Mos[t]ley a dull show about Manny Pacquiao

So-called sports analysts are now building up their case why Pacman did not deliver a KO.

The weather was cooperative Sunday morning in Manila.  The skies were somber gray, the heat wasn't as oppressive as the past days--the hottest recorded so far in Manila according to news reports--and the air was cool.   It's all because a storm locally called "Bebeng", "Aere" to the rest of the tropical world, was on its way towards the north of the Philippine archipelago.  We didn't know that it has started lashing the southern provinces in the Visayas and the Bicol region.  

"Bebeng" would arrive in Manila an hour after WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao shamed challenger 'Sugar' Shane Mosley after a lackluster 12-round bout at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Cool day for watching, but there was not much to get excited.

We watched the fight live for free at the Camp Aguinaldo grandstand, which military personnel and their dependents started filling up very early after breakfast. It didn't matter if were viewing pixelated images on a medium-size screen mounted on the side of a covered van.

Free live view at the Camp Aguinaldo grandstand/parade grounds.

The fight was boring though.  There were only two instances that got the crowd excited.  There was loud cheering when Pacman knocked down Mosley in the third round, and booing when the referee mistakenly gave the counts to the Pinoy champ who hit the floor in the 10th because he lost his balance.

This was the only instance when the crowd stood up to cheer!

We'd learn later that the Pacman felt the cramps ('cram' said he in his post-fight 'you know' interviews) in his left leg, reason why he could not go for the finish after the 3rd round.

Now they're talking about another fight sometime in November may be against Marquez. Or Mayweather?

There was something about his dream to 'end poverty' in the Philippines, that's why he was inviting every fan to wear yellow during the event to match his yellow gloves, yellow being the color of the Aquino administration.

Political colors?  Well, he was also wearing something blue.  His shorts were blue.  Defeated vice-presidential candidate and soon-to-be Aquino chief of staff (according to political rumorists) Mar Roxas wore blue during the yellow election campaign.

The champion happens to be the congressman of Sarangani province, and as of the latest who-is-the-richest-legislator monitor, he now tops the list being a billionaire from his very transparent source of income, the boxing ring.

This latest fight nets him at least $20-million, and Mosley gets just about $5-million in his purse.

Sunday was Mother's Day.  Pacman's mommy Dionisia was in prayer throughout the fight; she watched the replay. She said she got mad at Mosley for pushing his son to the floor.  Again, she told his son--through the press--to end his boxing career.

Her birthday is around the corner. Everybody knows that she wishes to get a green Hermes bag from the 'pambansang kamao' (the national fist).  She'll get that for sure because she asked her daughter-in-law Jinkee to tell that to her son.

Paris Hilton enjoyed the show. We did not. It was just a ho-hum sparring match. 

By the way, the self-appointed sports analysts in the Philippines who did their usual forecasts before the event and live biased coverages during the show are still at it, and this time as tropical storm 'Bebeng' is soaking MetroManila with heavy rains, they're getting their high doing 'post-mortem' diagnosis why Pacman did not deliver a KO.  

The Prince and the coal miner's great-great-great-great-granddaughter

Front page, 17 Nov 2010 issue of The Times, shows the blue engagement ring, his late mother's.

[Foreword:  We first read about the-prince-and-the-commoner story in the 27th November 2010 issue of El Mercurio, published in Santiago, Chile as Los Middleton de las minas de carbon a Buckingham [The Middletons. From the coal  mines to Buckingham].  The original in English was written by Andrew Norfolk for 19th November issue of The Press of The Times with the title Amazing journey from pit to palace. 

Clipped from the front page of the Saturday (Sabado), 27 Nov2010, issue of El Mercurio.

The feature page of the cover story, The Middletons/From the coal mines to Buckingham.

We clipped several rich illustrations from El Mercurio's follow-up stories and are spread out in this article. Our captions/notes are translations of the newspaper's Spanish text.]
 

As of this writing, it's 26 days to the "wedding of the decade", as one newspaper puts it, when Prince William takes Catherine 'Kate' Middleton to be his wife, "till death do [they] part." 

