World News Focus2008-05-17T02:29:35-06:00ExpressionEngineCopyright (c) 2008, StaffAftershock rattles China quake zonetag:therochesterdemocrat.com,2008:ee/index.php/39.421412008-05-17T02:28:01-06:002008-05-17T02:29:35-06:00{summary}2008-05-17T02:28:01-06:00Staffeditor@TheRochesterDemocrat.comChina(s)
YINGXIU, China (AP) - A powerful aftershock knocked out roads and communications in some of the most quake-ravaged parts of central China on Friday, as emergency crews rescued more than 30 people who had survived up to 100 improbable hours trapped in the ruins.
With the official death toll at more than 22,000, an air force unit reached Yinchanggou, a scenic spot in the mountains north of the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu, finding landslides had swept away rustic small hotels.
"There are several hundred hotels, including farmer homestays, probably 800 in all. They are all rubble now," Cai Weisu, an official with an air force unit from the Chengdu Military Region, told Sichuan Television. Most of the dead are tourists, he said, but did not identify whether they were foreign or Chinese.
Tens of thousands of people are considered buried or missing throughout the disaster zone. There were about 12 million people living within a 60-mile radius of the epicenter of Wenchuan, according to a study on the potential impact of the quake by Xu Mingbao, a senior researcher at the University of Michigan's China Data Center.
Acutely aware its response to China's worst disaster in 30 years could affect Beijing's image heading into the Olympic Games, President Hu Jintao ramped up the government's public relations efforts, making his first trip to the stricken region.
And in response to swelling anger, government officials accustomed to tightly controlled media took the unusual step of fielding questions from people online about why thousands of schools that collapsed were not built to be quake-safe.
Damage from the magnitude-5.5 aftershock - one of dozens of strong tremors since the devastating quake Monday - was a temporary setback to the mammoth relief operation. Repair crews were rapidly restoring mobile phone services and unblocking roads within four hours, state media reported.
Trucks navigated around boulders and splintered pavement that clogged roads into the forest-clad mountains of Beichuan county. The official Xinhua News Agency reported that 33 survivors were pulled from the rubble of Beichuan's remote main city, surrounded by small coal and gold mines and tea plantations about 100 miles north of Chengdu.
Still farther afield, soldiers slogged up a slippery mud path into the village of Yingxiu, as some of their comrades stayed back and used rubble from landslides to patch the road so supply and rescue vehicles could get closer.
Most buildings in the village collapsed in the quake and the rest appear damaged beyond repair. Hundreds of residents huddled in tents. Small groups of soldiers, some lugging body bags, rushed from place to place checking reports of people trapped. They pulled out bodies and - at least twice - survivors. Others dug a burial pit and laid in at least 80 bodies.
Helicopters whirred overhead, bringing supplies and dropping leaflets with survival instructions that included not drinking dirty water and staying away from collapsed buildings. "We should trust the party and the government," the leaflets also said.
The government said it would investigate why so many school buildings collapsed in the quake and severely punish anyone responsible for shoddy construction. Officials in at least six provinces promised to tear down dangerous school buildings to protect students, state media reported. The quake destroyed about 6,900 classrooms, not including those in the hardest-hit counties.
China's education system is chronically underfunded. Building experts said the problem here, as in many other parts of the world, was a lack of commitment by governments to improve the quality of school buildings.
"Schools should never collapse, and hospitals and fire stations should never collapse. These are all civic structures that are needed in a disaster," said Roger Bilham, a professor of geological sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "So when I hear a school has collapsed, I point the finger at politics."
More than 4 million apartments and homes were damaged or destroyed in Sichuan, Housing Minister Jiang Weixin told reporters.
Worried relatives went to sites where missing loved ones might be.
In the city of Hanwang, Zhou Furen walked for hours in borrowed shoes to a factory where her son had worked.
"I've been coming here every day, sitting here in the early morning, waiting," she wept. "He's been missing for more than three days now. But for my son I would come every day."
Augmenting the 130,000 soldiers and police deployed, Xinhua said specialized rescue teams from Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Russia arrived in the region and began work - the first time ever that China has accepted outside professionals for help in a domestic disaster.
The government said it had allocated $772 million for earthquake relief, according to the central bank's Web site, nearly five times the amount two days earlier.
China has also received $457 million in donated money and goods for rescue efforts, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs.
AIR Worldwide - a catastrophe risk modeling firm - estimated losses to both insured and uninsured property would likely exceed $20 billion.
]]>Strong aftershock hits China quake epicentertag:therochesterdemocrat.com,2008:ee/index.php/39.421162008-05-16T12:33:00-06:002008-05-16T12:35:21-06:00{summary}2008-05-16T12:33:00-06:00Staffeditor@TheRochesterDemocrat.comChina(s)
BEICHUAN, China (AP) - A strong aftershock sparked landslides Friday near the epicenter of this week's powerful earthquake, while some survivors were pulled from rubble after being buried for four days.
The first foreign rescue workers since Monday's magnitude 7.9 temblor were allowed to the scene, and helicopters dropped leaflets urging people to "unite together" and providing survival tips.
An aftershock rattled parts of central Sichuan province Friday afternoon, the official Xinhua News Agency said, citing its reporters at the scene. A number of vehicles were buried on a road leading to the epicenter, and casualties were unknown.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the latest tremor measured magnitude 5.5, one of the strongest among dozens that have shaken the area.
Education and housing officials, meanwhile, took the rare move of fielding questions online from angry Chinese citizens over the many children who died in the quake. The official death toll had risen to about 22,069 on Friday, and another 14,000 still were buried in Sichuan.
The government said it would investigate why so many school buildings collapsed in the quake - destroying about 6,900 classrooms, not including the hardest-hit counties - and severely punish anyone responsible for shoddy construction.
More than 4 million apartments and homes had been damaged or destroyed in Sichuan province, according to Housing Minister Jiang Weixin, and officials have said they expect the earthquake eventually will claim more than 50,000 lives.
Jiang said the water supply situation was "extremely serious" in Sichuan, and not flowing at all in 20 cities and counties.
A day past what experts call the critical three-day window for finding buried survivors alive, rescuers pulled a nurse to safety who had been trapped for 96 hours in the debris of a clinic in Beichuan county, one of 17 people saved there, Xinhua reported.
Survivors also were being found elsewhere, with a man pulled from the wreckage of a fertilizer plant near Shifang city.
Closer to the epicenter in the town of Yingxiu, helicopters dropped leaflets urging people to "unite together" and providing survival tips. Power and water remained cut off, forcing dazed, exhausted locals to hike 40 yards up a steep hill to a spring to fetch water.
On another hillside, at least 80 corpses in plastic body bags were placed into a trench dug by soldiers.
Dozens of people trudged up the winding mountain road, carrying backpacks and bags with food and medical supplies, on a quest for missing relatives.
Liu Jingyong, a 43-year-old migrant worker searching for his cousin, traveled two days by bus and now foot just to get near his relative's home.
"I have not had any information from him," Liu said. "This is so hard on me."
One villager, Pan Guihui, stood on the side of the road with a vacant look on her face.
She and her husband had just hiked 13 hours with her 1-year-old child, father and two brothers away from their destroyed village further up the mountain. They had stayed in the rubble until rescue workers arrived and ordered them out because of fears of landslides.
"I have just been so frightened this whole time. I don't know what we are going to do," said Pan, 35. The only belongings the family had were some clothes and a little food, among hundreds camped along the road. "We've lost everything. There's nothing left of our village, nothing left of our home."
As she spoke, hundreds of soldiers marched by in long columns out of Beichuan, some carrying shovels.
In the city of Hanwang, Zhou Furen walked hours by foot - borrowing the army green shoes she was wearing - to a factory where her son had worked and remained missing.
"I've been coming here every day, sitting here in the early morning, waiting," she said, weeping. "He's been missing for more than three days now. But for my son I would come every day."
President Hu Jintao made his first trip to the disaster zone, rallying troops among the massive relief operation of some 130,000 soldiers and police.
"The challenge is still severe, the task is still arduous and the time is pressing," Hu was quoted as saying by Xinhua. "Quake relief work has entered into the most crucial phase. We must make every effort, race against time and overcome all difficulties to achieve the final victory of the relief efforts."
The first international relief crews arrived in the disaster zone, with Japanese rescuers starting work. China initially was reluctant to accept foreign offers of help, but the Foreign Ministry said Friday that specialist teams from Russia, South Korea and Singapore also were welcome.
It was the first time ever that China accepted outside professionals for domestic disaster relief, Foreign Ministry counselor Li Wenliang told Xinhua.
The government said it had allocated a total of $772 million for earthquake relief, according to the central bank's Web site, up sharply from $159 million two days ago.
China also has received $457 million in donated money and goods for rescue efforts, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs, including $83 million from 19 countries and four international organizations.
Given the widespread destruction, AIR Worldwide - a catastrophe risk modeling firm - estimated losses to both insured and uninsured property would likely exceed $20 billion.
]]>Bin Laden: Palestinian cause fuels wartag:therochesterdemocrat.com,2008:ee/index.php/39.421152008-05-16T12:31:00-06:002008-05-16T12:32:49-06:00{summary}2008-05-16T12:31:00-06:00Staffeditor@TheRochesterDemocrat.comTerrorism
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Osama bin Laden said in a new audio recording released Friday that al-Qaida will continue its holy war against Israel and its allies until it liberates Palestine.
The terrorist leader's third statement this year came as President Bush was wrapping up his visit to Israel to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Jewish state.
Bin Laden said the fight for the Palestinian cause was the most important factor driving al-Qaida's war with the West and fueled 19 Muslims to carry out the suicide attacks against the U.S. on September 11.
"To Western nations ... this speech is to understand the core reason of the war between our civilization and your civilizations. I mean the Palestinian cause," said bin Laden in the close to 10 minute audiotape.
"The Palestinian cause is the major issue for my (Islamic) nation. It was an important element in fueling me from the beginning and the 19 others with a great motive to fight for those subjected to injustice and the oppressed," added bin Laden.
Al-Qaida has been stepping up its attempts to use the Israeli-Arab conflict to rally supporters. Israel has warned of growing al-Qaida activity in Palestinian territory, though the terror network is not believed to have taken a strong role there so far.
The authenticity of the message could not be verified, but it was posted on a Web site commonly used by al-Qaida and the voice resembled the one in past bin Laden audiotapes. Though it was unknown exactly when the audio was recorded, but it referenced Israel's 60th anniversary, which began May 8.
IntelCenter, a U.S. group that monitors al-Qaida message traffic, said the audio message was accompanied by a photo of bin Laden wearing a white robe and turban next to a picture of the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. It was unclear when the photo of bin Laden was taken.
The al-Qaida leader said the Western media managed to brainwash people over the past 60 years by "portraying the Jewish invaders, the occupiers of our land, as the victims while it portrayed us as the terrorists."
"Sixty years ago, the Israeli state didn't exist. Instead, it was established on the land of Palestine raped by force," said bin Laden. "Israelis are occupying invaders whom we should fight."
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Arye Mekel dismissed bin Laden's new message.
"We do not relate or pay attention to the words of this terrorist lunatic," he said. "The time has come for him to be apprehended and pay for his crimes."
Bin Laden criticized Western leaders like Bush who participated in Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations. Bush feted Israel on Thursday and predicted that its 120th birthday would find it alongside a Palestinian state and in an all-democratic neighborhood free of today's oppression, restrictions on freedom and extremist Muslim movements.
