It seems to me that World news been exceptionally grim and depressing recently.

Straight after Hurricane Katrina wipes out New Orleans, kills almost 1,000 people and shatters the lives of countless thousands of others in the southern U.S., Hurricane Stan then causes mud-slides in Guatemala, killing hundreds, followed shortly by an earthquake in Pakistini Kashmir yesterday that already has a death toll of 19,000 and rising.

And this in a year that began with the tsunami in the south Pacific that killed more than 200,000 people, plus the constant backdrop of senseless killing as fallout for the West’s disastrous crusades in Afghanistan and Iraq, such as the 7 July London bombings or the recent bomb blasts in Bali. And I’m probably forgetting a bunch of other, more “run of the mill” disasters or atrocities.

And it doesn’t look like things are going to get any better any time soon… Next up: The avian bird flu pandemic that could kill up to 150 million people Worldwide.