The 130-mph winds and 12-foot-high waves of Cyclone Nargis have already left at least 22,500 dead and another 40,000 missing along Burma's Andaman coast and Irrawaddy river basin, but the worst may not be over. Caryl Stern, head of the U.S. fund for UNICEF, said of the days to come, "Our biggest fear is that the aftermath could be more lethal than the storm itself."

Burma's paranoid, isolationistic junta has actually asked for international assistance in the face of this mounting disaster, but according to The Irrawaddy, a Burmese newsmagazine run out of Thailand, government cooperation with international relief groups is still questionable in practice.

As seen in this week's Tuesday Map(s), though, the biggest issue on the ground may simply be standing water -- miles and miles of standing water.

These images from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite show just how much of Burma's coastal plain is now under water.

On April 15, the image shows clean-cut river tracks and a visible shoreline:

NASA

The May 5 image, however, is clearly a different story:

NASA

And this map, created by UNOSAT (the Operational Satellite Applications Program of the U.N. Institute for Training and Research), shows the flooding's impact on Burma's citizens along the Andaman coast:

UNOSAT

As you can see, standing flood water (red-pink areas) has unfortunately closely followed the denser populations (red/orange dots) of this agricultural region. And that's why the cyclone's toll has been so astoundingly high.

After a record-setting week, the price of rice dropped 3 percent following announcements yesterday that the United States had accelerated its rice planting and that, more importantly, major rice exporters Thailand and Brazil would not impose export bans.

The news may be a drop in the bucket compared to the world-wide "silent tsunami" of inflated food prices (last month saw a 57 percent increase), but as this week's Tuesday Map shows, Thailand's decision to stay in the game was very much needed:

Three of Asia's top rice exporters shown above (China, India, and Vietnam) have already cut their rice exports this year, leaving neighboring importers high and dry. And according to the U.N. World Food Program's executive director, who spoke with FP during her recent visit to Washington, the countries who have the greatest potential for massive unrest, suffering, or starvation are "import-dependent countries, because we're seeing a strain on their capabilities to obtain enough food to meet their needs."

But the global food crisis is unfortunately not limited to import-heavy countries. The WFP estimates that more than 100 million people around the world could soon be without food. The problem has already reached great enough proportions that 33 countries have already seen hunger-driven, social unrest.  

Today, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced he would chair a U.N. task force to create and carry out a response action plan. Let's just hope his efforts don't prove too little, too late.

This week's Tuesday Map illustrates the fragile and spotty nature of Africa’s "Internet Weather" -- or "teledensity" as tracked by Internet monitoring technology.

Researchers at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, tracked Internet connectivity at points in more than 40 African countries, whose populations make up more than 80 percent of the continent's inhabitants. Their findings (pdf) are sad, though not surprising: "Africa's network performance is over 10 years behind that of Europe and the U.S. and falling further behind," and among African countries "performances in developing regions are a factor of 5-20 times worse than that in developed regions."

This video maps daily connectivity and explains each dot's meaning (in a funny British accent):

Hat tip: Today's Tuesday Map has been made possible by the PingER (Ping End-to-end Reporting) project of the Internet End-to-end Performance Measurement (IEPM) group at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC).

Thanks to the likes of Napster, modern-day piracy is often associated more with ripped files than riptides. But according to this week's Tuesday Map, modern-day pirates still roam the high seas –- at least off the coast of Somalia.

This integrated satellite map, created by UNOSAT (the Operational Satellite Applications Program of the UN Institute for Training and Research) shows reported incidents of pirate attacks and hijackings off the coast of Somalia between January and November of 2007 (highlighted in red orbs) as well as incidents in 2005 and 2006 (not highlighted).

Somalia, ranked third in the 2007 Failed States Index, has been in a rough patch ever since the 1991 fall of President Said Barre. For more than two decades, it remained loosely governed and divided by warlords. Then, back in June 2006, a group of Muslim clerics, leaders, and businessmen called the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) took control of Mogadishu and installed an Islamic extremist leader, challenging the legitimacy of Somalia's U.N.-backed Transitional Federal Government (TFG). Seven months later, the TFG, with the help of neighboring Ethiopia, retook the capital city and much of the South. The TFG's resurgence was also supported by American commandos, sent in to take out suspected al Qaeda terrorists.