Delivering this rosy forecast for the Middle East in 2068 during a speech to the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, Bush made no acknowledgment of the hardship Palestinians suffered when hundreds of thousands were displaced following the creation of the Jewish state in 1948, a counterpoint to Israel's two weeks of jubilant celebrations.
Though Bush has set a goal of reaching an Israeli-Palestinian deal before the end of his term in January, he did not mention the ongoing negotiations or how to resolve the thorniest disputes.
Bin Laden said Western leaders were insincere in their expressed desire for Israeli-Palestinian peace and failed to criticize Israel.
"Peace talks that started 60 years ago are just meant to deceive the idiots," said bin Laden. "After all the destruction and the killings ... your leaders talk about principles. This is unbearable."
The terrorist leader mentioned former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who he said ordered a Jewish militia to attack the Arab village of Deir Yassin in 1948. The attack during Israel's push for statehood killed more than 100 Arabs and forced the rest of the village to flee.
"Instead of punishing him (Begin) over his crimes ... he was awarded a Nobel prize," said bin Laden.
Begin won the Nobel peace prize for negotiating a peace treaty with Egypt in 1979, Israel's first with an Arab nation. The Israeli leader shared the prize with former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who was Begin's negotiating partner. Israel has only signed one other peace treaty with an Arab nation, Jordan.
"We will continue our struggle against the Israelis and their allies," said bin Laden. "We are not going to give up an inch of the land of Palestine."
Bin Laden's message Friday followed an audiotape released in March in which he lashed out at Palestinian peace negotiations with Israel.
The March audiotape was the first time bin Laden spoke of the Palestinian question at length since the deteriorating situation in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, where the Israeli military has been fighting with militants who fire rockets into southern Israel. Israel has been battling Hamas in Gaza since the Islamic militant group took control of the strip last June from followers of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
]]>Latin American, European leaders gather for summittag:therochesterdemocrat.com,2008:ee/index.php/39.420802008-05-15T10:38:00-06:002008-05-15T10:39:20-06:00{summary}2008-05-15T10:38:00-06:00Staffeditor@TheRochesterDemocrat.comE.U.
LIMA, Peru (AP) - European and Latin American leaders gathering for their fifth summit in a decade this week plan to tackle climate change, high food prices and poverty.
But they may get sidetracked by an issue not on the agenda: Colombia's raid on a rebel camp inside Ecuador earlier this spring.
The meeting is set to begin Friday, the day after Interpol announces the results of an investigation into allegations that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa collaborated with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
Chavez, Correa and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe are all expected to attend the Lima-based summit of nearly 60 leaders and top officials from Latin America, Europe and the Caribbean.
Colombia says it found documents pointing to a connection between the two leftist presidents and the FARC on laptops belonging to FARC leader Raul Reyes, who was killed in the March 1 cross-border raid.
Both Chavez and Correa deny the claims. Correa even cast doubt on the authenticity of the computers, suggesting they may have been planted by the Colombians.
The raid prompted Correa to sever diplomatic relations with Uribe's government. In a European tour this week, Correa said he would consider restoring ties only if Uribe halts "Colombia's verbal aggression."
"They already assaulted us with bombs," he said. "Now they're assaulting us with words."
Ricardo Vega Llona, who organized this week's event for the Peruvian government, said public displays of anger - such as when King Juan Carlos of Spain told Chavez to "shut up" at a Chilean summit six months ago - are unlikely this time around since the meeting's working sessions will be private.
That could bode well for progress on the summit's stated goals to fight poverty - a top priority of the Latin American and Caribbean nations - and slow global warming, a key interest of the Europeans.
"We want to make Latin America a trustworthy ally in the struggle against global warming," European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said Wednesday after meeting with Peruvian President Alan Garcia.
The commission plans to announce EuroClima, a $7.7 million fund for Latin American projects aimed at stemming climate change.
Garcia and other Latin American leaders are expected to raise the issue of soaring food prices and their impact on efforts to reduce poverty.
"We have to turn our eyes to food production and leave aside or regulate this change in the use of land to produce ethanol, which is causing great world damage," Garcia said in an interview published Tuesday.
Biofuel production should not come at the expense of the environment, German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned as she began a Latin America tour Wednesday in Brazil, the planet's chief ethanol exporter. Some worry that increased farming of biofuels threatens the Amazon.
Merkel and Chavez were likely to be in the summit spotlight after a recent testy exchange.
In an interview earlier this month, Merkel said Chavez does not speak for all of Latin America.
The Venezuelan president responded Sunday by describing Merkel's conservative party as "the same right wing that supported Hitler and fascism."
Asked on Wednesday about Chavez's comment, Merkel did not respond directly.
"I think that what is important is to strengthen the strategic partnership with Latin America as a whole," she said. "And everyone who makes a contribution to that is wholeheartedly welcome."
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) - Myanmar's junta announced Thursday that voters overwhelmingly backed a pro-military constitution - a move critics claim was an attempt to divert attention from its failure to deliver aid to victims of a devastating cyclone.
State radio said the draft constitution, which critics dismissed as a sham document designed to entrench the military's rule, was approved by 92.4 percent of the 22 million eligible voters. It put voter turnout Saturday at more than 99 percent.
Voting was postponed until May 24 in the Irrawaddy delta and Yangon areas, which were worst hit by Cyclone Nargis. But state radio said the results of the late balloting could not mathematically reverse the constitution's approval.
The constitution announcement came a day after Myanmar's government issued a revised cyclone casualty toll, saying 38,491 were known dead and 27,838 were missing.
But the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said its estimate put the number of dead between 68,833 and 127,990. U.N. officials have said there could be more than 100,000 dead in the May 2-3 cyclone.
Human Rights watch slammed the timing of the constitution announcement and questioned the accuracy of the results.
David Mathieson, a spokesman in Bangkok, Thailand, said the junta hopes that by announcing the results now it would divert attention away from its handling of the disaster and its refusal to cooperate with the international community.
"It seems strategically timed because you would have thought with how busy they were in cleaning up the cyclone that they never would have had time to count this properly," he said.
With up to 2.5 million people in urgent need of food, water and shelter, aid agencies were preparing or moving in a wide-range of relief supplies including material for temporary shelters, rice, drinking water, kitchen utensils and medicines, including 2,000 anti-snake bite kits. The World Health Organization said an increase in snake bites was feared in coming days.
U.N. agencies and other voluntary groups have been able to reach only 270,000 of the affected people. But instead of accepting foreign help freely, the government continued to issue only a few visas to foreign aid experts, and all but shut them out of the hardest-hit areas.
The regime insists it can handle the disaster on its own - a stance that appears to stem not from its abilities but its deep suspicion of most foreigners, who have frequently criticized its human rights abuses and crackdown on democracy activists.
Critics see the May 9 referendum as another attempt by the junta to stifle democracy. In a country ruled by the feared military since 1962, few would have dared to vote against the constitution. Human rights groups dismissed the vote as a mockery, saying government officials were told to mark the ballots with "Yes" ticks for those who failed to show up at polling stations by 1 p.m.
The junta says the new constitution will lead to a general election in 2010. But it guarantees 25 percent of parliamentary seats to the military and allows the president to hand over all power to the military in a state of emergency - elements critics say contradict the junta's professed commitment to democracy.
The junta's iron-fisted rule has been clearly demonstrated in the way it has dealt with international humanitarian agencies offering their services in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis.
The Hawaii-based Center for Excellence in Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance says seven U.N. agencies, more than 60 non-governmental organizations and about 45 nations or regional blocs are directly or indirectly involved in the aid operation.
But the junta has limited international staff to Yangon, and has also used police to keep foreigners out of the delta. It did grant approval for a Thai medical team to visit the delta as early as Friday.
Amanda Pitt of the U.N. Office for Humanitarian Affairs said that unless the disaster response was improved, more lives would be lost. "It is clearly inadequate, and we do not want to see a second wave of deaths as a result of that not being scaled up," she said.
Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch also said that countries delivering aid should insist on monitoring to ensure aid reaches the cyclone victims most in need and to prevent the military government from seizing it.
It said it has confirmed an Associated Press report this week that the junta had seized high-protein biscuits supplied by the international community and distributed low-quality, locally produced substitutes to the people.
"Simply dropping aid off at (the) airport under the control of the abusive and ill-equipped ... military will not necessarily help victims of the cyclone," it said.
The junta also said Wednesday it would accept 160 relief workers from India, China, Bangladesh and Thailand, though it was not clear if anyone but the Thais would be permitted to go to the delta.
On Thursday, the U.N. said that an emergency rapid assessment team from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, would also head into Myanmar within 24 hours to assess the most critical needs.
]]>China earthquake death toll exceeds 19,500tag:therochesterdemocrat.com,2008:ee/index.php/39.420782008-05-15T10:32:02-06:002008-05-15T10:34:45-06:00{summary}2008-05-15T10:32:02-06:00Staffeditor@TheRochesterDemocrat.comChina(s)
LUOSHUI TOWN, China (AP) - China issued a rare public appeal Thursday for rescue equipment as the government struggled to cope with this week's deadly earthquake. Rescue workers broke through key roads to the epicenter in the race to find survivors, as the death toll soared to more than 19,500.
More than 72 hours after the quake rattled central China, rescuers appeared to shift from poring through downed buildings for survivors to the grim duty of searching for bodies - with 10 million directly affected by Monday's temblor.
As their operations continued, the official death toll rose above 19,500 in Sichuan province alone where Monday's quake was centered, the regional government said Thursday, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. The figure was up from nearly 15,000 on Wednesday.
With some roads cleared, rescue workers were able to move heavy equipment into the worst-affected areas for the first time. Previously, soldiers riding to isolated mountain villages on helicopters and small boats had been forced to dig for survivors with their hands.
In Luoshui town - on the road to an industrial zone in Shifang city where two chemical plants collapsed, burying hundreds of people - troops used a mechanical shovel to dig a pit on a hilltop to bury the dead. Two bodies wrapped in white sheets lie near the pit.
Police and militia in Dujiangyan pulverized rubble with cranes and backhoes while crews used shovels to pick around larger pieces of debris. On one sidestreet, about a dozen bodies were laid on a sidewalk, while incense sticks placed in a pile of sand sent smoke into the air as a tribute and to dull the stench of death.
The bodies were later lifted onto a flatbed truck, joining some half-dozen corpses. Ambulances sped past, sirens wailing, filled with survivors. Workers asked those left homeless to sign up for temporary housing, although it was unclear where they would live.
Plans for the Defense Ministry to deploy 101 more helicopters underscored worries that the death toll would continue to skyrocket as time runs out to find survivors. Nearly 26,000 people remained buried in collapsed buildings.
Not all hope of finding survivors was lost. After more than three days trapped under debris, a 22-year-old woman was pulled to safety in Dujiangyan. Covered in dust and peering out through a small opening, she was shown waving on state television shortly before being rescued.
"I was confident that you were coming to rescue me. I'm alive. I'm so happy," the unnamed woman said on CCTV.
One earthquake expert said the time for rescues was growing short.
"Within 72 hours after the disaster is the critical period. Generally, the sooner the rescue of the buried, the better," the chief engineer of Shijiazhuang Bureau of Seismology, Liang Guiping, told state TV.
