Strong earthquake hits eastern Turkey | |||||
| The injured were ferried to hospital with the help of relatives BBC 12:29 GMT, Monday, 8 March 2010 A strong earthquake has struck eastern Turkey, killing at least 57 people, officials have said. The 6.0-magnitude quake, centred on the village of Basyurt in Elazig province, struck at 0432 (0232 GMT). It has been followed by more than 40 aftershocks. Officials said the nearby village of Okcular had been almost destroyed and several others badly damaged. A number of people were trapped in the rubble of collapsed buildings, many of which were built of mud-bricks. "Villages consisting mainly of mud-brick houses have been damaged, but we have minimal damage such as cracks in buildings made of cement or stone," Elazig Governor Muammer Erol told CNN Turk.
At least 17 of the dead came from the hillside village of Okcular, where up to 30 houses collapsed, rescuers said. "The village is totally flattened," Okcular's administrator, Hasan Demirdag, told NTV. Television footage from Okcular showed rescue workers and soldiers digging among the rubble of collapsed buildings as villagers looked on. Ali Riza Ferhat, a resident, said he had been asleep in his home when the earthquake struck. "I tried to get out of the door but it wouldn't open. I came out of the window and started helping my neighbours," he told NTV. "We removed six bodies." The nearby villages of Yukari Kanatli, Kayalik, Gocmezler and Yukari Demirci were also badly damaged and each reported several deaths.
"Everything has been knocked down - there is not a stone in place," Yadin Apaydin, the administrator for Yukari Kanatli, told CNN Turk. At least 50 people have been taken to hospital, officials say. Some were reportedly hurt during the panic after the first earthquake, when they jumped from windows or balconies. Residents of the affected villages have been warned not to return to damaged homes while the area continues to be hit by aftershocks, the strongest of which have so far measured 5.1 and 5.5. The government disaster management centre and Turkish Red Crescent have set up tents to help survivors cope with the harsh winter weather, and are also distributing food and blankets. Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Cicek and three other ministers have travelled to the earthquake zone to provide assistance.
In Ankara, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan lamented the lack of earthquake-safe buildings and said he had ordered the start of a reconstruction project in the area. "Mud-brick construction is undoubtedly a local tradition. But unfortunately, it has proved to have a heavy price," he said. A BBC News website reader who visited the village of Basyurt after the earthquake said its residents blamed the government for the destruction and loss of life. "This is a seismic area. We've experienced so many earthquakes in the last 20 years, yet no measures have been taken to strengthen the buildings," Volkan Durkal said. "Most houses are not made with cement, they are not well-built and the people are not well-educated about what to do and where to take cover during an earthquake." Turkey is plagued by earthquakes - generally minor - because of its location on the North Anatolian fault line. A 7.4-magnitude tremor which hit the western city of Izmit in August 1999 killed more than 17,000 people. The BBC's Jonathan Head in Istanbul says poor quality buildings were also blamed for the high death toll then and there is still concern in Turkey's largest city, where seismologists predict a major earthquake will occur within the next few decades. | |||||
Monday, March 8, 2010
Earthquake hits eastern Turkey... [ 713 ]
Everything has been knocked down - there is not a stone in place 
Kidnapping of British schoolboy[ 712 ]
Interpol called in to investigate kidnapping of British schoolboy
Interpol has been called in to help with the investigation into the kidnapping of a five-year-old British boy in Pakistan amid fears that he may have been taken out of the country.
Sahil Saeed, five, was seized by gunmen on Thursday hours before he was due to fly home to Oldham with his father after visiting his sick grandmother in Jhelum, Punjab
His father, RajaNaqqash Saeed, claimed he had been tortured by four armed men who left with his son and demanded a £100,000 ransom.
Rehman Malik, Pakistan's interior minister, said that Interpol had been asked to help with the investigation but warned the kidnappers that police were closing in.
His comments came after four Pakistani police officers were suspended after initially failing to respond to the family's emergency call. Police in the city have said they have made no progress with the case.
Rehman Malik also gave his backing to claims that the kidnapping was an “inside job” by disgruntled relations.
"There is someone who is very close to the family because the way the situation has happened, the way the entry was made, the way the conduct was done during the whole operation.
"We have certain leads which we would not like to disclose but a warning to those abductors: leave the boy because we are very near to you,” he said after meeting the boy’s father.
The boy's parents are reported to have been involved in a bitter separation shortly before their son was kidnapped.
Mr Saeed took his son out of school and flew with him to his family’s home in Pakistan, leaving his wife Akila and their two daughters behind in Oldham.
He took his wife’s passport with him so she could not follow them to Jhelum, a senior police source in the city south of Islamabad told the Daily Mail.