Given this rocky track record, Somalia's coastal chaos would seem to reflect its internal instability. But according to UNOSAT's figures (see the chart included in the pdf map), piracy actually subsided during the UIC period, a time otherwise reported as bearing a striking resemblance to the Taliban regime.

Perhaps there's a fatwa against eye patches?

This week’s Tuesday map comes to us from a billboard controversy south of the border.

Created by advertising agency Teran/TBWA and launched a few weeks ago in Mexico, the Absolut billboard ad depicted pre-1848 North America -– before the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo turned Mexican territories into what is now the American South West.

The campaign was obviously intended for a Mexican audience, as Favio Ucedo, creative director of a top Latino advertising firm, explained:

Many (Americans) aren’t going to understand it. Americans in the East and the North or in the center of the county -- I don’t know if they know much about the history… Probably Americans in Texas and California understand perfectly, and I don’t know how they’d take it.”

But Absolut quickly learned just how some Americans would take it: not well.  Although the ad never appeared in the U.S., it was picked up by American media outlets, causing a flurry of complaint from U.S. citizens (some more creative than others).

As of Friday, Absolut’s maker Vin & Spirits had decided to withdraw the apparently offensive advertisement even though it "was based upon historical perspectives and was created with a Mexican sensibility... [and was] in no way was meant to offend or disparage, nor...advocate an altering of borders..."

Already bored with Free Rice?

This week's Tuesday Map has the solution: the NATO Map Game. Test your knowledge of flags and capitals across NATO member states. And if you find the transatlantic a bit too easy, give the NATO partner countries a go -- picking out all those tiny Balkan states is no easy task. More of a North Africa buff? Try your hand at the NATO Mediterranean Dialogue countries. And if you're really up for a challenge, you can play the whole game in French.

Tired of reading about U.S. politics? Then pick up a copy of l’Humanite. Want to follow issues in Iraq and Iran? Then Slate is for you. At least according to these cartograms, which show media coverage, by source, of the world's countries.

Nicolas Kayser-Bril and Gilles Bruno have created 11 such maps for media sources ranging from La Croix, to the New York Times (shown above), to the "blogosphere." Not surprisingly, each source allots a disproportionate degree of coverage to its own country – Slate less so than the New York Times and The Economist much less so than, say, the Guardian.

Oddly enough, the blogosphere –- an amorphous source not exactly known for credibility –- does not appear too different in its global coverage from The Economist.

(Hat tip: BoingBoing)

Tensions in Kosovo between minority Serbs and U.N. peacekeepers turned violent Monday when a peaceful protest in the Serbian controlled northern half of Kosovska Mitrovica got ugly (think Molotov cocktail ugly). The clash left one U.N. police officer dead and more than 130 people injured. And despite today's calls for an end to the violence from U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, riots have only continued.

You may be wondering: Why is it so important for Kosovo to keep this little town within its newly declared borders? Ask an Albanian Kosovar, and he'll tell you it's not. Mitrovica is a sad little town, once ravaged by war and now home to a bunch of scared, isolated Serbs. And the same can be said for many small towns situated between Kosovo's northern border with Serbia and the Ibar River.

So why not just let them go? After all, if Albanian-majority Kosovo can just leave Serbia, why can't Serb-majority Mitrovica leave Kosovo in turn?

Because, for the last eight years, the West has toed the "partition is not an option" line, and with good reason. In a region already teeming with disputed boundaries drawn around ethnically cleansed communities (fruits of the wars of the 1990s), partition could only make things worse.

Looking at Kosovo alone, partition would be tough. More than half of Kosovo's Serbs live south of the Ibar. To only partition the northern enclaves would only half address the issue, and even moderate partitioning would indirectly legitimize the population swapping that turned so bloody back in 1999. Regionally speaking, partition would also only add fuel to separatist flames, sending the wrong message to Serbs in Bosnia's Repulika Srpska and Albanians in Macedonia.

