The century-old building housing Egypt's upper house of parliament, just a few blocks from my old apartment in Cairo, has gone up in flames:

KHALED DESOUKI/AFP/Getty Images

The BBC has the story:

At least 13 people have been hurt in a fire at the upper house of the Egyptian parliament in Cairo, officials say.

The cause of the blaze is unclear, but officials say it could have been caused by an electrical short-circuit.

Elijah Zarwan relays word that newspaper Al-Badil was banned for its coverage of the blaze. You can download a compressed PDF of the paper here.

Here is a video of the fire:

The Arabist comments:

Several times last night as I went out to see the blaze I heard people make jokes about how they hoped the senators where still in there (especially Safwat al-Sherif, the head of the Council) or how this was revenge for the highly unpopular new traffic law.

JOSE CENDON/AFP/Getty Images

With Zimbabwe's political turmoil and Burma's humanitarian woes grabbing most of the headlines on Africa and Asia lately, it might be easy to forget about another crisis that threatens millions of people on both continents: HIV/AIDS. In its recently released annual report, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Foundation (IRFC) recommended that the epidemic be classified a "disaster" in certain Asian and African countries, breaking with its usual focus on natural catastrophes like cyclones. The IRFC backed up its argument on HIV/AIDS with some scary statistics (PDF of the report):

• Some 2.1 million people died of AIDS in 2007
• At least one adult in ten is living with HIV in nations that include Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe
• Around 15 million children are currently orphaned as the result of AIDS

Perhaps the most chilling figure is this one: 25 million. That's how many people are estimated to have died of AIDS worldwide since 1981. In comparison, the tsunami that ravaged Indonesia in 2004 killed around 232,000 people.

Like natural disasters, AIDS can be a comprehensive threat, stressing healthcare systems and fueling poverty. AIDS can also worsen the impact of environmental catastrophes. Nine major natural disasters of 2007 occured in countries with generalized AIDS epidemics, according to the IRFC, meaning that people with HIV/AIDS had to contend with interrupted care. With AIDS treatment often requiring daily drug cocktails, even a minor interruption in drug availability poses major health risks.

So what can the world do to confront the epidemic? Throwing money at the problem won't make it go away. Billions have already been spent on general AIDS education and awareness programs worldwide, but the number of people living with AIDS keeps increasing in several areas, including Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and even parts of Western Europe. The IRFC says that the world won't make major strides against the disease until governments begin targeting their at-risk populations -- including sex-workers and intravenous drug users -- for prevention and treatment. Until this is done, AIDS will continue to wreak havoc, far worse than any single tsunami or earthquake could.

TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images

This cork-filled life preserver from the Titanic, which sunk in 1912, will be sold at auction house Christie's annual ocean liner sale in New York next Wednesday. The life preserver, one of only six known to exist, had been kept by a family in Nova Scotia since it was found -- allegedly by a farmer at the Halifax shoreline soon after the tragedy. Christie's expects it to go for 30,000 to 40,000 pounds ($59,000 to $79,000); the auction house sold another one last year in London for 61,000 pounds ($120,000).

China Photos/Getty Images

If a disaster the magnitude of the quake that hit China's Sichuan province last month had taken place in the United States, (think 50 Hurricane Katrinas) you can bet that the nation would still be reeling, many public services would not yet have resumed, and certainly some schools would still be closed. But nearly a month after the devastating earthquake hit, millions of Chinese students, many of whom have lost homes or loved ones, are returning to normalcy as they sit for the most important exam of their lives.

Today and tomorrow, an estimated 11 million secondary school students will vie for 6 million Chinese university spots: tough odds that put students and their families on edge. Slate.com's Manuela Zonensein puts the exams in perspective this way:

It is China's SAT—if the SAT lasted two days, covered everything learned since kindergarten, and had the power to determine one's entire professional trajectory."

The pressure is so great that many children study up to 12 hours a day, parents and children report adverse effects on their health due to anxiety, and large numbers of family members flock to temples, praying to Buddha and Confucius for their child's success. When prayer doesn't seem to cut it, some students even have resorted to high-tech cheating schemes.

