- Four days after a deadly earthquake, Chile's military finally launched a massive humanitarian aid effort Wednesday that promised to improve an image long associated with dictatorship-era repression. Its first delivery went to a neighborhood of military families who already had food. After days of looting, rifle-toting army troops occupied nearly every block of hard-hit Concepcion on Wednesday, enforcing a curfew that expired at noon with checkpoints throughout the city. With the streets more secure, they focused on aid. Soldiers had worked overnight stuffing flour, canned beans, cooking oil and tea into hundreds of plastic bags that volunteers loaded into dump trucks for distribution to survivors, many of whom had gone without fresh food or drinking water since Saturday's quake.

- From Sun News Services