It's a Cinderella 2011 story, the second-in-line to the British crown marrying a coal miner's great-great-great-great-granddaughter on 29th April 2011!  This could have been unthinkable even in fairly recent times, a would-be-king bringing a commoner into the royal household, a stuff for mushy movies and dime novels. 

From the feature story of 02 April 2011 of ,El Mercurio.  Wedding details shown include the route to the reception from Westminster Abbey to Buckingham Palace; the blue sapphire engagement ring studded with 14 diamonds; the Rolls Royce Phantom VI that Kate will ride to the church; the State Landau 1902 that the newly weds will take from the Abbey to the reception; the main altar where the couple will exchange vows; St Edward's Chapel where the bride and groom will sign the marriage certificate; assigned seating places of the royal family, VIPs and other invited guests. 1,900 people have been invited, and about 2-billion are estimated to watch the live TV coverage.  Five carriages drawn by 18 horses will bring the newlyweds, the royal family and the sponsors to Buckingham.  The newlyweds will be greeted by 21 cannon shots from Fort Amherst.  The British press estimates that the Royal Wedding will cost about $80-million.

 

Kate's ancestors on her maternal side, 27-year-old James Harrison and the generations after  him, toiled underground for wages in the coal mines owned by the family of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon who married into the royal family and would later become Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, Prince William's great-grandmother.

Clipping from 23 Mar 2011 issue of El Mercurio showing the carriage and Rolls Royce.  Princess Diana rode in this carriage during her wedding to  Prince Charles.

James Harrison moved to the collieries when these opened in 1821.  It was Thomas Harrison, Kate's great-grandfather, born 1904, who would dare move out from the coal shafts and seek for fortune away from the mining town.

From the 27 Nov 2010 issue of El Mercurio:  The royal weddings of Queen Isabel and the Duke of Edinburgh (20 Nov 1947); Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson (07 Jul 1986); and Prince Charles and Diana (29 Jul 1981).  Also shown are the portrait of Princess Diana and her wedding dresses.

Kate proceeds from Thomas's daughter Dorothy (born 1935) and granddaughter Carole (born 1955)--women who worked hard to improve their social standing.   Carole worked with the British Airways where she met Michael Middleton.  Kate's parents got married in 1980, brought forth Kate in 1982, and launched their children's party business in 1987.

From the 27 Nov 2010 issue of El Mercurio.   Three pictures of Kate Middleton, one taken in an official event, another at a disco, and the third at Buckingham.  Middle photo shows her parents Michael and Carole Middleton.  Bottom right photo shows the prince's parents.

The world of course knows that the prince and the collier's great-great-great-great-granddaughter met at St Andrews University, were into a relationship for seven years, got engaged while on holiday in Kenya in October 2010, and their wedding date formally announced on 16 November 2010.

This is the 28 March 2011 front page of Red i of Chicago.

London is in frenzy these days.  We surmise that hotel rooms have already been pre-booked soon after the wedding announcement.  We can be certain that there is an increasing demand of whatever astute businessmen can think of as souvenir items like the usual caps, t-shirts, key chains, decals, etcetera.  There's The Royal Wedding William & Kate website that features "all the latest news, gossip, trivia" and where one can buy online "china, merchandise, souvenirs, memorabilia ..." and also a running days-hours-minutes-seconds countdown.

Clipping from the front page of the 17 Nov 2010 issue of Express of The Washington Post.

The Royal Mail has already announced that a commerative stamp of the royal wedding is to be launched on April 21 featuring the couple's official engagement pictures.

In this age of instant news, two billion viewers worldwide are estimated to watch the live TV coverage of William&Kate's wedding at the Westminster Abbey.  

We of course do not belong to the lucky 1,900 persons who have been invited to the royal wedding.

Clipping from the front page of the 06 December 2010 issue of My Paper of Singapore.

Elizabeth Taylor, 79: Giving beauty back to God, "beauty's self and beauty's giver"

 

We had a glimpse of Elizabeth Taylor with Richard Burton as they were coming out from rehearsal at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater in New York City sometime in the last week of April 1983.  They were starring in the stage production of Noel Coward's Private Lives of divorced couples due for opening on May 8 that year.

