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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Bhutto’s Widower Takes Office in Pakistan

the widower of slain leader Benazir Bhutto and a relative political novice, was sworn in as president of Pakistan on Tuesday at an indoor ceremony in the presidential palace here.

The new president, whose reputation is marked by allegations of corruption, follows the path to power of his father-in-law, Zulfikar Bhutto, who was prime minister in the 1970s — he was hanged in 1979 — and his wife, who served two terms.

Mr. Zardari, 53, took the oath of office from Chief Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar, a controversial start to his rule since Mr. Dogar was appointed under an emergency decree by the former military ruler, Pervez Musharraf, and has remained in office with Mr. Zardari’s support.

Accompanying Mr. Zardari at the ceremony were his two daughters, Bakhtawar and Asifa, and his son, Bilawal, who has been named to succeed Mr. Zardari as head of the Pakistan Peoples Party.

The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai — the only significant international figure at the ceremony — was invited by Mr. Zardari as a peacemaking gesture of conciliation. Mr. Karzai has blamed Pakistan for not controlling the Taliban who have attacked Afghan targets and attempted to assassinate Mr. Karzai in April.

Mr. Zardari showed skill and toughness in the last month as he engineered the resignation of Mr. Musharraf, and pushed his closest rival, Nawaz Sharif, out of the coalition government, a move that cleared the way for his ascension to the most powerful job in Pakistan.

He takes office as Pakistan, a nuclear power with 165 million people, faces two grave crises: an emboldened insurgency from the Taliban that is backed by Al Qaeda, and an unraveling economy that needs urgent assistance to avert default.

Like Ms. Bhutto, Mr. Zardari has courted the United States and Washington has responded warmly, saying that it welcomes the arrival of democratic government in Pakistan. The Bush administration has gone out of its way in the last few days to praise the new political alignment, saying that it offers the opportunity for increased cooperation in the campaign on terror.

Washington has taken a more overt role in trying to quash the Taliban insurgency in Pakistan’s tribal areas since it became clear that Mr. Zardari would become president. For the first time, helicopter-borne American Special Forces troops landed in the region last week and fought militants there.

Mr. Zardari has been outspoken about Pakistan’s ineffectiveness against the insurgents. “I think at the moment they definitely have the upper hand,” he said in an interview with the BBC earlier this month.

But exactly how he would go about reversing Pakistan’s fortunes against the Taliban, and how he would work with the Pakistani Army, the main instrument in the campaign against the terrorists, remained to be seen.

Historically, the Pakistan Peoples Party, founded by Zulfikar Bhutto, has had fraught relations with the army, and the Inter-Services Intelligence, the nation’s premier spy agency.

The chief of staff of the army, General Asfaq Parvez Kayani, sat in a prominent position at Tuesday’s inauguration.

Mr. Zardari begins his five-year term with mixed reviews from the public. He, as well as Ms. Bhutto and other politicians, received an amnesty on corruption allegations from Mr. Musharraf, but a cloud of suspicion remains over Mr. Zardari.

Referring to his 11 years in jail, the Daily Times, an English-language newspaper, ran the headline “Prison to Presidency” when Mr. Zardari won the election on Saturday.

A survey by Gallup Pakistan showed a lack of enthusiasm for any of the three presidential candidates contesting the electoral college vote last Saturday. The survey said 44 percent of the respondents did not approve of any of the candidates.

Mr. Zardari received a 26-percent approval rating in the poll, compared with 18 percent for Saeeduz Zaman Siddiqui, the candidate of the Pakistan Muslim League-N.

Gallup said that the nationwide survey was taken Aug. 31 and Sept. 1 among approximately 2,000 men and women. There was a margin of error of 3.5 points, Gallup said.

Mr. Zardari, whose previous government experience was as investment minister in his wife’s second government — some of the corruption charges stemmed from that period — faces daunting challenges, commentators have said in the past few days.

His supporters said Mr. Zardari, who spent three years in New York City after being released from jail in December 2003, had changed and would prove the skeptics wrong.

He will be a valuable asset to the United States and will be able to stave off strong anti-American sentiment and opposition to American strikes against the Taliban in the tribal areas, they said.

Others predicted that though he won the presidency by a handsome margin — 481 votes out of 702 — the coalition of smaller parties that supported the Pakistan Peoples Party in the Parliament could turn out to be fragile.

“His past and the fact that he has never held office are the main concerns of most Pakistanis,” said Ahmed Rashid, the author of Descent Into Chaos, a study of Pakistan since 9/11.

“But his presidency could determine nothing less than the future of his nuclear-armed state and the West’s war on terror.”

A major balancing act for Mr. Zardari will be how to allow the Americans to increase the attacks against the Taliban in the tribal areas — something Washington appears intent on doing — and while keeping public opinion in check. Anti-American sentiment is strong in Pakistan, especially concerning what is seen as American infringement on Pakistani sovereignty in the tribal areas.

“How long can he keep up this two-faced war: the Americans continuing to intrude into the tribal areas but the foreign minister saying: ‘We won’t tolerate it,’” said Babar Sattar, a constitutional lawyer who writes a column in the daily newspaper, The News.

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Hong Kong Votes for Democracy

Hong Kongers have suffered one delay after another on their path to full democracy since the territory's return to China in 1997. But that hasn't snuffed out their democratic spirit. Witness the results of Sunday's legislative elections.

Pro-democracy parties won 23 seats in the 60-member Legislative Council elections. That's down from 25 after the last election in 2004. But that's not the number that matters. Half of the legislature is appointed by special interest groups loyal to Beijing. The other half is directly elected by the people. In those seats, the democrats won 19 of 30, gaining a seat from the 2004 results. The democrats' losses came only from the ranks of special-interest legislators.

