Oklahoma's devastating tornado, which killed at least 24 people and injured more than 200 others, is drawing comparisons to past U.S. twisters today, including the massive tornado that hit the same region in 1999. And the United States has plenty of examples to draw from. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the United States, in averaging more than 1,000 tornadoes each year, is by far the global leader when it comes to number of twisters recorded. Canada finishes a distant second with roughly 100 per year.

Here's NOAA's map of the regions of the world that are most likely to experience tornadoes. In addition to the United States and Canada, the organization highlights many European countries and parts of other nations including Argentina, South Africa, Bangladesh, and Japan (click on the image below to expand):

So why is the United States so disproportionately prone to tornadoes? According to a Discovery Channel explainer on the subject, the distinction is a result of climatology, geography, and topography (the NOAA image at the top of this post shows this week's storm system over Moore, Oklahoma):

[T]he United States has an abundance of flat, low-lying geographic regions, and it also has a climate that is conducive to intense thunderstorms, and tornadoes tend to form during thunderstorms.

Turning for a moment from topography to geography, the United States has a few places that might be called tornado hotspots. Most prominent among them, of course, is "Tornado Alley," a slice of America's mid-section running horizontally from Texas up to North Dakota -- taking in portions of Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas and Nebraska....

Tornado alley's tornadoes usually happen later in the spring time and sometimes into the fall. The region is considered a prime breeding ground for supercell thunderstorms, which tend to produce the strongest tornadoes. Supercell thunderstorms contain something called a mesocyclone, which has a rotating updraft -- they're very dangerous but also, when identified as supercells, can provide a good heads-up that the extreme weather they can produce, like tornadoes, is possible....

Florida, too, has lots of tornadoes. That's because the state has many thunderstorms on a daily basis, and it's also a pit stop for many tropical storms or hurricanes (the tropical storms and hurricanes don't tend to produce the kind of killer tornadoes that come about during non-tropical storms).

While the United States leads the world when it comes to sheer volume of tornadoes, the ranking changes when you apply other filters. The United Kingdom, for example, has more tornadoes relative to its land area than any other country (a fact one expert attributed to the country's position on the Atlantic seaboard, at the nexus of polar air from the North Pole and tropical air from the Equator). And factors such as high population density, ineffective warning systems, and shoddy infrastructure mean tornadoes can be particularly deadly in countries like Bangladesh, which experienced a tornado that killed 1,300 people in 1989.

Writing for PBS, Peter Tyson points out that America's tornado tally may be so high relative to the rest of the world in part because other countries aren't as diligent about recording twisters. And he adds that all nations that experience tornadoes have something in common:

They lie 20° to 50° on either side of the equator, in the mid-latitudes. "You could probably get a tornado anywhere on the planet, but there are places where they are far less frequent," says John Snow, a tornado expert at the University of Oklahoma. "For good meteorological reasons, these tend to be in the tropics and the very high latitudes."

The only continent where twisters have yet to strike? Antarctica.

I'm one of the millions of people who have recently become absolutely, incurably addicted to the new online game GeoGuessr. If you're a regular reader of this blog, you probably will be too.

Here's how it works: GeoGuessr drops you in a randomly chosen location on Google Street View. You can move around, but can't zoom out. It's a bit like playing Myst, except that you're looking for clues in a real place somewhere in the world. You then have to guess where you are by clicking on a world map, with points awarded for how close you get to the actual location.

Sometimes, obvious clues like signs in the local language or geographic landmarks will make it easy. Other times you'll find yourself on a nondescript country road trying to decide if those evergreen trees look more Scandinavian or Canadian. The game's one unfortunate limitation is that it will only drop you in countries that Google Street View has mapped, which means most of Africa, the Middle East, India, and China, are immediately ruled out.  You could, however, be dropped in such locations as the base camp of Mount Everest or the Great Barrier Reef. The most exotic place I've been in the game was what looked like a jungle path somewhere in Japan's remote Ogasawara Islands.  

