Compounding the challenge, the local mental health system has suffered a near total collapse, heaping a great deal of the work to be done with emotionally disturbed residents onto the Police Department and people like Sergeant Glaudi, who has sharp crisis management skills but no medical background.
Highlighting history's weight in modern Asia, China and South Korea, two of the region's closest economic partners, tried to patch over the sharpest crisis in 12 years of diplomatic relations by agreeing Tuesday to discuss calmly the boundaries of a kingdom that disappeared from maps 1,300 years ago.
Republicans said the episode showed that Mr. Obama's instincts were not as sharp at crisis management as at campaigning.
On Tuesday, Fidel Castro had undergone emergency abdominal surgery, according to reports, to repair a "sharp intestinal crisis with sustained bleeding".
However, countries facing the sharpest economic crisis showed a particular spike in numbers moving to Germany.
In the U.S., gross domestic product figures showed an unrevised 0.5% slide, further evidence that global stimulus measures, bank bailouts and interest rates heading for zero may not prevent a sharper economic crisis.
Because sharp changes and crisis are costly.
In sharp contrast, most humanitarian crises have been going on for at least eight years, and as long as 30 or 40 years in some cases.
With a series of foreign-policy crises generating sharp criticisms of the Obama Administration, the President and his top aides lost faith in the former Republican Senator, and decided to ease him out.
Many past crises brought sharp declines followed by recoveries in days or weeks, but the recent terror attacks seem to have marked the beginning of a war with an uncertain mission and duration and came to an economy teetering on the brink of recession.
