Earthquake kills 157, injures 5,700 in China's Sichuan

By Ben Blanchard

BEIJING (Reuters) - A strong 6.6 magnitude earthquake hit a remote, mostly rural and mountainous area of southwestern China's Sichuan province on Saturday, killing at least 156 people and injuring about 5,500 close to where a big quake killed almost 70,000 people in 2008.

The earthquake, China's worst in three years, occurred at 8.02 a.m. (0002 GMT) in Lushan county near Ya'an city and the epicenter had a depth of 12 km (7.5 miles), the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The quake was felt by residents in neighboring provinces and in the provincial capital of Chengdu, causing many people to rush out of buildings, according to accounts on China's Twitter-like Sina Weibo microblogging service.

State media said 156 people had been confirmed dead with more than 5,500 injured.

President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang said all efforts must be put into rescuing victims to limit the death toll.

After arriving at the disaster zone by helicopter, Li directed earthquake relief efforts from a plaza in Longmen township in Lushan, Xinhua said.

Li asked that a road be opened to Baoxing county, one of the most affected by the earthquake, and that rescuers "act quickly" in their efforts, Xinhua quoted Li as saying.

"The current most urgent issue is grasping the first 24 hours since the quake's occurrence, the golden time for saving lives," Xinhua news agency quoted Li as saying earlier.

Xinhua said 6,000 troops were heading to the area to help with rescue efforts. State television CCTV said only emergency vehicles were being allowed into Ya'an, though Chengdu airport had reopened.

Most of the deaths were concentrated in Lushan, where water and electricity were cut off. Pictures on Chinese news sites showed toppled buildings and people in bloodied bandages being treated in tents outside the hospital, which appeared only lightly damaged.

Rescuers in Lushan had pulled 32 survivors out of rubble, Xinhua said. In villages closest to the epicenter, almost all low rise houses and buildings had collapsed, according to footage broadcast on state television.

This aerial photo released by China's Xinhua news agency shows destroyed houses after a powerful earthquake hit Taiping town of Lushan County in Ya'an City, southwest China's Sichuan Province, ... more? This aerial photo released by China's Xinhua news agency shows destroyed houses after a powerful earthquake hit Taiping town of Lushan County in Ya'an City, southwest China's Sichuan Province, Saturday, April 20, 2013. The powerful earthquake jolted Sichuan province Saturday near where a devastating quake struck five years ago. (AP Photo/Xinhua, Liu Yinghua) NO SALES less? ?

"We are very busy right now, there are about eight or nine injured people, the doctors are handling the cases," said a doctor at a Ya'an hospital who gave her family name as Liu.

The hospital was seeing head and leg injuries, she added.

"SHAKES AND TREMORS"

The China Meteorological Association warned of a possibility of landslides occurring in Lushan county on Saturday and Sunday, the agency said in a statement on its website.

A resident in Chengdu, 140 km (85 miles) from Ya'an city, told Xinhua he was on the 13th floor of a building when he felt the quake. The building shook for about 20 seconds and he saw tiles fall from nearby buildings.

Ya'an is a city of 1.5 million people and is considered one of the birthplaces of Chinese tea culture. It is also the home to one of China's main centers for protecting the giant panda.

"There are still shakes and tremors and our area is safe. The pandas are safe," said a spokesman with Ya'an's Bifengxia nature park, a tourism park that houses more than 100 pandas.

Shouts and screams were heard in the background while Reuters was on the telephone with the spokesman.

"There was just an aftershock, an aftershock, our office is safe," he said.

Numerous aftershocks jolted the area, the largest of which was magnitude 5.1.

Sichuan is one of the four major natural-gas-producing provinces in China, and its output accounts for about 14 percent of the nation's total.

Sinopec Group, Asia's largest oil refiner, said its huge Puguang gas field was unaffected.

The U.S. Geological Survey initially put the magnitude at 7, but later revised it down.