So even as the U.N. withdraws its forces from the north, the West will keep up its "no partition" mantra. Good thing, too. The last thing Europe needs right now is a precedent for the creation of endless mini ethnic states.

In 2003, the U.S. Library of Congress paid $10 million for the first map in world history to use the name "America." The map goes on display in Washington this month, but researchers remain puzzled by its startling accuracy. Produced in 1507 by a German monk named Martin Waldseemüller, the map estimates South America reasonably well and even includes a large ocean to the west—years before the Pacific was discovered. Here, 500 years after its creation, is the famous Waldseemüller map:

U.S. Library of Congress

And here's what it looks like up close:

U.S. Library of Congress

When Google launched its fancy Web site for the 2007 Australian federal elections, the company gave no hint about Easter eggs—fun little surprises put there by mischievous programmers—buried in its mashup map section.

But blogger Ben Balbo poked around and found two animated graphics of Prime Minister John Howard and opposition leader Kevin Rudd having some fun with each other.

Here we see these bitter political rivals tossing the Frisbee at Bondi Beach in Adelaide Sydney:

And here we see them playing a vigorous game of rock, paper, scissors in front of Parliament, presumably deciding the fate of the nation:

And there's more, Ben says: 

I've been reliably informed that there are another 6 "easter eggs" hidden around Seaworld on the Gold Coast, Tanunda in Adelaide, a well known Melbourne sporting venue, near Barrack St Jetty in Perth, near Mandorah in Darwin and near the Botanic Gardens in Hobart.

The elections are slated for Nov. 24, which is this coming Saturday.

(Hat tip: Google Maps Mania)

Google Earth is a cool tool that's fun to play around with. Now you can also use it for something more serious—monitoring countries' progress toward achieving the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals, eight objectives to be reached by 2015 that form the blueprint of a mighty effort to make poverty history.

Launch Google Earth (download it first if you don't already have it) from the MDG Monitor Web site and you'll be able to click on capital cities all around the world to monitor their corresponding countries' progress toward achieving the MDGs. For example, you can learn that due to improvements in health and education, Madagascar brought its poverty rate down from 85.1 percent in 2003 to 67.5 percent in 2006. (The goal is to reduce the percentage of Madagascarians living on less than $2 a day to 50 percent by 2012.) There are also links to complete country profiles, such as this one for Madagascar.

Not to be outdone, the World Bank has put a bunch of its own data and links to its projects around the world into a Google Maps mashup. It's not quite as flashy, but you don't need to download any special software to view it. Is this the beginning of a map war between the World Bank and the U.N.?

(Hat tip: Mark Leon Goldberg)

Since gathering on Turkey's border with northern Iraq last week, Turkish troops have been mounting small-scale attacks against the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) inside Iraqi borders. These attacks have reportedly consisted of Turkish special forces with the support of helicopter gunships, targeting PKK bases.

The United States has urged Turkey to back down. Kurdish officials, on the other hand, have said little. This is likely because they know any large-scale attack by Turkey is likely to be ineffective. Take a look at this map, published recently in the New York Times. Because of the rocky terrain, it would be nearly impossible for Turkey to mount a successful campaign to destroy the PKK. There are simply too many places to hide (click for the full map):

When I looked at this map for the first time, I was immediately reminded of the Tora Bora region in Afghanistan (check out the similarities between this map of Tora Bora and the Times map—also, check out Google Earth's shot of Tora Bora, and compare with a shot of the Turkish/Iraqi border). U.S. troops had Osama bin Laden cornered there in late 2001, but Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld refused to send troops in. Why? Because he believed the area was too mountainous for any attack to be effective. Instead, Rumsfeld, perhaps citing the lessons learned during the Afghan war with the Soviets, relied on the Northern Alliance to mount the ground assault with U.S. air support, and the al Qaeda leader eventually escaped. Rumsfeld's decision was a controversial one, and who knows if U.S. troops would have found bin Laden. But it is a textbook example of how difficult it is to achieve a combat objective on rocky land. The Turks ought to take note.

Americans have many stereotypes about British people, but one misconception that has become particularly widespread in recent years is that Brits have bad teeth. Not so, as this map of "Decayed, missing or filled teeth at age 12 (DMFT-12 index)" in European Union countries shows. It's Eastern Europeans who need to brush and visit the dentist more often.

