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Publishing giant HarperCollins has been criticised for omitting Israel from an atlas. The country is not labelled on the map - bought by English-speaking schools in the majority-Muslim Gulf, while Gaza and Jordan are clearly marked. Collins Bartholomew, the subsidiary of HarperCollins, told The Tablet that including Israel would have been 'unacceptable' to their customers in the Gulf and the amendment incorporated 'local preferences'

Let she who is without geography sin cast the first globe! On her MSNBC show last night, Rachel Maddow mercilessly mocked Darrell Issa for confusing Guinea with Guyana. The Republican congressman made his mistake during a discussion of the country in which the latest Ebola outbreak began. Issa said it was "Guyana," a South American country, whereas in fact it was Guinea, a West African one. Fair enough. Issa should have gotten his countries straight. But of all the hosts in the MSNBC lineup, Rachel Maddow should have been the last to have the chutzpah to highlight Issa's blooper. For...

US vice president Joe Biden mistakenly described China as a part of North America during a gaffe-filled speech at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government last week. After stating that North America is "literally–not figuratively–the epicenter of energy in the world today," the 71-year-old Biden went on to say that, "North America will account–meaning Mexico, China and Canada–for two-thirds of the growth of global energy supply over the next 20 years." It appears that Biden had accidentally substituted China for the United States, but the vice president failed to notice or correct the remark. Duowei News, a US-based media outlet...

So called “smart power” strikes again - and shows itself to be embarrassingly dumb. There is a great deal of focus on the Middle Easy and has been for years. One would hope our leadership would have at least the basics down. Not true.

Akhil Rekulapelli has his life mapped out. The 13-year-old wants to attend Stanford University and become a doctor, probably a surgeon. But he knows it will be a while before he achieves anything as satisfying as his victory Wednesday in the National Geographic Bee, which came after a close call last year and a lifelong interest in nations, cities, cultures and history.

The borders of Europe have been static since the breakups of the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, and the reunification of Germany, but look set to shift shortly, if the Duma in Moscow ratifies the stated desire of a Crimean majority to quit Ukraine for Russia. But a broader perspective, taking into account the past 1,000 years of European history, shows that change on the continent has been a near-constant.

Democrats from President Barack Obama's very own party joined Republicans derailing Obama's nominee, Debo Adegbile, for the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department.Explaining the failure, the taxpayer funded National Public Radio (NPR) announced “a handful of southern Democrats joined Republicans yesterday to defeat President Obama’s choice to head the Justice Department’s civil rights division.” Jonah Goldberg at National Review Online  helpfully named the "handful of southern Democrats", something NPR failed to do.  Here they are:  Chris Coons (Del.) Bob Casey (Pa.) Mark Pryor (Ark.) Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.) Joe Manchin (W.V.) Joe Donnelly (Ind.)  John Walsh (Mont.)  And, of course,...

A group of 49ers fans who raised money for a billboard in Seattle to brag about their team's five Super Bowl trophies got their sign - but it's nowhere near CenturyLink Field. The digital billboard is just north of Fife, about 27 miles from downtown Seattle. Niners fans raised money through the fundraising site gofundme.com. They raised more than the $7,000 needed to pay for the billboard so the rest will go to charity. A Seahawks fan wants to do the same thing in San Francisco, but to promote Seattle Children's hospital and Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson. On Sunday, a...

The densely populated coastal corridors from Boston to Washington and from San Diego to Berkeley are where most of America's big decisions are made. They remind us of two quite different Americas: one country along these coasts and everything else in between. Those in Boston, New York and Washington determine how our government works; what sort of news, books, art and fashion we should consume; and whether our money and investments are worth anything. The Pacific corridor is just as influential, but in a hipper, cooler fashion. Whether America suffers through another zombie film or one more Lady Gaga...

What's YOUR country famous for? Map reveals that UK leads the world in fascist movements while U.S. has most Nobel laureates and lawnmower deaths From making babies to being struck by lightning, a new map has revealed the surprising things that countries are best at. The map is based on statistics gathered from across the internet - ranging from sources as diverse as the World Bank to the Guinness World Records. Created by online comic and website DogHouse Diaries, the map shows what each country leads the rest of the world in and the words picked - which are written...

