Now that the military has moved in and other state agencies have responded to Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath, some would think that all is under control. It isn’t.
I arrived on Monday afternoon and spent about a week covering the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in the outlying areas of New Orleans.
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia—At the entrance of Choeung Ek, the most visited of the “killing fields” here, several shiny-eyed children greet tourists and quickly engage them in a counting game in both Khmer (the Cambodian language) and English. They laugh, ask the strangers their names, where they're from. They skip around and say, in unison, "1-2-3-smile!"
It’s near deadline. A story about a tragic killing comes across my desk and it’s my job to get comments from the family. I make the dreaded call and gently ask for reaction to the news — only to learn that the family doesn’t yet know. What now?
Years ago when I spent time in Panama, rarely did a day go by when the morning paper didn’t carry the full-color, front-page bloodied remains of some poor guy killed the night before. It was hardly breakfast material, but apparently the photos didn’t disturb the reading public enough to make the paper stop publishing them.