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Spain-Netherlands Repeat Dominates Upcoming World Cup Games

Spain-Netherlands Repeat Dominates Upcoming World Cup Games

Rio de Janeiro (AFP) – Defending champions Spain take on the Netherlands in a re-run of the 2010 final that dominates Friday’s World Cup games.

Australia enter the tournament against South American dark horses Chile in the same Group B battle, while Mexico play Cameroon in Group A.

Andres Iniesta’s goal was all that separated Spain and the Netherlands on the scoresheet four years ago. But the Dutch, who were given nine of the 14 yellow cards handed out, were much criticized for their negative tactics.

Netherlands coach Louis van Gaal admits that Spain may still be playing the better football now, but insists that revenge is still possible.

“There is only one way to block the Spanish, you have to defend in a very compact way,” van Gaal said on the eve of the game in Salvador.

“Then when you get the ball, you have to have a fast, well executed game.

“This will not be easy as Spain also defend very well. But I have an iron belief that we can produce something special tomorrow, even if you have to be conscious that Spain play perhaps the best football.”

Everyone is looking for cracks in the Spanish side that has won two European Championships on the trot as well as the World Cup. Coach Vicente del Bosque says they do not exist.

Del Bosque could name a side with only one change from the one that won the 2012 Euro final. He has only one major decision over whether to use Diego Costa or Cesc Fabregas as his main attacker.

“We have a mature team and young players. We are not afraid of anything and we are in our prime,” he said

Netherlands will be relying on the veteran strike force of Arjen Robben, Robin Van Persie and Wesley Sneijder, who has been rejuvenated by van Gaal.

Spain’s midfielder Xavi Hernandez acknowledged the threat from the trio but stressed Spain’s traditional dominance of possession.

“They have three very experienced players up front. They will sit in and then look for very quick counter-attacks. We know Spain will have more of the ball.”

Chile coach Jorge Sampaoli announced that star midfielder Arturo Vidal is fit to play Australia in Cuiaba in a match that could be as important as Spain-Netherlands.

Both of the group favorites know that Sampaoli is waiting to see which one of them makes a slip that he can exploit.

But Sampaoli said he will have to overcome a physical challenge from the Socceroos first.

“We believe Australia will wait for us and counter. I need my players to be nimble and quick to break through strong defenses,” he said.

Australia are the lowest ranked team at the World Cup finals, 62nd on the FIFA list, but are ready to take on all comers.

“We don’t care who we’re up against,” said Swiss-based attacking midfielder Dario Vidosic.

“There can be 11 Ronaldos or Messis out there. We want to make everybody proud back home. We’ve worked very hard to get to this stage,” he added.

Mexican coach Miguel Herrera has dropped Manchester United forward Javier ‘Chicharito’ Hernandez to the substitutes’ bench for the Group A clash against Cameroon in Natal.

Hernandez started only six league games for a struggling Man United side this last season, managing just four goals in 24 appearances, 18 as a substitute, in the Premier League.

Herrera has plumped for in-form duo Oribe Peralta and Giovani dos Santos up front. “There is very good chemistry between them,” said Herrera.

Cameroon, who were embroiled in a bonus row before arriving in Brazil, will be relying on their veteran captain Samuel Eto’o to guide them through the tough group.

AFP Photo/Javier Soriano

Firefighters Get Handle On Deadly Chilean Fires

Firefighters Get Handle On Deadly Chilean Fires

By Mauricio Weibel and Juan Garff

SANTIAGO, Chile — Most of the fires that have devastated the central Chilean port city of Valparaiso and killed 15 people have been contained, the head of the government’s forestry agency said.

Substantial gains have been made against the blazes that broke out at the weekend but firebreaks must be established to prevent the spread of the flames to housing and dry vegetation if winds pick up, Aaron Cavieres, the executive director of the National Forest Corp, said late Monday.

“We have a breakthrough in the containment of the fire, but we cannot declare it controlled,” he said.

Hopes were also raised by the weather forecast, which predicted winds to die down Wednesday.

But Cavieres’ agency warned that it could take firefighters until the beginning of May to fully extinguish the blazes.

Interior Minister Rodrigo Penailillo said the death toll could rise further.

Dry conditions and high winds caused the original fire, which broke out Saturday, to flare into numerous blazes across the hills of the city known as “The Jewel of the Pacific.”

More than 11,000 people have been left homeless, about 2,500 apartments have been destroyed and 2,800 acres have burned, Penailillo said.

The historic city center, which is a World Heritage Site, has so far been spared.

