Wanting to keep the flame war off the thread didn't have anything to do with basic agreement or not!
No Problemo. By the way what does IMHO mean? Amazing how I can figure out the most complex things and see so much and the little stuff rolls right over my head, cracks my friends and family up sometimes!! Oh the curse of being a blonde!! One minute a genius and the next a blubbering idiot, I guess it depends on your belief system as to which one I get tagged with...lol.
Natural Disasters More Frequent Than Before, says UN Official
Kerry Sheridan
New York
14 Jul 2004, 20:43 UTC
Jan Egeland
A U.N. official says natural disasters, such as the recent deadly earthquakes in Iran and Algeria, are occuring with greater frequency than in past. The U.N. humanitarian chief, Jan Egeland, says natural disasters affect up to 10 times more people per year than war and global conflict.
Mr. Egeland says the world has seen an increasing number of severe natural disasters in recent years. Climate change and population shifts, according to the report, are to blame for the more frequent occurence of natural disasters.
Mr. Egeland says at least two kinds of these disasters, floods and earthquakes, tend to strike fast and can be more deadly than the bloodiest wars. To emphasize his point, Mr. Egeland gave the death tolls for the recent earthquakes in Algeria and the Bam region of Iran.
"The Bam [Iran] earthquake and the Algerian earthquake killed 30,000 people in seconds," said Jan Egeland. "That is more than most wars cost in a decade."
According to Mr. Egeland's research, 700 natural disasters last year killed some 70,000 people. He says the disasters affected 600 million people and cost $65 billion in material damage.
Mr. Egeland says natural disasters have an especially devastating impact on the poorest regions of the world because more low-income people tend to live in disaster-prone areas. Too often, he says, the international community ignores the problem until it is too late.
"What we hope is that the world will invest more in disaster prevention," he said. "Donors are waking up to this, but it is much easier to get, unfortunately, assistance the day after an earthquake, than to fund some preventive work to prevent a disaster from happening."
A new U.N. report, called Living With Risk, details some preventive measures that communities can take, such as constructing safer buildings and creating early warning systems.
A world conference on disaster reduction is scheduled for early next year in Japan.
Had problems with the simple/complex thing the same way all my life.
imho = in my humble opinion.
imnsho = in my not so humble opinion
or
imnho = in my no humble opinion.
I often have to ask or look em up on the computer!
Still some I don't know.
Blessings,