The government issued a rare appeal to the Chinese public calling for donations of rescue equipment including hammers, shovels, demolition tools and rubber boats. The plea on the Ministry of Information Industry's Web Site said, for example, that 100 cranes were needed.
The public request is emblematic of China's relative openness in dealing with the tragedy, as compared to past crises.
"This is only a beginning of this battle, and a long way lies ahead of us," Vice Health Minister Gao Qiang told reporters in Beijing.
No outbreaks of disease had struck refugees, who were being immunized against some illnesses, Gao said. Workers were seeking to ensure safety of drinking water and removing corpses to prevent the spread of bacteria.
After days of refusing foreign relief workers, China accepted an offer from Japan to send a rescue team, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said in an announcement posted on the ministry Web site. Tawan's Red Cross said rival China also agreed to accept a 20-person emergency relief team from the island.
Taiwan is also sending a cargo plane to Chengdu with tents and medical supplies. The Air Macau plane will make a brief stop in Macau.
Taiwan and China, which split during civil war in 1949, have banned regular direct links and other formal contacts as political disputes persist.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies also issued an emergency appeal for medical help, food, water and tents.
Gu Qinghui, the federation's disaster management director for East Asia who visited Beichuan county near the epicenter, said more than 4 million homes were shattered across the quake area.
"The whole county has been destroyed. Basically there is no Beichuan county anymore," Gu said in Beijing, adding the death toll was sure to rise.
Forty-four counties and districts in Sichuan were severely hit, with about half of the 20 million people living there directly affected, Xinhua said.
Roads were cleared to two key areas that bore the brunt of the quake's force, with workers making it to the border of Wenchuan county at the epicenter and also through to hard-hit Beichuan county, Xinhua reported. Communication cables were also reconnected to Wenchuan.
The Chengdu Military Area Command also planned to airdrop 50,000 packets of food, 5,000 cotton-padded quilts and clothes there, part of the military rescue operation that has grown to include more than 116,000 soldiers and police.
Dujiangyan city was clogged with buses and trucks decked out with banners from companies saying they were offering aid to disaster victims. One tour bus was stuffed full of water bottles, cartons of biscuits and instant noodles.
Public donations so far have totaled $125 million in both cash and goods.
NBA star Yao Ming, China's most famous athlete, was planning to donate $285,000 to the relief effort, agent Erik Zhang said.
"My thoughts are with everyone back in my home country of China during this very dark and emotional time," Yao said in a statement from Houston, where he is recovering from a broken left foot with hopes of competing in the Beijing Olympics this August.
As the rescue effort gathered momentum, the depth of the problem of tens of thousands homeless stretched government resources.
North of Chengdu in Deyang, the largest town near the devastated areas of Hanwang and Mianyang, thousands of people have streamed into the city hospital since Monday, mostly with head or bone injuries.
Patients heavily wrapped in bandages and with cuts and bruises were huddled in canvas tents in the hospital's parking lot.
"Our doctors have worked continuously since Monday and people keep coming in. We have to keep strengthening our measures to keep up," said Luo Mingxuan, the Communist Party secretary of the hospital.
There were piles of donated clothing for survivors at the hospital and stands for them to make free telephone calls. Handwritten notes with names of the injured were posted on a board in front of the hospital's emergency section, where ambulances arrived every few minutes.
A group of 33 American, British and French tourists were airlifted from Wolong, site of the world's most famous panda preserve, to the provincial capital of Chengdu on Thursday morning, Xinhua reported. All were in good health, Xinhua said.
BEIJING, China (CNN) -- The death toll in China's outbreak of hand-foot-mouth disease has risen to 42 children, with the capital Beijing reporting its first case Wednesday, state media said.
The child died on the way to a hospital Sunday, health authorities told the Xinhua news agency.
Another child died of the virus at a Beijing hospital, but that death was counted in the child's home province of Hebei, which neighbors Beijing, the news agency said.
So far, the virus has sickened 24,934 children on the Chinese mainland, authorities said. All 42 people who died have been children.
The deaths are blamed on enterovirus 71, or EV-71, one of the most common causes of hand-foot-mouth disease (HFMD).
The official count of infections has increased dramatically in recent days since an order issued late last week by the Ministry of Health mandating that all cases be reported.
HFMD is not related to foot-and-mouth disease, which affects farm animals. HFMD can be caused by a number of intestinal viruses, of which EV-71 and Coxsackie A16 are among the most common.
In mild cases, EV-71 causes cold-like symptoms, diarrhea, and sores on the hands, feet and mouth. Severe cases can cause fluid to accumulate on the brain, resulting in polio-like paralysis and death.
There is no treatment for severe EV-71 infections nor does a vaccine exist. Adults with well-developed immune systems can usually fend off the virus, but children are particularly vulnerable to it, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Public health officials expect the number of cases to peak this summer, since the disease thrives in warm weather.
The virus is a concern for Chinese officials as the nation prepares to host the Summer Olympic Games starting August 8.
Taiwan had a large outbreak of HFMD in 1998 with 78 deaths, and smaller outbreaks in 2000 and 2001, according to the CDC.
China is also coping with the devastation left by a magnitude-7.9 earthquake that struck Monday, killing thousands and leaving even more people trapped in debris or simply listed as missing.
]]>Bush links optimism for Mideast reform to democratic Israeltag:therochesterdemocrat.com,2008:ee/index.php/39.420662008-05-14T16:30:00-06:002008-05-14T16:31:51-06:00{summary}2008-05-14T16:30:00-06:00Staffeditor@TheRochesterDemocrat.comIsrael/Palestine
JERUSALEM (AP) - President Bush said Wednesday that 60 years of Israel's existence is cause for optimism for democratic change throughout the Middle East. "What happened here is possible everywhere," Bush said, opening a trip divided between ceremonial duties and a new push for Israeli-Palestinian peace.
The president, trying to hold together peace talks in his waning months in office, said modern Israel gives him a strong example to preach optimism to other nations in the region.
"I suspect if you looked back 60 years ago and tried to guess where Israel would be at that time, it would be hard to be able to project such a prosperous, hopeful land," Bush said during a meeting with Israeli President Shimon Peres. "No question, people would have said, 'We'd be surrounded by hostile forces.'"
A weakened Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert fended off corruption allegations. New bursts of violence erupted in the Gaza Strip. And an Israeli Cabinet minister claimed he's won approval to expand settlement activity in the West Bank, a development that could undermine peace talks with Palestinians.
Bush has expressed confidence, though more tempered lately, that an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement would be struck before his term ends. But he and his aides are holding out little hope for a major breakthrough during this five-day trip to Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said ahead of the trip that reaching a deal to end one of the world's longest-running and most difficult disputes within the next eight months "might be improbable, but it's not impossible."
In a speech Thursday before the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, Bush plans to discuss his vision for the country "on its 120th anniversary" - a vision that includes peaceful coexistence with a Palestinian state, White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.
Bush will say the celebration of Israel's founding is a time to look forward, as well as back.
"The United States and Israel share a belief that all people have the right to live in peace, that democracy is the best way to ensure human rights, that religious liberty is fundamental to civilized society and that using violence to achieve political objectives is always wrong," Johndroe said in a preview of the address' themes.
While focusing primarily on celebrating Israel's birthday, Bush also will use the speech to acknowledge - briefly - that Palestinians view the anniversary much differently, said a senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity. Israel's establishment resulted in the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, so they call the milestone "al-naqba" or the catastrophe.
Bush planned to state his concern for the daily lives of Palestinians and the Israeli responsibility for helping to improve them, the official said. Olmert, in Bush's view, is a partner who agrees with this. The president also was to meet Thursday with international Mideast envoy Tony Blair for an update on progress for improving Palestinian civic institutions and economic conditions. He spoke about the issue in his meetings Wednesday with both Olmert and Peres, the official said.
Peres, meeting with Bush in the trellis-covered sandstone portion of his gardens, backed Bush's hope for an accord, saying Israelis want to work with Palestinians.
"We would like to see the Palestinians living together," he said. "They have suffered a great deal of their life. The separation is a tragedy for them and for the rest of us."
Israel has imposed a closure on the West Bank and Gaza Strip during Bush's visit, though, preventing Palestinians from entering the country. Normally, tens of thousands of Palestinians are permitted into Israel each day for work, health care and family visits.
And just hours before Bush arrived, Eli Yishai, a right-wing minister in Olmert's Cabinet, said the prime minister had agreed to the construction of hundreds of homes in a West Bank settlement. Olmert spokesman Mark Regev disputed the claim, saying no decision had been made. In current peace talks, the Palestinians demand that Israel stop building in areas they both want for a future state, and Israel's failure to do so - despite pressure from the Bush administration - has increased Palestinian disappointment and frustration.
Meanwhile, the violence continued.
A rocket fired from Gaza exploded in a shopping center in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, wounding at least three people and leaving at least two trapped under the rubble, officials said. Two other people were killed in recent days in attacks by Palestinian militants on Israeli communities outside Gaza, even as an Egyptian mediator met with Israeli officials to try to work out a truce between Israel and Gaza's Hamas rulers.
Also Wednesday, Israeli military raids on the Gaza Strip killed two Palestinian civilians and three militants, Palestinian medical officials said.
Israel frequently raids Gaza to try to stop militants from firing rockets and mortars at Israeli border communities. But the attacks occur almost daily, and Olmert threatened a larger Israeli military incursion into Gaza after two hours of meetings with Bush at his official residence.
"We will not be able to tolerate continued attacks against innocent civilians," he said, Bush looking on soberly by his side. "We hope we will not have to act against Hamas in other ways with military power that Israel hasn't yet started to use in a serious manner."
In the Gaza Strip, Hamas called the Bush visit a "bad omen."
"No greetings to you, Bush, on our holy land," said Hamas strongman Mahmoud Zahar. "Your people will punish you one day."
And in Tehran, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Wednesday that Israel is dying and that its 60th anniversary celebrations are an attempt to prevent its "annihilation."
Peres chastised Hezbollah for aiming to destroy Lebanon and accused Hamas of working to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state. The U.S. has labeled both as terrorist groups.
Upon Bush's arrival at the airport at Tel Aviv, he hugged Olmert, the subject of a new criminal investigation that could push him from office. Earlier, broadcasters' microphones had picked up Olmert's assurances to Hadley: "Holding on, holding on, don't worry."
Olmert has rejected charges that he accepted illegal campaign contributions and possibly bribes. But he has also pledged to step down if he is indicted.
Bush, who visited Israel for the first time as president in January, was set to speak Wednesday night at a conference in Jerusalem celebrating the Jewish state's birthday. The conference, convened by Peres, includes former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, writer and Holocaust survivor Eli Wiesel, and other Jewish Nobel laureates.
]]>China says troops rush to plug dangerous cracks in damtag:therochesterdemocrat.com,2008:ee/index.php/39.420652008-05-14T16:25:00-06:002008-05-14T16:27:12-06:00{summary}2008-05-14T16:25:00-06:00Staffeditor@TheRochesterDemocrat.comChina(s)
HANWANG, China (AP) - Thousands of Chinese soldiers rushed on Wednesday to repair a dam badly cracked by the country's massive earthquake, while rescuers arrived for the first time in the epicenter of the disaster.
