Major earthquake strikes south-east Iran

Major earthquake strikes south-east Iran


The epicentre of the 7.8-magnitude quake was near the south-eastern city of Khash, close to Pakistan.
The quake struck deep and in a remote region, apparently limiting casualties.
Iranian state TV said 27 people had been injured, but rowed back on early reports of deaths. However, more than 30 people were killed in Pakistan.
The Pakistani military has been mobilised to help with rescue efforts, officials said.
Two military helicopters carrying medical teams have been sent to the area and troops will support the relief efforts, they said.
The border area has since been shaken by several strong aftershocks.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon said the organisation stood ready to help "if asked to do so". The US has also offered assistance.







The earthquake struck in the province of Sistan Baluchistan at about 15:14 local time (10:44 GMT), close to the cities of Khash, which has a population of nearly 180,000, and Saravan, where 250,000 people live.
"The epicentre of the quake was located in the desert, and population centres do not surround it. There were no fatalities in the towns around the epicentre," an Iranian crisis centre official, Morteza Akbarpour, was quoted as saying by the Iranian news agency Isna.
The power of the tremor led to offices being evacuated in Karachi, Pakistan, in the Indian capital of Delhi, and in several Gulf cities.
Iranian state TV initially reported that 40 people had been killed, and one Iranian official was quoted by Reuters news agency as saying hundreds of deaths were expected.

               


Iran's Fars news agency said the depth of the quake had reduced its impact to the size of a magnitude-4.0 tremor on the surface.
Iranian scientists said it was the country's strongest earthquake for more than 50 years.
All communications to the region have been cut, and the Red Crescent said it was sending 20 search-and-rescue teams with three helicopters to the area.
A resident of Saravan, Yar Ahmad, told BBC Persian that a number of people in the nearby village of Lolokadan had been injured, with broken arms or legs, but only had first aid kits for treatment.
No rescue workers had arrived, and the roads were in poor condition, he said.


Tents and shacks Sistan Baluchistan is Iran's biggest province and one of its most impoverished areas.
A member of parliament for Saravan, Hedayatollah Mir-Morad Zehi, said there were 1,700 villages in the area, and most of the buildings were made of mud.
Many people in the area live in tents or shacks, a factor which is thought to have limited the number of casualties.



Across the border in Pakistan, up to 34 people were killed and about 80 injured in the Mashkel district of Balochistan province, the army said.
Communications were disrupted in Mashkel, which has a population of about 45,000. But aid workers said many houses were thought to have been damaged or destroyed.
The earthquake was felt across the region.
Michael Stephens, a researcher at RUSI Qatar, told the BBC from his office in Doha: "I definitely felt the walls shaking. It lasted for about 25 seconds."
Mohammad Wazir, a correspondent for BBC Persian in Pakistan, says the quake was felt in the cities of Karachi and Quetta.
Tuesday's earthquake was about 180 times stronger in energy release than a 6.3-magnitude quake that struck on 10 April near the nuclear plant at Bushehr in south-western Iran. That quake killed at least 37 people and wounded 850.
The Bushehr plant was not damaged by the earlier earthquake, and an official at the Russian firm that built the plant said it had not been damaged by Tuesday's earthquake either, Reuters reported.
Scientists say earthquakes in south-eastern Iran are triggered by the clash between the Arabia and Eurasia tectonic plates, the former of which is pushing north at a rate of several centimetres each year.
In 2003, a 6.6-magnitude quake destroyed much of the south-eastern city of Bam and killed some 26,000 people.

Nicolas Maduro wins Venezuela presidential election

 Socialist candidate Nicolas Maduro has won a narrow victory in Venezuela's presidential poll.

 

Mr Maduro, who was chosen by the late Hugo Chavez, won 50.7% of the vote against 49.1% for opposition candidate Henrique Capriles

 

The electoral commission said the results were "irreversible".
There has been no comment from Mr Capriles, who earlier on Sunday has suggested there was an attempt to doctor the result.
Mr Maduro told a rally of supporters in the capital Caracas that he had won a "just, legal and constitutional" victory.
However, the margin of victory was far smaller than that gained by the late President Chavez over Mr Capriles at elections last October.
Mr Maduro said he was willing to allow an audit of the election result.
Almost 80% of eligible voters took part in the poll.
Mr Maduro had been serving as acting president since Mr Chavez died of cancer on 5 March.
He is due to be sworn in on 19 April and serve until January 2019 to complete the six-year term that Mr Chavez would have begun in January

 

Kerry in Japan for talks on North Korean tensions

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

John Kerry arrives in Japan having secured a pledge from China to calm tensions with North Korea

 

US Secretary of State John Kerry has arrived in Japan, the last stop of his four-day Asian tour which has focused on tensions on the Korean peninsula.

