Colombian Juan Manuel Santos has urged people to evacuate a hillside neighbourhood near Medellin, after a landslide buried around 50 houses.

哥伦比亚总统桑托斯敦促人们迅速撤离麦德林附近的山区，此前该地区发生山体滑坡，近50座住宅被掩埋。

More than 30 bodies have been recovered since the landslide in Bello on Sunday, about a third of them children.

More than 80 people are still missing, but rescue efforts have been hampered（阻碍，限制） by continued heavy rains.

President Santos said the collapse of the hillside was a "tragedy foretold" that could be repeated.

"To all the residents of this high risk zone, I ask you: in so far as is possible, let us evacuate this area. They have shown me places where what happened on Sunday could happen again and we have to avoid that," he said.

Mr Santos promised his government would build 1000 new homes in Bello for people whose houses were destroyed or had to be evacuated, and would help pay their rent until they could be re-housed.

He was speaking during a visit to the scene of the disaster, where hundreds of rescue workers and desperate residents have been digging through the mud in search of the missing.

"We are going to work 24 hours a day until we recover the last body, it is the least we can do", Mr Santos said.

National emergency

The landslide in the La Gabriela district of Bello on the outskirts（郊区） of Medellin is the deadliest single incident in what has been Colombia's worst rainy season in decades.

Across the country, around 200 people have died as a result of floods and landslides and hundreds of thousands have had to leave their homes.

President Santos is considering declaring a state of emergency, which would give his government more powers to address the crisis by raising emergency loans and even taxes.

"The tragedy has overwhelmed（打击） the current capacity of the state to confront it," he said.

Neighbouring Venezuela is also experiencing heavy flooding.

Some 100,000 people have been driven from their homes there.

President Hugo Chavez has said his government plans to take over private land to build new houses for some of those forced to abandon their homes.

Venezuela has also been offered help by its allies in Argentina, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Brazil.

President Chavez said he had asked Brazil for military bridge-building equipment to replace vital road bridges that had been swept away.

The May-November rainy season in Mexico, Central America and the northern part of South America has been severe（严厉的，剧烈的） this year.

The extreme weather is attributed to the La Nina climatic phenomenon, which is caused by colder than usual water currents along the Pacific coast.

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The county of Los Angeles has come up with a set of new guideline regarding future hosting of electronic music festivals in an effort to make the raves safer, the county's Board of Supervisors announced on Tuesday.

The 10 guidelines were authored by a task force consisting of public health and safety officials in collaboration with police and event promotors.

The county requires participants at the raves must be at least 18 years of age, people must reach the legal age of 21 years of age before they are allowed to drink alcohol, all events must be closed by 2 a.m. and medical personnel must be on side in case of an emergency.

Fifteen-year-old Sasha Rodriguez overdosed on Ecstasy after attending the 14th annual Electric Daisy Carnival at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and died June 29. The event was held from June 25 and 26, drawing a huge crowd of 185,000 music fans. Police made more than 60 arrests at the scene. Drug overdoses and drunkenness were cited as a problem.

The owner of the Coliseum enacted an indefinite moratorium on the event, and agreed last week to abide by the latest recommendations. The moratorium was only lifted on Nov. 3.

The next rave at the Coliseum is slated to be held for New Year's Eve.

Last week, commission member and county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky asked that raves be allowed to continue only if organizers' security and operational plans pass muster with the commission. That move requires that organizers submit detailed plans for approval at least two months before the event.

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