Mr Saeed, who is unemployed, denied any of his relations are involved. In an interview with the BBC he also denied reports of a family feudC.Nigeria: ''at least 100 deaths''[ 711 ]
Central Nigeria attacks lead to 'at least 100 deaths' | |||
BBC ,22:28 GMT, Sunday, 7 March 2010 At least 100 people have been reported killed in suspected religious clashes near the central Nigerian city of Jos. Witnesses said several villages just outside of the city were attacked simultaneously overnight. Acting President Goodluck Jonathan has put security forces in central Nigeria on full alert. In January hundreds of people were killed in riots in Jos, which lies between the mainly Muslim north and the more Christian south. Ethnic and religious riots also broke out in 2008, killing hundreds. Military deployed The attack happened before dawn on Sunday morning when gangs of men descended on several communities, centred on the village of Dogo-Nahawa, and attacked people with machetes, reports say. A resident of Dogo-Nahawa said the attackers had fired guns as they entered the village. "The shooting was just meant to bring people from their houses and then when people came out they started cutting them with machetes," Peter Jang told Reuters.
An aid worker with the Christian charity Stefanus Foundation, Mark Lipdo, said at least 100 people had been killed. He told the BBC he went to the villages of Zot and Dogo-Nahawa after daylight on Sunday and recorded the names of 77 victims and said there were at least two dozen more bodies. "We saw mainly those who are helpless, like small children and then the older men, who cannot run, these were the ones that were slaughtered." He said Zot had been almost wiped out. Other witnesses said they had also seen at least 100 bodies and a Plateau state official told Reuters news agency that more than 300 people had died. A doctor at a hospital in Jos told news agencies that victims had been cut by machetes and burnt. The military, which already has a presence in Jos, has sent troops to Dogo-Nahawa. "The acting president has placed all the security forces in Plateau and neighbouring states on red alert so as to stem any cross-border dimensions to this latest conflict," Mr Jonathan's office said in a statement quoted by Reuters news agency. He also ordered those behind the violence to be found. Analysts say the attack seems to be in reprisal for the clashes between Christians and Muslims in January, which claimed the lives of at least 200 people and displaced thousands of others. Hundreds of people have fled from Jos in the aftermath of the fighting, the Red Cross says. Robin Waudo, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, told the BBC his volunteers were assisting people wounded in the latest fighting. "We know that late this morning there was some fighting in the south part of the city and it seems like there are reprisal attacks from what happened a few weeks ago," he said. | |||
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Blasts Shake Baghdad[ 710 ]
Deadly Blasts Shake Baghdad as Iraqis Vote
Sunday, March 07, 2010 
March 7: Rescuers search for bodies under the rubble, at the scene of a blast which leveled a building in northeastern Baghdad, Iraq.
Polls closed across Iraq on Sunday as the war-weary population awaits results from the national election that will decide the future of the country's still-fragile democracy.
The election tested the mettle of the country's shaky security as insurgents killed 31 people across Iraq, unleashing a barrage of mortars intent on disrupting the historic day.
About 19 million Iraqis are eligible to vote on a candidate to lead the country after U.S. forces pull out. The election is critical in determining whether Iraq can overcome the jagged sectarian divisions that have defined it since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
It could take months before the new parliament chooses a prime minister and forms a government.
SLIDESHOW: Iraqis Head to the Polls
One polling station in Baghdad was believed to have 45 percent voter turnout. Expectations prior to the national election were approximately 50 percent voter turnout.
Insurgents who vowed to disrupt the elections — which they see as validating the Shiite-led government and the U.S. occupation — launched a spate of attacks as polls opened across the city and country.
At least 14 people died in northeastern Baghdad after an explosion leveled a building, and mortar attacks in western Baghdad killed seven people in two different neighborhoods, police and hospital officials said.
In Baghdad's northeast Hurriyah neighborhood, where mosque loudspeakers exhorted people to vote as "arrows to the enemies' chest," three people were killed when someone threw a hand grenade at a crowd heading to the polls, according to police.
In the city of Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, a bomb inside a polling center killed a policeman, Iraqi Army Col. Abdul Hussein said. There were also explosions elsewhere in the country, but no further reports of fatalities.
An Associated Press photographer on the scene of the collapsed building in Baghdad's northeastern Ur neighborhood described rescuers pulling bodies from the rubble.
Insurgents also launched mortars toward the Green Zone — home to the U.S. Embassy and the prime minister's office — and in the Sunni stronghold of Azamiyah police reported at least 20 mortar attacks in the neighborhood since day break.
