I am sure in the 'free' world there are agendas and priorities, hat tip to the linked Australian Lowy Institute item below; which acted as a catalyst for my question.

An extreme case was in 2007 when Cyclone Gonu struck Oman. It was a category 5 super-cyclonic storm, in a desert country where such things are unknown. 600mm of rain fell in a day in Muscat, the capital, and there was 5-metre sea surge. Officially, 50 people were killed, but the real number may have been much larger. Gonu was the biggest natural disaster in Oman's history. There is a nice YouTube description of the event by a British teenager:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlWIakaVLis . There are plenty of other graphic Youtube entries, like this:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWp8Vx-YZOs. Wikipedia has a good account.

What did our media report? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. It just didn't happen. I heard by e-mail (I have some connections there) and saw a story on the BBC, but our media chose not to report Gonu at all. Contrast this with the blanket coverage here of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, which was a category 3.
Link:http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/...our-media.aspx

I am just curious what SWC members have spotted.