China's top economic planning body said that the quake had damaged 391 mostly small dams. It left "extremely dangerous" cracks in the Zipingpu Dam upriver from the earthquake-hit city of Dujiangyan and some 2,000 soldiers were sent to repair the damage, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
Xinhua said Dujiangyan would be "swamped" if major problems emerged at the dam.
He Biao, the director of the Aba Disaster Relief headquarters in northern Sichuan province, said there were also concerns over dams closer to the epicenter.
"Currently, the most dangerous problems are several reservoirs near Wenchuan," he said, according to a transcript on the CCTV Web site.
"There are already serious problems with the Tulong Reservoir on the Min River. It may collapse. If that happens, it would affect several power plants below and be extremely dangerous," he said.
Rescuers who hiked in to the epicenter scoured flattened mountain villages for thousands of missing and buried victims, and the death toll of nearly 15,000 appeared likely to soar far higher.
Help also began to arrive helicopter in some of the hardest-to-reach areas, where some victims trapped for more than two days under collapsed buildings were still being pulled out alive. But the enormous scale of the devastation meant that resources were stretched thin, and makeshift aid stations and refugee centers were springing up over the disaster area the size of Belgium.
Leveled hospitals forced doctors and nurses to treat survivors in the street. Helicopters dropped food and medicine to isolated towns. Mourners burned money before rows of bodies, believing their lost relatives could use it in the afterlife.
Xinhua quoted government officials as saying rescuers who hiked Wednesday into the city of Yingxiu in Wenchuan county - the epicenter of the quake - found only 2,300 survivors in the town of about 10,000, with another 1,000 badly hurt.
The official death toll rose Wednesday to 14,866, Xinhua said, but it was not immediately clear if that number included the 7,700 reported dead in Yingxiu. In Sichuan province alone, another 25,788 people were buried and 1,405 were missing, provincial vice governor Li Chengyun said, according to Xinhua.
Twelve Americans were found safe near the epicenter of the quake.
A spokeswoman for the World Wildlife Fund said the 12 members of the wildlife group were reached by satellite phone earlier in the day. The team was near the world's most famous panda preserve in Wolong, whose pandas were reported safe Tuesday.
Unlike previous natural disasters in China, official media have reported prominently on the quake and state TV canceled regular programming to run 24-hour coverage.
Scenes of destruction and death have been shown, along with prominent focus on Premier Wen Jiabao, who rushed Monday to Sichuan to oversee the rescue work. He has been shown crawling into collapsed buildings to urge survivors to hang on with impassioned pleas, and seen reassuring children who had lost parents.
Wen was there when one 3-year-old girl trapped for more than 40 hours under the bodies of her parents was pulled to safety Wednesday in Beichuan region, Xinhua said.
Rescuers found Song Xinyi on Tuesday morning, but were unable to pull her out right away due to fears the debris above her would collapse. She was fed and shielded from the rain until rescuers extricated her from the rubble.
Elsewhere, a 34-year-old woman who was eight months pregnant was rescued after spending 50 hours under debris in Dujiangyan.
"It's a miracle brought about by us all working together," said Sun Guoli, fire chief of the nearby provincial capital Chengdu, who supervised the rescue.
The show of official empathy was aimed at reassuring the public about the government's response and also showing the world the country is ready to host the Beijing Olympics in August. Wednesday's leg of the Olympic torch relay in the southeastern city of Ruijin began with a minute of silence.
President Hu Jintao presided over an emergency meeting of the Communist Party's highest body Wednesday, the second such meeting since the quake happened. Hu, also secretary-general of the party, urged the military, police and others to rush to the disaster area to help.
The death toll from the quake was expected to rise when rescuers reach other towns in Wenchuan county that remained cut off.
"The Communist Party Central Committee has not forgotten this place," Wen said after flying by helicopter to Wenchuan, adding that some 50 injured people had been airlifted from the area.
Relief efforts were aided in their third day by the clearing of storms that had prevented flights over some of the worst-hit towns. Military helicopters seen flying north over Dujiangyan, and Xinhua said some had airdropped food, drinking water and medicine to Yingxiu.
East of the epicenter in the town of Hanwang, the smell of incense hung over a crowd of sobbing relatives who walked among some 60 bodies wrapped in plastic, some covered with tributes of branches or flowers.
Nearby, rescuers carried more bodies out of a makeshift morgue at the Dongqi sports arena. People from the town and surrounding areas packed into blue tents provided by relief officials. A Western-style clock tower in the town center had stopped at 2:27 - the time the quake hit.
The Mianzhu No. 3 Hospital was obliterated, and the seven-story main Hanwang Hospital collapsed. Surviving medical staff set up a triage center in the driveway of a tire factory, but could only provide basic care.
"The first day hundreds of kids died when a school collapsed. The rest who came in had serious injuries. There was so little we could do for them," said Zhao Xiaoli, a nurse at Hanwang Hospital.
Emergency vehicle sirens sounded every few minutes. An ambulance drove in, delivering a man pulled from the rubble and covered in dust.
"There will be a lot more people. So many still haven't been found," said Zhao.
Disorienting episodes added to the struggle for survival in much of the disaster zone. The Mianyang city government ordered its 700,000 residents to evacuate all buildings between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. because an aftershock was predicted.
In Chengdu, water to some parts of the city was cut for repairs, touching off a rumor that the supply was contaminated. People began hoarding water and water pressure citywide dropped before a senior official went on TV to deny anything was wrong.
]]>Red Cross estimates cyclone toll as high as 127,990tag:therochesterdemocrat.com,2008:ee/index.php/39.420642008-05-14T16:24:00-06:002008-05-14T16:25:00-06:00{summary}2008-05-14T16:24:00-06:00Staffeditor@TheRochesterDemocrat.comBurma
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) - Heavy rains and another potentially powerful storm are headed toward Myanmar's cyclone-devastated delta. The U.N. is warning that inadequate relief efforts could lead to a second wave of deaths.
The International Red Cross says in a new estimate that the death toll may be between 68,833 and 127,990.
The Red Cross says it arrived at the number by adding figures gathered in affected areas by other aid groups and organizations.
The Myanmar junta says Cyclone Nargis left at least 34,273 dead and 27,838 missing. U.N. agencies and other groups have been able to reach only 270,000 people so far.
]]>New storm head toward cyclone-devastated Myanmartag:therochesterdemocrat.com,2008:ee/index.php/39.420582008-05-14T12:21:00-06:002008-05-14T12:22:34-06:00{summary}2008-05-14T12:21:00-06:00Staffeditor@TheRochesterDemocrat.comBurma
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) - Another powerful storm headed toward Myanmar's cyclone-devastated delta, where so little aid has reached that the U.N. warned on Wednesday of a "second wave of deaths" among an estimated 2 million survivors.
The U.S. military's Joint Typhoon Warning Center said there is a good chance that "a significant tropical cyclone" will form within the next 24 hours and head across the Irrawaddy delta area.
The area was pulverized by Cyclone Nargis on May 3, leaving at least 34,273 dead and 27,838 missing, according to the government. The U.N. says the death toll could exceed 100,000. An estimated 2 million survivors of the storm are still in need of emergency aid. But U.N. agencies and other groups have been able to reach only 270,000 people so far.
In a sign that Myanmar may allow outside help, Dr. Thawat Sutharacha of Thailand's Public Health Ministry said Wednesday the junta has given permission to a Thai medical team to go to the cyclone-hit delta.
If the team is able to go as scheduled on Friday, it would be the first foreign aid group to work in the ravaged Irrawaddy delta.
Bottlenecks, poor logistics, limited infrastructure and the military government's refusal to allow foreign aid workers have left most of the delta's survivors living in miserable conditions without food or clean water. The government's efforts have been criticized as woefully slow.
"The government has a responsibility to assist their people in the event of a natural disaster," said Amanda Pitt, a spokeswoman for the U.N. Office for Humanitarian Affairs.
"We are here to do what we can and facilitate their efforts and scale up their response. It is clearly inadequate and we do not want to see a second wave of death as a result of that not being scaled up," she said.
The news of a second cyclone was not broadcast by Myanmar's state-controlled media. But Yangon residents picked up the news on foreign broadcasts and on the Internet.
"I prayed to the Lord Buddha, 'please save us from another cyclone. Not just me but all of Myanmar,'" said Min Min, a rickshaw driver, whose house was destroyed in Cyclone Nargis. Min Min, his wife and three children now live on their wrecked premises under plastic sheets.
"Another cyclone will be a disaster because our relief center is already overcrowded. I am very worried," said Tun Zaw, 68, another Yangon resident who is living in a government relief center.
Prof. Johnny Chan, a tropical cyclone expert with City University of Hong Kong, said the new cyclone would likely not be as severe as Nargis because it is already close to land, and cyclones need to be over sea to gain full strength.
"There will be a lot of rain but the winds will not be as strong," he told The Associated Press.
Soldiers have barred foreign aid workers from reaching cyclone survivors in the hardest-hit areas, but gave access to an International Red Cross representative who returned to Yangon on Tuesday.
Bridget Gardner, the agency's country head, described tremendous devastation but also selflessness, as survivors joined in the rescue efforts.
"People who have come here having lost their homes in rural areas have volunteered to work as first aiders. They are humanitarian heroes," said Gardner.
Gardner's team visited five locations in the Irrawaddy delta. In one of them, they saw 10,000 people living without shelter as rain tumbled from the sky.
"The town of Labutta is unrecognizable. I have been here before and now with the extent of the damage and the crowds of displaced people, it's a different place," Gardner was quoted as saying in a statement by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
In Labutta and elsewhere she said volunteers were giving medical aid to hundreds of people a day even though "they have no homes to go back to when they finish."
Some survivors of Cyclone Nargis were reportedly getting spoiled or poor-quality food, rather than nutrition-rich biscuits sent by international donors, adding to suspicions that the junta may be misappropriating foreign aid.
The military, which has ruled since 1962, has taken control of most supplies sent by other countries, including the United States, which began its third day of aid delivery Wednesday as five more giant C-130 transport planes loaded with emergency supplies headed to Myanmar.
Lt. Col. Douglas Powell, a spokesman for what has been dubbed operation Caring Relief, said a total of 197,080 pounds of provisions have been sent into Myanmar on the eight U.S. military flights that have been cleared to go.
Most of the provisions have been blankets, mosquito nets, plastic sheets and water.
As the U.S. military's effort to expand its relief effort appeared to make major headway, Myanmar also agreed to attend an emergency meeting of Southeast Asian foreign ministers next week to discuss problems in getting foreign aid the country, Asian diplomats said Wednesday.
Diplomats from the 10-country Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which includes Myanmar, were crafting the agenda for the meeting to be held Monday in Singapore, said two Manila-based Southeast Asian diplomats knowledgeable about preparations for the gathering.
Singapore, which currently heads the ASEAN bloc, organized the meeting after getting a nod from Myanmar, which has committed to sending its foreign minister, according to one of the diplomats. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to media.
Thailand's Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej also was to fly into Yangon to try to persuade the junta to grant visas to international disaster experts. On Tuesday night, King Bhumibol Adulyadej warned that hardship would prevail if assistance isn't accepted, though he did not mention Myanmar by name.
Joining other individual and institutional donors around the world, Hollywood stars have donated $250,000 for survivors through Save the Children. The global aid agency said Not On Our Watch, a nonprofit group founded by actors George Clooney, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt and others, has also pledged more donations over a one-year period.
