Even if typhoons have flooded my yard, destoyed my property, have devastated my crops, eroded my land, and buried my home with landslide, I could still smile. At least I am still alive to continue with my dreams.

Yes, there is still hope after the tempest! There is still another day to come after the night which brought us this nightmare. There will still be a tommorrow, a new day which bring us back the sun and the sky to look upon.

So stop now from crying dear little child, don,t worry you can still have a new home, a food to eat, and a backyard to play.

Oh, come and sing with me little child, let’s smile and listen to the music that brings hope into our lives. Keep that fire of strenght lights on your spirit!

Go go go my little child!

There is still music, let’s dance. That’s what you want… Okay let’s dance the cha cha, the tango, the waltz… Sorry how could I dance with you, I don’t know how to do ballroom dancing. All I know is hip hop. What? You do hip hop at your age? Well dancing today’s steps is immaterial of age…

There is still music, let’s dance and do the tango… What tango? I am not prepared for that. It’s a dance for well mannered persons which I am not. Hmmm, you are kidding. You learned that long ago… You are wrong, I’m only here for a while, HAHAHAHA. Hmmm even in your laughter there is music, why don’t you dance instead… Yeah, why not… I don’t even know how to start the first steps for a waltz!

You are a disgrace to culture and art. I am not, I am an artist myself… Okay you are, but will you please dance with me? With all my pleasure, I do. Thank you. Now there is music again. Let’s dance… Yes let’s dance… Right now… Let’s do the tribal dance! What? Let’s do the tribal dance…

With the price of oil products going higher, poor people from developing nations of the world are also going hungry. Japan helps developing countries cope with “soaring food prices” by allocating $50 million for emergency food aid. 

Japan gives $50 million to food crisis

Associated Press

TOKYO - Japan announced Friday it will provide $50 million in new emergency food aid to help developing countries cope with the impact of soaring food prices.

Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura said Tokyo will distribute the aid by October, in addition to $200 million it had already pledged.

Rapidly rising food prices are expected to be a top agenda item at the summit of the Group of Eight industrialized nations, which Japan is hosting July 7-9.

The world is grappling with surging prices of corn, wheat, rice, soybeans and other agriculture products. The price hikes are blamed on a range of factors including high oil prices, changing diets, urbanization, expanding populations, extreme weather, growth in biofuel production and financial speculation.

Rising food prices have set off riots and protests from Africa to Asia and raised fears about a food crisis that could cause millions more people to suffer malnutrition.

This one keeps me thinking, am I really happy living in my own country? Or, do I need to relocate some other places like Denmark? But happiness is a relative thing, right?

Study: World Gets Happier

 LiveScience Staff

  LiveScience.com

 Despite the anxieties of these times, happiness has been on the rise around the world in recent years, a new survey finds.

 The upbeat outlook is attributed to economic growth in previously poor countries, democratization of others, and rising social tolerance for women and minority groups.

“It’s a surprising finding,” said University of Michigan political scientist Ronald Inglehart, who headed up the survey. “It’s widely believed that it’s almost impossible to raise an entire country’s happiness level.”

Denmark is the happiest nation and Zimbabwe the the most glum, he found. (Zimbabwe’s longtime ruler Robert Mugabe was sworn in as president for a sixth term Sunday after a widely discredited runoff in which he was the only candidate. Observers said the runoff was marred by violence and intimidation.)

The United States ranks 16th.

The results of the survey, going back an average of 17 years in 52 countries and involving 350,000 people, will be published in the July 2008 issue of the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science. Researchers have asked the same two questions over the years: “Taking all things together, would you say you are very happy, rather happy, not very happy, not at all happy?” And, “All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days?”

A Happiness Index created from the answers rose in 40 countries between 1981 and 2007, and it fell in the other 12.

Scientists had thought happiness is stable over time when looking at entire societies. “Most previous research suggests that people and nations are stuck on a ‘hedonic treadmill,’” Inglehart said. “The belief has been that no matter what happens or what we do, basic happiness levels are stable and don’t really change.”

