Safari Notes

At nights, most of Africa is dark, but wherever you are, if you use artificially generated light - join and turn off your lights for Earth Hour . Starting in New Zealand's remote Chatham Islands, thousands of cities, towns, and landmarks around the world will start to go dark for Earth Hour on Saturday evening. Up to a billion people worldwide are expected to participate in this global voluntary blackout by switching off their lights from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. local time. The movement, sponsored by the conservation nonprofit WWF, is designed as a symbolic gesture in support of action against global warming . Read more from the National Geographic .

Lack of electricity ! That's what one of Uganda's ministers says: A leading Ugandan economist — who is also a government minister — discovered why the country had one of the highest birth rates in the world. The minister of State for Planning, Prof Ephraim Kamuntu, told a planning workshop a few days ago, that Uganda’s high population growth rate was the result of electricity shortage and outages, which compelled couples to go to bed early. The good professor buttressed his argument, adding that a related reason for the high population was that in Uganda, like most of Africa, one could argue, people don’t work in shifts. “While the rest of the world is working in shifts, we in Uganda are going to bed early. Then we complain that the population is growing; why not?” he said. >>>>> more from Daily Nation Uganda has the world's youngest population and is one of the fastest growing. In 199o, the country's population was estimated at 17 million people; and now

Lake Victoria - the second largest fresh water lake in the world - is said to have experienced the greatest mass extinction of vertebrates in modern times. Thirty years ago the Lake boasted over 400 fish species. More than half are now extinct. The Nile Perch, most probably introduced in to the Lake deliberately in the 1950s - has been as disruptive to Lake Victoria's ecosystem as Man has been. The legendary river, the Nile, that flows from the Great Lake - is no better off: it's listed as one of the top ten World's rivers that are fast dying as a result of climate change, pollution and dams.' Human activity has already excessively polluted the Lake but now Lake Victoria faces another great danger : water hyacinth has re-invaded the Lake choking thousands of hectares of the lake's surface - especially in Kenya. The species, which is originally from South America but today is a costly invasive species worldwide, first established itself in Lake Victoria, Africa

A recently discovered "psychedelic" fish (shown in a January 2008 picture) is bouncing into the books as a new species, a new study says ........ Read more from the National Geographic . Read more here ; or read more and see more pictures of the fish from Discovery and Nature blogs. Watch videos of the fish on Quick Time here . More videos here , here and here .

Africa's second most populous city has grown explosively, from 300,000 in 1950 to an expected 18 million by 2010, when it will be ranked as one of the world's ten largest cities. This happened so quickly that the city had no effective institutions, engineering, planning, or traditions to guide the hypergrowth. Nigeria's booming oil industry fueled it, and it will likely only accelerate, taking Lagos along and drawing even more immigrants from rural areas, as well as from neighboring countries. Overcrowding (averaging six people per room), poor sanitation, air and water pollution, clogged sewers, solid-waste contamination, and staggering traffic fester even as efforts are being made to improve the national and city infrastructures in a time of political turmoil. Residents survive all those conditions and have kept the food supply moving through the efforts of individual vendors who sell their wares in vast outdoor markets. National Geographic More on Lagos: City-Data , Daily

Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives, sharing more than 98 percent of our genetic blueprint. Humans and chimps are also thought to share a common ancestor who lived some four to eight million years ago . In many ways we are very very much like chimpanzees. And yet, we and chimps have some huge differences. The biggest difference between us and chimps, is: Man is the most cruel and the most destructive not only to our own fellow humans, but to all living creatures on this Planet. Chimps never keep us humans in captivity; or keep us in zoos for entertainment; or cruelly use us for scientific research; or eat us. Due to our destructive actions, we have driven chimpanzees almost to extinction and they are now an endangered species. Why was 'Travis' the chimp kept in captivity for all these years, when he should have been in the wild? Which is more cruel: 'Travis' the chimp mauling a woman or the chimp having been kept away from the wild and from its kind for so lon

While Mugabe's wife goes for expensive shopping sprees in foreign countries and has a string of properties across the country, taken after Mr Mugabe's loyalists began evicting white farmers in 2000 ; while Mr. Mugabe spends millions to have lavish birthday parties; while the Mugabe's own many high valued foreign properties - Zimbabwe continues to have the world's worse and highest inflation rate ever recorded; and Zimbabweans continue to starve, to mostly depend on food handouts and to live in want and misery. And now this : When President Robert Mugabe’s wife Grace landed in Hong Kong last month on the final lap of a lengthy Asian holiday, she had more on her mind than her usual extravagant shopping for baubles and handbags. The first lady was focused on two investments designed to keep the Mugabes rich should they one day be forced into exile from Zimbabwe, where thousands are starving and ravaged by cholera and opponents are jailed, beaten and tortured. One in