2 strong undersea earthquakes rattle Asia

TOKYO, Japan (AP) — Two strong earthquakes rattled Asia on Thursday, triggering alerts for a tsunami that harmlessly lapped Japan's northern coast and another in Indonesia that didn't materialize but briefly sent residents fleeing to high ground.

The more powerful of the quakes, with a preliminary magnitude of 7.1 hit at 9:21 a.m. off Japan's northernmost main island of Hokkaido at a depth of about 19 miles (30 kilometers), the country's meteorological agency said.

A 4-inch (10-centimeter) tsunami rippled to shore 35 minutes later, but there were no signs of damage.

"There was some light shaking, but it was nothing major," said Yukio Yoshida, a police spokesman in Hokkaido.

Authorities temporarily advised about 10,600 residents of Ofunato in Iwate Prefecture (state), about 125 miles (200 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo, to evacuate their homes and ordered people to stay away from beaches.

An hour earlier, northeastern Indonesia was hit by a 6.6-magnitude quake that struck 55 miles (90 kilometers) beneath the Molucca Sea, the U.S. Geological Survey. Though on the same tectonic plate, the temblors were unrelated, local officials said.

A tsunami alert was briefly issued over the radio and television and people in the Maluku capital of Ternate, which was closest to the epicenter, fled from houses and buildings as the earth rumbled beneath them.

The feared wave never came, however, and there were no reports of casualties or damage.

"I ran out of the hotel with other guests and we fled to high ground," Benyamin Otte said. "I could see people on the beach, checking to see if the were any signs of a tsunami, but everything looked normal. Within a half hour, we were heading back down."

Indonesia and Japan are both prone to seismic upheaval due to their location on the so-called Pacific "Ring of Fire," an arc of volcanos and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin.

In December 2004, a massive earthquake off Indonesia's Sumatra island triggered a tsunami that battered much of the Indian Ocean coastline and killed more than 230,000 people — 131,000 of them in Aceh province alone.

A tsunami off Java island last year killed nearly 5,000.

Japan also is one of the world's most earthquake prone nations.

In 1995, a magnitude-7.2 quake in the western port city of Kobe killed 6,400 people and experts believe Tokyo has a 90 percent chance of being hit by a major quake over the next 50 years.

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Russia 'backs US on terror fight'

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has pledged full co-operation with the US on anti-terrorism, on the anniversary of the 11 September attacks.

But he said the US should reconsider its ties with "rotten regimes" that "conduct military adventures", in a reference to Georgia's government.

Mr Medvedev also said Russia would focus on rearming, following the brief war it fought with Georgia last month.

They clashed over the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

After five days of fighting a ceasefire was agreed - but each side has accused the other of breaching the accord.

'No imperial ambitions'

Russia, which has backed self-declared governments in the nominally Georgian regions for years, recently infuriated the West by recognising their independence.

Kremlin officials have been involved in a bitter war of words with the US throughout the crisis.

Moscow has repeatedly accused Washington of arming Georgia. The US says Russia is violating Georgia's sovereignty.

The Georgian government, meanwhile, has accused Moscow of attempting to annex the two provinces.

Some critics have even suggested that Russia wanted to re-establish its spheres of influence from the Cold War era, and planned to target Ukraine's pro-Western government next.

But Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has once again angrily denied those claims.

"We do not have and will not have any of the imperial ambitions that people accuse us of," Mr Putin said from the southern resort of Sochi.

War claims

At a Kremlin meeting Mr Medvedev said the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks was a "sorrowful day for the USA and for all the other countries which suffer from terrorism".

He said that Russia was ready for "co-ordinated, fully-fledged co-operation with the USA and other states on issues of the fight against terrorism".

But he added: "We consider this our primary task and we believe that it is much more useful to the USA than developing relations with rotten regimes which undertake military adventures."

Mr Medvedev's remarks come a day after Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov accused the US of attempting to start a war in the Caucasus.

Mr Kadyrov, a Moscow supporter, accused the US of using the Caucasus as a testing ground to challenge Russia's resolve.

Fighting between Russia and Georgia began on 7 August after the Georgian military tried to retake the breakaway region of South Ossetia by force.

Russian forces launched a counter-attack and the conflict ended with the ejection of Georgian troops from both South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

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N.Korea celebrates 60th anniversary since founding

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea marked the 60th anniversary of its founding Tuesday amid international doubts over its commitment to denuclearization, speculation about the health of its leader and a worsening food crisis.

The centerpiece of the celebration was to be a massive military parade through Pyongyang's central Kim Il Sung Square — named after the communist country's founding figure — expected to take place later Tuesday.

But attention was focused on whether Kim Jong Il, the country's current leader and son of the founder, would attend given his absence from public view since mid-August which has sparked speculation he could be ill.

South Korean media have speculated that the 66-year-old Kim's health has worsened. South Korea's intelligence service has previously said Kim has chronic heart disease and diabetes — denied by Kim himself.

South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported Tuesday that Kim collapsed on Aug. 22, citing an unnamed South Korean diplomat in Beijing. The diplomat got the information from a Chinese source, the paper said.

Kim's health has been a focus of intense interest because his fate is believed to be closely tied to that of the totalitarian state that he inherited in 1994 from his father in communism's first hereditary transfer of power.

North Korea's state news agency had made no mention of the military parade by late Tuesday afternoon, though it carried an exhortation from the main Rodong Sinmun newspaper calling on the population to remain united around Kim.

"One-minded unity around the revolutionary leadership is a source of all the DPRK's victories and miracles," the paper said in a lengthy editorial marking the anniversary, using the acronym for the country's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

It also called for a stronger military, describing the armed forces as "the foundation of a strong nation."

South Korea's main spy agency, the National Intelligence Service, said it had no information as to whether the parade had taken place.

The 60th anniversary comes amid an impasse in international efforts to disable North Korea's nuclear programs. South Korea said last week the North has begun restoring its atomic facilities in apparent anger over not being removed from a U.S. list of countries that sponsor terrorism.

North Korea — which conducted an underground nuclear test blast in October 2006 — began disabling its main nuclear facilities late last year in exchange for international energy aid and other benefits.

The United States has insisted Pyongyang must first agree to a full inspection system of its nuclear programs if it wants to be taken off the terrorism list.

In Washington, the U.S. said that North Korea appears to be preparing to reverse the process of disabling its nuclear facilities.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters Monday, he could not confirm that the North has removed international seals from some of its nuclear equipment. But he said the U.S. assessment is that the North is "taking some of the equipment out of storage where it had been, perhaps taking off some of those seals."

Meantime, the World Food Program says North Korea's food shortage, an endemic problem, has worsened this year after devastating floods in 2007.

The North has relied on foreign assistance to help feed its 23 million people since its state-controlled economy collapsed due to mismanagement and natural disasters in the mid-1990s.

On Tuesday, South Korea's top minister in charge of relations with the North said Seoul plans to help North Korea overcome food shortages, and will provide greater assistance if Pyongyang resumes reconciliation talks with the South.

"The North Korean people suffer from food shortages," Unification Minister Kim Ha-joong told an international seminar. "We will not ignore such reality. We will assist the North."

The remark came as South Korea considers a WFP appeal for food contributions to aid the U.N. agency's efforts to alleviate the North's shortages.

Relations between the two sides have frozen since new South Korean President Lee Myung-bak took office in February with a pledge to get tough on Pyongyang. North Korea protested Lee's hard-line stance and suspended dialogue with Seoul.

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