So Inglehart’s team was surprised that happiness “rose substantially.” They speculate reasons for the sunny outlooks include societal shifts in recent decades: Low-income countries such as India and China have experienced unprecedented rates of economic growth; dozens of medium-income countries have democratized; and there has been a sharp rise of gender equality and tolerance of ethnic minorities and gays and lesbians in developed societies.

Previous research has found that happiness is partly inherited and that money doesn’t buy much of it.

Yet the new survey finds people of rich countries tend to be happier than those of poor countries. And controlling for economic factors, certain types of societies are much happier than others.

“The results clearly show that the happiest societies are those that allow people the freedom to choose how to live their lives,” Inglehart said.

A survey released last week found one reason America doesn’t top the list: Baby Boomers are generally miserable compared to other generations. Further, a public opinion poll released by the Pew Research Center in April found that 81 percent of Americans say they believe the country is on the “wrong track.” The response is the most negative in the 25 years pollsters have asked the question.

The World Values Surveys, led by Inglehart, was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Swedish and Netherlands Foreign Ministries, and other institutions.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Agence France-Presse

SAN FERNANDO, Romblon – The owners of a sunken Philippine ferry are unwilling to see its vessel refloated because it would be unable to claim full damages from insurers, a maritime official said Saturday.

The senior official said that the submerged Princess of the Stars, which contains hundreds of dead bodies inside, could easily be refloated but the shipping line and authorities were stalling.

The ferry, which sank off the central island of Sibuyan with 850 people aboard in a typhoon a week ago, has an intact hull with air pockets that could be used to float it once more and put it right side up, the official said.

However, declining to be named, he said the owners, Sulpicio Lines, and the coast guard “are not pursuing that tack because they are waiting apparently for the insurers to conduct their own investigation.”

“If they re-float the vessel, Sulpicio will not be able to claim damages for a total wreck,” the senior official said.

The 24,000-ton ferry is sitting upside down on a reef off Sibuyan, part of its hull jutting from the waters. Only 57 survivors have been found and it is believed that most of the bodies of the dead are trapped inside the hull.

Philippine Coast Guard and Navy divers, assisted by US Navy frogmen, were trying to retrieve the dead from the ship but the already slow-moving operation was suspended Friday after it was discovered the vessel was carrying a shipment of a toxic pesticide that might leak into the water.

The maritime official said the pesticide complicated the operation but remarked that the coast guard should have had blueprints of the ship and other documents from Sulpicio Lines identifying its cargo before the retrieval operations began.

The site of the sinking, earlier a hive of activity with rescue divers and their boats criss-crossing the waters, was quiet on Saturday with only a boat from the Bureau of Fisheries seen taking water samples for testing.

Nanette Tansingco, mayor of the coastal town of San Fernando, closest to the ill-fated ship, said she had barred fishermen from the area due to the pesticide threat.

“We will be doing a lot of studies in the area to make sure no one gets ill from eating fish,” she said.

Officials earlier said that they found no trace of the pesticide in the waters but are not taking chances and have subjected the divers to medical tests.

Navy spokesman Lt. Col. Edgardo Arevalo said that so far, there have been no reports of divers poisoned by the pesticide although some are suffering from infections and fever from the numerous dives they had to make.

One Coast Guard diver earlier this week suffered the bends and had to undergo decompression due to a prolonged dive to look for bodies.

Arevalo said experts from Singapore were expected to arrive soon to assess “how the hull can be breached so the container of pesticide can be brought out.”

The Navy spokesman said he had not heard of any suggestions of re-floating the vessel.

The Coast Guard meanwhile said it had recovered 16 additional dead bodies from the ferry, floating in the waters or on the shores of the island of Masbate, some 60 kilometers (37 miles) from Sibuyan.

This adds to the 146 bodies from the ferry that were earlier recovered from the ferry.

Local authorities said another 20 bodies were waiting to be picked up in Pasacao town, east of Sibuyan but this could not yet be confirmed.

The slow recovery of dead bodies has angered relatives who have trooped to Sulpicio Lines offices in Manila and the central city of Cebu waiting for word of their loved ones.

The Coast Guard commander for Manila, Luis Tuazon, was suspended pending an investigation in his role in the sinking, Coast Guard spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Armand Balilo although this did not mean he was suspected of wrongdoing.

