NO DISASTER relief execution in recent years has been remotely praiseworthy, not even in well-organised societies. The 1995 Hanshin earthquake in Kobe, which killed about 6,000 people, caught the local and national authorities flat-footed. The world had a very different opinion of Japan as a well-oiled machine after that. Hurricane Katrina in the southern United States, of recent vintage, is now a byword for abysmal crisis management and political indifference. In the case of a broken, ill-equipped Myanmar devastated by a cyclone a week ago, no one could reasonably expect the unpopular military government to be able to rescue its people from death, disease and destruction without outside help. The junta's failing is the more heinous for its reluctance to take in all offers of aid from foreign governments and relief organisations. This is a crime against the people.

THIS year has been momentous for Europe. The eastward expansion of the Shengen free travel area on Jan 1 has enabled peoples of countries once divided by the 'iron curtain' to travel freely across Europe.