Life, of course, isn't completely back to normal yet. Students in the hardest-hit areas will have an extra month before they, too, must take the test of their lives. And as a safety precaution, bays of tents have been constructed outside testing centers in case a large aftershock should disrupt the students' uneasy calm.

Sharon Stone is in big trouble with China.

Speaking last week at the Cannes film festival, the American actress made the following ill-advised remark to a Hong Kong TV station:

And then all this earthquake and all this stuff happened, and I thought, is that karma -- when you're not nice -- that the bad things happen to you?

As you might imagine, Stone's riff wasn't viewed too kindly by Chinese netizens, who have added her to their growing pantheon of personae non grata and are organizing a boycott of Stone-related products. Theaters are dropping her movies, department stores are taking down her image, and cosmetics brand Christian Dior has been scrambling to distance itself from the actress, who since 2005 has been the face of one of its skin products. I think it's fair to say Stone is discovering that karma can be a real b*tch sometimes.

You can see the video here:

China Photos/Getty Images

The Olympic torch reached Shanghai today where the relay was accompanied by a moment of silence observed by over 80,000 people for victims of the Sichuan earthquake. Among those carrying the flame were emergency services workers who had participated in the rescue effort. Shanghai's mayor Han Zheng noted the new symbolism of the relay:

"When torchbearers pass the flame, it's not just the Olympic spirit they are passing, but also the confidence and courage with which the people of Shanghai join hands with the victims of the quake to rebuild their beautiful homelands."

Last month, the torch relay was overwhelmingly viewed as a fiasco, marred by protests until organizers were actually hiding the flame from onlookers.  Now, of course, the symbolism has changed significantly. What was once a massive moving target for international protests over China's human rights crimes, is now being portrayed (Western media included) as a symbol of China's resilience in the face of catastrophe.

The international sympathy for China brought on by the earthquake may fade by the time the Olympics start, (It's not as if Tibet or Darfur have suddenly disappeared.) but I would still expect to see China invoking the tragedy quite a bit during the games. Supporting the earthquake recovery may even give "cover" to international leaders who want to attend the games but were afraid of appearing to condone China's policies.

Until two weeks ago, the mounting protests made it look like China's international coming-out party was sure to be an embarassing debacle. China's new, more sympathetic narrative may just save the Beijing games from disaster.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008	Thursday, May 22, 2008

The Xinhua news agency Web site is back to normal after a subtle change you may have missed if you don't check it every day. The shift comes on the heels of China's official three day mourning period to remember the victims of last week's earthquake. In the real world, karaoke bars were closed, HBO service was suspended, and newspapers used black ink on their front pages.

Online entertainment and gaming sites were also shut down, web advertisements were taken off news sites, and black and white lettering and logos signaled a time of remembrance. Media outlets were reportedly told to give priority to stories about national mourning.

What are the world's disaster hotspots? Arthur Lerner-Lam, who we spoke with in last week's Seven Questions about global disasters, set out with a team from Columbia University and the World Bank to answer this in "Natural Disaster Hotspots: A Global Risk Analysis." They divided the world up into sub-national swathes of land and analyzed population and disaster data going back about thirty years for six disaster types: drought, flooding, cyclones, earthquakes, volcanoes, and landslides. For reasons of data accuracy and availability, the results are relative rather than absolute likelihoods that disasters will occur in various corners of the globe.

The study focuses on more significantly populated areas amounting to about half of the world's land area. It approaches loss as potential damage to that which is "valuable but vulnerable includ[ing] people, infrastructure, and environmentally important land uses." And what's more, based on data from a Brussels-based research center, the study hints that disaster frequency is increasing.

The following map shows mortality risk by disaster type. This isn't a comprehensive summary but rather a summary of the top at-risk areas. Those purple blips in central China sure have a lot more meaning in the aftermath of recent events.

www.ldeo.columbia.edu

This second map shows risk in terms of total economic loss based on disaster type.

www.ldeo.columbia.edu

And finally, the third map normalizes potential economic loss based on country GDP. Notice the migration of the top at-risk areas away from the more developed regions.

www.ldeo.columbia.edu

Yesterday, two-and-a-half weeks after Cyclone Nargis hit Burma, junta leader Than Shwe finally descended from the remote mountain capital of Naypyitaw to tour cyclone-damaged areas outside of Yangon. He still has not visited the devastated Irrawaddy delta region. The Burmese government also agreed today to accept more aid from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations but is still blocking most aid from Western countries. French and American warships remain anchored off the coast of Irrawaddy, unable to bring food and supplies to shore.