What caused the fires to break out remained unknown.

President Michelle Bachelet vowed to rebuild the city of 270,000 people after fires “of never-before-seen dimensions.”

“I want to express my full solidarity and that of the government with the people and families who are being affected,” Bachelet said a month after taking office.

About 1,250 firefighters are battling the blazes with the help of 30 aircraft, including six from neighboring Argentina, and 3,000 soldiers and police who are providing security in the ravaged city, known for the brightly painted houses and funicular elevators on its hillsides.

Trucks of food, clothing and other aid are pouring into the port, 75 miles northwest of Santiago, from other parts of Chile.

Guillermo de la Maza, head of the National Office of Emergency, said he suspected arson to be the cause of the blazes, but Penailillo ruled that out. Police said they suspected two vultures that landed on high-voltage electrical lines to be the culprits, a theory prosecutor Eduardo Fernandez nixed.

Investigators, meanwhile, were looking into whether accelerants had a part to play in the blazes.

 

8.2 Earthquake Hits Chile; Pacific Tsunami Warning Spurs Evacuations

8.2 Earthquake Hits Chile; Pacific Tsunami Warning Spurs Evacuations

By Fabiola Gutierrez and Chris Kraul, Los Angeles Times

SANTIAGO, Chile — A shallow and powerful magnitude 8.2 earthquake rocked Chile’s northern coast Tuesday, sparking fires, churning up high waves, causing landslides and cutting power for thousands of people.

A fireman and an elderly heart attack victim were among five people reported dead from the quake, but authorities had yet to assess widespread damage.

Evacuations were ordered in expectation of waves as high as 16 feet along the Pacific coast of Chile, neighboring Peru and elsewhere. An alert was issued for Hawaii, where evacuations were under way late Tuesday, but officials cautioned they did not expect a large wave to hit the state.

The quake struck at 8:36 p.m. local time and was centered about 950 miles from the capital, Santiago, seismologists said. It was triggered from a depth of 12.5 miles, off the coast near the sparsely populated port of Pisagua.

Major damage was reported to Highway A16 between Pisagua and Iquique, a port city of about 182,000 people about 65 miles south. About 300 inmates escaped from a nearby women’s prison, officials said.

With the exception of Iquique, the area closest to the epicenter of the quake is largely desert and sparsely populated. Pisagua has fewer than 300 inhabitants, and the town of Arica, about 120 miles north of Iquique, has about 10,600 residents, according to recent census data. The Arica and Parinacota regions where the quake was felt strongly have a combined population of about 215,000 and are known largely for their mining and fishing industries.

The temblor knocked some residents off their feet and frightened a country where massive earthquakes have killed thousands of people.

“I have a 14-year-old son and the quake was so strong that we couldn’t stay on our feet,” said Josefina Pardo, a 40-year-old attorney in Arica, near the Peruvian border. “My boyfriend passed by to look for us and we went to a secure zone. Police passed by houses to tell people to evacuate. People are very afraid. Everyone is fearful of a tsunami and because we have no electric power. We took our dog with us and the evacuation was very rapid and orderly.”

Adriana Gonzalez, a 58-year old seamstress in Arica said: “Everything moved and the power went out immediately. It had been shaking all week and people immediately started running to get away.”

Nervous Iquique residents gathered in a soccer stadium, where Tatiana Gonzalez, a 45-year-old secretary, told local news media that the earthquake scattered furniture and possessions at her home. She came with her father, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease.

“I was able to sit with my father in his wheelchair, and when we tried to leave, the police passed by to evacuate us to a more secure sector (in the stadium) where there were many families who had just left their homes,” she said. “We are not going to leave this place.”

The Chilean navy’s oceanographic center reported wave heights of 5 feet in Iquique and greater than 6 feet in Pisagua.

Much of the coast borders the oceanic Nazca tectonic plate, which is being pushed under the continental South American plate, creating a geologic hot spot responsible for the creation of the Andes mountains.

That pressure can produce earthquakes greater than magnitude 9, the same class of temblor that caused the 2004 Sumatra and 2011 Japan tsunamis.

Southern Chile produced the most powerful earthquake on record, a magnitude 9.5 temblor in 1960, which killed thousands around the city of Valdivia and brought tsunamis to Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines and the U.S. West Coast. A magnitude 8.8 earthquake in southern Chile killed 524 people and destroyed 220,000 homes in 2010.

Swarms of earthquakes off the northern coast, including a magnitude 6.7 shaker that struck March 16, preceded Tuesday’s temblor.

