Lima, Peru – Relief officials urgently appealed for more aid Thursday for earthquake survivors along Peru’s shattered southern coast. Medical help, blankets and tents top the list, along with food, water and latrines.
Two weeks after the devastating quake, survivors are huddling in cardboard shelters in desperate, unhygienic conditions, said Doctors Without Borders spokesman Francois Dumont, speaking from the town of Guadaloupe.
“We found the town completely destroyed,” Dumont told The Associated Press. “In makeshift shelters made of cardboard and bedsheets in front of their destroyed houses, families are living in cold and unhygienic conditions. They have no latrines, no drinking water and no real space to bathe.”
“It’s like one day after the quake,” said Dumont, whose group has 35 people operating mobile clinics and offering psychological counseling in the disaster zone.
The magnitude-8 earthquake on Aug. 15 leveled most of Pisco, a port city 125 miles southeast of Lima, killing at least 519 people, injuring 1,366 and destroying 40,000 homes. At least 40 other people remain missing, said Alberto Visual, a director in Peru’s civil defense agency.
ATLANTA
Cancer society turns focus to insurance
In a stark departure from past practice, the American Cancer Society plans to devote its entire $15 million advertising budget this year to the consequences of inadequate health coverage.
The campaign was born of the group’s frustration that cancer rates are not dropping as rapidly as hoped, and of recent research linking a lack of insurance to delays in detecting malignancies.
Though the advertisements are nonpartisan and pointedly avoid specific prescriptions, they are intended to intensify the political focus on an issue that is already receiving considerable attention from presidential candidates in both parties.
The society’s advertisements are unique, say experts in philanthropy and advertising, in that disease-fighting charities traditionally limit their public appeals to narrower aspects of prevention or education.
John Seffrin, chief executive of the cancer society, said his organization had concluded that advances in prevention and research would have little lasting impact if Americans could not afford cancer screening and treatment.
LOS ANGELES
Widows’ suit targets denials of citizenship
Dahianna Heard’s husband was fatally shot while working for a private security contractor in Iraq. Raquel Williams’ husband died of sleep apnea and heart problems. Ana Maria Moncayo-Gigax’s husband was killed in a car crash while on duty with the U.S. Border Patrol.
All three women were waiting for their permanent residency, but their U.S. citizen spouses died before the applications were approved.
Immigration authorities later denied the cases because the women were no longer married to U.S. citizens.
The women are part of a class-action suit filed Thursday in Los Angeles federal court trying to end the “widow penalty” and asking the court to compel immigration authorities to reopen the individual cases.
“This is, bottom line, a moral issue,” said Brent Renison, the attorney heading up the suit. The widows should not be “stripped of the status of a spouse” just because their husbands died, he said.
There are nearly two dozen named plaintiffs, but Renison estimates that there are at least 85 women affected nationwide. Some of the women are already in deportation proceedings, he said.
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil
Train going 60 mph hits another; 8 killed
A speeding train carrying hundreds of commuters slammed into an empty train near Rio de Janeiro on Thursday, killing eight people and injuring more than 80, officials said.
The commuter train was traveling at nearly 60 mph when it slammed into the rear of an empty six-car train maneuvering slowly from one track to another, the Supervia company that runs the train said.
Rescue workers had to use blowtorches to cut through the wreckage to free some passengers.
The collision, about 200 yards from a station on Rio’s poor north side, killed eight people, said Pedro Machado, commander-general of the Rio de Janeiro Fire Department.
Brazil’s government-run Agencia Brasil news service said 84 people were injured, while the website of Globo TV said the number was 101. Most suffered light injuries, the reports said.
