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The sixth season of Locked Up Abroad premiers tonight on National Geographic Channel. The modern day morality play tells the true-to-life stories of persons arrested in foreign countries (usually for smuggling drugs) and thrown in prison. My favorite episode of the series appeared last season. It featured Brigene Young, who was a 20-year old South African barmaid when she got caught up in a heroin sting in Mauritius, the island nation roughly 1,250 miles off the southeast coast of the African continent. The gullible young woman was offered an all-expenses-paid holiday to the tropical island by a guy she met...

A Gallup survey done across 20 sub-Saharan African countries on the main sources of lighting for households saw Mauritius fair best, with 100% of respondents saying this was provided by power lines. South Africa came in second at 80% in terms of households with grid supplied power for lighting, followed by Ghana (67%), Nigeria (66%) and Cameroon (65%). At the bottom of the list in this survey for electrical grid power supplying household lighting was Liberia at 4%, followed by Chad and Burkina Faso at 8%. In Chad, Tanzania, Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic, Sierra Leone, Madagascar, Uganda and...

SNIPPET: "An examination of online activities by binyamine leads to the conclusion that he is likely involved with Dar al-Murabiteen, and that he links multiple terrorist networks together through his work translating, transcribing, and distributing jihadi media content. He is linked, in no particular order, to • Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan • The Pakistan and Afghan Taliban • as-Sahab, al-Emara, and al-Malahem media outfits • al-Shabaab and their al-Qimmah forum This is what Granovetter meant by a bridging weak tie - the kind of "weak" tie that is strong, as he links multiple networks. Among other things, all this...

"Third, Mauritius recognized that without natural resources, its people were its only asset. Maybe that appreciation for its human resources is also what led Mauritius to realize that, particularly given the country's potential religious, ethnic, and political differences—which some tried to exploit in order to induce it to remain a British colony—education for all was crucial to social unity. So was a strong commitment to democratic institutions and cooperation between workers, government, and employers—precisely the opposite of the kind of dissension and division being engendered by conservatives in the United States today."

The offshore bank account details of 2,000 "high net worth individuals" and corporations – detailing massive potential tax evasion – will be handed over to the WikiLeaks organisation in London tomorrow by the most important and boldest whistleblower in Swiss banking history, Rudolf Elmer, two days before he goes on trial in his native Switzerland. British and American individuals and companies are among the offshore clients whose details will be contained on CDs presented to WikiLeaks at the Frontline Club in London. Those involved include, Elmer tells the Observer, "approximately 40 politicians". Elmer, who after his press conference will return...

Starting in the late 1990s, China's presence on the African continent experienced a phenomenal expansion. Far more profound changes, however, have been underway and may only become apparent in the next decade. These changes are likely to transform the regional economic landscape of the African continent in ways never seen before. Chinese experts apparently believe that Africa is entering an era of relative stability and that the time to explore its untapped resources has arrived [1]. Chinese policymakers see in Africa possible solutions to some of China's most pressing problems, for instance, Beijing's need to secure access to energy resources...

The International Monetary Fund said Wednesday that it has sold 10 metric tons of gold to Sri Lanka, the third customer to acquire a portion of its gold holdings. The IMF in September finalized a plan to sell 403.3 metric tons of gold—an amount equivalent to about one-eighth of its total holdings. The IMF previously announced the sales of 200 metric tons of gold to India and 2 metric tons to Mauritius.

One night while diving for lobster on the island of Mauritius, an Australian named Ian McCormick was stung on his forearm by what local Creole fishermen call "invisibles": extraordinarily poisonous but hard to see "five-box" jellyfish, in the nomenclature of the trade. Medics were called -- urgently. It was an emergency if ever there is an emergency. "Found in the waters off northern Australia, the box jellyfish Chironex fleckeri is not the only marine invertebrate to use venom, but it is the possessor of arguably the most lethal venom in the world," notes one expert. "In the past half...

Travellers to an exotic island in the Indian Ocean have been issued with warnings against a rare tropical disease. Seventy seven people have already died in Mauritius from the rare chikungunya virus which is carried by mosquitoes. Mauritius, an island paradise particularly popular with honeymooning couple has about 700,000 visitors annually, generating more than £400 million. Following the outbreak the number of French tourists who normally account for about a quarter of the total, plummeted.

Scientists say they have discovered part of the skeleton of a dodo, the large, flightless bird which became extinct more than 300 years ago. One of the team in Mauritius said it was the first discovery of fully preserved bones which could give clues as to how the bird became extinct. Last year, the team found a number of dodo bones at the site, but said the current find was more "significant". The bird is thought to have been hunted to extinction by European settlers. No complete skeleton has ever been found in Mauritius, and the last full set of...

Though this picture isn't from the Web site below, the first picture I found of this waterfall is from the Web site below. The second link is Amazing Planet's picture of Chamarel Falls. Amazing Planet has a lot of great nature photography, and I may borrow a couple more from there in the future. Amazing Planet Chamarel Falls, Mauritius In other news, the link below is to the USGS site for Augustine volcano (Alaska). They have a Webcam located on Augustine Island itself. Every now and then (it refreshes every 30 minutes), you can get a glimpse of the...

From breadbasket to basket case in a decade Mauritius will soon be hosting the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) conference. This high-level summit will provide the opportunity for SADC members to harmonise policies on a broad range of subjects, such as crime, immigration and AIDS. The latter has struck sub-Saharan Africa with such savage swiftness that one could be forgiven for thinking that the disease had been specially designed for the region. Such is the magnitude of the epidemic that we have come to consider it as a "fait accompli", a pitfall inherent to life in Africa. At least one...

<p>The personnel manager for Grove Industries sees clothing manufacturers in the small island nation of Mauritius shutting down -- and workers losing jobs -- as exports to the United States start to dry up.</p> <p>Grove has been exporting men's pants and women's skirts, sold to companies like the Gap, under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). Congress passed the legislation in 2000 and two years later extended it through the end of 2008.</p>