A Bloody Day in Paradise

In Phuket, Thailand, the morning of Dec. 26 was as gorgeous as the seven that had preceded it. I was playing golf with a Finnish couple a few hundred meters from the island's western coast, when some kids came running onto the course, upset and agitated. Something terrible, they let us know, had happened on the beach.

Racing back to my hotel to check that my wife and children were fine (which they were) I received a voice mail from Alex Perry, Time's New Delhi bureau chief, on vacation in the Indian Himalayas. He knew much more about the...