

The Geo Quiz is going into space – by way of Toronto.

Two Canadian teenagers in Toronto made big headlines this week.

That’s because they successfully launched a man into space.

A man made of Lego blocks, that is.

This Lego man was attached to a homemade contraption, equipped with video camera, and tethered to a weather balloon.

After the two teenagers launched it, the balloon rose some 80,000 ft.

That’s within the layer of Earth’s atmosphere we want you to name.

It’s not as high as the thermosphere where the International Space Station orbits.

Nor is it as low as troposphere.

If you were standing on the summit of Mount Everest, for example, you’d be breathing the thin air of the troposphere.

The answer is the stratosphere. Lisa Mullins talks with Mathew Ho and Asad Muhammed about their science project.

Visualize tweets for this story: Click on the image below to see tweets

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Cyber Tycoon Wanted for Internet Piracy Arrested in New Zealand

The World — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:10:34 +0000

For the Geo Quiz, we are looking for a sleepy neighborhood in New Zealand.

This rural New Zealand town is suddenly in the limelight. That is because it is where a German cyber tycoon, nicknamed Mr. Dotcom, has been living.

He is the man behind a website called “Megaupload.” The FBI alleges that the website has carried out massive worldwide online piracy.

The tycoon himself rents a $24 million luxury mansion on a 30 acre rural estate northwest of Auckland.

The mansion is said to be one of the most expensive homes in New Zealand.

It is part of a noveau riche community surrounded by farming towns with names such as Riverhead and Dairy Flat.

Coatesville, New Zealand, is the answer to the Geo Quiz.

It is here that Kim Dotcom, founder of file-sharing website “Megaupload” was arrested.

He is facing an extradition hearing next month as he is wanted for trial in the US on various charges relating to internet piracy.

Anchor Lisa Mullins spoke to Georgina Ball, reporter with Radio New Zealand, to get more details.

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Burns, Haggis and Highland Dancers – A Postcard From Scotland

The World — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:20:12 +0000

We’re in Scotland for the Geo Quiz, in the city where Robert Burns started to make a name for himself in the late 1780′s, and where his portrait now hangs in the Scottish National Gallery.

The answer is Edinburgh. Scottish musician Sandy Brechin sent us an audio postcard.

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Video: Solar Storm To Lash Earth Until Wednesday

The World — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 13:40:01 +0000

Our Geo Quiz starts 93 million miles away: on the surface of the Sun.

That’s where a solar eruption happened over the weekend.

It’s described as an immense blast of plasma and radiation streaming out from the sun.

That plasma has been traveling through space at about four million miles an hour, and it reportedly reached our planet on Tuesday.

Scientists are on the lookout for any effects of this storm here on Earth.

The question is, what kind of storm are we talking about?

The answer is a geomagnetic storm.

It’s a phenomenon caused by a solar wind shock wave that interacts with the Earth’s magnetic field.

The result can be Northern Lights displays and possible disruption of satellite communications around the world. Anchor Lisa Mullins gets details from Doug Biesecker at the NOAA’s (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Space Weather Prediction Center in Colorado.

Solar Dynamics Observatory captured the flare, shown here in teal as that is the color typically used to show light in the 131 Angstrom wavelength, a wavelength in which it is easy to view solar flares. The flare began at 10:38 PM ET on Jan. 22, peaked at 10:59 PM and ended at 11:34 PM.

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European King of Seltzer

Nate Tabak — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:10:40 +0000

For our Geo Quiz, we want you to name a landlocked country in central Europe. It shares borders with 7 neighbors: Slovakia, Romania, Ukraine, Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, and Austria.

There’s no beachfront property on the Mediterranean but the country’s got the largest fresh water lake in central Europe, Lake Balaton.

And there’s plenty of mineral water too from all the hot springs scattered around the country.

Bubbly water’s on the menu in just about every café and restaurant.

The fizzy stuff caught on here back in the 1800s.

Ever since, the local version of a wine spritzer called a fröccs has been popular.

These drinks are cheap too!

So can you name the country where seltzer is king?

The answer the central European nation of Hungary which is famous for traditional delicacies like paprika and goulash. And to wash it all down, Hungarian prefer their water carbonated and fizzy as Nate Tabak reports from Budapest.

At Kadar Restaurant in Budapest, you can be pretty sure of two things. You’ll leave with a full belly. And you’ll fill up numerous glasses of seltzer.

Each table has one, if not two, plastic seltzer dispensers – the kind with old-fashioned nozzles. The seltzer helps wash down hearty Hungarian staples like roasted goose leg.

Sandor Orban, who owns Kadar, said regulars don’t bother to ask. As soon as they sit down, they fill themselves a glass of what Hungarians know as “szoda.”

They drink so much of the stuff, Kadar goes though nearly 500 bottles a week. At about a quarter a glass, szoda isn’t a bad deal, either.

According to Orban, foreign visitors often aren’t sure what do with the dispensers, which are staples of Hungarian life.

“At first they’re a little surprised — they don’t understand” he said. “And then they try. You know, they play with it a little bit. They figure it out.”

But Orban covers the tables in plastic just in case they don’t.

The szoda at Kadar is hardly a novelty. Seltzer dispensers are everywhere in Hungary. At restaurants, bars, and in homes, it’s hard not to find some szoda.

Orban traces it back to the early years of communist Hungary. He said the wine was so bad in the 1940s and 50s that seltzer was only way to make it drinkable.

