"85,000 flee homes in monsoon floods
YANGON — At least 85,000 people in Myanmar have fled their homes as the worst monsoon flooding in years submerged hundreds of thousands of acres of rice fields, a government relief official said Saturday. Heavy rains over the last few weeks caused the inundation, which primarily affected the country’s southern delta region, said a member of the government’s emergency response team (AP)."
"Cyclone could hit refugee camps
YANGON — Myanmar’s government warned Saturday that a cyclone now forming in the Bay of Bengal could slam into the country’s western coast next week, raising fears that storm surges or heavy rains could swamp low-lying camps housing tens of thousands of people who fled sectarian violence last year. The storm is currently barreling northwest toward Bangladesh. But its direction could shift and hit Myanmar’s Rakhine state when it makes landfall at midweek, officials said."
Also see: Cycloning Through India
"12 feared dead after Myanmar quake" Associated Press, November 12, 2012
YANGON, Myanmar — A strong 6.8-magnitude earthquake struck northern
Myanmar on Sunday, collapsing a bridge and a gold mine, damaging several
old Buddhist pagodas, and leaving as many as 12 people feared dead.
A slow release of official information left the actual extent of the
damage unclear after Sunday morning’s strong quake. Myanmar has a poor
official disaster-response system, despite having lost upward of 140,000
people to a devastating cyclone in 2008....
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