Disaster

Many companies just can't operate if they can't use their computers. And in the San Francisco area this week, many companies confronted exactly that problem. But the lucky ones already had foreseen such a threat. Long before the catastrophic earthquake twisted through San Francisco on Tuesday, they had hired outfits like SunGard Data Systems Inc., of Wayne. SunGard is part of a tiny but increasingly important industry that specializes in providing emergency computer backup for companies in the event of a disaster.

After reading your excellent, thought-provoking March 9 editorial "Warning bells ring out about danger in the skies," I heard Federal Aviation Administrator Donald Engen on television disagree with the General Accouting Office study that air travel isn't as safe as it should be. His contention was based on a decrease in accidents according to recent statistics, despite the pressure on a declining overworked staff of air traffic controllers and...

TO PHILADELPHIA Democrats from a two-time Bush voter and fellow Philadelphian: The majority of Americans do not think like you. WE, on the other hand, loathe the Hollywood and cultural radicalism that gets forced on us by the media on a daily basis. WE believe that the producers, the well-educated and the ambitious among us deserve to be haves and the antithesis deserve to be have-nots. WE understand that big business is the catalyst for capitalism, and that the economic boom of the '90s was due to more than a decade of Reaganomics (NOT Bill Clinton)

For some bands, the departure of a lead singer and principal songwriter spells certain disaster. For the Pogues, whose notoriously alcoholic front man Shane MacGowan was replaced last year, it appears to be just a temporary setback. As if to prove it remains one of the world's greatest anarchistic dance bands, the MacGowan-less group did everything it used to do Saturday at the near-capacity Trocadero. There were reels and jigs and country weepers and Irish ballads. More than once, the carefully appointed mandolin/violin underpinning erupted into blitzkrieging rants served with punkish glee and an Irishman's grin.

Now come the psychologists, now come the priests. Here are the unbidden journalists, the amateur videographers, the numb families, the stunned public. We assemble again for the American tragedy. By now we know our parts, taught by bitter precedent what to expect and how it all feels. When the space shuttle Columbia fell 40 miles onto Texas and Louisiana on Saturday like a streaking, spent star, the echoes of Sept. 11, 2001, were evident: Disaster played out against a sharp blue sky around 9 a.m., and we got to watch it unfold, in real time, on television.

SAN FRANCISCO - The good news is that all those tectonic plates under San Francisco have been stiller than the Phillies' bats this week. The bad news is that, according to the ill-timed documentary on the History Channel shown early Wednesday morning, when a lot of jet-lagged East Coasters were wide awake, it's only a matter of time before this city experiences - and I quote - "the inevitable mega-disaster. " There was no indication whether by "matter of time" the mega-disaster predictors were thinking this postseason, but let's face it, baseball, bunting, and building collapses converged here in a previous October.

Darkness and disaster loom large in this year's selection of five Academy Award-nominated live-action shorts. Maybe it's the glum mood across the land, and around the world, or just a reflection of the prevailing temperament in the Academy committee's screening room, but try this on for size: child slavery in India ("Kavi"), nuclear contamination in Russia ("The Door"), surreal desolation Down Under ("Miracle Fish"), dead bodies in a New York apartment ("The New Tenants"), and a bumbling magician sticking swords through his volunteers ("Instead of Abracadabra")

The Los Angles Lakers took advantage of a deep hole dug by the San Antonio Spurs to avoid getting in one themselves. Nick Van Exel scored 25 points as the Lakers took a 92-85 victory last night to cut the visiting Spurs' playoff lead to 2-1. Game 4 of the best-of-seven Western Conference semifinals is tomorrow at the Forum. The Spurs dug themselves a deep hole in the opening quarter with poor shooting - 5-for-20 - and even poorer rebounding. The Lakers, who shot 48 percent from the field in the period, outrebounded the Spurs, 18-8, and led, 28-11.

The BP oil spill is two media events: one environmental and one political. The ecological and economic disaster - oily pelicans, tar balls, empty restaurants, grounded fishing fleets - has prompted monumental media coverage charged with outrage and frustration. Add politics, and this combustible mixture has flared into a second story as white-hot as the first. Ever since the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, which killed 11 people, today's fractionated, diverse media world - cable TV, public radio, Internet - has shown that it can cover multiple angles of a complex story.

