Marshall Islands 2014
Yearbook 2014
Marshall Islands. On March 1, the memory of the American hydrogen bomb called Caste Bravo was detonated on the Bikini Toll in 1954. The bomb was more than a thousand times as powerful as the atomic bombs that fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, and the radioactive fallout caused major medical problems in the Marshall Islands. In April, the Marshall Islands sued the United States and eight other nuclear weapons countries for failing to meet the disarmament requirements laid down in the Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968. Marshall Islands population in 2020 is estimated at 59,201. A lawsuit was filed with the International Court of Justice in The Hague (ICJ) but also directly with the United States, which is not affiliated with this court system.
In March, large parts of the atoll Majuro, where the capital Rita is located, were flooded by large storm surges. Disaster status was announced after more than 1,000 people were forced to leave their homes.
According to topb2bwebsites, prior to the UN Climate Summit in September, a film was published in which Marshall Islands President Christopher Loeak appealed for action against climate change. The president stood in front of the wall built at his house to protect it from floods similar to those that hit the country in March.
In October, the country’s health minister announced plans to build a new hospital in Majuro. If the plan is implemented, this would be the Marshall Islands’ largest building project to date. The need for health care is great in the island state, and in 2014, the country was visited by several US medical teams, which treated hundreds of people for urological diseases and performed several knee and hip surgeries.
Archipelago located in the Pacific Ocean between 5 ° and 12 ° N. and approximately on the 170 ° meridian. It is made up of two groups of islands arranged in parallel festoons, with a NO.-SE direction. and 170 km apart. The north-eastern group bears the indigenous name of Ratak (“dawn”), the north-western one is called Ralik (“sunset”).
The Ratak group was probably seen by García de Loaysa in August 1526; Saavedra saw Bikimi (in the Ralik group) in 1529. The English navigator Wallis visited them in 1767. In 1788 the captains Gilbert and Marshall discovered the island of Mille in S. delle Ratak, then they went to N. giving the name of Marshall to the whole group. In 1857 some missionaries landed in Ebon. In 1873 commercial stations were established in the southern islands, where the main resource is copra. In 1885-86 Germany annexed the islands and placed the government in Jaluit. They were later administered by the governor of German New Guinea. After the World War, Japan was given the mandate over the whole group by the League of Nations.
All the islands are due to the work of coral polyps carried out on two submerged mountain ranges, produced by a folding of the Pacific bed. There are 46 islands, almost all made up of atolls, with islets scattered around each coral ring: few of them exceed 2 0 3 msm They include the largest known atoll, Kwatalene (Kwadielin) or Mencikov, whose lagoon measures almost 160 km. in maximum diameter. The total area of the islands is small: the Raliks measure 275 e le Ratak 129 square kilometers: the latter group is however more important than the other. The islands largely have multiple names. Arno, Majuro, Aur and Malolab form the southern end of the Ratak and are home to nearly half of the total population. Of the Ralik group, Jaluit is the main island; Ebon, Namerik and Uial are of minor importance. The Jaluit lagoon measures 65 km. in length and 20 in width; the coral ring has 4 large passages through which boats can penetrate the lagoon. The residents live on a small island that crowns a part of the atoll. The Majuro lagoon is also very deep and safe and was used by the Germans as a refuge for their fleet in the world war.