Getting to the worst-affected areas was getting more and more difficult, and the impending storm was expected to compound the misery of the survivors.
"They are already weak," said Pitt, the U.N. spokeswoman. A new storm will impact "people's ability to survive and cope with what happened to them ... this is terrible."
U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had expressed concern that aid was being diverted to non-cyclone victims, but so far there was no evidence.
CARE Australia's country director in Myanmar, Brian Agland, said members of his local staff brought back some of the rotting rice being distributed in the devastated Irrawaddy delta.
]]>China quake toll at 15,000; 26,000 believed buriedtag:therochesterdemocrat.com,2008:ee/index.php/39.420572008-05-14T12:19:01-06:002008-05-14T12:20:43-06:00{summary}2008-05-14T12:19:01-06:00Staffeditor@TheRochesterDemocrat.comChina(s)
HANWANG, China (AP) - Military helicopters dropped food and medicine to Chinese earthquake survivors who remained cut off Wednesday in remote mountain villages behind roads clogged by landslides. The official death toll rose to nearly 15,000, and tens of thousands more were feared buried or missing.
As help began to arrive in some of the hardest-to-reach areas, some victims trapped for more than two days under collapsed buildings were still being pulled out alive. But the enormous scale of the devastation meant that resources were stretched thin, and makeshift aid stations and refugee centers were springing up over the disaster area the size of Maryland.
The official Xinhua News Agency quoted government officials as saying rescuers who hiked Wednesday into the city of Yingxiu in Wenchuan county - the epicenter of Monday's magnitude 7.9 quake - found it "much worse than expected."
The official death toll rose Wednesday to 14,866, Xinhua said, but it was not immediately clear if that number included the 7,700 reported dead in Yingxiu. In Sichuan province alone, another 25,788 people were buried and 14,051 missing, provincial vice governor Li Chengyun said, according to Xinhua.
The toll was expected to rise further once rescuers reach other towns in Wenchuan that remain cut off from the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu more than two days after the quake. Roads leading to Wenchuan from all directions were still being cleared of debris, Feng Zhenglin, deputy minister of railway and transportation, said in Beijing.
The death toll for Mianyang city was also confirmed at 5,430, up from 3,629, on Wednesday, Xinhua said, with more than 18,000 people there still thought to be buried under crushed buildings.
At a middle school Sichuan province's Qingchuan county where students were taking a noon nap when the quake demolished a three-story building, 178 children were confirmed dead in the rubble and another 23 remained missing, Xinhua said.
Storms that had prevented flights to some of the worst-hit areas finally cleared on Wednesday. Military helicopters were seen flying north over Dujiangyan, and Xinhua said two of them airdropped food, drinking water and medicine to Yingxiu.
Trains were on their way to Sichuan carrying quilts, drinking water, tents and military personnel, Ministry of Railways spokesman Wong Yongping said. All railways in the province were working except for a line where a 40-car freight train was trapped by a landslide in a tunnel and burned, he said.
Rescuers raced to save people trapped under flattened buildings.
A 34-year-old woman who was eight months pregnant was rescued after spending 50 hours under debris in Dujiangyan.
In the Beichuan region, a 3-year-old girl who was trapped for more than 40 hours under the bodies of her parents was pulled to safety, Xinhua said.
Rescuers found Song Xinyi on Tuesday morning, but were unable to pull her out right away due to fears the debris above her would collapse. She was fed and shielded from the rain until rescuers extricated her from the rubble.
Premier Wen Jiabao looked over her wounds, part of his highly publicized tour of the disaster area aimed at reassuring the public about the government's response and to show the world that the country is ready to host the Beijing Olympics in August. Wednesday's leg of the Olympic torch relay in the southeastern city of Ruijin began with a minute of silence.
Wen said some 100,000 troops and police had been dispatched to the disaster zone. He also visited a school Wednesday in Beichuan where two classroom buildings collapsed in the earthquake, including a school with 2,000 students that state TV said sustained "heavy casualties."
East of the epicenter in the town of Hanwang, the smell of incense hung over a crowd of sobbing relatives who walked among some 60 bodies wrapped in plastic, some covered with tributes of branches or flowers.
Nearby, rescuers in blue uniforms carried more bodies out of a makeshift morgue at the Dongqi sports arena. The dead appeared to have come from heavily damaged apartments and a school behind the arena, where people stood in stunned shock.
People from the town and surrounding areas packed into blue tents provided by disaster relief officials. A clock tower in the town center had stopped at 2:27, the time the quake hit.
The Mianzhu No. 3 Hospital was obliterated, and the seven-story main Hanwang Hospital collapsed, its third floor suddenly smashing to the ground. People on the upper floors climbed out on bed sheets tied together.
Surviving medical staff set up a triage center in the driveway of a tire factory, but could only provide basic care.
"The first day hundreds of kids died when a school collapsed. The rest who came in had serious injuries. There was so little we could do for them," said Zhao Xiaoli, a nurse at Hanwang Hospital, who described herself as "numb."
Emergency vehicle sirens sounded every few minutes. An ambulance drove in, delivering a man pulled from the rubble and covered in dust.
"There will be a lot more people. So many still haven't been found," said Zhao.
Residents complained that delays in aid had caused more deaths in the immediate aftermath of the quake.
Zhang Chuanlin, a 27-year-old factory worker, said his 52-year-old mother was trapped while watching television with her friend. No rescue workers were around so he started to dig by himself.
"No one was helping me and then two strangers came and dug through the rubble. They found her an hour later," he said. "When they pulled her out I couldn't look, I just couldn't look when they pulled her out."
A man who gave only his surname Li said he had suffered a double tragedy. His wife was killed while watching TV with Zhang's mother and his daughter died when her school collapsed.
The child did not die right away and could be heard saying, "Please help me daddy, please rescue me," right after the earthquake, he said, but there were no authorities to save her.
In Dujiangyan, a mother pleaded with police for information about her husband who was working in Wenchuan, blocking one of the few roads leading to the epicenter.
"I've begged and begged them to help me look for my husband," Li Zhenhua said, showing her husbands ID card to a crowd of onlookers. "I can't go by myself because I've got a little baby and elderly parents here, so I can't leave."
"The government is doing nothing for us. The government won't help us," she said, over and over.
]]>US considering providing North Korea with food to help shortages.tag:therochesterdemocrat.com,2008:ee/index.php/39.420432008-05-13T19:36:00-06:002008-05-13T19:37:04-06:00{summary}2008-05-13T19:36:00-06:00Staffeditor@TheRochesterDemocrat.comKoreas
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is discussing ways in which the United States might help get food aid to North Korea, the White House said Tuesday.
Spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters that it's an issue that President Bush "talks about repeatedly, which is his concern for the humanitarian condition for the people of North Korea, many of whom are starving." She said such assistance might be made possible through the auspices of non-governmental organizations or via a United Nations program.
Pyongyang "has been open in saying it faces a major shortage in food supplies," Perino said.
She noted that U.S. officials have "had some useful discussions concerning the parameters of a program for the resumption of U.S. food assistance for the North Korean people." Perino also said that if such an agreement were finalized, it would be announced by the State Department, adding that "there are discussions that are ongoing in figuring out a way to make sure that people there are taken care of."
"The president thinks that the government is certainly diverting food to the military and not giving it to the people," she said. "But outside of politics, the president's heart hurts when he knows that people are starving, and especially because — especially for children, who are maybe trying to go to school."
]]>Missile Is Fired at Copter Over Baghdad, U.S. Saystag:therochesterdemocrat.com,2008:ee/index.php/39.420312008-05-13T14:28:00-06:002008-05-13T14:29:45-06:00{summary}2008-05-13T14:28:00-06:00Staffeditor@TheRochesterDemocrat.comIraq
By STEPHEN FARRELL and MICHAEL R. GORDON
NY Times
Published: May 13, 2008
BAGHDAD — A surface-to-air missile was fired on Saturday at an American Apache helicopter flying over the Sadr City section of Baghdad, American military officials said on Monday. The attack, which had not been disclosed previously, represents the first time that a helicopter has come under missile attack in Sadr City since fighting erupted in the Shiite enclave in March.
The missile missed the aircraft. But the attack was sufficiently worrisome that the American military changed the route of an aerial tour of Baghdad it had arranged for a group of reporters, television cameramen and photographers on Monday. Two helicopters were to fly over or near Sadr City, but an official said the route had been changed because of the missile threat.
The United States military has made extensive use of Apache helicopters to try to stop militias from firing rockets at the Green Zone and to protect American and Iraqi troops in Sadr City from Shiite fighters armed with small arms, rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and roadside bombs.
The helicopters have taken a heavy toll on the militia fighters. In an effort to blunt the American advantage in airpower, the militias have waited until dust storms have grounded the Apaches to unleash heavy rocket attacks on the Green Zone.
But the attack on Saturday suggests that the militias may intend to make a more determined challenge to the American dominance in the air.
Moktada al-Sadr’s movement and the main Shiite coalition within Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s government formally signed an agreement on Monday to end fighting in Sadr City, saying they hoped it would end seven weeks of violence.
It is unclear whether a cease-fire will take hold. Officials in Mr. Sadr’s movement said they would permit confiscation of heavy weapons and arrests of wanted men, but they warned against any attempt to detain all Mahdi Army fighters.
According to an American military official, who declined to be identified because the military has not publicly announced the attack, the attempt to shoot down an Apache occurred about 7:20 p.m. Saturday. An American patrol had been struck by a roadside bomb in Sadr City, and two Apache helicopters flew to the scene to investigate and provide protection for the troops.
The missile, described as an SA-7 shoulder-fired missile, was fired at one of the helicopters. It exploded in midair and neither aircraft was damaged.
Soldiers from an American Army civil affairs unit in Sadr City saw the missile ascending and reported that it seemed to have been launched from north of Al Quds Street, where the American military is building a large concrete wall to prevent militia fighters from infiltrating south.
The missile was also seen by Iraqi volunteers in the “Sons of Iraq” program who provide security in Adhamiya, a nearby neighborhood. They found the missile’s body, which was turned over to American troops.
Despite the agreement to end the fighting, there was no sign of a cease-fire along Al Quds Street. Militia fighters fired at Iraqi forces near the wall that the Americans are building. The Iraqi soldiers shot back, and an Apache helicopter fired a missile at a militia position.
American military officials released figures on Monday showing more than 700 attacks a month in Baghdad in March and again in April, primarily at American and Iraqi troops — nearly triple the level in February, before the Sadr City clashes began.
There have already been more than 200 attacks in May. Col. Allen Batschelet, the chief of staff of the military division securing Baghdad, said overall attacks are still down 42 percent since a peak of 1,200 last June.
Colonel Batschelet said that since American and Iraqi troops began the operation to curb the firing of rockets from Sadr City, more missiles are now being fired from areas outside that district. He also said the militias are also using more 122-millimeter weapons, whose 12-mile range is double that of 107-millimeter rockets, which account for most attacks against the Green Zone.
Many of the rockets and mortar shells fired by the militias have fallen wide of their intended targets. Of the 285 people killed or wounded by mortars and rockets in Baghdad since March 23, Colonel Batschelet said, 144 were Iraqis, 89 were coalition troops, 20 were Iraqi security troops, 15 were American civilians and 17 were of other nationalities.
Officials from hospitals in Sadr City said casualties declined over the weekend. At noon on Monday, however, ambulances were still delivering the wounded.