Sulpicio Lines has had at least three other major accidents since 1987, when its Dona Paz vessel collided with an oil tanker, killing around 4,000 people.

The government suspended the company’s operations until further notice, while anti-corruption campaigners are planning a class action lawsuit. A board of inquiry is also conducting hearings on the company’s possible liability.

(Photo file of rescue operation from the internet)

Philippine authorities are running short of body bags and formaldehyde in the recovery of victims from the capsized ferry. Meanwhile about 1 billion pesos ($22.4 million) is the estimated cost of damage to homes, bridges, and roads of the typhoon “Frank.” Around 1,100 deaths have been recorded also as the result of the typhoon. Relief operations to typhoon victims is on-going even if President Arroyo has left the country recently for an official trip to the U.S.

USS Ronald Reagan to aid in the relief effort…

Reuters

SIBUYAN ISLAND – Some 50 bodies were found 100 km (60 miles) from a giant capsized ferry in the Philippines on Wednesday, and Washington said it would send an aircraft carrier to help with typhoon relief efforts.

Typhoon “Frank” (international codename Fengshen) tore into the center of the country at the weekend, toppling the MV Princess of the Stars, with 865 passengers and crew on board, as well as a coal tanker and eight fishing vessels, and displaced hundreds of thousands.

The overall death toll from the sixth typhoon to hit the Philippines this storm season could reach around 1,100, while the damage bill to homes, bridges and roads has been put at nearly P1 billion ($22.4 million).

The United States, the Philippines’ former colonial master, pledged to send an aircraft carrier, the USS Ronald Reagan, to aid in the relief effort in the storm battered archipelago of more than 7,000 islands.

The main focus of the rescue effort has been the seven-storey ferry where hundreds are still feared trapped. U.S. and Philippine divers on Wednesday were scouting first class cabins on the ship before descending deeper.

So far, 48 people are known to have survived the ferry disaster but hopes of finding more alive are dim.

On Wednesday, about 50 bodies were found floating around 100 km (60 miles) north of the Princess of the Stars but Lieutenant-Colonel Edgard Arevalo could not yet confirm if they were from the ferry.

So far, 60 corpses had been found above water, including a Caucasian but officials said it was not possible yet to identify his nationality.

The retrieval operation is precarious. The ferry’s stern off the central island of Sibuyan is wedged on a rocky ledge and strong waves could cause it to slide down.

Body bags needed

Rescuers, meanwhile, are running short of body bags and formaldehyde.

“Right now, what our navy personnel are using to control the smell is gin,” said Arevalo.

In the central city of Cebu, relatives were waiting for the first ship to arrive from Sibuyan island bringing the bodies of their loved ones. Doctors, finger print technicians and a dentists were on hand to help with the identification.

Shipping tragedies are common in the Philippines, where safety rules are poorly implemented and substandard vessels ply dangerous waters.

An inquiry has already started into the Princess of the Stars tragedy. Sulpicio Lines said the coast guard had given it permission to sail and the captain tried to seek shelter when he realized Typhoon Fengshen had changed direction.

One survivor, who drifted for nearly 24 hours on a rubber dingy, said focusing on his relatives kept him alive.

“I just kept on thinking my family needs me. They are relying on me for our daily survival. I don’t want them to just discover the following day that I am already a cold corpse.”

The tragedy could be the Philippines’ worst maritime disaster since 1987 when the Dona Paz ferry collided with an oil tanker, killing more than 4,000 people.

Sulpicio Lines, which owns the Princess of the Stars, also owned the Dona Paz.

Fengshen, which has weakened to a tropical storm over southern China, has also killed at least 288 people in the south and centre of the country, disaster officials said.

More than 430,000 people were forced to evacuate their homes, and nearly 300,000 people remain with friends and relatives or are packed into churches, town halls and schools.

(AP Photo: Burmese coping up after the cyclone. At the background, Suu Kyi’s banner with monks behind her)

As cyclone aids continue to flow to Myanmar, the military regime quietly detained Aung San Suu Kyi for another year to her home in Yangon. Key donors however assured d that he Outrage over Suu Kyi’s house arrest will not hamper relief work. The United Nations also reported on Wednesday “small gains in getting aid to cyclone survivors.”

