Forget America's shining "city on a hill" --it's by the ocean where most of the world's greatest cities lie. For centuries, water has meant strategic advantages, like access to food and trade. But as Frank Jacobs writes in Foreign Policy, rising sea levels and disappearing coastlines mean that in many places what was once an advantage has become a liability. Could these 10 major cities soon vanish beneath rising tides? Mumbai, 2.8 million inhabitants exposed Mumbai sits on the western coast of India, on the edge of the Arabian Sea. A report this year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change noted that the city was facing increased risks from floods, storms, and rising seas. The city suffered massive flooding in 2005 when nearly three feet of rain fell over 24 hours, killing over 1,000 people. Above, Hindu devotees carry an idol of the elephant-headed Hindu God Lord Ganesha into the Arabian Sea for immersion in 2007.
The body of Norodom Sihanouk, the former king of Cambodia, arrived in Phnom Penh on Wednesday for a week of official mourning after his death at age 89 in Beijing on Monday. Sihanouk, who came to power during the age of French Indochina, was a towering figure in Cambodian politics, often compared in importance to contemporaries like Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, and Kim Il-Sung in their own countries. During his lifetime, he won independence for his country, only to see much of its potential squandered: he was overthrown, Cambodia got drawn into in the Vietnam War and then decimated by the Khmer Rouge regime that he himself to some extent helped bring to power. Still, he retained the affection of his people through his populist image and his role as a symbol of unity and continuity in a country that has spent most of the past 60 years in tumult. Above, a massive portrait of Sihanouk is displayed in Phnom Penh. Flags flew at half-mast this week, while many Cambodians wore black ribbons in mourning for their former king.
No. 6: Caracas, Venezuela The so-called malandros -- gangs of young men who spar over turf and the right to push drugs -- have made the Venezuelan capital a virtual war zone. In 2011, Caracas witnessed 3,164 homicides -- a staggering figure just shy of the total number of coalition fatalities in Afghanistan during the entire 10-year conflict in that country. Venezuelan officials have been accused of fudging murder statistics, and the actual number of homicides is likely much higher than the reported figure. To make matters worse, up to 90 percent of murders in Venezuela go unsolved. It's no surprise, then, that the rampant violence proved to be the primary issue in the Venezuelan presidential campaign with Henrique Capriles Radonski blasting President Hugo Chávez for failing to stem the bloodshed. (Since Chávez's election in 1998, the murder rate in Venezuela has doubled.) Experts say that easy access to guns, a culture of violence among young men, and a lack of police and prosecutors have combined to create a perfect storm of lawlessness and a homicide rate of 99 murders per every 100,000 residents. Above, a young man on a motorcycle brandishes his handgun during clashes between pro- and anti-Chávez university students before a march toward Venezuela's Supreme Electoral Tribunal in 2007. The clashes left one person dead and six others wounded.
