Massive earthquake strikes Chile, 122 dead

27/02/2010 - A massive earthquake with a magnitude of 8.8 has struck central Chile, triggering a tsunami. The quake that devastated Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, in January was magnitude 7.0.
The tremor shook the capital, Santiago, for a minute and a half early this morning, bringing down telephone and power lines.

The quake centred 200 miles south-west of Santiago at a depth of 22 miles, according to the US Geological Survey. The epicentre was 70 miles from Concepcion, Chile's second largest city, with a population of around 670,000.

The largest earthquake ever recorded struck the same area of Chile on 22 May 1960. The magnitude-9.5 quake killed 1,655 people and left 2 million homeless.

Four SOS Children’s Villages in the greater area of Concepcion are ready to immediately provide temporary shelter for unaccompanied children and to support reunification with families.

SOS Children’s Villages has a long experience of work in Chile. The organization started to operate in Concepción in 1965, when the first Village was established . Inadequate infrastructures in the immediate vicinity led to the creation of a number of additional facilities in the following years, such as SOS Kindergartens, SOS Youth Facilities, SOS Technical Schools, and various SOS Social Centers. In the following years the number of Villages continued to grow in other areas of Chile, especially in the central region. At present there are thirteen active SOS Children's Villages, eleven SOS Youth Facilities, four SOS Kindergartens, two SOS Vocational Training Centers and ten SOS Social Centers.

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US troops in Iraq head to Afghanistan

BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.

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Snake bite deaths

Monday, July 06, 2009 COLOMBO: The Sri Lankan government recorded some 33,000 snake bites in 2008, with most of the victims coming from remote villages.The Department of Government Information said in a statement that most of the snake bite cases could be fatal if neglected.The statement said snake bites are often neglected in Sri Lanka as victims do not seek treatment at hospitals where advanced medication is available. Instead, the victims rush to traditional type of treatment which could be a risk, reports Xinhua.Snake bites death at domestic level, outside hospitals, go unrecorded, said the statement.Most victims of snake bite are from the rural and remote villages where there is no electricity after dusk.Statistics show that Sri Lanka has over 90 species of snake with around 10 species possessing venom capable of killing a human being.In Sri Lanka the annual death rate due to snake bite envenoming is one of the highest in the world being 6 in 100,000 population.

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