On the morning of Aug. 28 last year, as Hurricane Katrina closed in on the Gulf Coast of the US, building contractor Vincent Whittaker nailed shut his home in Waveland, Mississippi, climbed into his old red Ford truck and fled for his life with his nephew Vincent.
Sitting in the north-bound bumper-to-bumper Interstate 59, they became part of the largest one-time displacements of people the US has ever known. More than 1 million people were uprooted by one of the worst natural disasters in American history -- a catastrophe which cost 1,815 lives, caused an estimated US$125 billion in damage and devastated a region the size of Britain.
"I thought I would be back in a few days," Whittaker said this month, nearly a year after the storm.
"Now I don't think I'll ever go back again. There's nothing left there for me now," he said.
Whittaker, 52, seems older than his years. You can see he was once handsome. There's still no fat on him, but his face is heavily lined, his hair a dirty grey and his mouth has no teeth. He is a black man who moves slowly, as though every step is painful.
In February he went back to Waveland, a small town of 7,000 on the Gulf Coast that was pummelled by 280kph winds.
It was a wasteland.
"I watch the TV like everyone so I knew not to expect much," he recalls.
"But the place I lived in was dead. That place was my soul and everything was gone. Just a heap of stinking trash and cars," he said.
Still, some of his former neighbors have gone back. Many live in government trailers on their property as they negotiate the cumbersome bureaucracy of insurance and permits and finance. Retail stores like Wal-Mart have reopened.
Nevertheless, Whittaker says he's "staying right where I am, thank you sir."
He landed on his feet, 650km from home in Huntsville, Alabama, a booming southern town with its own Toyota plant. There he drummed up business as a building contractor, and has since bought his own home.
"This place is good. It don't make no sense to go back to all that danger out there," he explains.
While many other evacuees were fortunate, like Whittaker, as they scattered across the US, hundreds of thousands of others remain in limbo amidst Katrina's destruction or displaced in strange communities, with few family members nearby. Many are single mothers.
As of April, the last time such figures were compiled, there were still 750,000 displaced by Katrina and the two hurricanes that followed, Rita and Wilma, according to Bob Howard, communications director for the Washington-based Red Cross Hurricane Recovery Program.
There are 100,000 evacuees in Atlanta, Georgia, and up to 150,000 in Houston, Texas. Many are blacks from the disadvantaged neighborhoods of New Orleans who remain jobless and will run out of federal disaster assistance in March, when they could quickly become homeless
"These families consist mostly of women, generally poor and uneducated, with children," said an editorial in the Houston Chronicle.
"Almost all are still reeling from their losses. They are uniquely ill-prepared to start anew in a city so much larger and more complex than New Orleans," it said.
There has been a backlash in some host communities. A Houston police report this month blamed the influx of hurricane refugees for the 17.5 percent rise in the city's homicide rate this year.
One in five murders involved an evacuee as suspect or victim, it said.
New Orleans, which bore the brunt of the storm and public interest, is slowly getting back on its feet. The mayor's office says the city's population is already "north of 250,000" out of the pre-storm population of 455,000.
But given the scale of destruction, it will probably take decades rather than years to recover. Decisions still haven't been made about which areas can be rebuilt, and which are still at risk of flooding. A total of 1.7 million families registered for help at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has paid out some US$6 billion in personal aid.
The Red Cross provided emergency assistance to 1.4 million families and an estimated 4 million people, Howard said. "We are still trying to deal with infrastructure issues and the ability to provide basic services," he said.
Prior to Katrina, the largest Red Cross operation ever was providing assistance for 70,000 families after four hurricanes hit Florida in 2004.
"We went from supporting 70,000 families to 1.4 million. It was 20 times larger than anything we had faced in our 120-year history," he said.
Ultimately, it's up to each individual family to determine their own recovery, he said.
Some will be like Nathan Whittaker -- who now plans to take additional relatives into his flourishing construction business.
But others will never get over Hurricane Katrina, Howard says, "not in one year or 10."
Recently, China launched another diplomatic offensive against Taiwan, improperly linking its “one China principle” with UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 to constrain Taiwan’s diplomatic space. After Taiwan’s presidential election on Jan. 13, China persuaded Nauru to sever diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Nauru cited Resolution 2758 in its declaration of the diplomatic break. Subsequently, during the WHO Executive Board meeting that month, Beijing rallied countries including Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Belarus, Egypt, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, Laos, Russia, Syria and Pakistan to reiterate the “one China principle” in their statements, and assert that “Resolution 2758 has settled the status of Taiwan” to hinder Taiwan’s
Can US dialogue and cooperation with the communist dictatorship in Beijing help avert a Taiwan Strait crisis? Or is US President Joe Biden playing into Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) hands? With America preoccupied with the wars in Europe and the Middle East, Biden is seeking better relations with Xi’s regime. The goal is to responsibly manage US-China competition and prevent unintended conflict, thereby hoping to create greater space for the two countries to work together in areas where their interests align. The existing wars have already stretched US military resources thin, and the last thing Biden wants is yet another war.
As Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu’s party won by a landslide in Sunday’s parliamentary election, it is a good time to take another look at recent developments in the Maldivian foreign policy. While Muizzu has been promoting his “Maldives First” policy, the agenda seems to have lost sight of a number of factors. Contemporary Maldivian policy serves as a stark illustration of how a blend of missteps in public posturing, populist agendas and inattentive leadership can lead to diplomatic setbacks and damage a country’s long-term foreign policy priorities. Over the past few months, Maldivian foreign policy has entangled itself in playing
A group of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers led by the party’s legislative caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (?) are to visit Beijing for four days this week, but some have questioned the timing and purpose of the visit, which demonstrates the KMT caucus’ increasing arrogance. Fu on Wednesday last week confirmed that following an invitation by Beijing, he would lead a group of lawmakers to China from Thursday to Sunday to discuss tourism and agricultural exports, but he refused to say whether they would meet with Chinese officials. That the visit is taking place during the legislative session and in the aftermath