The US Central Intelligence Agency last week released the 2001 version of its annual reference book the CIA World Factbook (last year's factbook is discussed in the September 1, 2000 Scout Report). The data, which are current as of January 1, 2001 in most cases, cover 266 countries as well as the "world," a category that summarizes the data overall. For each country, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe,...

The US Central Intelligence Agency has recently released the 2000 version of its well-known annual country information reference book (last described in the September 24, 1999 Scout Report). Data are available for more than 260 countries. For each country, map and flag, geographic, population, government, economic, communication, transportation, military, and transnational issue information is...

The new online Almanac of Politics and Government is a comprehensive reference tool, providing over 1,300 Web pages of political and governmental information about nations worldwide. The almanac's coverage emphasizes the US political system but also includes information about world governments and international organizations. Additionally, the almanac contains a collection of important US...