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed regret over Suu Kyi’s continued arrest while praising “a new spirit of cooperation” between the junta and the international community in the aid effort.  

Bush “deeply troubled”

As expected Bush sounds disappointment to a year-long extension on the house arrest of Suu Kyi.

In Washington, President Bush said Tuesday he was “deeply troubled” by the extension of Suu Kyi’s house arrest but stressed the U.S. would continue to provide aid to the victims.

Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace laureate who has been detained for more than 12 of the past 18 years, had her detention extended by one year Tuesday, a government official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

On Wednesday, her National League for Democracy party denounced the extension as “illegal,” saying it would launch an appeal. Party spokesman Nyan Win said the regime should also open a public hearing on the case.”

The decision came just two days after UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon left Myanmar following a donor conference that generated tens of millions of dollars in aid pledges in response to the cyclone that left 133,000 dead or missing

“The United States will continue to help the people of Burma recover from the devastation of Cyclone Nargis and will continue to support the Burmese people’s long-term struggle for freedom,” he said.

Improved Cooperation with the Junta

Even with Suu Kyi’s detention, international contines to flow with improved cooperation from the regime.

Despite condemnation pouring in from around the world, aid agencies said they had seen signs of improved cooperation with the regime.

“All the major obstacles we’ve been facing have been resolved. Now the relief effort will scale up more quickly,” said Richard Horsey, spokesman for the UN’s disaster relief arm in Bangkok.

He said more than 200 international staffers were now in Myanmar working with the United Nations, and that those who have entered the delta have not encountered any major problems.

“My understanding is there haven’t been any problems so far and they’ve been able to go where they’ve wanted to go, which is mainly the most-affected regions,” Horsey said.

Foreign Staffers Moving into the Delta

Emergency food supplies are slowly moving in to the delta to be distributed to the victims.

The U.N. says some of their foreign staffers have begun moving into the delta and emergency food supplies are being ferried in on its helicopters.

“Some international aid workers and NGOs have already gone into the regions of the Irrawaddy delta, without any problem,” Ban told reporters in New York on Tuesday. “I hope — and I believe — that this marks a new spirit of cooperation between Myanmar and the international community as a whole.”

The regime has forbidden direct aid by warships of France, the United States and Great Britain, which have been standing by off the Myanmar coast to deliver the assistance. Myanmar’s state media has voiced fears of a U.S. invasion to grab the country’s oil reserves.

Alternative Ways of Delivering Aids

After the suspicious military junta refuse to allow French ship to enter the country and deliver thousands of tons of supplies, international donors found and alternative way of delivering aid and is working.

Donors also began trying alternative ways of delivering aid.

After Myanmar refused to allow the French naval ship Mistral to enter the country, the thousands of tonnes of supplies on board were unloaded Wednesday in Phuket in neighbouring Thailand.

The supplies will now be loaded on to a commercial vessel, which the junta is willing to accept.

Myanmar’s state media, which insisted for three weeks that the military could handle the relief effort itself, has taken a more open tone about foreign aid.

The government mouthpiece New Light of Myanmar on Wednesday again highlighted the work done by WFP and charities like Doctors Without Borders.

Access Remained Spotty

Even as foreign aid worker are allowed to access to the delta to distribute aids, some still have to struggle to reach the victims.

“Everybody may make donations freely. Everybody may make donations to any person or any area,” the paper said.

But access remained spotty, with some saying they were still struggling to get into the delta.

Florian Meyer, an aid expert with the German relief group Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund Deutschland, said he has tried and failed to win access for the past two weeks.

 

“Myanmar begins 3-day mourning period”

 Today Myanmar began a three-day mourning for thousands of people who perished, about 78,000 cyclone victims, when Cyclone Nargis devastated Myanmar particularly at the Irrawaddy delta. Flags were lowered to half staff at government offices, schools, and large hotels to “mourn for people killed by Cyclone Nargis on May 2-3, 2008.

