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Chile Earthquake

March 26, 2012 by · Comments Off on Chile Earthquake 

Chile Earthquake, A magnitude-7.1 earthquake struck central Chile Sunday night, the strongest and longest that many people said they had felt since a huge quake devastated the area two years ago. There were no immediate reports of deaths or major damage.

The quake struck at 7:30 p.m. about 27 kilometres north-northwest of Talca, a city of more than 200,000 people where residents said the shaking lasted about a minute.

Buildings swayed in Chile’s capital 219 kilometres to the north, and people living along a 770-kilometre stretch of Chile’s central coast were briefly warned to head for higher ground.

Residents were particularly alarmed in Constitucion, where much of the coastal downtown at the mouth of a river was obliterated by the tsunami caused by the 8.8-magnitude quake in 2010.

Panic also struck in Santiago and other cities, with people running out of skyscrapers, and many neighbourhoods were left partly or totally without electrical power. Phone service was disrupted by heavy use.

“There are some injuries but nothing serious,” said Interior Minister Rodrigo Hinzpeter, who was serving as acting president while Sebastian Pinera is on tour in Asia.

Hinzpeter said authorities were conducting a thorough survey of the affected regions to look for damage.

The Chilean navy’s hydrographic and oceanographic service and the national emergency office called off the tsunami warning shortly after an analysis showed the quake wasn’t the type to provoke a tsunami.

But hundreds of coastal residents were staying away from the shore, remembering how the government said there would be no tsunami just before huge waves struck after the 2010 quake, killing 156 of the 524 victims of that disaster. As aftershocks rattled the region, many people living inland didn’t want to go back inside their homes, either.

Where Is Mubarak

February 12, 2011 by · Comments Off on Where Is Mubarak 

Where Is Mubarak, On their first day of freedom, Egyptians go to work. Thousands of volunteers carrying brooms, dust pans and garbage bags descended on Tahrir Square and surrounding streets to clean up – responding to a call to action that began circulating on the text messages, a few hours after the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak was announced Friday.

Fashionable young men and women donned rubber gloves and masks alongside their fellow low-income wearing headscarves to protect themselves from dust and began to sweep the streets of the place and remove the tents.

Some have found that there was not enough to do and spread in the surrounding streets, where they cleared rubble and other artifacts of the revolt that shook the city center for 18 days.

Switzerland announced it was freezing the assets owned there by Hosni Mubarak, former president of Egypt, media reported today.

The announcement, which gave no details on what assets Mubarak or his family might have in Swiss banks, will send shock waves through the presidential palaces of other countries in the Middle East, according to a report published in The Daily Telegraph.

“The government wants to avoid misappropriation of property belonging to the Egyptian state,” a statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland said.
The world seems to shrink around Hosni Mubarak after authorities froze his assets in Switzerland and has apparently been banned from leaving Egypt.
After a night without precedent in which the 82-year quit as president, Mubarak was believed to be at his residence in Sharm el-Sheikh refused to leave his homeland.

At the beginning of the uprising that would eventually force him from office, he vowed to “die on the soil of Egypt and be judged by history.”

But the aging politician and former officer in the Air Force can not have a choice in the matter, suggested that the reports he would be prevented from leaving the country.

Current and former government officials were banned from leaving the country without permission, according to airport authorities.

At least 1,000 people staged a noisy rally in London on Saturday to celebrate the downfall of President Hosni Mubarak and to show their support for anti-government protests across the Middle East.

The event was organized by Amnesty International as part of a global wave of protests to urge Mubarak to quit, but turned into victory celebration after the fort fled Cairo and handed power to the military Friday.

“What we see now is a transition to civilian rule,” activist Vivian Ibrahim, who led demonstrations outside the Egyptian embassy through the crisis, told the BBC.

“Above all we want to hear the voice of young people who stood in Tahrir Square, she added, referring to the location in downtown Cairo, where the largest protest against the Mubarak regime took place.

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