We were curious of the big crowd milling at the theater gate, and asked about the excitement in the air. Liz Taylor's coming out anytime!  Our only regret was that we didn't bring our camera, another photo-op missed.

We knew of Richard Burton and the other men in the life of Elizabeth Taylor.  We saw them together in the expensive but disappointing Cleopatra movie. We don't remember anything much else of the film except her iconic Cleopatra still pictures and the scandal surrounding her relationship with Burton during the making of the film. 

But we loved Liz Taylor as the rich, shrewish Katharina against Burton's brutish Petruchio in Franco Zafirelli's cinematic version of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew (1967).  Until today we can still hear her Marta in her bitter, drunken word war with Burton's George in Mike Nichols' movie of  Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966).  We came to know more of Liz the actress through the portable digital copies of her classic films:  as the socialite Leslie Lynnton, wife of the wealthy Texas rancher Jordan Benedict portrayed by her friend Rock Hudson in Giant (1956), as Maggie the Cat with Paul Newman as Brick in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), and as the high-class 'slut of all time' Gloria in Butterfield 8 (1960).

Movie lovers everywhere will remember her for her Martha and Gloria, for which she won two Oscars for best actress.  The world will not forget her for the friends she kept till their deaths--Rock Hudson and Michael Jackson--and her humanitarian spirit, in her commitment to and support of the AIDS campaign.

Hers was a "timeless beauty".  She of the legendary violet eyes was glamor up to the day she checked in at the hospital to bravely wait for death to claim her. She had already willfully rejected all further medical remedies.  After all she has survived pain and immobility through her 79 years brought about by "hundred surgeries and interventions of different types (including five back), which have been cured (and in some cases cause) of a long list of serious physical conditions such as brain tumor, skin cancer, diabetes, pneumonia, 

osteoporosis, stroke and chronic scoliosis."

 

Her parting words were from Gerald Manley Hopkins' The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo that she recited through her friend Colin Farrel at her graveside:  she is returning her beauty to God, "beauty's self and beauty's giver" (full text below). 

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89).  Poems.  1918.

The Leaden Echo And The Golden Echo

(Maidens’ song from St. Winefred’s Well)

The Leaden Echo

How to keep — is there any any, is there none such, nowhere known some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, lace, latch or catch or key to keep
Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, . . . from vanishing away?
Ó is there no frowning of these wrinkles, ranked wrinkles deep,
Down? no waving off of these most mournful messengers, still messengers, sad and stealing messengers of grey?
No there’s none, there’s none, O no there’s none,
Nor can you long be, what you now are, called fair,
Do what you may do, what, do what you may,
And wisdom is early to despair:
Be beginning; since, no, nothing can be done
To keep at bay
Age and age’s evils, hoar hair,
Ruck and wrinkle, drooping, dying, death’s worst, winding sheets, tombs and worms and tumbling to decay;
So be beginning, be beginning to despair.
O there’s none; no no no there’s none:
Be beginning to despair, to despair,
Despair, despair, despair, despair.

