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End Time News –
Updated 2 May 2013 -
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Earthquakes
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Iran Earthquake: 7.8 Quake Rocks
Middle East Region
The Inquisitr
Authorities say at least 40 people were killed Tuesday after a
powerful earthquake struck Iran near its border with Pakistan.
According to the United State Geological Survey, the 7.8 magnitude
quake struck around 3:44 pm local time (6:44 am EST) in southeastern
Iran, about 50 miles east of the city of Khash.
There were reports of tremors lasting as long as 30 seconds felt in
Qatar, Bahrain, and Abu Dhabi in the Gulf, in Multan in Pakistan,
and elsewhere. BBC reports in Delhi, more than 1,500 miles from the
quake’s suspected epicenter, office workers evacuated buildings as
fittings shook and windows rattled.
The USGS said that the temblor had a depth of 9.7 miles. Such deep
quakes are rare and typically have greater destructive capability.
“It was the biggest earthquake in Iran in 40 years and we are
expecting hundreds of dead,” said an Iranian official, who spoke on
condition of anonymity.
Following the quake, Iranian television reports suggested that at
least 40 people had been killed and possibly as many as 200, but no
official figures were given, and the reports could not be confirmed.
Tuesday’s earthquake came less than a week after a 6.1 magnitude
temblor about 60 miles southeast of Bushehr, the site of Iran’s main
nuclear reactor, devastating two villages, leaving 37 people dead
and more than 800 injured.
Due to Iran’s proximity to geological faultlines, the middle eastern
country is prone to earthquakes.
A 6.6 quake in 2003 flattened the southern city of Bam and killed
about 40,000 people, and, in 1990, at least 30,000 people also died
in a quake along the Caspian Sea.
PressTV has more on Tuesday’s 7.8 magnitude quake in Iran in the
video below:
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Earthquakes
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Strong earthquake rocks Papua New
Guinea
AAP
A 6.6-MAGNITUDE earthquake has hit Papua New Guinea's north, where a
huge tsunami killed more than 2000 people in 1998.
However, reports suggest the area escaped serious damage this time.
The earthquake, at a depth of just 13km, hit 23km east of the small
town of Aitape on the Pacific nation's north coast, the US
Geological Survey said.
"We are aware of the earthquake off Aitape in Papua New Guinea.
There have been no reports of serious damage or injury," a
spokeswoman from Australia's foreign office told AFP.
No destructive tsunami warning was issued by the Pacific Tsunami
Warning Center but it cautioned that earthquakes of this size could
sometimes generate local tsunami waves.
A giant tsunami in 1998 smashed into the coastline around Aitape
following an offshore earthquake that triggered waves measuring up
to 10 metres, which swept away churches, schools and other
buildings.
Phone lines to Aitape, which has a population of about 8000,
appeared to be down.
However, the PNG National Disaster Centre said it had been in touch
with officials in the town of Vanimo about 150 kilometres away and
no tsunami waves had been seen.
"If there was going to be a tsunami it would have been there by
now," Chris McKee from the disaster office said.
Geoscience Australia said about 60,000 people would be in the
exposure zone.
"There is the possibility of considerable damage. It certainly could
bring buildings down," seismologist Steve Tatham told AFP.
The PNG National Broadcasting Corporation said it had spoken to
Aitape community leader Paul Reptario.
"He says his whole house was shaking while his vehicle almost
overturned," the broadcaster said.
"He ran down to the beach to check for signs of tsunami like
receding waves but there was none. Reptario says houses and other
infrastructure in his village were not damaged," it added.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation also cited an Aitape local
as saying there had been no unusual waves and no significant damage
but people had been panicking.
"They were all running around the street. They were frightened maybe
the sea will come up," said Max Kamave from the Aitape Resort Hotel.
Personnel at Wewak Hospital, about 150 kilometres from the coastal
epicentre, said they too felt the tremor but there was no immediate
reports of damage from their town.
"It was a strong one. This is a solid building... and it was
shaking," hospital spokesman Morris Iuandu told AFP.
He estimated that the swaying had lasted at least three minutes.
Wewak resident Gregory Moses described it as a "huge earthquake".
"Everything literally was shaking and I thought the roof was going
to cave in any minute but thank God its now over," he said on
Facebook.
Quakes of this magnitude are common in impoverished PNG, which sits
on the so-called Pacific "Ring of Fire", a hotspot for seismic
activity due to friction between tectonic plates.
A 6.6-magnitude quake struck the country's Bougainville Island on
Sunday but there were no reports of damage or injuries.
