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Two months have passed since a devastating cyclone hit Burma and the government turned away 90% of the people who wanted to help, forbid Buddhist monks from helping and even told its secular citizens not to volunteer. All help must come from the government and the army. Meanwhile, people have lost their supplies of clean water and of food. So what’s going on now? The BBC reports.
From Ogle Earth, here’s a link to North Korea Economy Watch:
North Korea Intel: North Korean Economy Watch’s meticulously researched KML layer* pinpointing every conceivable feature in North Korea, including the gulags, nuclear sites, military sites and elite areas, has just been updated.
*KML or Keyhole Markup Language is an XML-based language for managing three-dimensional geospatial data in the program Google Earth.
It seems that giant sinkholes are not as rare as I thought. Another sinkhole opened in the Russian town of Berezniki on March 3, 2008.
The pictures are very impressive.
The sinkhole destroyed part of a road. Luckily, no one was on the road at the time. This makes me oif it’s practical to include some kind of ground-scanning radar in, say, annual surveys of roads for needed repairs. Any thoughts?
There was also a large sinkhole in Mexico that took three lives, but I haven’t found the date for it yet.
A powerful earthquake, magnitude 7.9, near Sichuan has killed at least 10,000 people and numbers are expected to rise. In Beichuan, 80% of the buildings collapsed. It struck in the early afternoon when people were at work and at school. When schools collapsed, hundreds of students were killed. Two chemical plants have also collapsed. There is no news from the epicentre of the quake, which is a relatively remote and mountainous area, about 100 km northwest of Chengdu. Roads are damaged. In contrast to Burma, China has mounted a massive rescue effort. The Red Cross Society of China are bringing in blankets and assessing the situation with the help of a disaster management expert from the international organization. Volunteers and the Chinese army are pressing towards Beichuan on foot. China is relatively lucky in that it practises disaster recovery regularly and also has been preparing for any eventuality during the Olympics.
This is the strongest earthquake since 1976. The earthquake was felt in Peking, a thousand kilometers away. Aftershocks have been felt about every 20 minutes and survivors are sleeping outdoors for fear of further building collapses. Harold Asmis of Ontario-geofish estimates that the epicentre might be as much as 30 km deep.
Myanmar’s coast and capital city were struck by a major cyclone that may have left 15,000 people dead. According to news reports, whole villages have been destroyed.
Myanmar was formerly Burma. It is ruled by a restrictive military junta, which has been keeping the democratically elected leader under house arrest for years. There’s was some question about whether the government-by-force would let anyone in to help, in case the people would be exposed to foreign contact. However, apparently they have decided to let in relief workers and supplies.
Maps are here: ReliefWeb.
Track of Cyclone Nargis:
Of course, we don’t know how much this is being understated. This is a higher fatality rate than in previous years. Enterovirus 71 is one of several enteroviruses that causes a disease in humans called Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease.
From Medbroadcast.com:
Provided by: The Canadian Press
Written by: Audra Ang, THE ASSOCIATED PRESSBEIJING - Health officials in eastern China say a viral outbreak has killed 20 children and left almost 1,200 others ill.
The Enterovirus 71 infections were discovered in March in Fuyang, a city in Anhui province. But health officials say the malady may have gone undetected for a time because the symptoms are similar to other ailments common in children.
It was not immediately clear what triggered the outbreak, but the province’s health bureau said it is the season when the virus is prevalent.
Enterovirus 71 is characterized by fever, mouth sores and a rash with blisters. It is spread by direct contact with nose and throat discharges, saliva, fluid from blisters, or the stool of infected persons.
What that means is that it comes around about every ten years and older children have developed some immunity.
The official Xinhua news agency reported that most of the patients admitted to hospitals in Fuyang were under age two, and none was older than six.
There were 1,199 reported cases between early March and Sunday, 20 of which were fatal, the health bureau said in a statement on its website.
Maybe it comes around every few years. Here’s the CDC page on Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease.
HFMD caused by coxsackievirus A16 infection is a mild disease and nearly all patients recover without medical treatment in 7 to 10 days. Complications are uncommon. Rarely, the patient with coxsackievirus A16 infection may also develop “aseptic” or viral meningitis, in which the person has fever, headache, stiff neck, or back pain, and may need to be hospitalized for a few days. Another cause of HFMD, EV71 may also cause viral meningitis and, rarely, more serious diseases, such as encephalitis, or a poliomyelitis-like paralysis. EV71 encephalitis may be fatal. Cases of fatal encephalitis occurred during outbreaks of HFMD in Malaysia in 1997 and in Taiwan in 1998 [and China in 2008].
I didn’t know there were so many of them. Non-polio enterovirus infections:
Enteroviruses are small viruses that are made of ribonucleic acid (RNA) and protein. This group includes the polioviruses, coxsackieviruses, echoviruses, and other enteroviruses. [There are] 3 different polioviruses [and] 62 non-polio enteroviruses that can cause disease in humans:
- 23 Coxsackie A viruses,
- 6 Coxsackie B viruses,
- 28 echoviruses, and
- 5 other enteroviruses.