One of the tragic ironies of Burma's glacial response to the disaster has been that they have made the Chinese Communist Party look really good by comparison. Say what you will about Hu Jintao, he was on the ground in Sichuan a few days after the earthquake and the Chinese government has broken sharply with past practice by asking for foreign aid.

Granted, "better than Burma" isn't exactly much of a compliment but the contrast is still striking. 

Yes, parents who lost a child in the earthquake will be able to have another child under China's one-child policy. 

Rumors are flying in China about why officials couldn't predict the quake when apparent natural signs were there. Technically, seismologists the world over say they can't accurately predict location and timing of earthquakes, but some in China see it differently.

Eyewitnesses say they observed changes in water levels in the days leading up to the quake, and abnormal animal behavior just prior. Media reports ten days ahead of the quake suggest "several thousand cubic meters of water disappeared within an hour in Hubei [350 miles east of the epicenter], but the [seismological] bureau there dismissed it." Quake mispredictions aren't without precedent; in the 1970s in Tangshan, the seismologists dispatched to check out reports of mysteriously falling well water levels were killed by the very quake they wrote off, according to the AP.

A few days prior to this week's Sichuan quake, a torrent of toads overran Mianzhu city where thousands of people were later killed in the severe tremors. The local forestry bureau did a TV interview before the disaster claiming it was normal breeding behavior which has people particularly angry after the fact. (Video above.) In Wuhan, 600 miles from the epicenter, a newspaper reported zebras banging their heads against the door, elephants swinging their tusks wildly, and peacocks screeching just before the quake hit. The idea that animals can sense certain things before humans is not new, though it relies primarily on observational evidence. It was studied some in the 1970s by the U.S. Geological Survey to no avail. Similar reports of strange animal behavior preceded the 2004 tsunami.

Some articles are now talking about the mandate of heaven, on which Chinese imperial dynasties traditionally drew their legitimacy. Natural disasters or mass disorder typically signaled the eclipse of that dynasty's mandate and the time for a new one to step in. Obviously the modern age is a different story, but it's been a rough year for China. As Wang Yiyan, Chinese studies professor at University of Sydney puts it, "The government knows many Chinese will see the quake as a sign that things are out of balance."

This is disturbing news. Chinese officials are now warning that earthquake-damaged dams in Sichuan province may be strained to the breaking point:

Two hydropower stations in Maoxian county, where 7,000 residents and tourists remain stranded near the epicenter, were "seriously damaged". Authorities warned that dams could burst. Landslides had blocked the flow of two rivers in northern Qingchuan county, forming a huge lake in a region where 1,000 have already died and 700 are buried, Xinhua said.

Luckily, the massive Three Gorges Dam appears to have been unaffected.

It's getting harder for the Burmese state to hide the truly profound level of its own dysfunction:

The Burmese generals were visible all right. State television showed them handing out boxes of the small amount of aid allowed in from neighbouring Thailand. Unwittingly, it also showed that the Burmese leadership had plastered their own names over the true origins of the food aid to fool their own people into believing that the emergency relief supplies had come from them.

You know things are bad when a military dictatorship can't even get its own propaganda right.

(Hat tip: Reason's Kerry Howley)

Invoking the United Nations' "Responsibility to Protect" clause, the EU's foreign policy chief Javier Solana joined French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner in calling for the international community to aid the population of Burma, even without the consent of their government.

"We have to use all the means to help those people," Javier Solana said before an emergency meeting of EU ministers in Brussels. "The United Nations charter opens some avenues if things cannot be resolved in order to get the humanitarian aid to arrive."

