News Feed: Collapsed School Buildings

Really shouldn't be posting today or any of those days...I DO have to work on my thesis, there is hardly any time left.
But that's NEWS.

Chinese officials (obviously under huge pressure because of the coming up one year anniversary of the May 12th devastating Sichuan earthquake that killed more than 80 000 people and destroyed the livelihood of millions more) have finally succumbed and announced a number of the supposed schoolchildren victims, something despite of many months of probing they have been (to say it mildly) reluctant to do.
For those of you you haven't followed. Many parents have questioned authorities about the disputable adequacy of school buildings in the affected regions, the main argument being why adjacent government buildings were still standing while the schools were turned to rubble. Many people expressed doubts (and outrage) at the possible lack of enforcement of safety standards and the substandard school building which possibly might have caused their collapse ( and the possible crime of side-stepping building regulations to cut/embezzle funds ) and it is indeed one of the few more massive questioning of authority by ordinary Chinese in recent months. Until today the Chinese authorities (local or central) had not announced the figure of the dead schoolchildren. According to reports, they did so today.
The figure is not small : 5,335 students have perished under the rubble of their classrooms.
A compilation of reports from Xinhua and local newspapers at the time put the number of dead and missing children and teachers at around 9,000, but this possibly will never be known...

The important thing is that this was a great tragedy and the obliquitous attitude of the authorities will always will be raising doubts, even if most of the children actually didn't die because of shoddy construction, but because of the devastating strength of the earthquake.

Recommended:

China Releases Student Quake Death Figures
http://china.blogs.time.com/2009/05/07/china-releases-student-quake-death-figures/

Looking back on Chinese media reporting of school collapses
http://cmp.hku.hk/2009/05/07/1599/

a very interesting outline of the media coverage and the authority control of it...