Over a half-century after Cooke wrote that lighthearted song, such ignorance is now all too real. Even our best and brightest -- or rather our elites especially -- are not too familiar with history or geography. Both disciplines are the building blocks of learning. Without awareness of natural and human geography, we are reduced to a sort of self-contained void without accurate awareness of the space around us. An ignorance of history also creates the same sort of self-imposed exile, leaving us ignorant of both what came before us and what is likely to follow. In the case of geography,...

General Motors and Michigan, Starbucks and Washington, Walmart and Arkansas, Apple and California. A new map sweeping the Internet entitled the Corporate States of America lists the brands, albeit subjectively, that the creator, Steve Lovelace feels best fits each of the 50 states of the union. The criteria for each brand were that it is still based in the state of origin and that of course is still in business as of 2012.

Mitt Romney is not particularly new to gaffes but when it comes to one about the relationship between Syria and Iran, he has shown extraordinary courage in repeating it at least six times just in the past year. During last night's foreign policy debate, Romney said: "Syria is Iran's only ally in the Arab world. It's their route to the sea."

When I learned world geography, the nation of Syria-Iraq was a single country like Czecho-Slovakia. I think its time to unify Syria-Iraq again.

Study offers evidence that long countries give better protection to languages than those that are wide. One reason that Eurasian civilizations dominated the globe is because they came from a continent that was broader in an east–west direction than north–south, claimed geographer Jared Diamond in his famous 1997 book Guns, Germs and Steel. Now, a modelling study has found evidence to support this 'continental axis theory'.Continents that span narrower bands of latitude have less variation in climate, which means a set of plants and animals that are adapted to more similar conditions. That is an advantage, says Diamond, because it means...

Featured Term (selected at random):GILEAD 1. father of the valiant Jephthah (Judges 11:1), who led the Israelites in their victorious wars against the Ammonites and Ephraimites; 2. part of the territory given by Moses to Gad as his inheritance when the country was apportioned among Israel's tribes. It was a grain-producing region in the Jordan valley between the Yarmuk and Arnon rivers (Joshua 13:24-25). All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

Does U.S. President Obama have a foreign policy or should we call it a "dangerous farcical policy." Is he even control of the White House? By now, most people have heard the story of how, "11 Secret Service agents" and "as many as 10 U.S. military personnel," hired prostitutes, drank alcohol, and possibly used illicit drugs -- all in "security preparation" for the president to attend the Summit of the Americas in Columbia. Besides the security debacle, Obama's diplomatic effort, "wasn't exactly smooth sailing." But there's a subtle clincher to Obama's ridiculous Columbia trip which belies his true incompetency, a...

Well take just Texas for example. Superimpose Texas over Europe and even Adolph Hitler would have an inferiority complex... Now Texas is pretty big. But let's take Alaska all by itself and superimpose it on the lower 48. Line up the North Slope of Alaska with Minnesota and you end up with Juneau down in the Carolinas and the Aleutians run clear to the coast of Southern California! Well I just thought this was pretty darn impressive.

A fine new report from the Public Policy Institute of California updates what we know about the state's political geography. For decades, the political divide in California was between the Democratic north and the Republican south. But in recent times, analysts have talked about a blue Democratic coast vs. the red Republican inland. PPIC's new report concludes that the coast vs. inland explanation isn't exactly right. When you dig deeply into the numbers, the state's real political divide puts the two former rivals -- Los Angeles County and the Bay Area -- on one side of the partisan divide, and...

COMMENTARY | Proving again that one cannot make a dumb statement if one is a liberal Democrat, President Barack Obama recently had a news conference in Hawaii in which he suggested the 50th state of the union was "here in Asia." Obama has, from time to time, fractured his geography. In a speech in Iowa last year he referred to Europe as a country. Obama once referred to the 57 states of the Union he had visited at a campaign stop in Oregon. The media, when it notes them at all, tends to pass on the president's alternate geography without...