The main square of Raekoja Plats, a cobbled plaza dominated by a Gothic town hall, lies at the epicentre of a web of alleys and lanes leading up to the 13th-century Toompea Castle and the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral.

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Most streets are now passable, and in Leogane - the town at the epicentre of the quake which has much flatter and more accessible geography than the capital - about 80% of the debris has been removed from the downtown area.

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It's been provoked for me by the focus on London for the Olympic Games, both in capital spend on the infrastructure of the Games, and now as the epicentre of world sport, at least for two weeks.

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And a bleached 18th-Century mission house still stands at the city's epicentre, one of the oldest buildings in America and perhaps the closest this nation has to a site of pilgrimage.

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The epicentre of the latest tragedy, at 5.54am on May 27th, was off the south coast of Java, the country's most densely populated island, just outside the ancient royal city of Yogyakarta.

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Many are based at a science park near the city of Hsinchu, about 100km (62 miles) north of the epicentre.

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Authorities also said that no damage was observed at the massive Three Gorges Dam, located on the Yangtze River, several hundred kilometres east of the epicentre.

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