DEAR ABBY: My 11-year-old niece, "Nina," has no table manners. I didn't say anything when Nina slathered clotted cream on her scone with her fingers, but I was disgusted. I did suggest she use a spoon after she scooped rice out of a communal bowl with her hand. Both of these incidents happened in restaurants. Is there anything I can do when I must eat with this child? I know it may have been wrong of me to correct Nina in front of her mother, but we were all eating from the same bowl.

John B. Thayer III's adult life was framed and scarred by two of the 20th century's great tragedies. He lost his father on the Titanic, his son in World War II. Finally, on Sept. 20, 1945, a rainy night whose gloom mirrored his despair, Thayer parked his car near a Philadelphia Transit Co. trolley-turnaround at 48th and Parkside in West Philadelphia and slashed his wrists and throat. Although the suicide came long after the supposedly unsinkable Titanic sank on April 15, 1912, exactly 100 years ago Sunday, Thayer was no less a victim than the 1,517 fellow passengers and crew who perished that night in the icy North Atlantic.

RIKUZENTAKATA, Japan - For Toshiko Murakami, 70, memories of the terrifying earthquake and tsunami that destroyed much of her seaside town and swept away her sister brought fresh tears Sunday, exactly a year after the disaster. "My sister is still missing, so I can't find peace within myself," she said before attending a ceremony in a tent in Rikuzentakata marking the anniversary of the March 11, 2011, disaster that killed more than 19,000 people and unleashed the world's worst nuclear crisis in a quarter century.

RIKUZENTAKATA, JAPAN - For 70-year-old Toshiko Murakami, memories of the terrifying earthquake and tsunami that destroyed much of her seaside town and swept away her sister brought fresh tears yesterday, exactly a year after the disaster. "My sister is still missing so I can't find peace within myself," she said before attending a ceremony in a tent in Rikuzentaka marking the anniversary of the March 11, 2011, disaster that killed more than 19,000 people and unleashed the world's worst nuclear crisis in a quarter century.

MINAMI-SOMA, Japan - The doctors and nurses at Futaba Hospital pleaded for help as a radioactive plume wafted overhead. They had been ordered out but had no vehicles to evacuate the hundreds of patients in their care. After two days of waiting in the cold with no electricity, help finally came. Nearly two dozen patients died in the chaotic, daylong odyssey that followed. Japan's government says only one person, an overworked employee at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, died as a result of the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

Philadelphia Health Commissioner Donald F. Schwarz said Wednesday that Gov. Corbett's proposed cuts for human services would have a sweeping impact on a wide variety of vulnerable populations. Affected by the cuts, Schwarz said, will be people with mental illness and intellectual disabilities; homeless individuals and families; children aging out of foster care; HIV patients needing hospice care; and elderly people in the city-run nursing home. At a City Hall news conference, Schwarz called the cuts "alarming" and predicted a rise in the city's homeless population, as support for housing the poor and mentally disabled was cut. "This takes apart many of the supports to people who are particularly vulnerable," Schwarz said.

From history to literature to Caribbean studies and beyond, Drexel University sociologist Mimi Sheller has always been interested in a lot of areas. So she helped create a broad academic field known as mobilities research - the interdisciplinary study of the movement of people, goods, and information and their impact on the world - that can take her wherever she wants to go. Her latest pursuit has landed her on the front lines of disaster planning. Sheller was one of 12 international experts invited to the World Bank Headquarters in Tokyo last month to examine the lessons learned in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami that devastated the country in March.

By Melissa Bert The Costa Concordia grounding is a stark reminder that sea travel remains dangerous. A modern cruise ship sailing a routine route in beautiful weather ran aground in a matter of minutes, leaving at least 15 people dead. About 15 million people took a cruise last year, and they are asking tough questions. Are the massive passenger vessels stable enough to withstand a grounding or collision? Are their international crews capable of coordinating rapid evacuations of thousands of people?

NEW YORK - With glittering fireworks and star-studded celebrations from New Zealand to Times Square, the world eagerly welcomed a new year and hoped for a better future Saturday, saying goodbye to a year of hurricanes, tsunamis, and economic turmoil that many would rather forget. Revelers in Australia, Asia, Europe, and the South Pacific island nation of Samoa, which jumped across the international dateline to be first to celebrate, welcomed 2012 with booming pyrotechnic displays.