China's veto pretty much precludes a Security Council resolution which is why some, like journalist (and top public intellectual) Anne Applebaum are calling for a new "coalition of the willing" to deliver aid without the junta's cooperation. Applebaum acknowledges that the phrase has been "tainted forever" by its association with the war in Iraq, but she isn't the only one drawing that parrallel. The Christian Science Monitor quoted one Burmese merchant who wondered why his country didn't meet the criteria for humanitarian intervention:

"I want to talk to Mr. George Bush. What are you doing? United Nations, what are you doing? We have no food, no water. This is the worst government in the world. Same as Saddam Hussein. Why you cannot help us?"

KHIN MAUNG WIN/AFP/Getty Images

Since last week's deadly cyclone in Burma, the nation's ruling military junta has been reluctant to allow aid to enter the country. Since then, trickles of food, water and medicines have been allowed to enter the country, but international aid workers have not. Citing a government that failed to even warn its citizens of the impending disaster, international observers believe that the regime in Burma has neither the will nor the capacity to distribute aid fairly, that corrupt officials are profiting from aid packages, and that the situation created by these conditions threatens to outpace the humanitarian devastation of the 2004 tsunami.

Last week, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner--the founder of Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders)--suggested that the international community and the UN are obligated to intervene in Burma, regardless of the wishes of the military junta, in accordance with the "Responsibility to Protect", or R2P, as outlined by the UN at the General Assembly in 2005. The concept asserts that the international community is obligated to intervene in cases where states fail to protect their populations from "genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity."

There are widely varying opinions (pdf) on the legality of the Responibility to Protect. Some argue that it violates the basic concept of sovereignty, while others like the Washington Post's Fred Hiatt, believe as Kouchner does, that the UN is abdicating its responsibility in Burma. Garreth Evans, of the International Crisis Group, offers a more nuanced interpretation in an editorial for The Guardian:

If it comes to be thought that R2P, and in particular the sharp military end of the doctrine, is capable of being invoked in anything other than a context of mass atrocity crimes, then such consensus as there is in favour of the new norm will simply evaporate in the global south. And that means that when the next case of genocide or ethnic cleansing comes along we will be back to the same old depressing arguments about the primacy of sovereignty that led us into the horrors of inaction in Rwanda and Srebrenica in the 1990s."

He admits that if the inaction and neglect of the Burmese government is widely interpreted as a crime against humanity, then there might be room for the principle's application.

But there is no disagreement that the people of Burma can't wait for these issues to be bandied about at the Security Council or across editorial pages. Frustrated nations have a choice to make: either they must defy the wishes of the Burmese junta and send aid workers or airlifts to the Irrawaddy Delta, or they must submit to the regime and send whatever they have in the hopes that it will reach those in need. Regardless, it is clear that moralizing and posturing on the issue is not going to influence many, either in Rangoon or at the UN.

AFP/AFP/Getty Images

It seems hard to imagine a scenario in which the massive earthquake that rocked China's western Sichuan Province at 2:28pm local time today has not killed tens of thousands -- possibly more. Beijing originally put the death toll at 61. Hours later, the figure was increased to "up to 8,500." With rescuers, including thousands of Chinese soldiers, still unable to reach the epicenter of the quake, one can only assume this figure is tragically optimistic.

Officials at the U.S. Geological Survey have said that the magnitude 7.9 quake was relatively shallow. Shallow earthquakes do more damage near their epicenters than ones which occur deeper in the Earth. Just over 30 years ago, in 1976, a similarly shallow quake, measuring magnitude 7.5, hit the northern Chinese city of Tangshan. It killed more than 250,000 people.

It's worth watching Beijing's response to the crisis, for a couple of reasons (in addition to any worst-case Olympic scenarios).The first will be to see how real recent transformations in Beijing's disaster response policies are, including a new network of emergency management offices and provisions which give local leaders more autonomy in times of crisis. So far, the speed with which Beijing has responded has been impressive. Can it be sustained and intensified?

The second will be to gauge Beijing's commitment to transparency with regard to the scale and scope of the quake's impact. So far, information seems to have flowed relatively freely to the Western media. As the scale of the disaster increases, and with it the death toll, in all likelihood revealing deficiencies in engineering and infrastructure, it will be interesting to see if these channels of communication remain as open.

