Sri Lanka: U.S. researchers design tsunami-resistant house

U.S. researchers have designed a house they say is better able to withstand a tidal wave and are planning to build 1,000 of them in Sri Lanka, one of the countries hit by last year's deadly tsunami. Carlo Ratti, a teacher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was at a wedding in Sri Lanka when the tsunami struck the region last December. When he returned to MIT, he worked on the design of the "tsunami-safe(r) house" with colleagues at his school, Harvard University and British engineering firm Buro Happold.

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(Source: Reuters via AlertNet)

Tsunami early warning system could be up in six months

From The Irrawaddy On-Line (scroll down the page linked to)

Plans for a tsunami early warning system for 27 Indian Ocean countries were agreed during a meeting in Mauritius in early May. Several western and Asian countries, including the United States, Germany, Finland, Belgium, Norway, Australia, China and India, have agreed to provide funding for the US $5.5 system, which is expected to be operational within six months. The warning system will transmit information on tsunamis from two stations in Tokyo, Japan and Hawaii, USA. The Indian Ocean countries will also be provided with tsunami expertise, according to Laura Kong, director of the Pacific Tsunami Early Warning System.

See also this page on Planet Ark, which reports on Indonesia's plans for an early warning system.

Rich and Corporates come together for Tsunami Relief

The enclosed article is from rediff.com on Laxmi Mittal donating $2 mn. to the Tsunami Aid Fund set up by former presidents Bill Clinton and George HW Bush of the USA.

Also a donation from ExxonMobil and everyone associated with it totalling $11 mn.

The full article is here.

Source: www.rediff.com

450,000 kids to be given vitamin A in coastal Sri Lanka

The UN children's agency UNICEF said today it has teamed up with Sri Lanka's government to give vitamin A to 450,000 children living in coastal areas hit by the December tsunami. Vitamin A deficiency impairs a child's immune system and increases the severity of childhood diseases, as well as leading to poor eye sight and even blindness. <>

"With the tsunami and subsequent population displacement, people have lost their natural sources of food and are exposed to unclean water sources and inadequate sanitation facilities, all of which could increase the risk of childhood diseases," said Geoffrey Keele, a communication officer at UNICEF. Sri Lanka was the second worst-hit country after Indonesia by the tsunami. It killed more than 31,000 people here and made 900,000 others homeless.


(Source: Associated Press)

India gives survivors of tsunami 2p in compensation

There was anger and astonishment in India's Andaman and Nicobar islands this week after the Indian government started handing out compensation cheques to survivors of December's tsunami - for as little as two rupees (2p) each.

Residents of the islands, the area of India worst hit by the Boxing Day tsunami, have felt abandoned by the authorities since the disaster. While the relief effort elsewhere in India and in other affected countries was widely praised, in the Andamans it was so poor that at one point starving survivors had to kidnap a senior bureaucrat in order to force the authorities to distribute food.

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