You can check out the British public health study from which this map is taken here. And you may be surprised to learn that the United Kingdom scores better than the United States on the DMFT Index: Brits best American 12-year-olds by a score of 1.1 to 1.4 (lower is better), according to the World Health Organization.

While Kosovo, Chechnya, and Georgia's breakaway provinces get all the press, you might be wondering if there are any other post-Soviet regional conflicts that deserve your attention.

You're in luck. This week, the government of Moldova angered residents of its breakaway region, Transnistria, by outlawing dual citizenship (Many Transnistrians are also citizens of Russia or Ukraine) and proposing that the Transnistria army disband and join the Moldovan national army.

Also known as Pridnestrovie or Transdniester, Transnistria is a Russian-speaking region that declared its independence from Moldova in 1990 due to fears of Moldovan nationalism. A war of independence ended in stalemate, with a ceasefire declared in 1992.

Since then, Transnistria has existed in a state of international limbo, ruled continuously by former Communist apparatchik and Sean Connery look-alike Igor Smirnov. (You've got to love a place where the government's own Web site runs headlines like "(Some) international observers call elections free, democratic.") It has its own parliament, currency, and military, but is not recognized as a state by any other country, though Russia maintains a troop presence there and Hugo Chávez, of all people, recently pledged his support. Its economy has been mostly privatized but residents retain a odd fondness for Lenin.

Transnistria now finds itself caught between hostility from Moldova and neglect from Russia, as Douglas Muir of Fistful of Euros explains:

The country's rulers would love to merge with Russia, and much of the country's population would probably follow them. But Russia lacks enthusiasm for picking up another exclave. Especially one that is (1) hundreds of kilometers south of Russia’s current borders, (2) totally lacking in resources or strategic utility, (3) majority non-Russian, and (4) dirt-poor. Independence doesn’t make a lot of sense; Transnistria is small, ethnically divided, economically dependent on Russia, and geographically ridiculous.

It has also earned a reputation as a crime-ridden, mafia-dominated transshipment point for the international weapons trade, a role you can learn a lot more about from Illicit, by FP's editor in chief Moises Naim. And to keep up-to-date with Transnistria developments, check out The Tiraspol Times, which reads like a bizarro-world Fox News with headlines like:

Igor Smirnov: Communist strongman or courageous independence hero? We report, you decide..."

Back in 2004, NASA sounded the alarm. Recent satellite measurements showed that the great conveyor belt of the Atlantic, the Gulf Stream, had weakened by as much as 30 percent over the previous 12 years—presumably due to global warming. The implications of such a decline, according to NASA, would be catastrophic for northern Europe, as warm waters would no longer feed tropical heat to the area and sustain the temperate climate. In short, it suggested London could be heading for an ice age.

But it appears there's no need to break out the mittens and galoshes just yet. A more recent study published in Science concluded that the Gulf Stream was merely undergoing a cyclical adjustment, and that the full effects of climate change on the behaviors of ocean currents are still too complex to predict.

Today's map was crafted by Benjamin Franklin and Timothy Folger sometime around 1786, and it's credited with being one of the earliest charts of the complete Gulf Stream system. Now in the collection of the Library of Congress, the map contains some great notes by Franklin:

The earliest known record of the current was in a log book kept by Ponce De Leon in 1513. The log noted: "A current such that, although they had great wind, they could not proceed forward, but backward and it seems that they were proceeding well; at the end it was known that the current was more powerful than the wind."

You can explore the Gulf Stream yourself via real-time data collected from buoys stationed in the Atlantic by NOAA. It can tell you the precise temperature of various points of the ocean, as well as wind speed and wave height. Ben and Ponce would have a field day with it.

How is the subprime mortgage crisis playing out across the globe? Short answer: Not so great, and today was another lousy day on Wall Street. The Financial Times has a handy interactive tool that is getting updated as new problems at financial institutions crop up. Here's the snapshot from today:

One thing the map is missing, however, is the latest news from China. Many people have been wondering about how China is weathering the subprime crisis, both in terms of Chinese banks' exposure to bad U.S. financial instruments and in terms of China's own mortgage market. As the Telegraph's Richard Spencer put the matter, "in many people's reckoning, all of China is subprime, by American standards." Luckily, we have Brad Setser, who sorts through many of the complicated issues here.

