• The junta in Burma has raised its estimated death toll to 78,000, with 56,000 missing. [CNN]
• Harvard Professor (and former Obama aide) Samantha Power and Washington Post Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt talk about Burma and the moral and political complexities of intervention. [NPR]
• In China, at least 5 million people are left homeless in the aftermath of the largest earthquake the country has seen in 58 years. The country continues to struggle to recover the injured and dead while grappling with aftershocks and landslides. [Times Online]
• The 17th Karmapa, Ugyen Trinley Dorje, makes his first visit to the United States. [New York Times]

From the New York Times:

CNN apologized to China after the government strongly complained about remarks made on April 9 by the CNN commentator Jack Cafferty. During a broadcast that came after riots in Tibet, Mr. Cafferty said China’s leaders were “basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they’ve been for the last 50 years.” China demanded an apology, and angry Chinese accused CNN of biased news coverage. An earlier apology was rejected. But recently China’s Foreign Ministry highlighted a second apology, saying it came in a letter sent by the CNN president, Jim Walton, to China’s ambassador to the United States.

Also in today’s NYTimes: a feature on Michael Roach and Christie McNally, two Buddhist teachers who consider themselves (celibate) spiritual partners. Roach, 55, who ordained as a monk in 1983, and McNally, 35, live in a yurt, say that they are never more than fifteen feet apart and “admit to a hands-on physical relationship that they describe as intense but chaste.” Okie dokie.

Heartbreaking updates on China and Burma in today’s New York Times. In China, the Times notes, many of the dead appear to be children, “in a country where most families are allowed to have only one.” Meanwhile, farmers in Burma fear they will miss the fall harvest, having lost seeds, livestock, rice stock, and draft animals in the cyclone. The deputy country director for the World Food Program estimates that at least 50,000 tons of rice are needed for the next six months, and 50,000 more will be necessary if farmers are not able to plant within the next few weeks.

Nicholas Kristof on violence against monks in Amdo:

At Labrang Monastery in Xiahe, almost 10,000 feet high in the mountains, more than 220 Buddhist monks were arrested and beaten, local Tibetans said. The great majority have been released, but some are still hospitalized because of injuries. Some monks are hiding in the mountains, and they are all terrified.

“I was beaten for two hours with sticks, and kicked all over,” said a monk who was released after one night of imprisonment.

Last month, the Chinese authorities ushered a group of journalists here on a tightly scripted tour to show that Labrang was calm — and then 15 monks rushed up to the group. One was crying, and all said that their human rights were being systematically violated.

After the reporters left, those who joined that peaceful protest were imprisoned, beaten and in some cases subjected to electric shock torture, the monks here say. That is impossible to confirm, and Tibetan versions of events are sometimes exaggerated.

Nepal prepares to abolish the monarchy.

The twin disasters continue to unfold.

The storm is over in Burma but the humanitarian nightmare continues. And the constitutional referendum went ahead despite being “blatantly rigged.”

Meanwhile ABC says “Tibetan tectonics triggered China quake.”

The violent quake that shook China’s Sichuan province this week is linked to a shift of the Tibetan plateau to the north and east, researchers say.

Hmm. And some inside China didn’t take kindly to the cheery spectacle of the Olympic torch jogging along as if nothing were wrong.

There are as many 12,000 dead in China after the quake, plus hundreds of thousands injured and homeless, and there may be more quakes to come in the region. Those suffering here are not the ones who ordered troops into Lhasa or tanks into Tienanmen Square, but even if they were, in a previous life, whether you take that literally or not, each one of them was your mother, and in yet another life, your child.

Terrible death and suffering in Sichuan Province.

Not to brag or anything, but I think The New York Times may have a bit of a crush on us. Hot on the heels of columnist Wendy Johnson’s profile last week comes an article about artist/author Lynda Barry, whose drawings of meditating monkeys, along with an original essay, are featured in our Summer 2008 issue. Sure, Lynda Barry’s an extremely successful cartoonist with multiple books and an off-Broadway play under her belt, as well as a weekly comic strip, “Ernie Pook’s Comeek.” And it’s true that she’s got a new book on her creative process, What It Is, coming out this month. But still! Did you see the way The Gray Lady was looking at us? It’s flattering, really. I think we may ask them out for a milkshake sometime.

Lynda Barry’s Tricycle profile, “Monkey Business,” is available–for free!–here.

Five days after the storm, Burma’s main city of Rangoon is paralyzed and lacks basic services, but the death toll there was small, 400 or so, compared with the Irrawaddy Delta. Food, water, and other necessities are desperately needed on the delta, which was slammed by the incoming storm, and aid teams are stuck waiting in Thailand for permission to cross the border.

Meanwhile, with very little fanfare outside the Chinese media echo-chamber, the torch summits Everest.