North Korean famines

North Korea does not just make the headlines for missile and nuclear bomb tests, it is also well-known for famines. Though there is plenty of money for military hardware, the hardline Communist regime often struggles to feed its own people.

In such a secretive country, it is hard to be sure which was its most disastrous famine, but there were fears that one in the first decade of the 21^st century may have killed up to 3.5 million people, with tens of thousands fleeing into China, and women being sold as brides or forced into brothels and illegal sweatshops.

A decade earlier, in 1994, defectors were reporting things had got so bad that old people were going out into the fields to die so their families would not have to feed them. As floods and drought struck in 1995-97, the government had to appeal for international help while it appeared to be channelling what food there was to the army of one million and party activists.

In 1998, a visiting research team from the US State Congress estimated that at least 900,000 had died of starvation over the previous 3 years, though it reckoned the real figure might be as high as 2.4 million. Malnutrition was also widespread.

For more see A Disastrous History of the World. See also my posts of 22 September 2010, 26 May 2011 and 31 January 2016.

Train crashes and safety improvements

We still do not know what caused this week’s German train crash in Bavaria, in which 10 people died. The trains collided head-on on a stretch of single line track, but safety precautions introduced after another fatal accident in 2011 should have made this impossible.

As a German train approaches a red signal, an alarm is supposed to go off in the driver’s cab, and if he fails to stop, the brakes are supposed to go on automatically. Since the crash, there has been speculation that a signal controller may have turned off the automatic system, or even that someone else may have sabotaged it.

Rail crashes have often provided the spur for safety innovations. So in 1989, five people were killed at Purley in South London when one train ran into the back of another after going through a red light, even though the driver’s cab was fitted with an alarm that sounded when the train was approaching the danger signal.

After that, a system called ATP (Automatic Train Protection) was introduced to apply the brakes automatically if the driver ignored a red light. But that did not prevent a crash between a passenger and a goods train at Southall in West London in 1997 (see picture) in which seven people died. Neither the alarm system nor the ATP were working. For more, see London's Disasters.

Floods in deserts

That’s me in the Lower Antelope Canyon near Page in the deserts of Arizona, USA,  which I visited last month.  It’s place of bizarre, fascinating rock formations, but also a reminder that disastrous floods can strike almost anywhere, even in deserts.

On August 12, 1997, 11 tourists, including 7 from France, were walking through the long narrow, ‘slot’ canyon.   There had been little rain close to the site, but a thunderstorm had dumped a lot of water into the canyon basin seven miles upstream.

By the time it swept into the slot canyon, this flash flood was swelled by logs and stones.    The tourists’  guide managed to wedge himself behind an outcrop, and for a time he held on to two of his party, but eventually the careering waters dragged them from his grasp.

Then he too was swept downstream.   He was found alive on a ledge – the only survivor.   Two of the victims’ bodies have never been found.     You can find more detail here - http://climb-utah.com/Powell/flash_antelope.htm

Picture by Anne Clements http://www.anneclements.com/

Sierra Leone trial

A special United Nations court at The Hague has turned down a plea from former Liberian President Charles Taylor that charges of crimes against humanity that he faces should be dismissed. Taylor is being tried on 11 counts relating to his alleged role in the brutal civil war in neighbouring Sierra Leone, which cost tens of thousands of civilian lives. He is accused of bankrolling and equipping rebels who committed murder, rape, hacked off people's limbs, and used child soldiers.

Taylor had been a warlord who launched Liberia’s civil war in 1989, before being elected president in 1997. Two years later, though, an insurrection against him began and in 2003 he resigned under pressure from the United States. The trial is scheduled to resume on June 29, and if Taylor is convicted, he will serve his sentence in the UK.

Last month, an international court in Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown sent three rebel leaders to gaol for a total of 120 years for war crimes and crimes against humanity (see my blogs of March 4 and April 10) In Rwanda too, the process of holding people to account for their part in the country’s genocide goes on. (See my blogs of January 23, March 1, 4, 23, 25, April 9.)