Another form of magic bites the dust in India when a rationalist challenges a tantric black magician to kill him with magical curses.
On 3 March 2008, in a popular TV show, Sanal Edamaruku, the president of Rationalist International, challenged India’s most “powerful” tantrik (black magician) to demonstrate his powers on him. That was the beginning of an unprecedented experiment….
Everything started, when Uma Bharati (former chief minister of the state of Madhya Pradesh) accused her political opponents in a public statement of using tantrik powers to inflict damage upon her….
India TV, one of India’s major Hindi channels with national outreach, invited Sanal Edamaruku for a discussion on “Tantrik power versus Science”. Pandit Surinder Sharma, who claims to be the tantrik of top politicians and is well known from his TV shows, represented the other side…. He claimed that he was able to kill any person he wanted within three minutes by using black magic. Sanal challenged Surinder to try and kill him. …
The tantrik, unwilling to admit defeat, tried the excuse that a very strong god whom Sanal might be worshipping obviously protected him. “No, I am an atheist,” said Sanal Edamaruku.
(hat tip to PZ Myers at Pharyngula)
UPDATE: Bill Poser, over on Ed Brayton’s article about this on Dispatches from the Culture Wars, had the best suggestion for follow-up:
The way to really nail this down is to lay charges of attempted murder against Surinder Sharma. He can either admit guilt or admit as his defense that he is a fraud.
Sir Edmund Hilary has died at age 88. He was the second man to scale Chomolungma, Goddess Mother of the World, known in English as Mount Everest. Chomolungma’s resident goddess is Miyo Lungsangma, the mother goddess of earth.) The first man to scale the mountain was Tenzing Norgay, Sir Edmund’s Sherpa guide.
Sir Edmund was 33 when he completed his famous climb. He devoted the rest of his life to helping the people of Nepal.
The Bad Astronomy Blogger has some commentary on the reported finding of what might be the crater of the Tunguska meteorite. For one thing, the crater is oval, which generally indicates an old and distorted crater. For another, coincidence of “crater-like shape” is not enough.
Cyclone Sidr is a category 4 hurricane on its way to low-lying Bangladesh and gainin g strength on the way. Hundreds of thousands of people may die in it? So why haven’t Iheard about it except through other science bloggers. Science blogs are the newspapers we would have if everyone were like me. Chris Mooney has the story: time to panic, and he makes a good point: we should be readying the succour and rescue teams, hospital ships, air relief, or whatever.
Finally, here is a note on Alertnet, with a link to an interactive map of Bangladesh. The CBC has finally picked it up:
Sidr, currently a Category 4 storm, is on a “really similar track” as Cyclone Bhola, a storm that devastated the region in 1970, CBC meteorologist Nick Czernkovich said.Bhola, which made landfall as a Category 3 cyclone, was the deadliest tropical cyclone ever recorded, resulting in the deaths of more than 500,000 people.
Cyclone Sidr alert:
Harold at Ontario Geofish points out that unstable surroundings make the Three Gorges Dam project in China a disaster waiting to happen.
Pictures on the Internet led to the arrest of a Canadian gay pedophile in Thailand. He or someone else posted pictures of him raping young boys, with his head digitally “swirled” so that the face was unrecognizable. Germany’s federal crimes office reversed the process (they won’t say exactly how) and Interpol released a picture of the culprit. He was recognized and a recent picture was added to the clues. Now, he has been arrested and it’s time to face the music. No more posting poems about how lonely street kids admire the reassuring “prowess” of the foreign visitor.
The suspect had been a seminary student. He was a teacher of English as a second language in Korea when the warrant was issued.
Men who are attracted to children of either sex tend to go where there are children. They might be youth group leaders, teachers, ministers. Men who are conflicted about their sexuality might turn to religion in their efforts to deal with the problem. They might become priests, especially the non-marrying kind. Please warn your children. If someone touches you, move away instantly. Say “No!” loudly. Say loud and clear that this is wrong and you’ll tell their boss and your family. Keep backing off. Leave. Do not be intimidated by authority. They’ll pick on someone else.
One of the scourges of humankind, polio, may soon be gone from the world’s largest democracy. Last year, cases were limited almost entirely to two states, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
Polio is transmitted only from person to person, so it can be wiped out by inoculating people against it. It is a viral disease that causes paralysis, muscle weakness, or death.
From Living the Scientific Life: Mangroves and Tsunamis: The Shrimp Connection. This article by Grrlscientist was nominated for a Koufax award.
Abstain from shrimp lest your mangrove forests be destroyed and your people die in tsunamis.
The Yangtze River Dolphin, a unique species of freshwater dolphin, has been on the most endangered list for some time. China’s industrial development, with pollution and habitat destruction, combined with illegal fishing, have driven it over the edge. An intensive survey found not one left. It’s possible that one or two still lurk in the murky waters, but for practical purposes, they are gone. They have been declared extinct and by humans, the first large mammal to be lost that way in fifty years.
