News Buzz: Myanmar's Cyclone Death Toll, Tuesday's Primaries, and More
Myanmar's foreign minister said today that the death toll from tropical cyclone Nargis could be as high as 10,000. Nargis hit the Southeast Asian country formerly known as Burma early Saturday, with winds reaching up to 120 mph. Information has been slow coming in, especially from the flooded southern delta region. The government first put the death toll at 351, and then increased it to nearly 4,000. Earlier today, government radio reported 4,000 people killed and nearly 3,000 still missing.
As voters head to the polls tomorrow in Indiana and North Carolina, rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have both expressed the view that the results will not be definitive enough to settle the 16-month battle for the Democratic nomination. On NBC's Today show, Obama predicted that after the final June 3 contests, the Democrats will be in a position to finally make a decision. Clinton refused to predict Tuesday's results. "I think we've closed the gap," she said on CNN's American Morning. Obama remains ahead in pledged delegates and the popular vote while Clinton retains a narrow lead among the Democratic superdelegates.
With Microsoft's decision announced Saturday to walk away from negotiations to buy Yahoo, the repercussions are being felt on the stock market today. In early trading, Yahoo shares dropped 17 percent, while Google's went up 2.3 percent. Microsoft was hoping to buy the struggling Internet pioneer in order to compete with Internet giant Google. However, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang felt that Microsoft's offer wasn't hefty enough for the company he started 14 years ago in a Silicon Valley trailer.
Reader Comments
MYANMAR
Only now, after two weeks, does the head of government visit the ravaged area by the sea. An outrage.
International aid is being held up, while thousands of families are wanting. Outrage
The ruling junta sitsback up north and does nothing. Outrage
They are indeed commiting crimes against humanity.
Obama
You do realize that economically, Obama at least knows what hes talking about right? He doesn't propose ideas that make absolutely no economic sense, therefore, economically, hes the better candidate because he won't just throw away funs with idiotic policies.
Death toll of Cyclone in Myanmar
The official count of death toll -- as of 12:00 New York Time, May 5, 2008 – hasn't reached 10,000 yet. It is estimated around 4,000 so far. The fear is that it will exceed 10,000 because several towns of over-hundreds-thousand population in each town were flattened by storm water. So far, over 3,000 people in one of those towns are missing.
Why is the death toll so high? The storm water surged over 12 feet. The houses in the delta region of my country are used to flooding and are constructed to cope with, say, 5-6 feet but not 12 feet. The bamboo and wooden houses can certainly NOT cope with 120 mile per hour wind.
So, why is the death toll so high for such a cyclone?
Because the storm fell on the most populated regions of the country. Approximately 12 million people live in the two regions hit hardest, namely Yangon and Irrawaddy provinces.
The tropical storms called cyclones in Bay of Bengal usually had gone into Bangladesh. Even if the storms head towards Burma/Myanmar, they usually head toward a range of mountains in the West, which had given us a natural shelter. The storm of this direction and this magnitude is very rare. Its land fall was on the Southwestern flat land and was heading towards East. We didn’t expect such direction.
Most importantly, we don’t follow the weather news partly because the weather had never been severe enough for us to follow and partly because the weather forecasts had never been reliably accurate (at least in our perception and memory). The weather forecasts say that it is going to rain today and it is sunny the entire day. The forecast says that it is going to be sunny today and we get downpour.
The storm warnings were issued by government-controlled radios, televisions and newspaper. Of course, the weathermen, like most Burmese, might have thought that it was going to be another tropical storm that would move towards the Arakhan Range of Mountains and subsided later. This time we were wrong and our mistake is fatal.
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