The Golden Echo

Spare!
There is one, yes I have one (Hush there!);
Only not within seeing of the sun,
Not within the singeing of the strong sun,
Tall sun’s tingeing, or treacherous the tainting of the earth’s air,
Somewhere elsewhere there is ah well where! one,
One. Yes I can tell such a key, I do know such a place,
Where whatever’s prized and passes of us, everything that’s fresh and fast flying of us, seems to us sweet of us and swiftly away with, done away with, undone,
Undone, done with, soon done with, and yet dearly and dangerously sweet
Of us, the wimpled-water-dimpled, not-by-morning-matched face,
The flower of beauty, fleece of beauty, too too apt to, ah! to fleet,
Never fleets more, fastened with the tenderest truth
To its own best being and its loveliness of youth: it is an everlastingness of, O it is an all youth!
Come then, your ways and airs and looks, locks, maiden gear, gallantry and gaiety and grace,
Winning ways, airs innocent, maiden manners, sweet looks, loose locks, long locks, lovelocks, gaygear, going gallant, girlgrace —
Resign them, sign them, seal them, send them, motion them with breath,
And with sighs soaring, soaring sighs deliver
Them; beauty-in-the-ghost, deliver it, early now, long before death
Give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty, back to God, beauty’s self and beauty’s giver.
See; not a hair is, not an eyelash, not the least lash lost; every hair
Is, hair of the head, numbered.
Nay, what we had lighthanded left in surly the mere mould
Will have waked and have waxed and have walked with the wind what while we slept,
This side, that side hurling a heavyheaded hundredfold
What while we, while we slumbered.
O then, weary then whý should we tread? O why are we so haggard at the heart, so care-coiled, care-killed, so fagged, so fashed, so cogged, so cumbered,
When the thing we freely forfeit is kept with fonder a care,
Fonder a care kept than we could have kept it, kept
Far with fonder a care (and we, we should have lost it) finer, fonder
A care kept. — Where kept? Do but tell us where kept, where. —
Yonder. — What high as that! We follow, now we follow. — Yonder, yes yonder, yonder,
Yonder.

 [Highlighting ours.]

As a politician's wife.

Source:  PrimeraFila of Las Ultimas Noticias (11 February 2011), Santiago, Chile

Still as glamorous as ever when she checked in at the hospital.  She was brave, the paper reported, bored of doctors and medicines, rejecting further medical treatment.

 

The 18-day war: "revolution of the youth of the internet ... of the youth of Egypt ... of Egypt itself"

The end of the "Pharaoh", other front pages of 13 February said.

"This is the revolution of the youth of the internet, which became the revolution of the youth of Egypt, then the revolution of Egypt itself." 

That's how the acknowledged hero of the Egyptian uprising, 30-year old Egyptian Google marketing executive Wael Ghonim, defined the leaderless revolution of eighteen days, waged from the command posts in the social networks and Tahrir Square and on the streets of Cairo and other major cities.  

People are already saying Ghonim started the revolution through his Facebook page "We are all Khaled Said", which he set up to protest police brutality in honor of Khaled Said, a businessman who died in the hands of the police in Alexandria last year.  This spark lit up the movement that raged into Tahrir Square on January 25 .  He had about 400,000 Facebook followers to fan the flames of war!

According to reports, Ghonim ran his popular Facebook account outside of his office hours in Dubai until he went home to Egypt purportedly for personal reasons. His Google bosses did not know about his activism until he disappeared, and they had to ran a campaign for his freedom.  He was kept in police custody for 12 days, most of the time blindfolded.  When he appeared on TV upon his release on 08 February, "hundreds of thousands of protesters returned to the streets of Cairo" (BBC, 09 Feb). 

"We won't give up," he urged the protesters in Tahrir Square.  They did not. Nothing would move them out from Tahrir until Mubarak bows out. They would not wait for his 30-year reign to end after his successor is elected in September.

 

Grab from CNN broadcast.

There were cyberworld [underground is now passe, we suppose] voices that summoned people's power to the streets.  Blogger Sandmonkey was one of them.  Until he came out through CNN after he was assaulted by pro-Mubarak elements on his way to the Square with food and medical supplies, nobody knew he was 29-year old Mahmoud Salem who grew up in Egypt and studied at Northwestern University in Boston.

Hosni Mubarak was reported to have flown out of Cairo with his family and trusted staff late February 11 to his seaside mansion in Sharm el-Sheikh, a resort town at the southern tip of the Sinai peninsula. Terrorists attacked this town in 2005, and 88 people got killed.

February 11 was the day in 1979 that the Shah of Iran was overthrown, and he went into exile.  Twenty five years ago this month, the United States flew out the dictator Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines from the presidential palace to Hawaii as a result of the peaceful EDSA or People Power revolution.  Those who were on EDSA could remember that it was a military mutiny that morphed into a people's revolution; the Church called on the people to go to EDSA to support the mutineers.