North Korea has recently threatened attacks against South Korea and the US, sparking alarm in the region.
After meeting China's top leaders on Saturday Mr Kerry said China was "very serious" in its pledge to help resolve tensions with North Korea, its ally.
Mr Kerry has said the US will defend itself and its allies from any attack.
Speculation has been building that the North is preparing a missile launch, following reports that it has moved at least two Musudan ballistic missiles to its east coast.

Mr Kerry is holding talks with Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and on Sunday will meet Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Mr Abe has said they must make Pyongyang "recognise that their provocative actions will not benefit them at all".
Japan's Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera said he hoped Mr Kerry's visit would send "a strong message" to North Korea's leaders.
"It is important that we co-ordinate internationally and firmly tell North Korea that it must give up its nuclear and missile programmes," he told reporters.
Washington and Tokyo have a security alliance dating back to the 1950s, under which Washington is bound to protect Japan if it is attacked.
The BBC's Martin Patience in Tokyo says Mr Kerry's visit aims to reassure Japan that they have America's continued support during this crisis.

Celebratory launch?
North Korea habitually issues fiery statements denouncing the US and South Korea, but the rhetoric has grown increasingly aggressive since the UN imposed a fresh round of sanctions in March.

The sanctions punished Pyongyang for carrying out a banned test of a ballistic missile and conducting its third test of a nuclear device.

Pyongyang has also been angered by joint military manoeuvres by the US and South Korea, which it says are preparations for war.
It has responded by vowing to restart an inactive nuclear reactor, shut an emergency military hotline to the South and by urging countries to withdraw their diplomatic staff, saying it cannot now guarantee their safety.
It has also withdrawn North Korean workers from the Kaesong industrial complex - a rare joint Korean enterprise where South Korean companies employed Northerners.
The South has offered to discuss the future of the complex, but on Sunday Pyongyang rejected this, saying it was an "empty, meaningless" act aimed at disguising invasion plans, the North's KCNA state news agency reports.
On Monday, North Korea will mark the birth of national founder Kim Il-sung. Such occasions are traditionally marked with shows of military strength and it is thought this year the date could be used for a missile launch.
Some estimates suggest that the Musudan missiles which North Korea has moved to its east coast could travel 4,000km (2,500 miles).
That would put US bases on the Pacific island of Guam within range, although the exact threat is unclear as it is not believed that the Musudan has been tested before.
Mr Kerry has stressed that it would be a "huge mistake" for the North to go ahead with a launch, saying it would further isolate North Korea and that the people of the country are in need of food, not missiles

 

 

Yankees’ Rodriguez Tied to Clinic Records Purchase

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Former employees of a now-shuttered South Florida anti-aging clinic and others who had ties to it have told Major League Baseball that the Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez arranged to purchase documents from the clinic to keep them out of the hands of baseball officials, according to two people briefed on the matter.  

The assertions about Rodriguez’s activities were conveyed to baseball officials through investigators who have been in Florida since last summer as they try to establish if the clinic was providing performance-enhancing drugs to major leaguers, including Rodriguez, 37, a slugger who is still recovering from off-season hip surgery and has yet to play in 2013.

The two people said that the investigators were told by the ex-employees and others that documents said to be from the clinic had been put up for sale by various people and that Rodriguez had arranged for an intermediary to purchase at least some of them.

That, in turn, led Major League Baseball to conclude that other players linked to the clinic would also attempt to buy documents to conceal incriminating evidence and accelerated baseball’s own efforts to purchase as many documents as it could.

A spokesman for Rodriguez denied on Friday that his client had arranged to acquire any documents.

 From baseball’s point of view, a cat-and-mouse game has now emerged with the clinic and Rodriguez. Since admitting several years ago to using performance enhancers in the early part of last decade, when he was playing for the Texas Rangers, Rodriguez has had to meet with baseball’s investigators on several occasions as new allegations have periodically linked him to drug use.

