Stories that are still moving, used the way an examiner would want you to use them: located, dated, explained, and evaluated rather than repeated.
Date it. Write the date next to every figure you take from here. A number without a date is not evidence.
Expect it to change. Early reporting of a disaster is nearly always wrong in detail. Being wrong early is not the same as lying.
Evaluate the source. A wire agency, a government statement and a geoscientist’s blog are not interchangeable. Ask what each one is in a position to know.
Every located story, plotted. Select a marker to see what happened there and open the full account.
Robinson projection · graticule at 30°
Smiling markers are good news stories. Not on the map — 3 stories with no single location: Two economists say humanity has already stopped replacing itself, Bright Ideas in Travel 2026, a global list, and Geography strikes back, a story about five chokepoints at once. Some geography happens everywhere at once.
Newest first. Open a story for the full geographic breakdown, discussion questions and sources.
A New York Times analysis argues that war around Iran, a summer of drought and a newly open Arctic have put location back at the centre of world power. Five chokepoints, two kinds of cause, and an old argument between Friedman and Kaplan to settle.
A rare September nor’easter sat off the Mid Atlantic coast for five days, peaked at an 81 mph gust, and still pushed Atlantic City to its highest water since 2012. A 40 million dollar beach replenishment finished last year was stripped in a weekend. Duration and tide timing, not wind speed.
Bangladesh grew more than eight million bales of jute in 2025 to 2026 and needs about two thirds of it at home. The fibre is renewable, biodegradable and supports three million farming households, and Dhaka scientists have turned it into a film that behaves like plastic and rots in months. Price is the obstacle, not chemistry.
Condé Nast Traveler’s Bright Ideas in Travel 2026 is a ready made set of sustainable tourism examples, chosen by a magazine that depends on people travelling. Four tests for turning any entry on it into evidence you can use in Option E.
Turkey’s COP31 president set out a ten theme action agenda in New York, built around implementation rather than new pledges. Australia runs the negotiations with exclusive authority, and leaders will visit Tuvalu in October before they argue about atoll states in November.
An offensive that opened in Ta’iz Governorate on 3 September pushed 129,438 people out of their homes across seven governorates by 21 September, 11,352 of them in the last three days of that count. Boats are now carrying people from Yemen to Djibouti, reversing a migration route that normally runs the other way.
August 2026 tied July 2023 as the warmest month on record at 16.96°C, 1.65°C above the 1850 to 1900 baseline. Both poles carried below average sea ice in the same month. The El Niño behind it is still strengthening, and the WMO says it may pass anything in forty years of monitoring.
A supreme leader killed and replaced, inflation near ninety percent with two government agencies disagreeing about the figure, and a strait carrying a fifth of the world’s oil that has effectively stopped working. Seven stories that only make sense together.
A Himalayan glacier broke away in Tibet on a clear morning with no rain falling. The debris flow that followed crossed an international border at roughly 190 km/h, killing hundreds and leaving more than a thousand people missing across two countries.
The rules governing the most heavily managed river in the United States expire at the end of this year. After years of negotiation the basin states failed to reach a deal, and the federal government imposed a ten-year framework instead. Arizona, California and Nevada must now cut 1.25 million acre-feet a year.
After years of resident protest, European destinations have moved from asking tourists to behave to legally limiting how many arrive. Caps, levies and rental bans are now in force across the Mediterranean, and Barcelona intends to abolish short-term tourist rentals entirely.
A paper circulated this month argues that global fertility has fallen below replacement level for the first time in human history — and that the steepest falls are in poorer countries, not richer ones. The United Nations still puts that crossing roughly two decades away. Someone is wrong.
Stories are chosen because they teach something on the syllabus, not because they are dramatic.
Developing — facts still changing hourly. Ongoing — a situation, not an event. Decided — a settled outcome you can cite. Contested — credible people disagree.
Not summarised. Each one asks what the evidence supports, who is making the claim, and what the claim leaves out.
If a story earns a full ten-part record, it moves to Case Studies and gets a pin on the map.