The result maintains the crucial veto pro-democracy parties have wielded over constitutional reforms by denying the pro-Beijing parties a 40-seat supermajority. This won't force Government House to push ahead with democracy faster, but it will keep Beijing from pushing any antidemocratic electoral "reforms."

Within the democratic movement, this election also marks a changing of the guard of sorts. Its best-known figureheads have left -- Democratic Party founder Martin Lee and former bureaucrat Anson Chan, both of whom announced their retirements before the election. Sunday's results thus give a mandate to a new generation of democratic voices in the legislature, like Kam Nai-wai, a 47-year-old social worker and member of the Democratic Party just elected to represent Hong Kong Island.

The result is also a slap in the face to the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB), the largest pro-Beijing group that campaigned for seats. The DAB is better funded and better organized than the pro-democracy crowd. In the run-up to Sunday's vote, the DAB blanketed the territory with advertisements. Chief Executive Donald Tsang did his part, too, rolling out a package of largesse including expanded electricity discounts, and hosting a star tour by China's Olympic athletes. Yet those efforts yielded only eight directly elected seats.

Voters clearly were frustrated with the government's economic record. Ahead of Sunday's polls, a Hong Kong University Public Opinion Programme poll found 87% of voters said their decision would be driven by "livelihood" issues like housing and education, while 77% said they were "focusing" on economic policies. Little wonder: inflation is running 6.3% and GDP growth slowed to 4.2% in the second quarter, from 7.3% in the first.

On their face, the pro-Beijing and democratic policy platforms weren't that far apart. Unfortunately, both favor imposing a minimum wage and enacting a competition law. The key difference was that democrats also campaigned on holding Mr. Tsang's administration accountable for its perceived policy blunders. This suggests that Hong Kongers understand better than some of their leaders the relationship between democracy and prosperity.

Skeptics will note that turnout, at about 45%, was 10 percentage points lower than in the last general election, in 2004. But Hong Kong's turnout was still high by the standards of some other democracies. In 2006 in the U.S., when a very unpopular executive faced a legislative election, only 41% of voters turned out. So it's hard to argue that Hong Kongers are not interested in democracy now.

Sunday's election is another reminder that the territory deserves a democratic system worthy of its voters.

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China rushes troops to quake zone as toll rises

China deployed more than 8,000 soldiers and military reservists to help search and rescue efforts in the southwest Monday after a 6.2-magnitude earthquake that left 40 people dead, state press said.

The weekend quake, in a mountainous region spanning the Sichuan and Yunnan provinces, destroyed or damaged more than 392,000 homes and injured nearly 675 people, according to the Xinhua news agency.

Xinhua was quoting figures announced by the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

The China News Services said earlier Monday the military were rushed to the scene to beef up search and rescue efforts as more people were being located and pulled out from the rubble.

Some 2,000 troops, police and firefighters already in the area have rescued more than 130 injured victims from collapsed buildings since the quake struck on Saturday afternoon, it added.

An inter-ministerial command post was set up on Monday in the quake zone to coordinate communications and the rescue and relief work, the China Earthquake Administration said.

Food, water, medical supplies and tents were being rushed to the scene, it said on its website.

Besides searching for survivors, rescue workers were also rushing supplies to those in need, evacuating people from dangerous buildings, and setting up refugee camps, it added.

The administration said two of the fatalities were attributed to a 5.6-magnitude aftershock that shook the region around Panzhihua city on Sunday afternoon.

Panzhihua is near the epicentre of the main quake and about 500 kilometres (300 miles) south of where an 8.0 earthquake devastated a swathe of Sichuan on May 12, leaving nearly 88,000 people dead or missing.

According to the government in Sichuan, aftershocks continued to rattle the region Monday, shaking the city of Dujiangyan which was also badly damaged in May.

Most of Saturday's damage was in the county of Huili.

source : afp.google.com

Indian homes torched in Christian-Hindu violence

Protesters set fire to several houses in eastern India on Monday in an area where recent clashes between Hindus and Christians have left at least 11 people dead, police said.

No one was injured in the latest attack in Orissa state, but police feared the arson will increase tension in a region with a history of violence along religious lines.

Senior police official Gopal Chandra Nanda would not say whether the burned homes belonged to Hindus or Christians, but said an investigation was under way. The attacks took place in Tikabali, a town in Kandhamal district that has been the center of the unrest. Police have imposed a strict curfew across the district for the past week.

The violence began late last month with the killing of a Hindu leader, which police blamed on Maoist rebels but Hindu activists blamed on Christian militants.

In apparent retaliation, Hindu hard-liners set fire to a Christian orphanage, killing a Christian woman and seriously injuring a priest. The violence has spread to include mob attacks on churches, shops and homes.

Orissa has a history of Hindu-Christian clashes generally fueled by Hindu suspicions about Christian missionary work among the rural poor.

On Sunday, four small churches were burned in a village in southern Orissa, an area that had not seen recent Christian-Hindu violence. No one was injured in those attacks, Nanda said.

Thousands of poor and lower-caste Hindus have converted to other religions, including Christianity, often in an attempt to escape the rigid confines of Hinduism's complex caste system.

That has long embittered Hindu groups who say Christian missionaries try to lure the poor and those on the lowest rungs away with promises of money and jobs. Churches deny that the converts were pressured or bribed.

Last year, four people were killed and nearly 20 churches destroyed in similar clashes in Orissa. An Australian missionary and his two sons, aged 8 and 10, were burned to death in their car in Orissa following a Bible study class in 1999.

source : www.iht.com