As soon as  Mubarak fell, the Sandmonkey, as expected went ranting in his blog of that name:

"Today [12 February], the people were more resolved than ever to get rid of Hosny Mubarak, especially after last night's provocative statement. I went to the presidential palaces alongside thousands of Egyptians and we surrounded it completely. Within a couple of hours we received the news: MUBARAK HAD ABDICATED!

"Now, mind you, he didn't really abdicate..the army overthrew him. That's why we only had Omar Suleiman letting us know this. But it doesn't matter. We will get all the money they stole and use it to rebuild the country.

"Tonight will be the first night where I go to bed and don't have to worry about state security hunting me down, or about government goons sent to kidnap me; or about government sponsored hackers attacking my website. Tonight, for the first time ever, I feel free…and it is awesome!  

"Save any and all disagreements with any of the groups that operate them. We will disagree with each other, and that will be sweet because no more dictatorship. Tomorrow we squabble, and…tonite?

"TONIGHT WE CELEBRATE! "  

Egypt is slowly going back to normalcy.  The Muslim Brotherhood banned through all the years has come back into the political discussions. Noble peace price winner ElBaradei tried to be a negotiator during the height of the storm, but he never emerged to be the leader. He said he's open to run in the September elections.

Children in the war.

Peace be with you.

The protest movement ousted Hosni Mubarak and the country is in the hands of the military. Whether there was a coup, as Sandmonkey views it, or not, the fact is the military and the protesters slept with each other during those cold nights in Tahrir Square.  The military protected them by fencing them off from the hostile pro-Mubarak elements with tanks and barbed steel wire barricades.

Egypt has always been in military hands; Mubarak who succeeded Anwar Sadat after his assassination were high military officials although they were elected by popular vote. It was a win-win scenario for the United States, Israel and the Arab world.  

It looks like Egypt's fate is now in the hands of Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi. Here's a view from Anthony Shadid of the New York Times:

"The Egyptian military consolidated its control on Sunday [13 February] over what it has called a democratic transition from nearly three decades of President Hosni Mubarak’s authoritarian rule, dissolving the feeble Parliament, suspending the Constitution and calling for elections in six months in sweeping steps that echoed protesters’ demands. .. Though enjoying popular support, the military must now cope with the formidable task of negotiating a post-revolutionary landscape still basking in the glow of Mr. Mubarak’s fall, but beset by demands to ease Egyptians’ many hardships....  The moves to suspend the Constitution and to dissolve Parliament, chosen in an election deemed a sham even by Mr. Mubarak’s standards, were expected. The statement declared that the supreme command would issue laws in the transitional period before elections and that Egypt’s defense minister, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, would represent the country, in a sign that the 75-year-old loyalist of Mr. Mubarak’s had emerged to the forefront. Protesters — and some classified American diplomatic cables — have dismissed him as a “poodle” of Mr. Mubarak’s. But some senior American officers say he is a shrewd operator who played a significant role in managing Mr. Mubarak’s nonviolent ouster. . "

Faces of the revolution.

Invoking the power of the Almighty God.

Ecumenical battle front.

    

References:

Profile: Egypt's Wael Ghonim. (2011, Feb 09). BBC News Middle East.  Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-1240052 

News Agencies. (2011, Feb 11). Report: Mubarak, family leave Cairo amid persisting unrest.  The Haaretz.com. Retrieved from http://www.haaretz.com/news/international/report-mubarak-family-leave-cairo-amid-persisting-unrest-1.342792

Kinzer, Stephen.  (2011, Feb 11).  Where Will Mubarak Go?  The Daily Beast. Yahoo News. 
Retrieved from http://news.yahoo.com/s/dailybeast/20110211/ts_dailybeast/12370_mubaraksteppingdownwherewillhego

Shadid, Anthony. (2011, Feb 13).  Egyptian Miltary Dissolves Parliament. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/14/world/middleeast/14egypt.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2
 

 Sandmonkey. (2011, Feb 12).  Mubarak's Egypt No More. Retrieved from blogsite Rantings of a Sandmonkey.

Horror and heroism in the Queensland flood disaster

The latest news is that of floodwater receding in Brisbane and surging into other areas in Queensland.  The video clips on TV last night showed passable city streets, cars back on the road and residents cleaning up the debris in their houses and yards.

