Internet search giant Google Inc unveiled a new feature on Tuesday for its popular mapping programs that shines a spotlight on the movement of refugees around the world.
The maps will aid humanitarian operations as well as help inform the public about the millions who have fled their homes because of violence or hardship, the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which is working with Google on the project.
“All of the things that we do for refugees in the refugee camps around the world will become more visible,” UN Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees Craig Johnstone said at the launch in Geneva.
PHOTO: AP
Users can download Google Earth software to see satellite images of refugee hot spots such as Darfur, Iraq and Colombia. Information provided by the UN refugee agency explains where the refugees have come from and what problems they face.
Although not all parts of the world are displayed at the same high resolution, the Mountain View, California, company has made an effort to allow users to zoom in closely on refugee camps.
In the Djabal refugee camp in eastern Chad, which is home to refugees from the conflict in neighboring Darfur, Google Earth users can see individual tents clustered together amid a sparse landscape and learn about the difficulty of providing water to some 15,000 people.
Google says more than 350 million people have already downloaded Google Earth. The software was launched three years ago and originally intended for highly realistic video games, but its use by rescuers during Hurricane Katrina led the company to reach out to governments and nonprofit organizations.
Google Earth has since teamed up with dozens of nonprofit groups seeking to raise awareness, recruit volunteers and encourage donations.
Among them are the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, the UN Environmental Program and the Jane Goodall Institute.
“Google wants to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” said Samuel Widmann, the head of Google Earth Europe.
The company estimates that 80 percent of the world’s information can be plotted on a map in some way.
Rebecca Moore, who heads the Google Earth Outreach program for nonprofit groups, said the company does not control the information published using the software.
Google is considering offering a stand-alone version of its mapping software that can be used by aid workers in the field who do not have an Internet connection on hand, she said.
Google said it will also provide nonprofit groups in several countries with training and free copies of its US$400 professional mapping software, an offer it plans to roll out across the globe over time.
HAVANA: Repeated blackouts have left residents of the Cuban capital concerned about food, water supply and the nation’s future, but so far, there have been few protests Maria Elena Cardenas, 76, lives in a municipal shelter on Amargura Street in Havana’s colonial old town. The building has an elegant past, but for the last few days Maria has been cooking with sticks she had found on the street. “You know, we Cubans manage the best we can,” she said. She lives in the shelter because her home collapsed, a regular occurrence in the poorest, oldest parts of the beautiful city. Cuba’s government has spent the last days attempting to get the island’s national grid functioning after repeated island-wide blackouts. Without power, sleep becomes difficult in the heat, food
U-TURN? Trami was moving northwest toward Vietnam yesterday, but high-pressure winds and other factors could force it to turn back toward the Philippines Tropical Storm Trami blew away from the northwestern Philippines yesterday, leaving at least 65 people dead in landslides and extensive flooding that forced authorities to scramble for more rescue boats to save thousands of terrified people, who were trapped, some on their roofs. However, the onslaught might not be over: State forecasters raised the rare possibility that the storm — the 11th and one of the deadliest to hit the Philippines this year — could make a U-turn next week as it is pushed back by high-pressure winds in the South China Sea. A Philippine provincial police chief yesterday said that 33
The space rock that slammed into Earth 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous Period caused a global calamity that doomed the dinosaurs and many other life forms, but that was far from the largest meteorite to strike our planet. One up to 200 times bigger landed 3.26 billion years ago, triggering worldwide destruction at an even greater scale, but as new research shows, that disaster actually might have been beneficial for the early evolution of life by serving as “a giant fertilizer bomb” for the bacteria and other single-celled organisms called archaea that held dominion at the
PROPAGANDA: The leaflets attacked the South Korean president and first lady with phrases such as: ‘It’s fortunate that President Yoon and his wife have no children’ North Korean propaganda leaflets apparently carried by balloons were found scattered on the streets of the South Korean capital, Seoul, yesterday, including some making personal attacks on the country’s president and first lady. The leaflets attacking South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and first lady Kim Keon-hee found in the capital appear to be the first instance of the North Korean government directly sending anti-South propaganda material across the border. They included graphic messages accusing the Yoon government of failures that had left his people living in despair, and describing the first couple as immoral and mentally unstable. The leaflets included photographs of the