But one earthquake expert who has studied the area warned Tuesday that the quake was unlikely to have relieved the enormous pressures that have built up along the massive fault, which he said had not broken in that area since 1877.

“It’s probably not big enough to have released all of the energy that had been stored up along that locked plate boundary for the last 140 years or so,” said Rick Allmendinger, a Cornell University professor of Earth and atmospheric sciences. “Is this the big one for that area? Or was it a foreshock to a presumably an even bigger earthquake?”

AFP Photo/Aldo Solimano

8.2 Earthquake Hits Chile; Pacific Tsunami Warning Spurs Evacuations

8.2 Earthquake Hits Chile; Pacific Tsunami Warning Spurs Evacuations

By Fabiola Gutierrez and Chris Kraul, Los Angeles Times

SANTIAGO, Chile — A shallow and powerful magnitude 8.2 earthquake rocked Chile’s northern coast Tuesday, sparking fires, churning up high waves, causing landslides, and cutting power for thousands of people.

A fireman and an elderly heart attack victim were among five people reported dead from the quake, but authorities had yet to assess widespread damage.

Evacuations were ordered in expectation of waves as high as 16 feet along the Pacific coast of Chile, neighboring Peru and elsewhere. An alert was issued for Hawaii, where evacuations were under way late Tuesday, but officials cautioned they did not expect a large wave to hit the state.

The quake struck at 8:36 p.m. local time and was centered about 950 miles from the capital, Santiago, seismologists said. It was triggered from a depth of 12.5 miles, off the coast near the sparsely populated port of Pisagua.

Major damage was reported to Highway A16 between Pisagua and Iquique, a port city of about 182,000 people about 65 miles south. About 300 inmates escaped from a nearby women’s prison, officials said.

With the exception of Iquique, the area closest to the epicenter of the quake is largely desert and sparsely populated. Pisagua has fewer than 300 inhabitants, and the town of Arica, about 120 miles north of Iquique, has about 10,600 residents, according to recent census data. The Arica and Parinacota regions where the quake was felt strongly have a combined population of about 215,000 and are known largely for their mining and fishing industries.

The temblor knocked some residents off their feet and frightened a country where massive earthquakes have killed thousands of people.

“I have a 14-year-old son and the quake was so strong that we couldn’t stay on our feet,” said Josefina Pardo, a 40-year-old attorney in Arica, near the Peruvian border. “My boyfriend passed by to look for us and we went to a secure zone. Police passed by houses to tell people to evacuate. People are very afraid. Everyone is fearful of a tsunami and because we have no electric power. We took our dog with us and the evacuation was very rapid and orderly.”

Adriana Gonzalez, a 58-year old seamstress in Arica said, “Everything moved and the power went out immediately. It had been shaking all week and people immediately started running to get away.”

Nervous Iquique residents gathered in a soccer stadium, where Tatiana Gonzalez, a 45-year-old secretary, told local news media that the earthquake scattered furniture and possessions at her home. She came with her father, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease.

“I was able to sit with my father in his wheelchair, and when we tried to leave, the police passed by to evacuate us to a more secure sector (in the stadium) where there were many families who had just left their homes,” she said. “We are not going to leave this place.”

The Chilean navy’s oceanographic center reported wave heights of five feet in Iquique and greater than six feet in Pisagua.

Much of the coast borders the oceanic Nazca tectonic plate, which is being pushed under the continental South American plate, creating a geologic hot spot responsible for the creation of the Andes mountains.

That pressure can produce earthquakes greater than magnitude nine, the same class of temblor that caused the 2004 Sumatra and 2011 Japan tsunamis.

Southern Chile produced the most powerful earthquake on record, a magnitude 9.5 temblor in 1960, which killed thousands around the city of Valdivia and brought tsunamis to Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines and the U.S. West Coast. A magnitude 8.8 earthquake in southern Chile killed 524 people and destroyed 220,000 homes in 2010.

Swarms of earthquakes off the northern coast, including a magnitude 6.7 shaker that struck March 16, preceded Tuesday’s temblor.

But one earthquake expert who has studied the area warned Tuesday that the quake was unlikely to have relieved the enormous pressures that have built up along the massive fault, which he said had not broken in that area since 1877.

“It’s probably not big enough to have released all of the energy that had been stored up along that locked plate boundary for the last 140 years or so,” said Rick Allmendinger, a Cornell University professor of Earth and atmospheric sciences. “Is this the big one for that area? Or was it a foreshock to a presumably an even bigger earthquake?”

AFP Photo/Frederick Florin