At the end of a letter to the Daily Mirror urging action to meet the typhoon disaster in the Philippines, the writer added: “God bless all those affected.” This was a little more than a conventional wish (“God bless!” or more cloyingly, when spoken, in a drawn-out descending tone, of some sweet animal or child, “Ah, bless”).“Thank God we all survived,” the head of an orphanage said to Kate Hodal, reporting for The Guardian. For those distant from the events, with relations in peril, there was a period of anxious suspense. Good news followed for some. “After this phone call, I felt so thankful to God for giving them a second chance,” a mother in Virginia with a family in Tacloban told Devika Bhat of The Times after four uncertain