In some sections of Sadr City, residents seemed relaxed, walking on the street and shopping. Lines of cars were waiting for gas. The lines vanished a couple of weeks ago, because people were afraid to remain in the street for long periods of time.
]]>Bush to return to the Mideast with tempered hopes for peace agreement before term endstag:therochesterdemocrat.com,2008:ee/index.php/39.420302008-05-13T14:26:02-06:002008-05-13T14:27:36-06:00{summary}2008-05-13T14:26:02-06:00Staffeditor@TheRochesterDemocrat.comIsrael/Palestine
WASHINGTON - When President Bush began his first energized pursuit of an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord just over five months ago, confidence was his constant companion. "I'm optimistic," he said over and over about the prospects for ending one of the world's longest-running disputes within little more than a year.
As the president prepares a Mideast trip this week, his second in four months, he is trading that unfailingly upbeat tone for something a bit more reserved.
It's a nod to Mideast realities.
Old barriers to peace such as distrust, violence and little movement on the most difficult issues concerning borders, Palestinian refugees and how to resolve both sides' claim to Jerusalem have run up against new ones, mainly in the form of leaders possibly too weak among their own people to cut deals.
"I certainly think there's a coming to grips with reality," said Nathan Brown, a Mideast expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and director of George Washington University's Institute for Middle East Studies.
In November, when Bush convened nearly 50 countries in Annapolis, Md., for a Mideast peace conference that launched the first formal negotiations in years between Israelis and Palestinians, he repeatedly said a deal was doable by the time he leaves office next January.
"I wouldn't be standing here if I didn't believe that peace was possible," he said at a Rose Garden send-off for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Bush was just as cheerful in January before, during and after a Mideast trip. "There's a good chance for peace," he said in Israel, his first visit there as president. "When I say I'm optimistic we can get a deal done, I mean what I'm saying," Bush said in Egypt.
He kept this stance into March, despite no visible progress in the Israeli-Palestinian talks that include bimonthly meetings between Olmert and Abbas. Bush declared that the 10 months left on his self-imposed peace clock was "plenty of time." "I'm still as optimistic as I was after Annapolis," Bush said after meeting at the White House with Jordan's King Abdullah II.
The approach is classic Bush, for whom a favorite story is how the choice of an Oval Office rug with a sunburst pattern says "optimistic person comes to work" to visitors. Truth be told, it's not so uncommon for most politicians and diplomats, said Jon Alterman, head of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
"The president is optimistic because he thinks his job is to be optimistic," he said.
But Bush was less ebullient by the time Abbas visited the White House last month to plead for stepped-up U.S. involvement in the negotiations, particularly to ride herd on Israel to halt settlement activity in Palestinian areas. "I'm confident we can achieve the definition of a state," he told Abbas, somewhat flatly.
Perhaps even more significantly, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told an American Jewish audience a few days later that "we have a chance to reach the basic contours of a settlement by the end of the year."
These subtle shifts in language may not seem like much.
But in the painstaking, tea-leaves world of Mideast diplomacy, Bush describing the goal as the "definition of a state" and Rice's talk of merely "a chance" for "the basic contours of a settlement" are read by experts and those in the region as a scaling back of initial hopes for a full-blown treaty. Though the White House was vague from the beginning about what it was seeking from the talks, the distinct impression was left that the envisioned final product was an end to the conflict and the definition of a Palestinian state.
Now, Palestinians are becoming increasingly suspicious that the Israelis are looking to achieve something by the end of the year that is much less than a full treaty, and that they are supported in this by Washington.
"We don't want a declaration of principle because we had one," complained an upset Abbas after the meeting with Bush in Washington.
The Carnegie Endowment's Brown said this sort of disappointment is a price of Bush's high-flying original rhetoric. Though it was widely seen as overblown at the time, it still created expectations — and reduced his credibility.
"Anything less than some kind of agreement is going to be seen as failure," Brown said.
Bush's Mideast peace push has seen other instances where initial intentions seemed to be rolled back.
The November conference originally was meant to produce the outline of a future peace deal. But while the Palestinians wanted a detailed statement that noted core issues and timelines, the Israelis preferred something more vague. The agenda was curtailed to just restarting negotiations and stating the goal of reaching a deal before Bush left office.
Further, the notion of a three-way meeting between Bush, Olmert and Abbas — the kind of intensive mediation engaged in by previous presidents — has been raised and then quashed before both of the president's Mideast trips.
And this trip, announced when Bush was in the region the last time and expected to be about furthering negotiations, now seems designed as much as a ceremonial journey. Bush is in Israel primarily to participate in festivities surrounding the 60th anniversary of the Jewish state. And his stop in Saudi Arabia later in the week is billed as a celebration of 75 years of formal U.S.-Saudi relations.
"You look at the itinerary and this does not look like a major diplomatic trip," Brown said.
Progress has been so invisible from the talks, that the Bush administration has told both sides they need to give some visible sign soon that things are moving forward.
But both the Israeli and Palestinian leaders are weak, complicating Bush's task — and his confidence.
Olmert is under investigation for allegations that he illicitly collected campaign cash, and has said he will resign if indicted. Abbas is constrained himself, by the political divide between Palestinians in the West Bank where Abbas' Fatah movement is in control and in Gaza, which is governed by the Hamas militant group.
]]>Death toll in China quake reportedly nears 12,000tag:therochesterdemocrat.com,2008:ee/index.php/39.420202008-05-13T11:55:02-06:002008-05-13T11:57:08-06:00{summary}2008-05-13T11:55:02-06:00Staffeditor@TheRochesterDemocrat.comChina(s)
DUJIANGYAN, China (AP) - Bodies covered with sheets lined the streets Tuesday as rescue workers dug through schools and homes turned into rubble by China's worst earthquake in three decades in a search for more victims. The official death toll rose to nearly 12,000, and thousands remained missing.
But hope that many survivors would be found was slim. Buildings were knocked down on every block in some cities, and corpses were laid out in the street and in schoolyards.
Only 58 people were extricated from demolished buildings across the quake area so far, China Seismological Bureau spokesman Zhang Hongwei told the official Xinhua.
"Survivors can hold on for some time. Now it's not time to give up," said Wang Zhenyao, disaster relief division director at the Ministry of Civil Affairs, adding that rescue efforts could take a week.
A day after the powerful 7.9 magnitude quake struck, state media said rescue workers had only just reached the epicenter in Wenchuan county - cut off by the disaster and where the number of casualties was unknown. China said it would welcome international aid but would not yet allow foreign relief workers into the affected area.
Heavy rain, which had contributed to the difficulty of reaching the epicenter, continued to impede efforts and a group of paratroopers called off a mission to the area, Xinhua said.
The death toll rose to 11,921, Wang said. At least 4,800 people remained buried in Mianzhu, 60 miles from the epicenter, Xinhua said, citing local authorities.
The casualty figures were expected to rise and remained uncertain due to the remote areas affected by the quake and difficulty in finding buried victims.
The earthquake caused a wide swath of damage across central China, leveling buildings and severing roads and communications. It sent people rushing out of their offices across the country in Beijing, and was felt as far away as Vietnam.
Nearly 10,000 people died in Sichuan province alone and 300 others in other provinces and the mega-city of Chongqing, Xinhua reported.
A 40-car freight train with 13 gasoline tankers derailed in the quake and was still burning Tuesday, the agency said, with no word on casualties.
Earthquake rescue experts in orange jumpsuits extricated bloody survivors on stretchers from demolished buildings, and some 34,000 troops swarmed into the region to help.
Aftershocks rattled the region for a second day, sending people running into the streets in the city of Chengdu. The U.S. Geological Survey measured the shocks between magnitude 4 and 6, some of the strongest since Monday's quake.
In Dujiangyan, rescue teams were trying to get to a woman who was eight months pregnant and trapped in a seven-story apartment building that collapsed.
Zhou Chun, a 70-year-old retired mechanic, was leaving Dujiangyan with a soiled light blue blanket draped over his shoulders.
"My wife died in the quake. My house was destroyed," he said. "I am going to Chengdu, but I don't know where I'll live."
Nearby, a man in his late 50s who refused to give his name, said his father was missing in the rubble of his home. "Yesterday, when the earthquake happened our home collapsed really quickly and I heard my father yell, 'Help, help, help,'" the man said.
People were seeking rides out of town, where makeshift tent cities were being erected as shelter from rain that began Tuesday and could affect rescue efforts.
Just east of the epicenter, 1,000 students and teachers were killed or missing at a collapsed high school in Beichuan county. The six- or seven-story building was reduced to a pile of rubble about two yards high, according to Xinhua. Another 900 students were feared dead when their school collapsed in Juyuan, which is in Dujiangyan city.
The Beichuan school had more than 2,000 students and teachers in three school buildings. The other two buildings collapsed partially, Xinhua said.
Up to 5,000 people were killed and 80 percent of the buildings had collapsed in Beichuan, Xinhua said, in a region of small cities and towns set amid steep hills north of Sichuan's provincial capital of Chengdu. The government has poured more than 16,000 troops into the area with tens of thousands more on the way.
Premier Wen Jiabao, who flew to the area to oversee rescue efforts, said a push was on to clear roads and restore electricity as soon as possible.
China's Ministry of Health issued an appeal for blood donations to help the victims of the quake. "There is a large demand for blood in quake-hit areas and we hope the public actively donate blood," spokesman Mao Quan said.
Before the rescue workers arrived, the only previous contact with hard-hit Wenchuan, Xinhua said, was a satellite phone call from the local Communist Party secretary to appeal for air drops of tents, food and medicine.
The official, Wang Bin, said there were 57 reported deaths so far, with more than 300 other people seriously injured. He said the figures were likely to rise as there was no information from mountainous areas.
He estimated that at least 30,000 of the county's 105,000 residents slept outside Monday night.
Fifteen missing British tourists were believed to be in that area at the time of the quake and were "out of reach," Xinhua reported.
They were likely visiting the Wolong Nature Reserve, home to more than 100 giant pandas, whose fate also was not known, Xinhua said. It reported that 60 pandas at another breeding center in Chengdu were safe.
Also, two Chinese-Americans and a Thai tourist were missing in Sichuan province, the agency said, citing tourism officials.
Disasters pose a test to China's communist government, whose mandate rests heavily on maintaining order, delivering economic growth and providing relief in emergencies.
Pressure for a rapid response was particularly intense this year, as the government was already grappling with public discontent over high inflation and a widespread uprising among Tibetans in western China while trying to prepare for the Beijing Olympics this August.
Expressions of sympathy and offers of help poured in from the United States, Japan and the European Union, among others. Even rival Taiwan, which is frequently hit by quakes and has highly developed expertise in rescue operations, offered aid.
The Chinese government said it would welcome outside aid. Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said relief authorities "are ready to make contact with relevant countries and organizations."
But Wang, the disaster relief official, said international aid workers would not be allowed to travel to the affected area.
"We welcome funds and supplies, we can't accommodate personnel at this point," he said.
Russia was sending a plane with rescuers and aid, the country's Interfax news agency reported. Department spokesman Sean McCormack said no aid requests had been made by China. China's Ministry of Finance said it had allocated about $123 million, in aid for quake-hit areas.
The quake was China's deadliest since 1976, when 240,000 people were killed in the city of Tangshan, near Beijing in 1976.
