We live in a truly global village. What happens in some remote part of the world will impact on a whole swathe of land on the other side. It is the so-called butterfly effect.
It is said when a butterfly flaps its wings somewhere in a remote pacific island, the effect might mutate into a tsunami on some other shores on the west coast of America. Or put in another way, when America - or more recently China - sneezes, the world catches pneumonia.