But Seltzer actually goes back further in Hungary. In the 1800s, a priest and scientist named Anyos Jedlik pioneered a way to produce carbonated water on a commercial scale. To Hungarians, Jedlik is seltzer’s founding father.

Just outside Budapest, in Delegyhaza, the fizzy tradition is very much alive at the mom-and-pop owned Szoda Kiraly, or Soda King.

The process is very simple. A hose sends carbon dioxide into a metal chamber, and there it mixes with tap water.

The Soda King himself is Gabor Mozsolics, a former flight attendant. He’s adjusting the pressure on bottle of szoda to get it just right.

“If it’s very high pressure,” Mozsolics said, “it’s very dangerous.”

Last year, Mozsolics and his wife sold more than 100,000 liters out of their family home. Refillable plastic dispensers are the bread and butter of their business, and people here put them to good use, making froccs – or Hungarian spritzers.

Tamas Soros makes a hazmester or house master froccs at Baldaszti’s Grand in Budapest.

“Every combination’s got another name, for example, kisfroccs, nagyfroccs, little froccs, big froccs,” Soros said, rattling off a list of froccs.

There’re at least 16 kinds of frocks, each corresponding to a precise mix of seltzer and wine.

“It’s a fresh, fresh drink. The Hungarian people really like it,” Soros said.

Tamas Fricz, who’s sitting at the bar, said he drinks froccs every day in the summer.

“You can get more power from it,” Fricz said. “If you’re tired, it’s a very fresh drink.”

But Fricz, who’s 21, says plain seltzer is the drink of grandfathers. Hungarians his age don’t have much of a taste for it, though he’s not quite sure why.

“I don’t. Maybe because of the marketing?”

But Mozsolics, the Soda King, said he’s not having trouble marketing his seltzer.

“It’s not about who’s a businessman or a bachelor. Everybody drinks it,” Mozsolics said.

And as a board member of the Hungarian Sodamakers’ Association, he knows a thing or two about the seltzer market. According to association figures, 66-percent of Hungarians drink seltzer.

The Soda King says that leaves plenty of room for the seltzer business to grow.

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Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Appointed Cultural Ambassador

The World — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:40:08 +0000

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meets with Hall-of-Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. (Photo: State Dept)

Three cities in Brazil are on our Geo Quiz radar this time: we’re talking about Brazil’s three most populous cities.

We’ll give you the first one: São Paulo is the biggest with a population of more than 11 million.

That leaves numbers two and three for you to name.

One of them is said to be the most visited city – not just in Brazil – but in all the southern hemisphere.

The other is nicknamed “Brazil’s capital of happiness”, thanks to its outdoor street carnivals and nearly 50 miles of beaches.

These two cities are popular destinations for tourists.

The answers Rio de Janeiro and Salvador, and they are both destinations for the US State Department’s newest cultural ambassador Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Anchor Marco Werman talks with the NBA legend about his upcoming trip to Brazil, his first as US cultural ambassador.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (via US State Dept.)

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A 3000-Year-Old Singer Discovered in Egypt

The World — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 13:10:35 +0000

For the Geo Quiz, we are walking in the Valley of the Kings.

A team of Swiss archaeologists has discovered an 1,100-year-old tomb in Upper Egypt near the Nile River.

Unlike many ancient tombs that have been emptied of their treasure, this one contained a surprise; Not a pharaoh or ancient king, but a woman who may have been a singer in ancient times.

So which modern Egyptian city would you visit on your way to this tomb?

Every year, this city attracts thousands of tourists who come to explore the Valley of the Kings.

It is located on the banks of the Nile where the ancient city of Thebes once flourished.

Luxor is the answer to the Geo Quiz.

The tomb belonged to Nehmes Bastet and one blogger likened her to a 3000-year-old Lady Gaga.

Perhaps a better analogy would be to a woman who was practically a court singer in Egypt: the legendary Oum Kalsoum.

Anchor Marco Werman talks to Dr. Susanne Bickel, head of the archaeology team from Basel University, Switzerland, who have discovered the tomb.

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Australian Horse Cheats Death Twice

The World — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:30:01 +0000

Boyd Martin and Neville Bardos at the 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games in Lexington, KY (Copyright Amber Heintzberger 2010)

For the Geo quiz, we want you to name a town that some call “the horse capital” of Australia.

It is located in the Hunter Valley region of New South Wales.

The town kicks up its heels at an annual horse festival.

The town of Scone is the answer to the Geo Quiz.

Anchor Marco Werman talks to New York Times reporter Mary Pilon, who wrote about a horse named Neville Bardos, who is the odds-on-favorite for the US Equestrian Federation’s international horse of the year honors.

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Dutch Queen Beatrix Sparks Controversy Over Headscarf

The World — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:20:42 +0000

For the Geo Quiz we are looking for one of the cities in the Arab world where Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands paid a visit and got into trouble because of what she was wearing.

The 73-year-old Dutch queen visited a number of Arab cities this week along with this city, which is the capital of the ancient Kingdom of Oman.

Much of the city dates from the kingdom’s medieval hey day when it was the center of a trading empire that spread across the Indian Ocean.

Queen Beatrix is a stylish dresser, but one of her accessories that she chose today for her visit to the city’s grand mosque sparked a controversy back home.

Muscat, the capital of Oman is the answer to the Geo Quiz. This is where Queen Beatrix wore a headscarf on her visit there sparking a political controversy in the Netherlands.

Anchor Marco Werman talks to Klaas den Tek, a political editor with Radio Netherlands.