Natural Disasters

Forty-nine years ago, President John F. Kennedy signed a proclamation establishing a week to commemorate the contributions of U.S. small businesses. Every president since then has continued the tradition, known as National Small Business Week. The 2012 recognition is this week, featuring a variety of events designed to trumpet and empower a group of business owners whose total size is hard to quantify. The federal government says small businesses total more than 27 million.

A year ago, images of the destruction in Asia and Africa from two consecutive earthquakes and the Indian Ocean tsunami were beaming into our living rooms and tearing into our hearts. The year since has been marked by the scale and number of natural disasters that occurred, and the world's struggle to help those harmed by calamity. The tsunami was one of the worst natural disasters on record, killing at least 216,000 people. People, communities and fishing economies vanished in an instant.

Here's something to be thankful for: The United States has had almost no major natural disasters this year. The year 2000 dawned with apocalyptic fears - biblical, technological, meteorological - but so far has turned out to be downright benign. First, the Y2K computer bug was a no-show. Now, with only about six weeks to go, 2000 is shaping up as the least dramatic year in terms of natural disasters that the United States has experienced in more than a decade. Usually the Federal Emergency Management Agency pays about $2.3 billion a year in aid to disaster victims.

With Congress balking at a bailout, General Motors soon could be driven into the dustbin of history. How did an icon of American business reach such a disastrous state? For an answer, it's instructive to consider natural disasters - which, like corporate calamities, have been particularly devastating to the country in recent years. Hurricane Katrina killed 1,300 people and forced 1.5 million from their homes. If GM declares bankruptcy, hundreds of thousands will lose their jobs, and many of them could lose their homes, too. Whether the risk at hand is a natural calamity or a corporate disaster, we see parallel lessons for those most responsible for avoiding the worst.

Ace Ltd. reported a small loss yesterday in its third quarter after taking a $406 million after-tax charge on losses from hurricanes and typhoons. Evan Greenberg, chief executive officer of the Bermuda insurer, said that the series of large natural disasters "overshadowed an otherwise strong quarter in terms of revenues, earnings, and book-value growth. " Ace, which bases its U.S. operations in Philadelphia, reported a loss of $3 million, or 5 cents a share, compared with profit for the same quarter last year of $355 million, or $1.22 a share.

Floods ravage the Midwest. Hurricanes sweep Florida. Earthquakes and mud slides wreck California. Across America, the 1990s seem to be turning into a frightening and expensive preview of the apocalypse. More trouble came last week to California, where winter storms swept away bridges, flooded out crops, and left 10,000 homeless. President Clinton declared 48 of the state's 58 counties as disaster areas. It would be easy to blame nature for this widespread pain and suffering.

Known for helping during natural disasters, the National Guard worked in Philadelphia yesterday on the urban calamity of abandoned houses. Magnets for the drug trade, some of the houses provide havens for junkies, dealers and prostitutes. City officials and neighborhood groups have worked for two years to bring in the troops. The Guard also has sealed houses in York and Chester.

NBC's "Nightly News with Tom Brokaw" is gradually moving toward a new format that will permit Brokaw to spend more time covering news in the field and give Jane Pauley an enhanced role as anchor in New York. Pauley has not been named co-anchor of the broadcast, and NBC officials did not say how often she will appear on the program. But fundamental changes seem to be on the horizon for the "Nightly News. " Steve Friedman, the new executive producer of the show, this week told NBC affiliates meeting in Washington: "We want to be a show of interest, not the show of record.

Denmark is the best place in the world to live, Angola the worst and the United States ranks 27th out of 124 nations, according to a new University of Pennsylvania report on the quality of social progress. The study, announced Friday at the Global Development Conference in College Park, Md., was prepared by Richard Estes, a professor at Penn's School of Social Work. It is an update of a continuing study that he began in 1974 for the period beginning in 1970. Estes measured economic development, social and political conditions and the ability of nations to provide for their citizens during the period from 1980 to 1983.

Alys Willman works with Witness for Peace, an organization bringing disaster relief to victims of Hurricane Mitch. She sends this e-mail from Nicaragua. Hurricane Mitch left its deadliest mark near the Las Casitas volcano in western Nicaragua, triggering a massive mud slide, killing more than 2,500 people and burying two entire communities. When I arrived there with a Red Cross brigade last week, not a house, not a tree, was still standing. Here, nature had turned valley to desert in seconds.

