The Ilocos Times

By Noralyn Dudt A Bump here and there can become SERIOUS COLLISIONS. Geographic coordinates 8 38N, 111 55E are the Spratly Islands, roughly midway between the Philippines and South Vietnam. Named after the 19th-century British whaling captain Richard Spratly who sighted the islands in 1843, Spratly is composed of islands,   islets, cays,   and more than a hundred reefs, sometimes grouped in submerged old atolls. While it is largely uninhabited,   it offers rich fishing grounds and may contain significant oil and natural gas reserves which are vital to the countries filing claims in their attempts to establish international boundaries. The Philippines,   Malaysia,   Vietnam,   China, Taiwan and Brunei have all laid claim. Nautical charts bear the notation "dangerous ground" on some areas that are not well sounded in the South China Sea. More recently, a "dangerous ground" designation has risen from the disputes that is becoming an international crisis a...

By Noralyn Dudt NOW IN Gaza, 2 million people are jammed into an area about the size of Las Vegas. Medical supplies,   food, water and fuel are dwindling. Israel's continued airstrikes have forced hundreds of thousands of Gazans from their homes deepening the humanitarian crisis there. A blast killed hundreds at a hospital in Gaza. They were civilians who were sheltering there thinking that a hospital would never be hit. The hospital explosion compounded the escalating humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. Even before the blast, rescuers were struggling to free more than a thousand people trapped under the rubble, and fights were breaking out over loaves of bread. The situation in Gaza is a disaster in the truest sense of the word: "massacres everywhere,"   said a paramedic with the Palestinian Red Crescent. The streets reek of death. And then...a bomb hit an ancient Christian church where families with young children were taking refuge. The bombing of a church str...