In addition to just being a fun way to kill time -- more time than I'd like to admit over the past week or two -- the game is also a cool way to experience visual culture and notice surprising similarities in architecture and landscape between regions. Every once in a while you can come across something weirdly beautiful or an unexpected slice-of-life moment like those documented in artist Jon Rafman's 9-Eyes project. 

GeoGuessr is the creation of a 29-year-old Swedish IT consultant named Anton Wallén. I recently spoke with Wallén via e-mail and asked him how the idea for GeoGuessr came about.

"I have always loved how Street View enables you to visit locations you would never go to in real life in such an immersive way, almost like you're there," he said. Wallén says he initially set out to build a simple "random location generator" using Street View, and only later decided to add the guessing game element to it.

According to Wallén, since the game blew up on social media last week, it's been getting 200,000 to 300,000 unique visitor per day. "To me, it's mindblowing," he says, noting that  he's "received many emails from people getting together to organize tournaments in their workplaces/schools using their own rules, parents/children and couples playing the game together as a team and also a lot of teachers allowing their students to play the game during their classes."

Initially, much of the feedback Wallén received was from readers complaining about Australia being overrepresented. (It is, after all, a pretty big country, and frankly much of the interior of it is pretty nondescript-looking from the road.) But he says he's tinkered with the algorithm and the overrepresentation complaints are now much more diverse -- which could indicate that it is, in fact, pretty random.

I asked Wallén for the hardest location he's had to guess. "The hardest probably was a very luxurious, Asian-style house somewhere in Central America (which I finally decided would have to be Japan). You could walk around in the courtyard and the garden but there was no way to leave the premises. The easiest I guess was when I was dropped right in front of a sign that said 'Welcome to Fairbanks, Alaska.'" (I had similar good fortune in Valparaíso, Chile.)

The game may even have inspired a few people to see a bit more of the world. "I got an email a few days ago from a woman who had known her husband for 12 years," Wallén says. "She had always been very fond of traveling but since he didn't like it they had never really traveled anywhere together. They both, however, liked the game very much and had been playing it for a few nights. After that, the husband had started looking up tourist locations in Japan and even bought a guidebook. That story really made me smile."

The Venezuelan opposition on Monday released a recording of what it says is a conversation between Mario Silva, a prominent Venezuelan television host and a favorite of the late Hugo Chávez, and a Cuban intelligence officer, in which Silva details a feud within the government between Chávez loyalists and Diosdado Cabello, the president of the National Assembly.

In the conversation with Aramis Palacios, a lieutenant colonel in the G2, the Cuban intelligence agency, Silva, the host of the state television program "La Hojilla," describes a government deeply divided against itself, with rival factions competing for power amid rampant corruption.

The conversation was allegedly recorded for the benefit of Cuban President Raúl Castro, but its authenticity has not been independently verified. Writing on Twitter, Silva dismissed the recording as a Zionist plot.

Assuming that's not the case, set against the backdrop of the recent highly contested presidential election and Chávez's death, Silva sketches a portrait of a government in turmoil marred by high-level corruption, shares rumors of a coup d'état against President Nicolás Maduro, and says he fears that Maduro is being manipulated by his wife. Additionally, according to Silva, on election day the Venezuelan National Electoral Council was the victim of a cyberattack that brought down its security protocol for at least an hour, an allegation that would seem to further call into question the integrity of the vote.

The full audio (a transcript, in Spanish, is here) is available below:

Prior to being selected by Chávez as his heir apparent, Maduro engaged in a bitter power struggle with Cabello, and if Silva's account is correct, a great deal of tension remains between the two men. At one point, Silva, who might be described as the country's de facto propaganda minister, says that "Maduro is obligated to follow the path of el Comandante and is obligated to put Diosdado Cabello against the wall," a statement that is difficult to read as anything other than a suggestion to put Cabello before a firing squad.

But it's not entirely clear that Silva trusts Maduro either. "I am afraid, Palacios, that Nicolás ... is feeling manipulated by Cilia [his wife]," Silva tells the Cuban officer. "This is a continent of caudillos [strongmen], my friend, and the woman has to stay in the shade." Silva then compares Maduro's tendency to appear in public alongside his wife and to kiss her to the worst tendencies of an American poltician. "This isn't a North American campaign," he says. "This is a Latin American campaign." Elsewhere in the conversation, Silva wonders why Chávez didn't make a tape recording of his decision to anoint Maduro as his successor.

