The first mains electricity that flowed in Zambia came from a small coal fired station in the capital Livingstone, but even that did not cover the entire city. Zambia had to wait till 1938 to get its first hydro-electric power from that mighty power source, the Victoria Falls. Of course the copper mines needed power, but up to the middle of the last century they had to provide their own generation facilities.

A great city facing a broad stretch of water: as a description this could apply to thousands of places because mankind usually makes its first settlement where it first makes landfall. These settlements expand as trade makes use of the highways of the sea: hinterland cities are typically established later and take longer to grow.

Established in November 1944, with the construction of the Compostilla thermal plan in Ponferrada, in the province of Leon in Spain, Endesa is today one of the largest electric power companies in the world. As well as being Spain’s largest utility company, it is also the leading private multinational enterprise in Latin America and a major player in the gas sector.

Once considered home to one of the largest gold deposits in India, the Kolar mines were nationalised in 1956 and 1972, before operations were handed to BGML. Mounting losses and falling revenues however led to BGML’s closure in 2001. In June of this year, India’s Supreme Court approved the government’s plan to issue a global tender for BGML’s assets, so that the Kolar gold mines could be restated.

Cerrejón is an integrated mining and transport complex in the La Guajira region, jutting out into the Caribbean Sea from the north of Colombia. The mine is independently operated, but belongs in three equal parts to subsidiaries of BHP Billiton, Anglo American, and Glencore Xstrata: between them these partners approved investment of $1.3 billion in 2011 for an expansion project that will increase Cerrejon’s production and export capacity by 8 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) in 2012 - 2014 to reach a 40 mtpa production by 2015.

Cybercriminals are employing more sophisticated techniques all the time and far too many companies and organizations still don’t have the protection they really need to safeguard their systems. The prevalence of targeted attacks and advanced persistent threats (APTs) is disturbing.

The Defence Secretary Philip Hammond announced that starting from October the government proposed to develop a full-spectrum military cyber capability, including a strike capability, to enhance the UK's range of military capabilities. He called for hundreds of ‘cyber reservists’ to work alongside regular forces in the new Joint Cyber Reserve Unit in a bid to protect key computer networks and safeguard data.