 The mourning began a day after junta leader Senior Gen. Than Shwemet met with storm victims in the hard-hit Irrawaddy delta and declared that the regime had “promptly carried out rescue and rehabilitation tasks,” according to state-owned media. The general even bragged that the government spent more than 45 million US dollars in assisting the victims met immediate needs such as food, shelter, and health care on its relief operations. “But his assessment contrasted with ones from foreign aid agencies and the United Nations, which said that only some 500,000 of the 2.4 million storm victims have received some form of international assistance.”

The three-day mourning has come after the ruling junta relented to international pressures to allow inflow of more foreign aids to help the storm survivors. The junta is trying to project a compassionate image of the military regime to the victims. It’s a crocodile-tears of a regime that initially refused foreign aids when people needed them most. This stubborn general Than Shwe initiated the mourning as a form of propaganda since he can no longer resist international pressure to allow foreign aids and volunteer relief workers to come. UN insists to really come and look after the needs of survivors who face disease, malnutrition, and exposure to the elements. “It is clear that the emergency phase is set to continue for some time,” the United Nations said.

Heavy rain fell on the delta again Monday, said the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, noting that such weather can have the benefit of providing clean water for those able to catch the downpour with plastic sheeting.”

Myanmar already agreed to open its doors to medical teams from all ASEAN countries; ASEAN member Thailand had already sent teams in, as did non-ASEAN neighbors India and China. But the United Nations said the rest of its foreign staff were still barred from the delta and it described conditions there as “terrible,” with hundreds of thousands of cyclone victims suffering from hunger, disease and lack of shelter.

So, Than Shwe is mourning? A crocodile-tears from a ruthless general is an insult to humanity.

(There is a need for more doctors to attend to the wounded)

This idiot Myanmar government is doing a great disservice to its people by continually blocking and slowing down the flow of aid. Those shenanigan military junta officials have put first their own interest rather than attending to the needs of millions of its citizens already  distressed due to lack of food and worsening illnesses. Now is day 11 after Cyclone Nargist afflicted millions of people at the Irrawaddy delta.

 Burma’s sufferings inflicted by the corrupt military is further compounded after cyclone Nargist hit the country claiming about tens and thousands of lives and rendering thousands of families homeless;  a great number of people were injured and suffering from various illnesses as an aftermath of the cyclone.

As of this writing, another powerful storm headed toward Myanmar’s cyclone-devastated delta, where victims received so little aid. The U.N. warned on Wednesday of a “second wave of deaths” among an estimated 2 million survivors.

The Hawaii-based Joint Typhoon Warning Center warned that there is a good chance that “a significant tropical cyclone” will form within the next 24 hours heading across the Irrawaddy delta area, one of Myanmar’s key rice-producing areas.

On May 3, Cyclone Nargis inundated the region that was already isolated and underdeveloped. Reports of the scale of Nargis’ destruction after a week listed some 60,000 people either killed or missing. Some fear the death toll may reach to 100,000. “Disaster experts know that the key to cutting the casualty count is a quick response:

At the rate those heartless generals in the ruling military junta are ignoring UN call, and holding up international relief efforts, about 1.5 million people of Myanmar shall be overwhelmed by shortages of food, shelter, medicines and drinkable water. This may lead to an outbreak of diseases and without immediate medical attention millions are at risk of in what they call “second wave of disaster.”

“The military junta is xenophobic and deeply paranoid.” It is afraid that entry of international relief will lessen their grip to the affected citizens. The government would rather limit the distribution of aid and limiting the numbers of foreign workers than ensuring that most victims are helped. The military junta is a disaster to the people itself.

What is even more disturbing are reports from volunteers of Irrawaddy delta that Burmese officials were appropriating emergency aid supplies and selling them in local markets. “Burmese volunteers likewise, who are operating their own aid missions, are hiding from “local apparatchiks” to avoid commandeering their supplies.”

“But we know that for every 10 sacks of rice we give them, only four will reach the people. The other six will end up being sold by that official on a market in some local town. Rice prices are very high right now and that official will then make a good profit.”

People are hungry and dying, yet these merciless Burmese officials still have the nerve to sell and make profit from foreign aids. 