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Wars and Rumors of Wars
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Even a midget
nuke strike will lead to massive retaliation, India warns Pak
Indrani Bagchi, TNN
NEW DELHI: India will retaliate massively even if Pakistan uses
tactical nuclear weapons against it. With Pakistan developing
"tactical" nuclear warheads, that is, miniaturizing its weapons to
be carried on short-range missiles, India will protect its security
interests by retaliating to a "smaller" tactical attack in exactly
the same manner as it would respond to a "big" strategic attack.
Articulating Indian nuclear policy in this regard for the first
time, Shyam Saran, convener of the National Security Advisory Board,
said, "India will not be the first to use nuclear weapons, but if it
is attacked with such weapons, it would engage in nuclear
retaliation which will be massive and designed to inflict
unacceptable damage on its adversary. The label on a nuclear weapon
used for attacking India, strategic or tactical, is irrelevant from
the Indian perspective." This is significant, because Saran was
placing on record India's official nuclear posture with the full
concurrence of the highest levels of nuclear policymakers in New
Delhi.
Giving a speech on India's nuclear deterrent recently, Saran placed
India's nuclear posture in perspective in the context of recent
developments, notably the "jihadist edge" that Pakistan's nuclear
weapons capability have acquired.
Saran argued that as a result of its tactical weapons, Pakistan
believes it has brought down the threshold of nuclear use.
"Pakistani motivation is to dissuade India from contemplating
conventional punitive retaliation to sub-conventional but highly
destructive and disruptive cross-border terrorist strikes such as
the horrific 26/11 attack on Mumbai. What Pakistan is signalling to
India and to the world is that India should not contemplate
retaliation even if there is another Mumbai because Pakistan has
lowered the threshold of nuclear use to the theatre level. This is
nothing short of nuclear blackmail, no different from the
irresponsible behaviour one witnesses in North Korea," he said.
One of the main reasons for Pakistan miniaturizing its nukes is
actually to keep its weapons from being confiscated or neutralized
by the US, a fear that has grown in the Pakistani establishment in
the wake of the operation against Osama bin Laden. "Pakistan has,
nevertheless, projected its nuclear deterrent as solely targeted at
India and its strategic doctrine mimics the binary nuclear equation
between the US and the Soviet Union which prevailed during the Cold
War," Saran said.
However, warning Pakistan, he added, "A limited nuclear war is a
contradiction in terms. Any nuclear exchange, once initiated, would
swiftly and inexorably escalate to the strategic level. Pakistan
would be prudent not to assume otherwise as it sometimes appears to
do, most recently by developing and perhaps deploying theatre
nuclear weapons."
There have been significant shifts in Pakistan's nuclear posture
recently. First is the movement from uranium to a newer generation
of plutonium weapons, which has enabled Pakistan to increase the
number of weapons, outstripping India in weapons and fissile
material production. Although they are still to be verified,
Pakistan has claimed it has miniaturized nuclear weapons to be used
on cruise missiles and other short-range missiles. The newer
generation of Pakistan's weapons are also solid-fuelled rather than
liquid, making them easier to transport and launch.
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Pestilence
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China reports latest bird flu
death, toll rises to 27
Reuters
BEIJING (Reuters) - A 55-year-old man in central China has died from
a new strain of bird flu, bringing to 27 the number of deaths from
the mysterious H7N9 virus, state news agency Xinhua said on
Thursday.
The H7N9 virus, which has infected 127 people in China, is a threat
to world health and should be taken seriously, scientists said on
Wednesday.
The Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO) has described it as
"one of the most lethal" flu viruses but said there is as yet no
evidence of human-to-human transmission of this virus.
The latest victim, a native of southeastern Jiangxi province
surnamed Jiao, died in Hunan province, Xinhua said. The man sold
braised pork and was diagnosed with the H7N9 virus on April 26, the
Hunan Health Bureau said on its website.
A 69-year-old farmer, also from Hunan, was the latest person to be
infected with the virus, state media said.
So far, 26 people have recovered after contracting the virus,
according to Xinhua.
Chinese scientists have confirmed for the first time that the H7N9
strain has been transmitted to humans from chickens.
Last week a man in Taiwan became the first case of the flu outside
mainland China. He caught the flu while traveling in China.
(Reporting by Sui-Lee Wee; Editing by Michael Perry)
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Famines |
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Politics makes
people prevaricate, even when famine looms
The Guardian
Donors and developing countries culpable for failing to act on early
warnings, claims Chatham House report into food crises.
It is a familiar paradox: the world sees famine coming, yet acts
only after the event. The food crisis that engulfed the Horn of
Africa in 2011 was predicted almost a year before it happened.