Although Chávez used the armed forces to consolidate his power, according to Silva, the army is now divided, with some factions in favor of staging a coup. According to Silva, Maduro has managed to alienate Diego Molero, the country's defense minister, whom Silva describes as an "operator" and a "commando." The strained relationship resulted in rumors circulating in Caracas that Molero was about to launch a coup attempt, leading Maduro's wife, Cilia Flores, to dispatch Silva via intermediaries to find out if the rumours were true. They were not.

But for the man charged with selling the idea of the Bolivarian Revolution to the Venezuelan people, Silva speaks like a man who has become disillusioned with what has become of the government. He describes rampant corruption and officials dipping into public funds for their personal benefit. "We are in a sea of shit, my friend, and we have not yet realized it, Palacios," Silva says.

Despite the explosive nature of the conversation between Silva and Palacios -- never mind the crazy fact that he is having in-depth conversations with Cuban intelligence agents in the first place -- it is far from clear what repercussions this recording will have on the ground in Venezuela. Writing at Caracas Chronicles, Juan Nagel makes a compelling case that this recording may strip some of the revolutionary veneer off Maduro:

The important thing to keep in mind is that we are not the target audience for this recording.

Yes, we all knew that Cabello was a crook, Maduro a nincompoop, Silva a marxist Cuban mole, Rangel an evil power broker, and Flores a scheming Lady Macbeth. But the important thing is that rank-and-file chavistas … didn’t. Up until now, they have been immune from these facts because of the messenger.

Either way, take a moment to revel in the sweet irony of the fact that Chávez's favorite propagandist is now responsible for providing the most stinging critique to date of the Maduro government.

At  7 a.m. on May 6, Yu Xuejun received a phone call from the captain of a fishing boat he owns. "I asked him what the problem was," Yu told state broadcaster China Central Television in an interview broadcast Monday, "and he said one of the ships was missing" from off the coast of Liaoning, a Chinese province that borders North Korea.

Thus began the bizarre, opaque, and as-yet unresolved saga of the North Korean kidnapping of 16 Chinese fishermen.

The next day, May 7, Yu received a call on a satellite phone from someone he identified only as "the North Koreans' translator." The mysterious caller asked for $200,000. "Then," Yu told CCTV, "they said we don't want that much, just $130,000." Yu asked, "Why did you take my boat?" He couldn't understand the caller's answer.

"If you pay, we'll release the boat," the translator told Yu. The calls kept coming, from the same number. On the fourth call, Yu says, the captors dropped the number to $100,000 and allowed the captured captain to speak to him. "His voice was trembling. I could feel he was very afraid," Yu wrote on his microblog, where he broke the news of the kidnapping. "I suspected that my crew had been mistreated. I can't imagine what the North Korean side could do."

China remains North Korea's closest ally, yet often gets repaid for its friendship with inexplicable acts of aggression. The kidnapping was probably coordinated by Pyongyang -- as the Chinese newspaper the Global Times wrote on Monday, the kidnappers are "highly likely from the North Korean army." The paper also quoted Jin Qiangyi, director of the Asian Studies Center at northeast China's Yanbian University, speculating that North Korea is "taking revenge on China" for approving the U.N. sanctions that followed its nuclear test in February.

According to Yu, his boat is now by the island of Changyon, which hosts a North Korean military base -- one would guess that the boat would only be allowed to dock at that island with permission from Pyongyang. According to the website for state radio service Chinese Radio International, Kim Jong Un visited Changyon in 2012 and "expressed satisfaction" at the navy's state of readiness.

But if the "pirates" were actually members of the North Korean military acting in concert with Pyongyang, why the laughably small ransom? Yu told a Chinese journalist that he can't pay the "sky-high price" of $100,000 -- that may be true, but the sticker price for international incidents is usually higher than that of a luxury car. (By comparison, in 2010, the average ransom demand from Somali pirates was $5.4 million.)

