Globe Trot: Life in 'the world's largest village'

SOUTH SUDAN: Greetings from “the world’s largest village.” Juba, the capital of South Sudan, has 2 million residents, all with “no functioning electrical system, only a few miles of paved roads, and enough crime to make most people nervous,” writes a pastor (and Globe Trot subscriber) currently teaching there. And it’s dangerous: Five children were killed in Juba this week digging for scrap metal and hitting unexploded ordinance from Sudan’s multi-decade civil war.

SUDAN: Anti-government protests that began last month killed more than 200, and experts Alex de Waal and Eric Reeves have dueling essays about the compelling forces behind them.

KENYA: The Global African Future (GAFCON) conference gets underway on Monday in Nairobi. Delegates from the Anglican Communion, including representatives from orthodox breakaways, will get a brief session with the Archbishop of Canterbury before formal meetings open. Kendall Harmonand David Virtue are where to follow events.

NIGERIA: Muslim Fulani herdsmen killed 10 Christians in three villages in this area in Plateau State last week in what authorities called a cattle-rustling attempt. But a visit to the home where eight members of one family were killed showed no cows present.

PHILIPPINES: The 7.2 magnitude quake that struck the central Philippines this week killed at least 160 and left major damage to centuries-old architecture in Cebu, the Philippines’ second largest city, including many churches.

AFGHANISTAN:Former U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry’s takedown of the counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan is worth the read for the opening photo. But his swipe reveals less about the limits of counterinsurgency as carried out by then Gen. David Petraeus and more about the inner battles within U.S. war operations that have crippled any chance of success.

GEORGIA:Skull 5, “the world’s first completely preserved adult hominid skull,” along with four others discovered at a site 60 miles from the Georgian capital of Tblisi, all suggest that other discoveries of early man may represent the same, not different, lineages. The researchers did give it a new name, Homo erectus ergaster georgicus. Man may have started out on two legs after all.