The full extent extent of the damage caused by the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that hit China's Sichuan Province on Monday afternoon is just starting to become clear. It is estimated that about 9,000 people were killed. The quake was felt in Beijing and Shanghai, and in places as far reaching as Taipei, Hanoi and Bangkok.

In order to reassure people and to squelch false rumors, the Chinese government is using SMS text messaging (translated) to mobile phones as well as internet postings to inform people that the areas where they live are not in the seismic zone. Over a million such messages were sent in nearby Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and Guizhou Province.

The government plans to use text messaging not only for emergencies, but for various situations relating to the public interest. The plan is part of the government's new openness in information regulations which it says will promote "openness as principle, being closed off as the exception" in an effort to provide timely and accurate information to the public.

The hand of the government doesn't seem so far away when it's reaching you through a device clutched in yours.

AFP/AFP/Getty Images

Nearly a week after Cyclone Nargis devastated Burma, the first UN World Food Program and Red Cross planes were finally allowed to land in Yangon today. U.S. military planes carrying supplies are still waiting in Bangkok for permission to fly from the Burmese government.

Meanwhile, the humanitarian crisis continues to worsen. The total number of casualties is anywhere between 23,000 and 100,000 depending on estimates and over 1 million people may have lost their homes. As the arresting images in FP's photo essay "Burma Picks up the Pieces" show, rebuilding after this catastrophe would be a monumental task for any state. For one as repressive and paranoid as Burma, it may be impossible.

While it might seem unimaginable to find a reason for optimism in suffering of this scale, the Burmese people can only hope that the cyclone, and the government's inept handling of it, might be the final blow that brings this odious regime to an end.

The 130-mph winds and 12-foot-high waves of Cyclone Nargis have already left at least 22,500 dead and another 40,000 missing along Burma's Andaman coast and Irrawaddy river basin, but the worst may not be over. Caryl Stern, head of the U.S. fund for UNICEF, said of the days to come, "Our biggest fear is that the aftermath could be more lethal than the storm itself."

Burma's paranoid, isolationistic junta has actually asked for international assistance in the face of this mounting disaster, but according to The Irrawaddy, a Burmese newsmagazine run out of Thailand, government cooperation with international relief groups is still questionable in practice.

As seen in this week's Tuesday Map(s), though, the biggest issue on the ground may simply be standing water -- miles and miles of standing water.

These images from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite show just how much of Burma's coastal plain is now under water.

On April 15, the image shows clean-cut river tracks and a visible shoreline:

NASA

The May 5 image, however, is clearly a different story:

NASA

And this map, created by UNOSAT (the Operational Satellite Applications Program of the U.N. Institute for Training and Research), shows the flooding's impact on Burma's citizens along the Andaman coast:

UNOSAT

As you can see, standing flood water (red-pink areas) has unfortunately closely followed the denser populations (red/orange dots) of this agricultural region. And that's why the cyclone's toll has been so astoundingly high.

KHIN MAUNG WIN/AFP/Getty Images

The devastating cyclone that hit Burma this weekend, killing perhaps 22,500 people -- 40,000 more are still missing -- seems to have spared the country's new administrative capital, Naypyidaw. Deep in the heart of the country's interior and surrounded by mountainous jungle, the isolated new capital, only unveiled last year, suits the insular military junta just fine. But The Irrawaddy reports that civil servants and military officials, many of whom left family behind in Rangoon, are bucking orders from the junta to stay put. Instead, they've fled to look for lost family members in the cyclone's path:

We left our children in Rangoon, and we should be there with them now," the official said, adding that higher authorities have turned down all requests for leave until after the May 10 referendum.

Many of Burma's bureaucrats have homes in Rangoon, where they lived until the junta suddenly shifted the capital to Naypyidaw in November 2005. Telephone lines and Internet connections in Rangoon, which is still the country’s main commercial center, have been down since Friday.

Military personnel with relatives in the stricken area have also been returning to their homes without permission from their commanding officers.

Perhaps another sign that bungling relief efforts could weaken the junta's control?