
A 6.1-magnitude quake has hit northern Chile close to the border with Bolivia, the US Geological Survey reports.

A DUO of windsurfers from England and Argentina say a fortnight they spent exploring the Falklands coastline far exceeded their expectations.
Brazil's Defence Minister Nelson Jobim says the military is ready to help the city of Rio de Janeiro deal with rising numbers of dengue fever cases.
The international observance of World Water Day is an initiative that grew out of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro.

Rio do Janeiro faces a dengue epidemic claims the physicians association of the Brazilian state which anticipated that next Monday they will make a formal claim against municipal, state and federal authorities for neglecting the spread of the disease that so far this year has caused 30 deaths.

Illegal trade in hides of polar bears, a species in steady decline throughout the Arctic is on the rise in Russia, the World Wildlife Fund said on Thursday.

Six children have died of the mosquito transmitted disease in the last 24 hours reported Brazilian health authorities from Rio do Janeiro, totaling 30 fatal cases so far this year which is almost the 31registered in the twelve months of 2007.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency announced this week it was tightening the amount of smog-forming ozone that will be allowed, declaring that the air in hundreds of U.S. counties is too dirty to breathe. But the new lower level, 75 parts per billion (from 80 parts per billion), still is significantly higher than what the agency's scientific advisers had urged.

Areas of Britain that escaped the worst of the storms earlier this week woke up to a battering on Wednesday.

A logger is suspected to be the first fatal case of yellow fever in Argentina since the 2007 outbreak in neighboring Paraguay. The man, 39, together with a crew was logging in the northern province of Misiones and according to local sanitary officials had all the symptoms of the mosquito transmitted viral disease.