Word: regionals
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...that just struck. Haiti sits over two clashing tectonic plates, the North American and the Caribbean, which form what's known as the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden Fault. Geologists know the fault well and have studied it for decades, and well they should: it has shaken the region violently and repeatedly over history, though yesterday's quake, measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale, is the worst in a century. (See pictures of the devastating earthquake in Haiti...
...California to study a particularly unstable stretch of the San Andreas fault near the town of Parkfield. Quakes had been occurring in the area every 20 to 25 years or so. The previous one had been in 1966, so scientists predicted another should hit before 1990. They threaded the region with seismometers and other sensors, then sat back and waited for the telltale signal that would give them notice of the coming rumble. The quake never occurred in the 1980s, nor in the 1990s. It was not until 2004 that the earth in the area at last moved again...
...hapless cop was reportedly stopped at a police checkpoint in the capital region's Quezon City just 30 minutes into the gun ban that began on Jan. 10. In the first 48 hours of the clampdown, 71 people were arrested at police checkpoints across the country for carrying firearms. Many of those nabbed pleaded ignorance, but the authorities have vowed zero tolerance for violators of the ban that suspends licenses to carry firearms in public - and there are over 1 million registered handguns and rifles in the Philippines - until June 9, the last day of the official election period after...
Police have 68 armed groups on a watch list; most are concentrated in long-standing election trouble spots, such as the autonomous region for Muslims on Mindanao Island and a clutch of clannish northern provinces. "Based on our estimates there are at least 200 private armed groups nationwide if you include those run by landlords, businessmen and gambling lords," says Rommel Banlaoi, director of the Philippine Institute for Political Violence and Terrorism Research. Many are small units with under a dozen members. But some - it is not clear how many - are virtual armies. The one operated by the Ampatuan clan...
...region of Calabria, where Rosarno is located, makes up the toe of Italy's boot. Seasonal migrants - mostly from Africa and Eastern Europe - have long been employed to work in the citrus orchards there. The hours are long, and the wages average less than $30 a day. When Fabrizio Gatti, a journalist for the Italian newsweekly L'Espresso, posed as a migrant worker in 2006, he uncovered a world where beatings were common and exploitation was rife. "You have no contract - no rights," Gatti says. "So if they don't pay you, you cannot go to the police...