Forty-nine years ago, President John F. Kennedy signed a proclamation establishing a week to commemorate the contributions of U.S. small businesses. Every president since then has continued the tradition, known as National Small Business Week. The 2012 recognition is this week, featuring a variety of events designed to trumpet and empower a group of business owners whose total size is hard to quantify. The federal government says small businesses total more than 27 million.

When President Obama in February unveiled his proposed budget, it was dismissed by Republicans as little more than a political statement because they weren't about to let Congress pass it. Since the Republican budget, which passed Thursday in the Republican-controlled House, has no chance of getting through the Democratic-majority Senate, that must make it a political statement, too. But, oh, what a statement. With its emphasis on eviscerating social programs that help the poor and downtrodden while preserving current tax rates for the wealthy - all in the name of debt reduction - the budget largely crafted by Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.)

WASHINGTON - The House rejected a bill Wednesday that includes $3.65 billion in aid to victims of Hurricane Irene and other natural disasters, a setback for Republican leaders controlling the chamber. Some Republican lawmakers objected to the overall cost of the measure offered by their leaders. House Democrats opposed a spending cut in it. The vote against the bill was 230-195, with 48 Republicans joining 182 Democrats in casting "no" votes. Supporting the bill were 189 Republicans and six Democrats.

Judy Michel is a retired teacher who is fascinated by volcanoes. For most of her 37 years in the classroom, she taught middle schoolers, early adolescents whose behavior is often determined by erupting hormones. One could reasonably wonder if there's a connection. For Michel, teaching middle schoolers was not a hardship; it was an ever-changing challenge and delight. She taught at the Baldwin School and Penn Charter and for six years was middle school head at the Winchester Thurston School in Pittsburgh.

NEW YORK - Small businesses that were hit by severe weather this spring can get tax breaks from the government. The IRS gives taxpayers, including businesses, additional time to file returns or make payments after a federal disaster declaration. The government also enables them to get a faster refund when they have incurred casualty losses. A gift of time: After a disaster, filing a tax return or making a payment isn't going to be the top priority for a business owner. It might be impossible to do either task.

Many Christians amaze me with their arrogance, bigotry and audacity to confine God in their own tightly wrapped little box. As a Christian myself, I am offended by those who, in the name of Jesus, go out of their way not only to denounce other religions, but to condemn people of other faiths to hell. It is even more sickening to see politicians, adorned in the cloak of self-righteousness, join forces with some of these people in a not-so-veiled political demonstration aimed a furthering their careers rather than serving their country.

Airline stocks have tumbled nearly 14 percent the last five months as high oil prices have raised jet-fuel bills and air travel has been hurt by political turmoil and natural disasters. The International Air Transport Association this week slashed its profit forecast for airlines worldwide this year by 54 percent, to $4 billion from the $8.6 billion it forecast in March. Industry profits will be down 78 percent from last year's $18 billion, chiefly due to high fuel. "That we are making any money at all in a year with this combination of unprecedented shocks is a result of a very fragile balance," IATA chief executive Giovanni Bisignani said.

Natural disasters may be as common in the United States as they are in other countries. But the frequency and intensity of devastation in lands a world away can lull Americans into thinking such tragedies will never happen to them - until one does happen. They were still looking for bodies Monday from a weekend tornado that left at least 90 people dead in Joplin, Mo. That killer storm came within weeks of tornadoes in April that killed more than 230 people in Alabama. Such numbers have public officials questioning whether current early-warning systems are sufficient.

Now zombies and rogue planets are making apocalypse news. A radio preacher's claim that Saturday is Judgment Day seems to have spurred further speculation about cataclysmic sucker punches. The good news, though, is another theory: Hostile aliens didn't land at Roswell, N.M,, little disfigured Soviets did as part of a terror plot by Stalin. It's enough to make a grave-spinning Franklin Roosevelt revise his famous dictum to: The only thing we have to fear is media coverage of fear.

What is the line between being a ghoul and a do-gooder when it comes to visiting a recent disaster area? It's a question to be asked again when the crisis in Japan finally abates. But what is an appropriate waiting period before visiting a country hit by a magnitude 9 earthquake and tsunami that killed thousands of people in northeastern Japan and created a nuclear radiation crisis? In natural disasters of recent years, the question of tourism lingered in the background during the immediate aftermath.