SANTIAGO - Chile's new Anti-Tobacco Law, to take effect in June, could increase the black market for cigarettes in the areas surrounding primary and secondary schools, where shops will be prohibited from selling cigarettes, warn some lawmakers.

That is a real possibility, "but it is the duty of the authorities to step up enforcement" to prevent it, Norma Salinas, leader of a Santiago school group, told Tierramérica.

The law, passed on Mar. 14, will be the first to be enacted by the recently inaugurated -- and first woman -- president, Michelle Bachelet, a physician specializing in pediatrics and public health.

Chilean legislation will thus adapt to international conventions that have recently tightened restrictions on tobacco use, considered a global public health problem, and in Chile associated with 17 percent of all deaths.

CARACAS - The Venezuelan capital will have civilian protection brigades, made up of citizen groups, to prevent disasters resulting from heavy rains, such as mudslides and flooding, announced the municipality of Libertador, which covers two-thirds (west and central) of Caracas.

The rainy season in central Venezuela is from May to October, although in the past decade there were heavy rains outside of that period.

"We want to give the communities basic training in natural disasters in order to attend to emergencies jointly with the officials," Carmen Zerpa, of the city's Safety Commission, told Tierramérica.

The rains increase the risk of mudslides and building collapse, and Mayor Freddy Bernal noted that 70 percent of the construction in the area he governs, hundreds of impoverished neighborhoods, is built on precarious terrain.

SAO PAULO - Some 200,000 children ages seven to 13 will take part in the Samba for Life parade, organized by the environmental group Greenpeace alongside Brazilian institutions, during the 8th Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP8).

"Children from Japan, Germany, Mexico, Italy and many other countries will join Brazilian children to raise awareness of government officials about the necessity of protecting the planet's biodiversity," campaign coordinator Marcel Marquesini explained to Tierramérica.

It is one of several activities included in Greenpeace's Youth for the Forests program, to take place during COP8 in the southern Brazilian city of Curitiba, Mar. 20-31.

Created 15 years ago, the program is active in 13 countries with the participation of thousands of children and adolescents.

HAVANA - Ahead of hurricane season in June, an international seminar for journalists announced this week in Havana is an attempt to provide better tools for reporting on this kind of natural disaster.

From May 29 to Jun. 1, experts and academics will explain the upward trend in the number and intensity of hurricanes in the Atlantic basin.

The panel "Journalistic coverage and hurricanes" will put emphasis on damage prevention, in which the media play an extremely important role, says Roger Ricardo, coordinator of the workshop organized by the scientific and environmental journalism department of the José Martí International Journalism Institute and the Cuban Ministry of Environment.

"The seminar could also lead to the creation of a network of journalists in the Caribbean region specializing in these issues," Ricardo said in conversation with Tierramérica.

TEGUCIGALPA - More than 1,730 families in 33 municipalities in the Honduran interior have overcome poverty in the past three years, thanks to a sustainable agriculture, sales and marketing program of the non-governmental development organization Oxfam International.

Backed by the European Union, the project took place in regions of western, northern and central Honduras.

Sonia Cano, Oxfam representative in Tegucigalpa, told Tierramérica that the project's main legacy is joint planning: "the desire to overcome and to prove that with few resources but broad stimulus, people can leave behind their mental and physical state of poverty."

Eight out of 10 Hondurans live in poverty or extreme poverty. Most survive on less than two dollars a day, according to United Nations figures.

GUATEMALA CITY - Guatemalan officials are alarmed by the 96 forest fires that have consumed 563 hectares -- 211 in protected areas -- throughout the country so far this year.

The fires have most affected the capital, the departments of Zacapa and Jalapa in the east, and Sololá, Totonicapán and Chimaltenango in the west, said Josué Morales, director of the National System for Prevention and Control of Forest Fires (SIPECIF).

Morales explained in a Tierramérica interview that 42 percent of the fires were the result of criminal activities, and the rest were from the burning of fields, or accidentally started by loggers or hunters.

SIPECIF figures indicate that in 2005, fires consumed 34, 157 hectares. The government set aside 4.2 million dollars to confront the emergency.

According to the environmental group Trópico Verde, Guatemala loses some 60,000 hectares of forest each year, and reforests just 14,000.