]]>China quake kills nearly 10,000 in Sichuantag:therochesterdemocrat.com,2008:ee/index.php/39.420192008-05-13T04:34:00-06:002008-05-13T04:37:46-06:00{summary}2008-05-13T04:34:00-06:00Staffeditor@TheRochesterDemocrat.comChina(s)
CHENGDU, China (Reuters) - Nearly 10,000 people were killed by the earthquake that hammered southwest China, officials said on Tuesday as rescuers struggled to reach the worst-hit areas, where many more may have died.
Rescuers worked frantically through the night, pulling bodies from schools, homes, factories and hospitals that were demolished by the 7.8 magnitude quake, which rippled from a mountainous area of Sichuan province across much of China on Monday afternoon.
The toll from China's worst earthquake for over three decades appeared sure to climb as troops struggled on foot to reach the worst-hit area, Wenchuan, a hilly county of 112,000 people 100 km (62 miles) from Sichuan's provincial capital, Chengdu.
About 900 teenagers were buried under a collapsed three-storey school building in the Sichuan city of Dujiangyan.
Premier Wen Jiabao, who rushed there, bowed three times in grief before some of the 50 bodies already pulled out, Xinhua news agency reported.
"Not one minute can be wasted," Wen said, state television showed. "One minute, one second could mean a child's life."
At a second school in Dujiangyan, fewer than 100 of 420 students survived, Xinhua reported.
China's Communist Party leadership announced that coping with the devastating quake, and ensuring that it did not threaten social stability, was now the government's top priority.
"Time is life," said an official announcement from the Communist Party Standing Committee, according to the Xinhua news agency. "Make fighting the earthquake and rescue work the current top task."
Officials must speed food, water, medicine and other necessities to quake-stricken areas, the meeting ordered, adding that officials must keep a grip on social stability.
"Strengthen positive guidance of opinion," the meeting urged, warning against the spread of rumors.
The Sichuan quake was the worst to hit China since the 1976 Tangshan tremor in northeastern China where up to 300,000 died. Then, unlike now, the Communist Party kept a tight lid on information about the extent of the disaster.
SEVERED ROADS, RAIL LINES
In Chengdu, many residents slept outside or in cars on Monday night, fearing more tremors in the city where at least 45 people died and 600 were injured.
The government has rushed troops and medical teams to dig for survivors and treat the injured. But severed roads and rail lines blocked the way to Wenchuan, and local officials described crumpled houses, landslides and scenes of desperation.
"We are in urgent need of tents, food, medicine and satellite communications equipment," the Communist Party chief of Wenchuan, Wang Bin said, according to Xinhua.
Most farmers' homes in two townships had collapsed and there was no word from the three townships nearest the epicenter, which have a population of 24,000, the report added. So far Wenchuan has reported 15 dead, a number likely to rise steeply.
More than 7,000 may have died in Sichuan's Beichuan Qiang Autonomous County, where 80 percent of the buildings were destroyed, Sichuan television said. Beichuan has a population of 161,000, meaning about one in 10 there were killed or injured.
"Even if it means walking in, we must enter the worst-hit areas as quickly as possible," Wen said, according to Xinhua.
But a paramilitary officer marching with a hundred troops towards Wenchuan described a devastated landscape that is likely to yield many dead and to frustrate rescuers.
"I have seen many collapsed civilian houses and the rocks dropped from mountains on the roadside are everywhere," said the People's Armed Police officer Liu Zaiyuan, according to Xinhua.
(Writing by Chris Buckley; Editing by John Chalmers)
]]>Food prices drive China inflationtag:therochesterdemocrat.com,2008:ee/index.php/39.420162008-05-13T00:18:00-06:002008-05-13T00:21:18-06:00{summary}2008-05-13T00:18:00-06:00Staffeditor@TheRochesterDemocrat.comChina(s)
BBC NEWS | May 12, 2008
China's consumer price inflation stood close to a 12-year high in April, official figures showed, as the cost of food continued to take its toll.
Annual inflation rose to 8.5% from 8.3% in March - despite the government having earlier pledged that tackling price rises was a priority.
Food costs rose 22.1% in April from a year earlier, driven by demand for pork. However fresh food prices dipped.
High inflation increases worries that China's economy may be overheating.
"Greater prominence needs to be given to curbing inflation and controlling price rises," said the country's the National Bureau of Statistics
Trade surplus
However, despite the government declaring it wants to tighten monetary policy in the battle against inflation, the authorities have not yet increased interest rates in 2008.
There were six interest rises in 2007.
Instead, banks have been told to increase the amount of money they hold in reserve and curb lending to limit credit growth.
Official data also showed that China's trade surplus in April was $16.7bn.
The surge of money into the country from exports poses a risk of pushing inflation even higher.
Observers say that a global economic slowdown - which is resulting in richer nations importing fewer goods - may cut China's surplus.
]]>Death toll in China earthquake up to nearly 9,000tag:therochesterdemocrat.com,2008:ee/index.php/39.420092008-05-12T18:49:00-06:002008-05-12T18:50:51-06:00{summary}2008-05-12T18:49:00-06:00Staffeditor@TheRochesterDemocrat.comChina(s)
CHONGQING, China (AP) - One of the worst earthquakes in decades struck central China on Monday, killing nearly 9,000 people, trapping about 900 students under the rubble of their school and causing a toxic chemical leak, state media reported.
The 7.8-magnitude earthquake devastated a hilly region of small cities and towns in Sichuan and nearby provinces. The official Xinhua News Agency said 8,533 people died in Sichuan alone and dozens of other deaths were reported in surrounding areas.
Xinhua said 80 percent of the buildings had collapsed in Sichuan province's Beichuan county after the quake, raising fears the overall death toll could increase sharply.
State media said a chemical plant in Shifang city had cratered, burying hundreds of people and spilling more than 80 tons of toxic liquid ammonia from the site.
The earthquake sent thousands of people rushing out of buildings and into the streets hundreds of miles away in Beijing and Shanghai. The temblor was felt as far away as Vietnam and Thailand.
It posed a challenge to a government already grappling with discontent over high inflation and a widespread uprising among Tibetans in western China while trying to prepare for the Beijing Olympics this August.
The quake hit about 60 miles northwest of Chengdu - a city of 3.75 million - in the middle of the afternoon when classrooms and office towers were full. There were several smaller aftershocks, the U.S. Geological Survey said on its Web site.
The temblor struck hilly country leading up to the Tibetan highlands, toppling buildings in small cities and towns in the largely rural area. About 1,200 pandas - 80 percent of the surviving wild population in China - live in several mountainous areas of Sichuan.
The earthquake, China's deadliest since 1976, occurred in an area with numerous fault lines that have triggered destructive temblors before. A magnitude 7.5 earthquake in Diexi, Sichuan that hit on August 25, 1933 killed more than 9,300 people.
Xinhua said 50 bodies had been pulled from the debris of the school building in Juyuan town but did not say if the children were alive. Students also were buried under five other toppled schools in Deyang city, Xinhua reported.
Its reporters saw buried teenagers struggling to break loose from underneath the rubble of the three-story building in Juyuan "while others were crying out for help." Two girls were quoted by Xinhua as saying they escaped because they had "run faster than others."
Photos showed heavy cranes trying to remove rubble from the ruined school. Other photos posted on the Internet and found on the Chinese search engine Baidu showed arms and a torso sticking out of the rubble of the school as dozens of people worked to free them, using their hands to move concrete slabs.
Calls into the city did not go through as panicked residents quickly overloaded the telephone system and the quake also affected power networks.
Although it was difficult to telephone Chengdu, an Israeli student, Ronen Medzini, sent a text message to The Associated Press saying there were power and water outages there.
"Traffic jams, no running water, power outs, everyone sitting in the streets, patients evacuated from hospitals sitting outside and waiting," he said.
The road to Wenchuan from Chendu was cut off by landslides, state media said, slowing the rescue efforts.
Though news trickled out in the first hours after the quake, the government and its media quickly mobilized, with nearly 8,000 soldiers and police sent to the area. China Central Television ran non-stop coverage, with phone reports from reporters and a few isolated camera shots from the scene.
Disasters always pose a test to the communist government, whose mandate in part rests on providing relief to those in need. In recent years, the government has improved emergency planning and rapid response training for the military.
The earthquake also rattled buildings in Beijing, some 930 miles to the north, less than three months before the Chinese capital was expected to be full of hundreds of thousands of foreign visitors for the Summer Olympics.
Li Jiulin, a top engineer on the 91,000-seat National Stadium - known as the Bird's Nest and the jewel of the Olympics - was conducting an inspection at the venue when the quake occurred. He told reporters the building was designed to withstand a 8.0 quake.
"The Olympic venues were not affected by the earthquake," said Sun Weide, a spokesman for the Beijing organizing committee.
Skyscrapers swayed in Shanghai and in the Taiwanese capital of Taipei, 100 miles off the southeastern Chinese coast. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.
The quake was felt as far away as the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi, where some people hurried out of swaying office buildings and into the streets downtown. A building in the Thai capital of Bangkok also was evacuated after the quake was felt there.
A magnitude 7.8 earthquake is considered a major event, capable of causing widespread damage and injuries in populated areas.
The last serious earthquake in China was in 2003, when a 6.8-magnitude quake killed 268 people in Bachu county in the west of Xinjiang.
China's deadliest earthquake in modern history struck the northeastern city of Tangshan on July 28, 1976, killing 240,000 people.
]]>Death toll in China earthquake rises to 7,600tag:therochesterdemocrat.com,2008:ee/index.php/39.420062008-05-12T15:40:00-06:002008-05-12T15:41:38-06:00{summary}2008-05-12T15:40:00-06:00Staffeditor@TheRochesterDemocrat.comChina(s)
BEIJING (AP) - A massive earthquake struck central China on Monday, killing more than 7,600 people and trapping nearly 900 students under the rubble of their school, state media reported.
The official Xinhua News Agency said 80 percent of the buildings had collapsed in Beichuan county in Sichuan province after the 7.8-magnitude quake, raising fears the overall death toll could increase sharply.
Xinhua cited the Sichuan provincial government as saying 7,651 people died, but the situation in at least two counties remain unclear.
The earthquake sent thousands of people rushing out of buildings and into the streets hundreds of miles away in Beijing and Shanghai. The temblor was felt as far away as Pakistan, Vietnam and Thailand.
Rescuers had recovered at least 50 bodies from the debris of the school building in Juyuan township, about 60 miles from the epicenter. Xinhua did not say if any students had been pulled out alive.
An unknown number of students also were reported buried after buildings collapsed at five other schools in Deyang city in Sichuan, Xinhua reported.
It said its reporters saw buried teenagers struggling to break loose from underneath the rubble of the three-story building in Juyuan "while others were crying out for help."
Two girls were quoted by Xinhua as saying they escaped because they had "run faster than others."
The earthquake hit less than three months before the start of the Beijing Summer Olympics, when China hopes to use to showcase its rise in the world.
Shanghai's main index inched up Monday, but the advance was capped by worries over inflation and potential damage from the earthquake. Analysts said that shares of companies located in the Sichuan region may fall in coming sessions due to the quake.
It struck about 60 miles northwest of Chengdu in the middle of the afternoon when classrooms and office towers were full. There were several smaller aftershocks, the U.S. Geological Survey said on its Web site.
Calls into the city did not go through as panicked residents quickly overloaded the telephone system. The quake affected telephone and power networks, and even state media appeared to have few details of the disaster.