Front page, 12 January 2011.

It was good to hear that 95% of the members of the Filipino communities in the affected areas did not have to abandon their homes, and the 5% who were in the evacuation centers have returned home.

Front Page, 14 January 2011.

 Brisbane got hit with its worst flood in 118 years since 1893 (Brisbane Times, 12 Jan).  That's all because Queensland had its wettest on record last year--"the wettest spring on record, the wettest September and December, while every month from August to December ranked in their respective top 10s"  with the average annual rainfall at 1109.73 mm against the mean rainfall for all of Australia at 690 mm (Nancarrow, 05 Jan).

"It's a tragedy of epic proportions," Glenda Kwek wrote (11 Jan), "as overwhelming volumes of water cut a destructive swathe through Queensland towards Brisbane and beyond, wrecking families and their fortunes in its path. ... rushing waters savaged Toowoomba, Lockyer Valley, Grantham and Murphys Creek in just one hour."

The turbulent waters claimed lives (15 deaths as of 14 Jan), damaged properties (up to 40,000) and totally crippled the state's mining industry (equivalent to $100-million lost per day in export revenues). The Cairn Post (14 Jan) puts the daily state loss at $460-million.

With Queensland under water and damage to rail services very extensive, the coal mines declared force majeure, creating a critical impact on supply and prices of thermal and metallurgical coals to consumers around the world..  

The sobering words of state Premier Anna Bligh and the heroism of citizens, the most heart-breaking of all that of 13-year old Jordan Rice who died to save his brother, stood out through the horror of the state's and Brisbane's massive flooding.

Bligh's ringing voice through the dark, dreadful weather --

Front page, 14 Jan 2011.

"It's breaking our hearts ... but it won't break our will."

Front page, 14 Jan 2011.

Clipping from The Border Mail 'the river city' front page. 

When the summer sun shines again on Queensland, and the long recuperation and restoration begins in the lives of families and communities, they will have Jordan Rice to remember and inspire. He reminds of the boy in the dike who plugs his finger through the leak and saves his town. Jordan's heroic act is an inspiring reminder in times of desperate circumstances.

The heroism of 13-year old Jordan is best described in the account of Peta Doherty and Nicky Phillips (How Jordan died to save his brother, Brisbane Times, 13 Jan):

Jordan Rice.  Source: Brisbane Times at http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/environment/weather/how-jordan-died-to-save-his-brother-20110112-19obf.html

"IT IS almost unimaginable the fear 13-year-old Jordan Rice would have felt as the car he and his family were in was pummelled by a wall of water.

"But as it began engulfing the vehicle, Jordan, who could not swim himself, insisted his younger brother, Blake, 10, be rescued first.

"Five minutes later he was clinging to a pole, dodging cars and wheelie bins after he risked his life to try to save the Rice family.

"While Blake was rescued, Jordan and his mother, Donna, 43, perished when they were swept away in the flood.

"''When I first saw the car the water was up to the number plate,'' Mr McErlean, 37, a Toowoomba builder, told the Herald.

"''I thought I would push it backwards but by the time I walked 20 metres, it [the water] was up on the bonnet and coming up the windscreen.''

"Mr McErlean grabbed a rope, tied one end to a post, the other around his waist and set out to rescue the woman and two boys but the fast-moving water swept him downstream.

"Another rescuer, known only as Chris, pulled Mr McErlean to safety before tying the rope to himself and approaching the car to grab Jordan.

"But Jordan wanted his brother to go first so Chris took Blake, handing him to Mr McErlean part way across before heading back to the car.

"''I had the boy in one hand, the rope in the other. I wasn't going to let go but then the torrent came through and was pulling us down,'' Mr McErlean said.

"''Then this great big tall fellow just came out of nowhere, bear hugged us and ripped us out of the water.

"''When I got back I turned to look at the guy [Chris]. He looked at me and we knew it was over. The rope snapped and the car just flipped.''

"Chris, who had been holding Jordan's hand until it was torn from him, flew metres in the air before locking his legs around a post in the centre of the road, said Mr McErlean.

