Word: rices
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...scene of devastation has reached apocalyptic levels. Aerial photos of the Irrawaddy delta, Burma's rice bowl, show much of the region still inundated by a vast surge of muddy water. The few residents who have been able to communicate with the outside world describe rice fields littered with bodies and villages where not a single bamboo shack was left standing. Even in the commercial capital Rangoon, where structures are more sturdily constructed, roofs were sheared off buildings and nearly all the city's main streets were uprooted of their columns of stately trees. "We have a major humanitarian catastrophe...
Burma's state media quoted a government official saying the situation in the country was "returning to normal." This as the death toll from last week's cyclone is estimated, by some, to be as high as 100,000, as bodies float in waterways, as shortages of water, rice, medicine and fuel, as well as fear of disease, grip the populace and people swarm shops and and dash toward any location where they think they can find supplies to help them make it through the crisis...
...door for democratic elections in 2010, but which most view as a rigged effort to prop up support for their rule. The deaths of tens of thousands of people, in other words, should not impede efforts to codify the primacy of the generals. At a time when Burma's rice growing regions - which once made it the world's top rice producer - have been devastated leaving its people starving for the staple, the junta seems determined to remain the world's number one producer and consumer of barbed wire - literally and figuratively. The people are cowed. They utilize hushed tones...
...that had sparked last year's civil protests; additional increases could push tens of thousands of shantytown dwellers from chronic malnutrition to starvation. Outside Rangoon, the fate of millions remains largely unknown, since roads are blocked and telephone lines are down in a region that serves as Burma's rice bowl. In a frightening glimpse of the storm's destructive power, the country's state media reported that in the delta town of Bogalay alone, 10,000 people had been killed. Infrastructure has been heavily damaged, with some aid workers reporting it could be months before the electrical grid...
...hamstrung Beijing's response. Starting in December 2007, as public discontent about rising food prices in China grew, Beijing implemented a series of measures to reduce its grain exports. Among other things, it eliminated a 13% tax rebate on grain exports. Since a substantial portion of Chinese-grown rice and grains go to the North on commercial terms - Beijing's overall agricultural trade and aid to Pyongyang is an official state secret, so no one knows precisely how much - those policy changes hurt overall food supply in the North, and also helped continue to drive up food prices...