Famine was likewise foretold in the Sahel region, which last year
experienced extreme hunger for the third time since 2004. Early
warning systems are the Cassandras of the modern world, accurate yet
unheeded augurs of tragedy.
Donors and NGOs know this, but what fewer seem to know is how to
change things – and why they aren't already changing.
How can the growing sophistication of early warning systems – which,
from humble beginnings in the early 80s, now include long-term
weather forecasting, satellite imagery to estimate harvests,
population migration monitoring, and detailed household and food
availability data – be used for prevention rather than cure, saving
lives and money? With effective tools in place, and a clear case for
intervention on humanitarian and economic grounds, why isn't risk
management improving?
"If we had to boil it down to a single answer – one word – it would
be politics," says Rob Bailey, a senior research fellow at Chatham
House, a London-based international affairs thinktank.
Bailey says governments are inherently risk averse, causing them to
prevaricate rather than commit to strategies that might undermine
their foreign policy objectives, tarnish a carefully crafted
international image, or – should public funds be used to support a
crisis that fails to materialise – provoke a media and voter
backlash. Developing country governments can be equally culpable, he
says, often failing to act on early warnings because famine is seen
as "anathema to the narrative of development".
But although the dynamics of delay vary, the upshot is almost
invariably the same: political rather than humanitarian factors
determine where aid goes. The situation is exacerbated, argues
Bailey, by a "dynamic of buck-passing and free-riding" triggered
when there are early warnings of a hunger crisis that is not yet
visible.
"The political consequences of sitting on your hands and doing
nothing aren't necessarily as apparent as they could be with a rapid
onset disaster that's broadcast on the news every night. This makes
it easy for donors to wait for somebody else to act and pick up the
tab."
Competition holds the key to changing this culture of political
inertia, says Bailey, who advocates a carrot-and-stick approach
whereby governments would be rewarded for acting on early warnings
of famine and penalised for ignoring them.
"I think there's a lot more that can be done by NGOs to try to
create that race to the top among donor governments, for instance by
producing some kind of index," he says. "NGOs should identify and
praise governments that are funding things early and doing their
best to mitigate risks. NGOs find it quite difficult to say
governments are doing well – it's much easier for them to say a
government is doing badly – but there's definitely an opportunity
there."
A step in this direction is being taken by the UK's Department for
International Development (DfID), where a global risk register is
being developed to guide decision-making. The initial model,
expected to be operational this summer, will cover a range of
humanitarian risk factors, creating a platform for decision-making.
"One of the positive outcomes [will be] that we can use it to frame
humanitarian risk as a threat to non-delivery of DfID's development
programmes," said DfID's Kate Foster at the launch of a report by
Bailey called Managing famine risk: linking early warning to early
action. "This research will help us to build the economic case."
Bailey welcomes the DfID initiative while stressing the importance
of making such information transparent and accessible so that
governments can be held accountable. He echoes Foster's emphasis on
making the economic case for early spending. "Governments must do
more to justify why early action is important for getting better
value for money from aid, making the case publicly that, unless you
start to manage these risks to mitigate them, the actual return you
get on every pound of foreign aid is greatly reduced."
Donor governments should agree rules on burden sharing, suggests
Bailey, with one tier of donors specialising in early action,
another in emergency response, a third in recovery, and so on. This
approach, he believes, would increase mutual accountability,
creating another layer of political incentive.
For governments in developing countries, civil and political
freedoms of the kind that underpinned the successful Kenya for
Kenyans campaign are central to incentivisation, says Bailey. "The
government deprioritised the northern drylands, and it was those
civil and political freedoms that created the penalties – the stick,
if you like – for the government to respond. They could equally
create the carrot in the future, if the campaign continues to put
pressure on the government to invest in those communities."
Legislation could play a role in improving early intervention, says
Bailey, who suggests "an institutionalised disaster risk reduction
policy that identifies the responsibility of certain ministers and
government departments to do certain things, with mechanisms of
redress if they don't".
Bailey's study, which urges improvements in the capacity and
effectiveness of existing systems and greater empowerment at
community level, was welcomed by Jane Cocking, Oxfam GB's
humanitarian director.
"The report is a refreshing addition to the debate on early warning
to early action, and that is inarguably because it is so up front
and explicit about the political nature of this discourse, helping
us move on from the purely technical approach," said Cocking.
How fast things will move on is another question, however. "If you
have a catastrophe like you had in the Horn in 2011, it opens up a
window of opportunity where everybody wants to make changes and
improve things," says Bailey. "But that window gradually closes as
the agenda moves on. Change is piecemeal and long term."
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