Yet voters still came. In Azamiyah, Walid Abid, a 40-year-old father of two, was speaking as mortars landed several hundreds yards away.
"I am not scared and I am not going to stay put at home. Until when? We need to change things. If I stay home and not come to vote, Azamiyah will get worse," he said.
About 6,200 candidates are competing for 325 seats in the new parliament, Iraq's second for a full term of parliament since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion seven years ago this month.
Many view the election as a crossroads at which Iraq will decide whether to adhere to politics along the Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish lines or move away from the ethnic and sectarian tensions that have emerged since the fall of Saddam Hussein's iron-fisted, Sunni minority rule.
Iraqis hope it will help them achieve national reconciliation at a time when the United States has vowed to withdraw combat forces by late summer and all American troops by the end of next year.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is fighting for his political future against a coalition led by mainly Shiite religious groups — the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and a party headed by anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. He also faces a challenge from secular alliance led by Ayad Allawi, a former prime minister and secular Shiite, who has teamed up with a number of Sunnis in a bid to claim the government.
"These acts will not undermine the will of the Iraqi people," al-Maliki said Sunday morning, speaking to reporters after casting his ballot.
Security was tight across the capital. The borders have been sealed, the airport closed and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi military and police have flooded the streets.
Extra checkpoints were set up across the city, and in some parts of central Baghdad, people could not go 50 yards without hitting another checkpoint.
A ban on small vehicles was lifted around the country, except in northern Ninevah province, to facilitate access to the polls, Maj. Gen. Ayden Khalid Qader, who's in charge of election security, on state-run Iraqiya television.
But many voters continued to proceed to the polling places on foot.
In keeping with the U.S. military's assertion that Iraqis are running the elections, the only visible American military presence was in the air or escorting election observers to and from the polls; four U.S. helicopter gunships could be seen in the sky over the Kazimiyah neighborhood.
The U.S., which has lost more than 4,300 troops in the nearly seven-year conflict, has fewer than 100,000 troops in the country — a number that is expected to drop to about 50,000 by the end of the summer.
Exiting the polls, Iraqis waved purple-inked fingers — the now-iconic image synonymous with voting in this oil-rich country home to roughly 28 million people.
Despite the violence and frustration that has set in after years of fighting and faulty government services, many Iraqis were still excited to vote.
In the city of Nasiriyah, in the Shiite south, crowds of people filled the streets — men in what appeared to be their best clothes were accompanied by women in long black cloaks and often children.
"I voted in 2005. There were a lot less people then," said Ahmed Saad Chadian. "Today participation is much higher."
In the Shiite holy city of Najaf, south of Baghdad, dozens of voters also lined up to cast their ballot.
"We came to participate in this national day, and we don't care about the explosions," said Sahib Jabr, a 34-year-old old taxi driver.
President Jalal Talabani was among the first to vote Sunday morning in the Kurdish city of Sulamaniyah. Talabani's party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, is enmeshed in a tight race with an upstart political party called Change which is challenging the two Kurdish parties that have dominated Iraqi politics for years.
Fox News' Malini Wilkes and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
NASA,The latest "Image of the Day"[ 709 ]
This is a composite image of NGC 1068, one of the nearest and brightest galaxies containing a rapidly growing supermassive black hole. The X-ray images and spectra obtained using Chandra's High Energy Transmission Grating Spectrometer show that a strong wind is being driven away from the center of NGC 1068 at a rate of about a million miles per hour. This wind is likely generated as surrounding gas is accelerated and heated as it swirls toward the black hole. A portion of the gas is pulled into the black hole, but some of it is blown away. High energy X-rays produced by the gas near the black hole heat the ouflowing gas, causing it to glow at lower X-ray energies. X-ray data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory are shown in red, optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope in green and radio data from the Very Large Array in blue. The spiral structure of NGC 1068 is shown by the X-ray and optical data, and a jet powered by the central supermassive black hole is shown by the radio data. This Chandra study is much deeper than previous X-ray observations. Using this data, researchers believe that each year several times the mass of our sun is being deposited out to large distances, about 3,000 light years from the black hole. The wind likely carries enough energy to heat the surrounding gas and suppress extra star formation. These results help explain how a supermassive black hole can alter the evolution of its host galaxy. It has long been suspected that material blown away from a black hole can affect its environment, but a key question has been whether such "black hole blowback" typically delivers enough power to have a significant impact. NGC 1068 is located about 50 million light years from Earth and contains a supermassive black hole about twice as massive as the one in the middle of the Milky Way Galaxy. Image Credit: X-ray (NASA/CXC/ MIT/C.Canizares, D.Evans et al), Optical (NASA/STScI), Radio (NSF/ NRAO/VLA)