] With a terse announcement in Wednesday morning
] newspapers, Beijing closed all its primary and secondary
] schools until at least May 7 because of widespread SARS,
] and it said that the 1.7 million affected students should
] study at home using a newly improvised online educational
] service.
 . . .
] In a remarkable homage to the recent, rapid spread of Internet
] use here, the order closing down schools said the authorities
] were opening an "Educational Committee Online School" to help
] students study at home. The site is "providing online question-
] answering and review materials for Beijing's 1.7 million primary
] and secondary school students," the report said. The web address
] is www.bjedu.gov.cn.

Ironic that a low-tech biological bug may be what really catapults China into increased use of the high-tech internet.

The English version of the "Beijing Educational Network and Information Center," btw, is at:
 http://www1.bjedu.gov.cn/english/internet/index.htm

Beijing sends its children home to study on the internet

] Saudi Arabia, home to Islam's holiest shrines, has
] stopped issuing umrah, or minor pilgrimage, visas to
] Muslims in the Far East because of fears over Severe
] Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), an official said
] Wednesday

Saudi Stops Mecca Visas for East Asian Muslims

] The way people were grabbing at the man walking along
] Paradise Square here, he may as well have been giving
] away bottled water or satellite telephones or chunks of
] gold, people were so aggressive. But he was not. He was
] giving away information.
]
] Newspapers have hit the streets here for the first time
] since the government stopped publishing April 8. Never
] mind that "yesterday's" editions were nearly a week old.
] Or that they did not really contain any news that people
] here did not know.
]
] In a city craving information, the newspapers were
] devoured as if they contained the secret formula for
] surviving the aftermath of a war that has cut off
] electricity, deprived many people of clean water and
] indefinitely suspended government paychecks.
]
] The paper, called Tarieq Al-Shaab, or The Way of the
] People, had no answers. But its mere existence in Baghdad
] - people have been executed for smuggling it from
] northern Iraq since it was banned in 1979 by Saddam
] Hussein - made its pages worth reading.

I can identify with this feeling so strongly. Even with all my own access to thousands of information sources around the world, I frequently felt "out of the loop" on what was going on in Iraq, and I felt like I couldn't find enough information to satisfy my hunger. To have been in the middle of it though, with no access to internet, phones, television, or even newspapers, would have been a deep circle of hell for me. So I'm delighted that the Iraqi people are getting their newspapers going again, and I wish them all the best in accessing as many different sources of news as they can get their hands on.

Let the information flow!

Iraqis Hunger for Information

This is circulating among some of the Kansas basketball fans, regarding the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship (http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/ncaatourney03/columnist?id=1535397&name=katz_andy) that took place earlier this month. Though the American news media reported that Syracuse won, 81-78, there's a different version being attributed to Iraqi Information Minister Al-Sahaf, aka "Baghdad Bob":

] "Last night Kansas hit 100% of their free throws and
] destroyed the infidel criminals from Syracuse. It was not
] even close. KU is in full control of the national title
] at this time. There is no reason for Kansas fans to be
] concerned as the reports that KU was defeated are
] absolutely not true."

ROFL

(Check "April 11th" at this link:)

Iraqi Information Minister and Basketball

This is an excellent collection of slides from the trenches in Iraq, set to music. The photography is top-notch, and it gives a good cross-section of the different jobs of various military members there. It's an interesting "Support Our Troops" Flash show.

Shoulder to Shoulder... (Iraq Slideshow)

SARS information in the U.S., listed by state. It would be nice to get some more detailed information (like by city), but that doesn't seem to be being reported anywhere.

CDC Media Relations - SARS US Case Report

It's unclear how accurate the data is, but this site attempts to list a table of civilian casualties. Sources are cited, and the table indicates both minimum and maximum reported numbers.

What's still unclear is how to define civilian vs. military casualties. I'm also interested in this dataset for the number of Iraqi soldiers who were killed, but have not seen any such collection (and the Iraqi government never released those numbers either).

In any case, verifiable or not, at least this site does attempt to collect *some* of the data . . .

Iraq Body Count Database

] NEW YORK, April 21 (Reuters) - An Iraqi scientist told a
] U.S. military team that Iraq had destroyed chemical
] weapons and biological warfare equipment only days before
] the war began, The New York Times reported on Monday.

This would tie in to the (unconfirmed) reports about high concentrations of cyanide and mustard agent being found in the Euphrates a couple weeks ago, too. Rather than being caught with the stuff, Iraq was likely dumping and destroying it.

Scientist says Iraq destroyed WMD just before attack

] On Mar. 20, the FBI arrested Hawash at gunpoint in
] Intel's parking lot near Portland for reasons that remain
] confidential. A 38-year-old American citizen with a wife
] and three children, he has not been charged with a crime.
 . . .
] Hawash is being held as a "material witness" under a 1984
] law that the Justice Department believes should let the
] government detain American citizens at will for an
] arbitrary length of time. A well-researched Washington
] Post article from last fall (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A31438-2002Nov23)
] said the Justice Department
] has imprisoned at least 44 people, including seven U.S.
] citizens, under the same law, with some held for many
] months and possibly for more than a year.
 . . .
] U.S. District Judge Robert Jones, who is overseeing the case,
] held a secret hearing last week and concluded that Hawash has
] so far been lawfully detained. But Jones did give the Justice
] Department a deadline, ordering prosecutors to take Hawash's
] testimony before a subsequent closed-door hearing on April 29.

I very much agree with the last paragraph of this article:

] If prosecutors can show good cause why they need to ask someone
] vital questions about terrorist activities, let them. But
] detaining American citizens indefinitely as "material witnesses"
] to undisclosed crimes is unreasonable and unjust, and it sets
] a very worrying precedent.

CNet News: [Hawash] Guilty until proven innocent

] In this last instalment of the reporters' log they record
] some final impressions and look back at what it was like
] reporting the war.

Today's the last day of the BBC's "Reporters' Log", which saddens me. I enjoyed reading the raw data stream as it came in each day. I also liked getting to know the names of the various reporters, so that I could filter their various biases as I was reading: "Oh, that's so-and-so, he's been stuck in one location for the last 3 days, and is getting fed up reporting that nothing new is happening in his location." "Oh, that's whatshisname, he's really negative and tends to report the most anti-US spin that he can." "Oh, there's that guy, he generally sticks to the facts, what's he got to say today?"

Several (but not all) of the reporters got to post a wrap-up comment for today's final log. Their opinions are across the spectrum, though most seem to express some frustration that they only saw a very small part of the conflict. Some felt that they were barred from the real story by the embedding process, others felt that it really did give them unprecedented access (and danger). My overwhelming sense from reading all of their reports though, is that they feel a kind of disappointment now that the main fighting is over. Which I guess is to be expected.

Interesting reading, nonetheless, and I'm glad that the BBC provided the log!

BBC NEWS: Reporters' log: Final thoughts