Rodriguez, in those meetings with baseball officials, has consistently denied using performance enhancers after he left the Rangers. Investigators for baseball, unsatisfied, have on several occasions asked federal authorities to provide them with any drug-related information about Rodriguez. But those requests have not been successful.

Now Major League Baseball believes that Rodriguez bought documents to keep the sport from getting a full picture of his links to the clinic.

But there are an untold number of documents swirling around, and questions about what they actually show and how they would be authenticated. Major League Baseball may ultimately choose to focus on testimony it has obtained from a number of the clinic’s former employees rather than the documents if it proceeds with efforts to discipline Rodriguez or other players, one of the two people said.

Those ex-employees were paid for the time they spent talking with baseball’s investigators, the two people said, with the payments not believed to have exceeded several thousand dollars. Whether their statements alone are strong enough for baseball officials to proceed with disciplinary action against players remains to be seen.

In its decade-long effort to rid the sport of performance enhancers — an effort that has included a wider range and number of drug tests and increasingly heavy penalties — baseball officials have still found it difficult to suspend a player in the absence of a positive drug test.

And that is still the hurdle the sport faces even as it has taken the unusual step of paying for evidence and as it contemplates what penalties would be called for if it could establish that Rodriguez bought documents in order to conceal them.

Rodriguez is halfway through a 10-year, $275 million contract — the largest ever in American sports — and is owed $114 million through the end of 2017. He missed all of spring training and is unlikely to return to action until the second half of the season, assuming his rehabilitation proceeds as planned.

Accusations that link him to the anti-aging clinic, and the new assertions about the purchase of documents, have created still more uncertainties about his status for 2013.

Although the Yankees would never publicly say so, Rodriguez is now widely perceived as a diminished player whose contract is weighing down the team and limiting its flexibility. But he has made clear that he intends to keep playing, and if he is able to do so, the Yankees will have to keep paying him.

As for the anti-aging clinic, Major League Baseball grew so concerned about it last year that it created an improvised war room in its Park Avenue headquarters in Manhattan, mapping out potential evidence about the facility’s activities.

In January, Miami New Times reported that it had obtained medical records from the facility that tied half a dozen players — Rodriguez, Melky Cabrera, Gio Gonzalez, Bartolo Colon, Nelson Cruz and Yasmani Grandal — to the use of banned substances like human growth hormone.

The newspaper, a weekly, said that it had received the records from a former employee of the clinic and that it included handwritten notations listing drugs distributed to players.

The newspaper said that Rodriguez’s name appeared 16 times in the records.

More records then emerged that tied other players, including the Milwaukee Brewers slugger Ryan Braun, to the clinic. Many of the named players, including Rodriguez and Braun, denied obtaining banned substances from the clinic.

In his denial, which was issued through a public relations firm, Rodriguez said the documents cited in the Miami New Times article that were linked to him were “not legitimate.”

Now, Major League Baseball has concluded that Rodriguez bought such documents to keep investigators form obtaining them. And Rodriguez has issued another denial even as baseball essentially ignores it and keeps investigating.

 

Obama Searching For a Key Victory

Obama Searching For a Key Victory

President Barack Obama gestures as he speaks about his proposed fiscal 2014 federal budget on April 10, 2013, in the Rose Garden of the White House.

Behind President Obama's strong policy offensives on a variety of fronts is a matter of growing urgency: He needs a major victory soon on at least one high-stakes issue or he risks sliding toward lame-duck status in his second term, political strategists say.

"The clout starts diminishing if he doesn't have some breakthrough on the big issues soon," says Ken Duberstein, former White House chief of staff for President Ronald Reagan.

This explains why Obama has been pushing so hard to win congressional passage of a deficit-reduction package, gun control legislation and a comprehensive immigration bill – three of his top priorities. Democratic advisers say he is probably at the high point of his influence now, only a few months after his re-election triumph, and this is the best time to win some Congressional victories.

Presidents tend to lose influence in their second terms as the political establishment and the country begin to focus on choosing their successors, but it usually doesn't happen until their final two years in office.

Obama hopes to avoid this fate by bending Congress to his will now and building on that success to keep fellow Democrats in control of the Senate and give them control of the House in the 2014 mid-term elections.