"In Chengdu, mobile telecommunication convertors have experienced jams and thousands of servers were out of service," said Sha Yuejia, deputy chief executive officer of China Mobile.
Although it was difficult to telephone Chengdu, an Israeli student, Ronen Medzini, sent a text message to The Associated Press saying there were power and water outages there.
"Traffic jams, no running water, power outs, everyone sitting in the streets, patients evacuated from hospitals sitting outside and waiting," he said.
Xinhua said an underground water pipe ruptured near the city's southern railway station, flooding a main thoroughfare. Reporters saw buildings with cracks in their walls but no collapses, Xinhua said.
The earthquake also rattled buildings in Beijing, some 930 miles to the north, less than three months before the Chinese capital was expected to be full of hundreds of thousands of foreign visitors for the Summer Olympics.
Many Beijing office towers were evacuated, including the building housing the media offices for the organizers of the Olympics, which start in August. None of the Olympic venues was damaged.
"I've lived in Taipei and California and I've been through quakes before. This is the most I've ever felt," said James McGregor, a business consultant who was inside the LG Towers in Beijing's business district. "The floor was moving underneath me."
In Fuyang, 660 miles to the east, chandeliers in the lobby of the Buckingham Palace Hotel swayed. "We've never felt anything like this our whole lives," said a hotel employee surnamed Zhu.
Patients at the Fuyang People's No. 1 Hospital were evacuated. An hour after the quake, a half-dozen patients in blue-striped pajamas stood outside the hospital. One was laying on a hospital bed in the parking lot.
Skyscrapers in Shanghai swayed and most office occupants went rushing into the streets.
In the Taiwanese capital of Taipei, 100 miles off the southeastern Chinese coast, buildings swayed when the quake hit. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.
The quake was felt as far away as the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi, where some people hurried out of swaying office buildings and into the streets downtown. A building in the Thai capital of Bangkok also was evacuated after the quake was felt there.
A magnitude 7.8 earthquake is considered a major event, capable of causing widespread damage and injuries in populated areas.
The last serious earthquake in China was in 2003, when a 6.8-magnitude quake killed 268 people in Bachu county in the west of Xinjiang.
China's deadliest earthquake in modern history struck the northeastern city of Tangshan on July 28, 1976, killing 240,000 people.
]]>In Sadr City, a Cease-Fire Is Put to the Test, and Failstag:therochesterdemocrat.com,2008:ee/index.php/39.420012008-05-12T11:42:02-06:002008-05-12T11:43:36-06:00{summary}2008-05-12T11:42:02-06:00Staffeditor@TheRochesterDemocrat.comIraq
By MICHAEL R. GORDON and STEPHEN FARRELL
NY Times
Published: May 12, 2008
BAGHDAD — A column of Iraqi armor set out on Sunday to test a new truce in the Sadr City area of Baghdad between the militias and the Iraqi government by venturing north on a major thoroughfare that borders the Shiite enclave.
But the Iraqi forces had barely started to move when they were struck by three roadside bombs, known as improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.’s, as the military calls them.
As Sadr City and Iraqi government negotiators struggled to complete the cease-fire agreement, the scene was a vivid demonstration that a durable accord in the densely populated neighborhood, where intense fighting has been going on for more than a month, had yet to be achieved.
“They promised that there would not be any explosions, that people would show us where the I.E.D.’s are,” said a combat engineer with the Ninth Iraqi Army Division who identified himself as Colonel Alaa. “In 10 meters three I.E.D.’s exploded on us.”
Three Iraqi soldiers were wounded by the blasts, including the Iraqi colonel, who strode through a rubble-strewn street with a bandage on his left leg.
Hopes for a peaceful end to the bitter fighting in Sadr City were raised on Saturday when government officials and followers of Moktada al-Sadr, the anti-American Shiite cleric who controls the militias, said a truce had been brokered.
A news conference with Iraqi government officials who were expected to announce the agreement was scheduled for Sunday afternoon but later canceled.
Under the terms of the agreement, Iraqi forces would have free access to Sadr City, and militia members would not be allowed to have heavy weapons like machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades or mortars. In return, militia members who refrained from fighting Iraqi and American forces would not be arrested.
Iraqi and American forces have already moved into the southern quadrant of Sadr City, and American troops have been working to complete a wall along Al Quds Street, which marks the northern edge of the sector, to try to turn that region into a safe zone. But the agreement was seen as a way for the Iraqi government to assert control over the Sadr City areas north of the wall without ordering Iraqi troops to fight their way in.
Putting the accord to the test, at least at this early stage, was another matter. In recent weeks, Iraqi and American commanders have said that much of the fighting has been carried out by Iranian-backed “special groups” that appear to have little interest in reconciling with the Iraqi government despite assertions from Iranian officials that they are encouraging a peaceful outcome.
There appeared to be other complications as well. Bassim Sharif, a leader of the Fadhila party, a rival of Mr. Sadr’s party, said he believed that the Sadrists were behind the cancellation of the announcement because some of them were “not happy with some of the items of the agreement, probably the handing over of weapons and wanted men.”
Ali Adeeb, a Parliament member from the Dawa Party of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, said the Sadrist members of Parliament appeared to be having trouble bringing their armed wing on board.
“The Sadrists M.P.’s have a problem persuading their armed people to listen to them,” he said. “However they have four days of calm, and they will use that time to convince them to stop fighting. We believe that some groups will keep fighting and not observe the cease-fire because they are worried about being arrested.”
Throughout the dealings there has been no official public statement from Mr. Sadr about the agreement. Mr. Adeeb said some Sadrist politicians were trying to persuade the cleric to issue such a statement.
Haji Abu Mohammed, a Mahdi Army commander in Sadr City, said on Sunday that his men would not stop fighting until ordered to do so by the cleric personally. He said his Baghdad fighters feared a repeat of what happened in Basra last month when, he asserted, Sadrists stopped fighting but the government continued making arrests and raiding their strongholds.
“We do not trust the government and the politicians,” he said.
On the streets of Sadr City on Sunday, there were signs that the accord was not in place.
When Lt. Gen. Abud Qanbar, the commander of forces in the Baghdad area, and Maj. Gen. Mizher al-Azawi, who leads the 11th Iraqi Army Division, toured the southern section of Sadr City early Sunday morning, Iraqi soldiers reported that some of the mosques had been blaring messages assailing the accord and urging residents not to allow Iraqi troops in.
Along Al Quds Street there was no break in the fighting. An Iraqi solder was wounded by a sniper near one forward position. A rocket-propelled grenade was fired at a different Iraqi strongpoint that is jointly operated with the Americans. There were loud explosions as American “route clearance” teams found and detonated roadside bombs.
Important questions remained late Sunday about whether the truce would be patched up soon and which groups in Sadr City would honor it if it was. Another problem was how long the Maliki government would wait if a durable truce could not be achieved before sending the Iraqi troops north of Al Quds Street.
At least some residents were not waiting for an answer. On Sunday morning, streams of cars could be seen leaving Sadr City.
]]>Drive in Basra by Iraqi Army Makes Gainstag:therochesterdemocrat.com,2008:ee/index.php/39.420002008-05-12T11:38:00-06:002008-05-12T11:41:42-06:00{summary}2008-05-12T11:38:00-06:00Staffeditor@TheRochesterDemocrat.comIraq
By STEPHEN FARRELL and AMMAR KARIM
NY Times
Published: May 12, 2008
BASRA, Iraq — Three hundred miles south of Baghdad, the oil-saturated city of Basra has been transformed by its own surge, now seven weeks old.
In a rare success, forces loyal to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki have largely quieted the city, to the initial surprise and growing delight of many inhabitants who only a month ago shuddered under deadly clashes between Iraqi troops and Shiite militias.
Just as in Baghdad, Iraqi and Western officials emphasize that the gains here are “fragile,” like the newly planted roadside saplings that fail to conceal mounds of garbage and pools of foul-smelling water in the historic port city’s slums.
Among the many uncertainties are whether the government, criticized for incompetence at the start of the operation, can maintain the high level of troops here. But in interviews across Basra, residents overwhelmingly reported a substantial improvement in their everyday lives.
“The circle of fear is broken,” said Shaker, owner of a floating restaurant on Basra’s famed Corniche promenade, who, although optimistic, was still afraid to give his full name, as were many of those interviewed.
Hopes for a similar outcome in Baghdad’s Sadr City district were undercut when an Iraqi armored unit was struck by three roadside bombs on Sunday, one day after a cease-fire there was negotiated.
The principal factor for improvement that people in Basra cite is the deployment of 33,000 members of the Iraqi security forces after the March 24 start of operations, which allowed the government to blanket the city with checkpoints on every major intersection and highway.
Borrowing tactics from the troop increase in Baghdad, the Iraqi forces raided militia strongholds and arrested hundreds of suspects. They also seized weapons including mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and sophisticated roadside bombs that officials say were used by Iranian-backed groups responsible for much of the violence.
Government forces have now taken over Islamic militants’ headquarters and halted the death squads and “vice ‘enforcers’ ” who attacked women, Christians, musicians, alcohol sellers and anyone suspected of collaborating with Westerners.
Shaker’s floating restaurant stands as one emblem of the change since then.
Just two months ago, he said, masked men in military uniforms walked into the packed dining room and abducted a businessman at gunpoint. The man was never seen again, and the restaurant closed.
Now, however, customers who fled that evening are pressing the 34-year-old owner to stay open later at night, so they can enjoy their unaccustomed freedom from the gangs, which once banned the loud Arabic pop music now blaring from Shaker’s loudspeakers.
“Now it is very different,” he said. “After we heard that the lawless people have been arrested or killed, we have a kind of courage.”
Even alcohol, once banned by the extremists, is discreetly on sale again in some areas.
Nevertheless, few Basra residents trust that the change is permanent or that the death squads have been vanquished.
Asked how long it would take for Basra to slip back into lawlessness if the army departed, Afrah, a 20-year-old theater student at Basra’s College of Fine Arts, replied, “One day.”
Capturing a mood that flits between bad recent memories, giddy relief and brittle future expectations, she added, “It is over, but it could come back any moment, because the people who are doing the intimidation on the streets, sometimes they are your neighbor and you trust them.”
Mr. Maliki’s hastily begun operation to rein in the extremists did not start with great promise.
The offensive, grandly named Charge of the Knights, was widely criticized for being poorly planned and ill-coordinated. It was derided as the Charge of the Mice by followers of the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr after more than 1,000 soldiers deserted in the face of heavy resistance from his Mahdi Army and other extremist groups. The fierce early clashes halted only after a pro-government delegation went to Iran and struck a deal with the Sadrists.
An overwhelmingly Shiite city of more than three million people, Basra sits atop huge oil reserves, which, Western officials say, provide 40 percent of Iraq’s annual oil revenue of $38 billion.
Thus, stability in a city that could be Iraq’s economic engine room is a major priority for the Shiite-led government. However, the Basra experience may not translate to other cities like Mosul or Kirkuk in the north, with a much more complicated religious and ethnic mix.
The push into Basra succeeded in part because people here were exhausted with the violence and in part because Mr. Maliki received crucial help from the American and British military.
British forces, who headed the coalition military forces in Basra beginning in 2003, handed security control to the Iraqis six months ago. But a British military spokesman said British and American forc