Losing sight of people can spell disaster

October 3rd, 2009 MANILA - A powerful typhoon Saturday battered extreme northern Philippines with forceful winds and heavy rains, but spared the capital and surrounding areas still recovering from devastating floods. Typhoon Parma toppled trees and ripped off rooftops in Cagayan province, 405 km north of Manila, hours before it was set to make landfall in the town of Santa Ana Saturday evening.

September 7th, 2009 TAIPEI - Taiwan Premier Liu Chao-shiuan submitted his resignation to the president Monday to take the blame for a disaster triggered by last month's Typhoon Morakot that left close to 700 dead and thousands homeless.

August 13th, 2009 KARACHI - Famous lawyer, human rights activist and Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) chairman Asma Jahangir has said that even the worst democracy is better than an army regime and Pakistan cannot afford another spell of army rule politically and economically. Delivering a lecture on 'Democracy and Human Rights in Pakistan: A Dead End?' at Aga Khan University on Wednesday, she said that army generals do not want Pakistan to be a real democratic country, so they gave Pakistan democracy in the shape of President Asif Ali Zardari and said go, enjoy democracy.

July 22nd, 2009 TAIPEI - Tens of thousands of people in Taiwan watched Wednesday's partial solar eclipse, but few said they still believe in superstitions that the eclipse could spell disaster. In Taipei, clusters of people gathered in squares, parks and on rooftops to try to catch a glimpse of the phenomenon, which appeared as a total eclipse in parts of India, Nepal, China and Japan and a partial eclipse in other areas of Asia.

July 11th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A major series of reports into crowd behaviour and management has determined that losing sight of people in a crowd because of a more focused approach on technology can spell disaster. Compiled for the Cabinet Office by researchers from two centres within Leeds University Business School (COSLAC and CSTSD), the reports claim that over-reliance on technical and IT solutions means we fail to learn the lessons from past disasters.

July 1st, 2009 LONDON - The foreign troops in Afghanistan are losing the battle against militants because their leaders don't know how to handle the war, a former British diplomat has said. "We're losing," Paddy Ashdown, former British representative for Bosnia, said Tuesday.

June 29th, 2009 MELBOURNE - Almost two-thirds of the Australian adults have difficulty spelling the word 'embarrass', finds a new survey. The Galaxy survey commissioned by Westpac was conducted on 400 people, aged over 16 years, from Sydney and Melbourne.

June 15th, 2009 LONDON - A new study has shown that a majority of Brits find it difficult to properly spell the word 'definitely'. The 10-letter word of English language topped the list of commonly misspelt words as most of them mix up the second 'I' with an 'A'.

June 8th, 2009 LONDON - Mobile phones of the future would be able to form a peer-to-peer network to sound an alarm in the event of a disaster, and pass on the alert from phone to phone, even if most of a cellphone network is down. According to a report in New Scientist, this futuristic scenario might soon be a reality, if a new patent application by Telecommunications Company Motorola is anything to go by.

May 14th, 2009 FEMA rolls out new disaster housing optionsEMMITSBURG, Md. — Federal officials are rolling out new mobile homes for disaster victims to replace the much-criticized travel trailers used in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

April 30th, 2009 Myanmar cyclone victims burdened by debtBANGKOK — Without hundreds of millions of dollars in additional assistance, many victims of last year's devastating cyclone in Myanmar will be unable to rebuild homes or replant flooded fields in the Irrawaddy delta, the British charity Oxfam said Thursday. Foreign governments and charities provided at least $315 million for food aid and emergency assistance in the months after Cyclone Nargis hit the country May 2-3, 2008, killing 138,000 people and leaving 800,000 homeless.

April 30th, 2009 LAHORE - The Pakistan Government has issued shoot-on-sight orders for 'miscreants' in Karachi to counter the deteriorating law and order situation in the city. State Minister for Ports and Shipping Nabeel Gabol said certain elements were trying to create trouble in the region by fanning ethnic tension.

March 12th, 2009 LONDON - Brit celebrity Jade Goody fears that she may never get a glimpse of her two young sons, Bobby, five, and Freddie, four, again as cancer takes away her sight. Goody, 27, has been fighting to be allowed to go home from hospital so that she can spend her remaining time with her boys, but her pals have revealed that her condition is so bad that she can barely see, with just one eye working.

March 11th, 2009 LONDON - Terminally ill British reality TV star Jade Goody's condition has worsened. The cancer-stricken actress lost sight in one eye as her cancer takes hold.

February 3rd, 2009 LONDON - There is some hope for aphasics who have virtually lost the capacity to speak, read or write, even though their intellectual ability remains intact, after a stroke or head injury sustained in road accidents. Their writing skills can now be potentially helped with computerised aids, according to doctoral study conducted by language pathologist Ingrid Behrns from the Sahlgrenska Academy of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.