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POPSNatural Disaster Evolves Into Man-Made Catastrophe "We have small helicopters to drop food, and we have doctors." The USS Essex, an amphibious assault ship, and its battle group have been waiting to join in the relief effort as well. U.S. Marine flights from their makeshift headquarters in Utapao, Thailand, continued Saturday — bringing the total to 500,000 pounds of aid delivered. Britain's prime minister accused authorities in Burma of behaving inhumanely by preventing foreign aid from reaching victims. "This is inhuman," Gordon Brown told the British Broadcasting Corp. Brown said a natural disaster "is being made into a man-made catastrophe by the negligence, the neglect and the inhuman treatment of the Burmese people by a regime that is failing to act.
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POPSNatural Disaster In Beichuan: A Vision Of Hell Anger, too, is growing about the poor quality of buildings. In Mianzhu, an apartment block collapsed on itself. The flats had been built using contributions from a local work unit, a group of workers organised by the Communist Party at a factory or office. Residents searching for survivors said it was because corrupt officials had demanded so much in kickbacks that the building fell. The neighbouring buildings had not collapsed, including one which housed cadres from the Communist Party. "Show me the structural steel in that building," said one woman, whose mother is missing in the rubble. "It all went into some official's pocket," she spat. The foreign media have a poor image in China This makes reporting the disaster difficult; before the anti-Chinese riots in Tibet, and the sympathetic view of Tibetans in the Western media, foreign journalists were popular. Now we are seen as a threat.
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POPSSenate Votes To Roll Back Media Ownership Rule "Today the Senate stood up to Washington special interests by voting to reverse the FCC's disappointing media consolidation rules that I have fought against," he said. "Our nation's media market must reflect the diverse voices of our population, and it is essential that the FCC promotes the public interest and diversity in ownership." The FCC decision allows one company to own a newspaper and a broadcast station in the nation's 20 largest metropolitan areas. The TV station may not be among the top four in the market, and post-transaction, at least eight independent media voices must remain. The rule replaced an outright ban on cross-ownership. The FCC's media ownership decision has been met with opposition on both sides. The newspaper industry has complained that the FCC did not go far enough, while activists who want to keep big media companies from getting bigger said the agency went too far.