Via BBC News, a sickening report: Pakistan flood warning 'not passed on'. Excerpt:
A study has suggested that the effects of last year's floods in Pakistan could have been less catastrophic if European weather forecasts had been shared with Pakistan.
The American Geophysical Union said the forecasts could have given up to 10 days' advance warning of the floods.
The study said this could have allowed the authorities in northern Pakistan to take preventative measures.
The monsoon floods affected 20 million people and one fifth of the country.
At least 1,500 people died in the deluge.
The American Geophysical Union said the information did not reach Pakistan because of a "lack of cooperation between the forecasting centre and Pakistan".
Pakistan's own weather agency also did not forecast the floods, the organisation added.
"This disaster could have been minimised and even the flooding could have been minimised," said Peter Webster, a professor of earth and atmospheric science at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta and lead writer of the study.
"If we were working with Pakistan, they would have known eight to 10 days in advance that the floods were coming."
Here is one of many reports from Pakistan that I posted last summer: "Our hospital is drowning in front of our eyes." I don't know how many people are still displaced from their homes by the floods, but they must number in the scores of thousands.