"''The others were just gone, just disappeared,'' he said."

 

Sources:

1.   Brisbane Times Online. Queensland Under Water at  http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/environment/weather/qldfloods

      1.1   05 Jan 2011. Dan Nancarrow. 2010: Queensland's wettest year on record

      1.2   05 Jan 2011. Staff Reporters.   Flood recovery leader appointed

      1.3   11 Jan 2011. Glenda Kwek.   A terror that took their breath away ... and it's coming again

      1.4   11 Jan 2011. Staff Reporters.  Brisbane prepares for worst flood in 118 years

      1.5   13 Jan 2011. Peta Doherty and Nicky Phillips.  How Jordan died to save his brother

  

2.    Herald Sun (Melbourne) at http://www.heraldsun.com.au/

3..   The Cairns Post (Cairns) at http://www.cairns.com.au/

4.   Townsville Bulletin (Townsville) at http://www.townsvillebulletin.com.au/ 

5.   The Border Mail (Albury-Wodonga) at http://www.bordermail.com.au/

Death by earth & water in the Brazilian summer



Clipped front pages of Brazil papers, 13 January 2011.

In the translation, this non-Portuguese reader found the headline of A Noticia--"the coming events in 2011"--quite eerie since it has nothing to do with the photographic spread on the "catastrophe in Rio".  The show will definitely go on for the "over 20 trade fairs and conferences in Joinvilee" during the year, but as of now, rescue workers are desperately looking for victims of the landslides in Teresopolis, Nova Friburgo and Petropolis, three cities in the mountainous region near Rio de Janeiro. 

The mountain came tumbling down at dawn of Thursday, 13 January, after becoming water-logged from so much rain--almost a month's rain in 24 hours.  "Torrents of mud and water," Reuters reported, "set off by heavy rains left trail of destruction ... toppling houses, buckling roads and burying entire families as they slept." 

The latest death toll was 443, with more feared.  It may yet exceed the 594 lives lost in the same area, which Extra  reported for the decade (2001-10), more than half of that, 331, last year.  "It's a recurring tragedy," the paper cried, "but ate quando (until when)?" 

And yet it's summer in South America when the rains come in Brazil. It's the climate and urban sprawl combined, says Correio Braziliense, that causes this tragedy. The mountainsides have been stripped where people built brick and wooden houses.

"Landslides and flash floods are common in much of Brazil," Reuters reported, "often exposing poor urban planning and a lack of preventive action by authorities." Apparently, there are no housing policies that prevent poor people from building houses in risky areas such as the base of steep hills. According to Reuters, "President Dilma Rousseff, facing the first major challenge of her presidency since taking office on January 1, called it a tragedy that could not be blamed only on mother nature."

De javu? This catastrophe in Rio recalls the landslides that swept away hillside villages in northern Philippines, and the sudden flood that submerged large portions of Metro Manila, at the height of storm Ondoy in 2009. 

Clipped front page of Manila Bulletin (Philippines), 14 Jan 2011.

At present, people are in evacuation centers in flooded towns in Albay in northern Luzon and Leyte in the Visayas due to heavy rains.  The Philippine weather office PAGASA has warned 9 provinces to brace for the worst due to predicted adverse climate conditions.

Sources:

1.   Front Pages, 13 January 2011 of the following Brazilian papers --

      1.1.  A Noticia (Joinville) at http://www.clicrbs.com.br/anoticia/jsp/default.jsp?uf=2&local=18&section=capa_online

      1.2.   Extra (Rio de Janeiro).

      1.3.   Folha da Regiao (Aracatuba) at http://www.folhadaregiao.com.br/

      1.4.   Correio Braziliense (Brasilia, Distrito Federal) at http://www.correioweb.com.br/
     1.5.   Gazeta Do Povo (Curitiba) at.http://www.gazetadopovo.com.br/

2.   Queiroz, Sergio. (2011, Jan 13). Brazil flood death toll rises to 443, more feared. Reuters. Retrieved from http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110113/wl_nm/us_brazil_rains/print