Saturday, April 5

The death toll from the Myanmar earthquake has surpassed 3,100 people, and their military government has declared a temporary ceasefire in the country's civil war to allow residents to recover.

In case you missed it, a deadly 7.7 magnitude earthquake hit southeast Asia last Friday, with an epicenter near the town of Sagaing in central Myanmar. Unfortunately, the epicenter also happened to be quite close to a highly populated area-- the city of Mandalay, Myanmar's second-largest city with a population of 1.7 million people, is located just across the Irrawaddy River from Sagaing.

Due to the quake's magnitude, its effects were spread across the region. While the epicenter was located near Sagaing, a large stretch of central Myanmar around the Sagaing Fault experienced severe shaking of similar intensity to the epicenter, including the capital city of Naypyidaw. Strong shaking also stretched into northern and southern Myanmar, the latter of which contains the country's largest city, Yangon, and the shaking also extended into neighboring countries like India, Bangladesh, China, and Thailand. Read more about the initial effects of the quake here.

Due to Myanmar's unpreparedness for these sorts of scenarios, they were forced to call on other countries to send aid for their people. Read more about Myanmar's call for aid here.

Myanmar is currently going through a civil war after the military overthrew the government in a 2021 coup, and intense fighting has persisted since then. However, the military has declared a temporary ceasefire until April 22 to allow people to recover from the quake.

Despite the ceasefire, the United Nations claims that the military is halting aid from going to areas that do not support their government, and the UN is also investigating dozens of attacks by the military on opposition targets after the ceasefire was declared.

Now, after over a week of search-and-rescue efforts, the death toll has risen to at least 3,145 people. Over 4,500 others are injured, and at least 200 people are still missing. Unfortunately, to add onto their problems, the monsoon season is coming up in around a month, with heavy rains expected. Those rains could flood the region that was just hit by the quake, exacerbating the effect as the impact of the two combine into a major disaster.

Fact of the Day (Today): Silverback gorillas are extremely strong-- they can lift over 1,763 pounds.

Quote of the Day (Gracious Quotes): When you’re limited on parts and you have reliability issues, you don’t get the testing done. You need to really develop the car. (Rubens Barrichello)

Word of the Day (Merriam-Webster): Hew (verb, HYOO) - Hew is commonly used with to to mean "to conform to or adhere to (something)." Hew on its own has several meanings having to do with cutting or shaping with a sharp tool, such as an ax. Both hewed and hewn are past participles of hew.

In a Sentence: The senator has always hewed closely to the party line.