It’s a pity that Myanmar (Burma) keeps on denying countries all over the world to distribute relief goods. The military Junta proclaims it is in control of everything while thousands of cyclone victims die everyday. The United Nations is so desperate in reaching out the victims. The suspicious military Junta on the other hand still closes the door for aids and services to come to reach the needy. Where is your heart?

Ang mga buwiset na military Junta na iyan ay parang mga hayop ang turing sa kanilang mga kababayan na nasalanta ng cyclone. Bakit hindi pa ang mga hinayupak na heneral na iyan ang tinamaan ng magaling at nalunod na lang sa ilog at dagat, o kaya’y natabunan na ng lupa at mabulok hanggang impierno. Nasaan ang iyong puso? Matitiis ba ninyo ang mga naghihingalo na ninyong kababayan? Magpakatao kayo!

Read this posting from the Yahoo News.

Myanmar rejects US, UN pressure on aid

by Hla Hla Htay 

YANGON (AFP) – Myanmar’s military rulers on Tuesday rejected growing international pressure to accept aid workers, insisting against all the evidence that it had the emergency cyclone relief effort under control.

Even as US President George W. Bush and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon voiced their fury at the country’s generals, and aid agencies again warned that time was running out, the regime remained defiant about letting in outsiders.

“The nation does not need skilled relief workers yet,” Vice Admiral Soe Thein said in the New Light of Myanmar newspaper, a mouthpiece for the military which has ruled the nation with an iron grip for nearly half a century.

He said the needs of the people following the storm, which has left around 62,000 dead or missing since ripping through the southern Irrawaddy delta on May 2, “have been fulfilled to an extent”.

But aid agencies tell a starkly different story, warning that as every day passes without sufficient food, water and shelter, as many as two million people are at risk of adding to the already staggering death toll.

Just hours after the United States sent its first aid plane into the country since the tragedy — following days of negotiations — Bush said the world should “be angry and condemn” the junta.

“Either they are isolated or callous,” he said. “There’s no telling how many people have lost their lives as a result of the slow response.”

The United States has long been one of the most vocal critics of the regime, repeatedly tightening sanctions on Myanmar over its refusal to shift towards democracy or release opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest.

But Ban Ki-Moon also took aim at the junta, using unusually strong language for a UN chief to insist that outside aid experts be allowed in immediately to help direct the fumbling relief effort.

“I want to register my deep concern and immense frustration on the unacceptably slow response to this grave humanitarian crisis,” Ban told a news conference at UN headquarters in New York.

“We are at a critical point. Unless more aid gets into the country very quickly, we face an outbreak of infectious diseases that could dwarf today’s current crisis,” he said.

“I therefore call in the most strenuous terms on the government of Myanmar to put its people’s lives first. It must do all it can to prevent this disaster from becoming even more serious.”

Myanmar’s military regime is also forcing cyclone survivors out forcing cyclone survivors out of their devastated villages and into other parts of the country, the United Nations said.

The country has welcomed donations of aid, even from the United States, which sent in its first planeload of supplies on Monday and said that two more military transporters would follow Tuesday.

But the generals remain deeply suspicious of the outside world and fearful of any outside influence which could weaken their control on every aspect of life in this poor and isolated nation, formerly known as Burma.

Aid groups insist that only specialists with long experience of disaster zones can ensure that the neediest get the aid they need — and navigate that aid through scenes of almost total destruction.

Eleven days after the disaster struck, thousands of hungry people, including many children , are still lining the roads on the route between the main city Yangon and the low-lying delta that bore the brunt of Cyclone Nargis, begging for food and water.

The storm churned up huge waves that turned the delta rice paddies into a saltwater swamp, and drowned untold numbers of people and animals — many of whose corpses are still rotting in the tropical heat.

Weakened by hunger, thirst, fatigue and the sheer psychological trauma of their ordeal, survivors face an enormous range of threats — from dysentery and pneumonia to wind-burn and deadly snake bites.

Myanmar is struggling to feed its people in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis — in part because the regime has been forcing some farmers to stop growing rice in a plan to produce biofuel  instead.

The United Nations said Monday that the current relief effort was running at about 10-20 percent of what was needed, and that although aid flights are arriving, there are serious bottlenecks in getting supplies to the delta.