It's not the first time this has happened. A year ago almost to the day, North Koreans abducted 29 Chinese fishermen; the identity of the North Koreans, or whether they were authorities or autonomous kidnappers, remains unknown. The fishermen were returned and relieved of all their possessions, in some cases even including their clothes and the pencils in their pocket. Is the North Korean army so starved of resources that it would steal writing utensils from Chinese fishermen?

Throughout its  history, North Korea has been more on the receiving end of piracy, as its ships have rarely ventured overseas. In the Historical Dictionary of Democratic People's Republic of Korea, former British diplomat James Hoare writes that Japanese pirate attacks in the 16th century are one reason for North Koreans' historical hatred of Japanese. 

So far, Beijing's public response to this latest hijacking incident has been muted. The Wall Street Journal reports that "Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said China is in close communication with Pyongyang, without offering details," while China's Internet universe is understandably angry. ("Americans say, 'I'll attack whoever I want,'" writes Weibo user Christopher-Columbia in a typical post. "Us Chinese, we say, 'whoever attacks us, we'll just insult them in return,'" he adds.) The Journal also quoted retired general Luo Yuan as writing on his microblog, "North Korea has gone too far. Just because you're poor, that doesn't mean you can cross borders and detain people for ransom." Unless China does something, Pyongyang may prove Luo wrong.

At a stopover in Jalandhar Monday on his way to New Delhi for meetings with Indian officials, Afghan President Hamid Karzai was presented with an honorary doctorate from what claims to be India's largest private university. Indian President Pranab Mukherjee conferred the degree on Karzai, making him an honorary alumnus of Lovely Professional University -- a school that bills itself as "a world-renowned center for the creation and dissemination of knowledge."

LPU was founded by the late Shri Baldev Raj Mittal, who earned his fortune as chairman of the Lovely Group, which began as a distributor of traditional Indian sweets before delving into scooters and automobiles.

As for Karzai, who did his undergraduate and graduate studies at Simla University in India in the late 1970s and early 80s, he will add the award to an already long list of honorary degrees. In 2003, his alma mater presented him with an honorary doctorate in literature, to go with the master's degree in international relations and political science he earned two decades earlier. Karzai has also received honorary degrees from Boston University, Georgetown University, the University of Nebraska, and, just last year, Japan's Sports Science University of Nippon.

According to some quick Googling, it is the first time Karzai has been associated with the words "lovely professional," however.

What is happening in this photo that is making these children so emotional?

(Real caption after the jump)

Read on

America and Australia have their fair share of similarities -- both are former British colonies with English as a primary language, both occupy giant chunks of land, and both are characterized by their independent frontier spirits -- but is this reason enough to join them? Sadly, no.

The deadline for a White House petition to "Join American and Australia to form Ameristralia" is fast approaching. The petition, which has until Friday to garner 100,000 signatures, so far clocks in at an unimpressive 6,500.

The campaign to combine the two great nations was inspired by Redditors who in April realized that the United States dominates the social media site during its daytime while Australians actively use Reddit when America sleeps. Combined, they could achieve Reddit -- if not world -- domination. As Urban Dictionary puts it: "the union of the greatest country in the world and the deadliest island, Ameristralia rules all of the day and all of the night."

But while the petition is clearly a joke, an argument can be made for fusing the two countries. Fans of the union -- who call themselves 'Matriots' (Mate + Patriots) -- note: Ameristralia would bypass Russia in size at 17.32 million square km to Russia's 17.08. And yes, it would also finally bring the United States into the metric system. Furthermore, not only do the two countries' respective leaders get along famously, but having a whole territory in the South Pacific, not just a Marine base, could really be a boon to the U.S. pivot to Asia. As the initiative's Facebook page notes, both countries have "amazing armies" to be used "to uphold freedom and awesome." Who could argue with that mission statement?

Still not convinced? Redditors point out that Ameristralians would also dominate Olympic swimming, diving, and at long last give the United States a fighting chance at rugby. 

So there you have it: a case for Ameristralia. If the petition somehow reaches 100,000 signatures by Friday, it will join other ridiculous requests -- like Texas seceding from the Union or the United States building a Death Star -- to require White House review.