The 2006 CIA World Factbook

Description

The CIA World Factbook is the United States government’s premier reference work on the nations of the world. The 2006 edition provides up-to-date information on 271 countries, dependencies, and other entities, organized for quick reference and easy comparison.

Each country entry is organized into categories including geography (area, climate, terrain, natural resources), people (population, ethnic groups, languages, religions), government (capital, administrative divisions, legal system, political parties), economy (GDP, inflation, unemployment, exports, imports), communications (telephones, radio, television, internet), transportation (airports, railways, roadways, waterways), military (expenditure, branches, service age), and transnational issues (disputes, refugees, trafficking).

In addition to the country entries, the Factbook includes detailed field listings that allow direct comparison across countries, rank orders for key statistics such as area and GDP, appendixes covering international organizations and selected economic indicators, and a comprehensive set of notes and definitions explaining every term used in the entries.

This edition features updated country information as of December 2006, including the recognition of Montenegro and Serbia as independent states following the 2006 secession referendum, expanded capital entries with geographic coordinates and time zone information, a new entry on human trafficking, and a new appendix on weights and measures.