U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon visited Myanmar for the July 3-4 weekend in what turned out to be a major political gamble -- with no discernible results so far.
With an agenda that asks the ruling military junta to open its doors to national "reconciliation", Ban Ki-moon is convinced he can persuade the country's leaders that reforms are for their own good.
One of the questions that will face our society when a future pandemic proves more deadly is how our public health authorities ought to allocate ventilators.
Scientists say that an earthquake that rocked Napa County, California Monday night was actually an aftershock from a screening of the new Transformers sequel, Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen.
Orphans International Sri Lanka was founded in Sri Lanka following the 2004 tsunami. Now fully trained, the staff are beginning their own program for the children of Unawatuna.
As I travel through Sri Lanka, covering the nation as it seeks reconciliation among its diverse population after decades of conflict, I am receiving e-mails from my friends at home asking me to review the basics.
Sri Lanka is now focused on the "3 R's:" Rehabilitation, Reconstruction, and Reconciliation. European leaders need to stop lecturing and start helping.
There's one defining quality that we'll remember the most about the last ten years: the relentless onslaught of disasters and the omnipresent threat that a new one could strike at any moment.
I have flown from Haiti to Peru to Guyana in the Americas, Hong Kong to Indonesia to Sri Lanka in Asia, and Togo to Ghana in Africa.
Since the defeat of the revolutionary Tamil Tigers, the streets of Columbo, the capital of Sri Lanka, are alive with euphoria.
While large scale aid groups provide funds, it is the bootstrapped nimble organizations that partner with local community groups to fill the cracks in delivering aid.
In spite of the slaughter, of using their own people as human shields, of creating the largest, bloodiest hostage drama of modern times, the Tigers have at long last been defeated.
The Chinese Government moved in the direction of development by making a huge effort to be open to international aid, ideas and US corporate responsibility in China post-quake.
Local officials should not delude themselves into thinking that existing plans for responding to dirty bombs can be simply expanded to deal with nuclear terrorism.
We may use market forces for what they are good for -- setting prices - without being used by them for what they are bad for -- greed and corruption.
"Nargis and its aftermath have demonstrated that the policy of isolation and sanctions against the government of Myanmar is counterproductive. It is simply not working."
It is not enough to either sit by and hope that each president makes disaster-recovery a priority, or to spread urban legends designed to make FEMA as popular as Guantanamo Bay.
For the whole night many people have been exchanging news on Friendfeed and Twitter, while newsrooms where still dark and silent.
It's always good fun predicting how our world will end. So many of us engage in this sport, I'm hoping we can somehow harness the considerable intellectual energy that goes into this question.
China's 10 million-plus victims of last May's Sichuan Earthquake remain largely in massive temporary prefabricated housing complexes, in tents or under blue tarps in partially damaged homes.
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I don't think the Chinese Government needed another chance to come up short in the eyes of the people in the countryside ... they better have a more successful response to this earthquake than the last one.
Only one person was killed? That is truly remarkable in an area with such a large population. Did the Chinese issue a prior warning to get people outside as they have done before?
Holy cow! 6.0? That's barely more than a massage here in CA.
Okay. I don't normally subscribe to these sorts of "channeled" messages, but six months of research has me convinced there is some incredible consistency between messages since the 70s and this example I am linking really nails what is going on worldwide. It covers personal and collective things, such as changes the Earth is going through and how political power and the economic ways of the powerful are no longer sustainable. It predicted and explains what is going on with the electromagnetic field (which mainstream media is finally reporting) and how it plays with the increase in earthquakes.
This is link to the archives. Check out the message titled "Truth and Lies in Global Politics" from 2003. The messages are listed from most recent, descending.
http://tomkenyon.com/hathors-archives
Very sad.
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