Obama released a 2014 budget blueprint Wednesday that showed his intense desire to find a "grand bargain" that would put the government on a path to major deficit reduction and put the economy on a path toward a strong recovery.

His proposals included provisions designed to court at least a few Congressional Republicans, who have stymied his agenda in the past. One such provision is to cut benefits for Social Security recipients in an effort to save money. This is causing a backlash among liberals who consider it a betrayal of the Democratic party's commitment to the elderly.

But Obama strategists argue that his top priority is to somehow bring balky GOP legislators to his side. Obama held a private dinner at the White House with a dozen GOP senators Wednesday night, his second such dinner with Republicans senators in recent weeks.

More News:

• Obama Plays Divide and Conquer With the GOP
• From Turmoil to Stability
• Poll: Voters Say Job Creation Is Priority 1

                Drug company subsidies

State of the Union proposal

"We'll reduce taxpayer subsidies to prescription drug companies and ask more from the wealthiest seniors."

Background
President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, failed to achieve a "grand bargain" on deficit reduction during negotiations over raising the debt ceiling in summer 2011, an agreement that would've included significant changes to entitlement programs such as Medicare. Reuters reported that Obama's State of the Union proposal to cut subsidies to pharmaceutical companies would mean mandating that companies offer drug rebates to the approximately 10 million Americans who qualify for Medicare and Medicaid while receiving Medicare prescription drug benefits, a group known as "dual eligibles." The Congressional Budget Office projected this proposal would reduce Medicare costs by $137 billion, Reuters says, but it has in the past sparked criticism from the pharmaceutical industry.
Additionally, Obama called for Medicare recipients in higher income brackets to pay a larger share of their Medicare premiums. 

Venezuela: Hunger strikers say government thugs attacked them

Protesters say bikers dressed in Chavez's socialist party colors robbed them and fired guns at them. The government blames Washington.

CARACAS, Venezuela — About 40 hunger strikers camped out in Venezuela's capital city of Caracas came under attack Monday night by what they described as a large group of armed, pro-government activists, leaving at least half a dozen injured after shots were fired.
Demanding clean April 14 presidential elections, the hunger strikers this weekend set up mattresses on a roundabout in a wealthy Caracas district, many of them without eating now for three days.


But some 50 motorbikes descended on their camp, their riders clad in the crimson of late President Hugo Chavez's socialist party followers, protesters told GlobalPost.
The police and socialist party officials did not respond to GlobalPost's requests for comment.
But witnesses and images posted to the internet told of a violent attack, signaling tensions are high during the bitter but brief campaigns to succeed Chavez.
"They were using bikes belonging to the government," said Henry Linares, an 18-year-old student who was taking part in the hunger strike. "They robbed us of our stuff. We have around 10 students injured but we're continuing the fight."
Linares' friend and fellow protester Esteban Galup added: "There were around 50 motorcyclists. They surrounded us."
The protesters said they took refuge at a nearby McDonald's as police and medical assistance arrived.
The students accuse the country's electoral council of a pro-government bias and are calling for a fair election this Sunday, as acting President Nicolas Maduro runs against opposition leader Henrique Capriles.
In Venezuela, after 14 years of Chavez's rule, pro-government still means pro-“Chavismo” — a philosophy that has relied on the country's oil wealth to reduce poverty through a bevy of welfare programs while, opponents say, also muzzling dissent and wrecking the economy. International watchdogs such as Human Rights Watch accused Chavez of stacking the electoral council and the courts with supporters and intimidating or arresting judges suspected of straying from the government line.
Sunday's election and the short campaign preceding it come in the wake of Chavez's death from cancer on March 5.
Unlike in the United States, Venezuelan law calls for a new election after a president dies rather than filling the top executive post with the vice president.
In December, before leaving for an emergency cancer surgery in Cuba, Chavez anointed his faithful deputy Maduro as his preferred heir. That's likely to win Maduro the presidency, according to pollsters.
"We're here demanding that the elections are clean, just and free," said 22-year-old Vanessa Eisig, lying on a mattress alongside other hunger strikers over the weekend. "That's why we're having this hunger strike."
Twitter users posted dramatic messages and pictures of the attack. "We need help," wrote one organizer, Gaby Arellano. "The situation is severe." Her message was accompanied by an image of a protester with blood pouring from a wound on his head.