Ever wonder why Africa is so poor? Here's one reason: In many parts of the continent, it's hard to ship goods anywhere without paying serious bribes and incurring infuriating delays. Via Felix Salmon comes this very interesting study (pdf) of West African roadblocks (read: places where armed men demand money).

The three-page report, which was funded primarily by USAID and the World Bank, contains this handy map of roadblocks along three major routes:

Trucking your wares from Bamako, the capital of Mali, to a port in Ghana is a journey of a little over 2,000 kilometers. On average, the report says, it will cost you about $200 in bribes, and the nearly 50 forced stops along the way will delay your journey by almost 4 hours. As Salmon observes, "This kind of study is crucial to understanding real trade barriers, as opposed to just the ones which get fought over at international fora such as the WTO."

Coming soon, I hope: a Google Maps mashup for the entire continent.

With many adjustable-rate mortgages not due to reset until later this year—when, no doubt, many in the United States who didn't read the fine print will default on their home loans—here's one Web site where more-savvy investors can go to feast on the resulting carrion: ForeclosureRadar.com. One man's famine becomes another man's feast.

Focused on California, the site tracks "the fastest growth market in real estate," i.e. the market for foreclosed houses:

The combination of over development and aggressive lending practices has set the stage for an unprecedented foreclosure boom. In California alone, the default rate was up 14% in January 2007, when an estimated $4.5B worth of property entered the foreclosure process. At that level of activity, more than $100M per month in gross profit will be generated by savvy investors and real estate professionals, including Realtors®, lenders, and attorneys.

At the heart of the custom interface is a Google Maps mashup that looks like this:

The system also keeps track of foreclosure auctions so you don't have to. What inspired all this? The site's founder, one Sean O'Toole, says he "nearly lost his first home to foreclosure almost 20 years ago." Clearly, it's a lesson he never forgot.

(Hat tip: Barry Ritholtz)

Morton Abramowitz, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, has an important piece in today's Web magazine called How to Save Iraqi Kurdistan from Itself.

As a former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey, Abramowitz writes with authority about the perils and politics of that corner of the Middle East. And he's worried about what Turkey might do in response to incessant attacks by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a guerrilla group better known as the PKK. Turkey has massed troops along the Iraqi border, and the Kurds recently accused the Turks of shelling their territory. But the United States seems inexplicably complacent. Just the other day, the U.S. commander in charge of northern Iraq, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, shrugged off the PKK issue:

I'm not alarmed about it at all," he said. "I think that will be worked out in the long run."

But as Abramowitz argues, this isn't an issue that will simply work itself out, and it runs much deeper than the PKK alone. U.S. diplomats and military types need to roll up their sleeves and solve this problem before the situation spirals out of control. Looking at the below map of the Kurdish population in the region, it's easy to see why the Kurds represent such a thorny issue for Turkey, a fiercely nationalistic country:

Read the article to find out more about what is one of the world's most dangerous situations right now.

This year's Tour de France may not featured doped-up American stars, but it's pretty exciting nonetheless. It's anyone's guess who will win this year, and that infuses every stage with drama. One climb in particular could decide this year's race, the hors catégorie Port de Balès toward the end of next Monday's stage 15. VeloNews calls the 19-km uphill slog "frightening," noting that the last 10 kilometers have "an average grade of almost 10 percent and a maximum pitch of 14 percent." The Port de Balès, which is 1775 meters high, has never been part of the Tour before.

Somebody in the Netherlands was kind enough to create a Google Earth map (KML) of the Tour's route, so we can get a better sense what the Port de Balès looks like. And wow, is it daunting:

You can also check out a YouTube video of an amateur French cyclist exploring the route on his own last fall. As the pros attack this killer climb on Monday, it'll be interesting to monitor the riders' heart rates with this live Google mashup map of the tour.

(Hat tip: Google Earth Blog)