DeeKnow’s Grotto

Man Bites Dog, 1100 Indians Die - You'd be excused for not knowing but there's a terrible heatwave on in India at the moment. Not that its getting any coverage in our local media. Ask your friends and colleagues, see if they know anything about it.

It's most probably old news now, interesting maybe after the first hundred died.

Anway, they're only Indians right, theres almost a billion of them on the planet after all. Tasteless jokes aside, this is a humanitarian disaster, I mean for friggs sake, 1100 people dead in the last three weeks with temperatures recorded at over 50C in some areas, 50 degrees !!! (that's Celcius by the way)

It sounds like many of the dying are the elderly, and that deforestation and pollution are significant contributors to the heat-wave problem which is mostly affecting the South Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.

There's no short-term fix for the regular heat-waves that strike the area, 1000 died here last year and the region also gets hammered by heavy cyclones. It seems the Government are doing bugger-all in the way of aid or relief or educating locals re protection against the sun and preservation of the environment for the future.

With other 'news' like the G8-protests, Posh's kidnap case and SARS dominating the headlines, our local paper has a generous postage-stamp sized paragraph hidden on page 256 tonight on the Indian disaster. Its under their 'Briefly' column.

And the popular news websites hardly give it a mention today unless you seek it out in their special 'Indian' news sections.

Jesus-H, What does it take to make the news these days?

9:30:13 PM