The devastating May 2008 quake was 7.9 magnitude.

(Additional reporting by Melanie Lee and Lu Jianxin in SHANGHAI and Sui-Lee Wee in BEIJING; Editing by Jonathan Standing and Sanjeev Miglani)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/magnitude-6-9-quake-strikes-sichuan-region-china-002702079.html

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European car sales plummet, even in solid Germany

MILAN (AP) ? Europe's auto market is in freefall. Once the motor for Europe's economy, the car industry has fallen victim to the region's widening recession and soaring unemployment. Carmakers have suffered 18 straight months of declining sales as people worried that they might soon be out of a job put off making big purchases.

New car sales across Europe slid 10 percent in the first quarter of 2013 to 2.9 million, down from 3.3 million in 2012, the European automakers association ACEA reported from Brussels on Wednesday. Even in Germany, one of Europe's strongest economies, new car sales plunged 13 percent during the first three months of the year.

Across the rest of Europe, the figures were just as disappointing. Most major markets saw double-digit contractions: down 11.5 percent in Spain, 13 percent in Italy and 14.6 percent in France.

The German fall ? which was felt across the country's domestic industry from Volkswagen to Mercedes ? took analysts by surprise. The country, after all, was still relatively prosperous.

"How can it be so bad when employment and economic growth remain solid?" said Max Warburton of Bernstein Research.

The answer lies in the demand-sapping problems of Europe's debt crisis. The economy of the 27-country European Union is on the verge of a recession after it contracted 0.5 percent in the last quarter of 2012 while unemployment is at nearly 11 percent. This has drained consumers across the EU of any confidence to make big-ticket purchases like a new car.

Based on ACEA's figures, Ian Fletcher, a London-based auto analyst with IHS, expects European sales to fall 3.3 percent overall this year to 11.8 million units. By comparison, many expect U.S. sales to reach 15.5 million for 2013, while sales in China could top 20 million.

The fortunes of its car industry have a big impact on the rest of Europe because any downturn it suffers is felt across the whole region. According to the ACEA, the auto industry directly employs 2.3 million ? mainly highly skilled ? people and supports about another 10 million jobs among the carmakers' suppliers.

The declining car market in Europe has been weighing on global carmakers' bottom lines. Last year, four of the biggest automakers based in Europe ? Ford, PSA Peugeot, Fiat and General Motors ? together posted operating losses of 5 billion euros ($7 billion) for the region.

According to the ACEA, in the first three months of 2013 General Motors saw sales drop 13 percent, PSA Peugeot sales were down 15 percent, Ford was down by 20 percent, Toyota 18 percent and Fiat 9 percent. In the premium market, which had continued to sell well as the mass market slumped, manufacturers were starting to feel the pinch. BMW was down a slight 0.9 percent while Daimler rose 0.2 percent.

For the time being, orders from around the rest of the world help cover carmakers' European losses ? but that is something executives say cannot last. Ford plans to close three plants and reduce European production by 18 percent over the next two years, while General Motors Co. announced this month it will close a German Opel plant by the end of 2014.

Fiat ? whose profits are mainly due to its Chrysler operations in the U.S. ? has switched investment from producing mass market cars in Italy to expanding its premium brands like Alfa Romeo and Maserati which it can easily export.

Ford has said it doesn't expect to break even in Europe until 2015, while for Fiat that will be in 2015-2016.

Among Europe's major markets, only Britain posted growth in the quarter, up 7.4 percent to 605,000 vehicles, the ACEA says. Fletcher of the IHS said this was due to country-specific reasons including a shortage of used cars and very favorable financing.

Jaguar and Land Rover bucked the trend for a 13 percent increase in sales, while Honda rose 19 percent ? each claiming a market share of a mere 1.4 percent. Also gaining sales and market share were Renault's off-price brand Dacia, with sales up 14.6 percent for a 2.1 percent share, and Hyundai's Kia brand, with sales up 3.5 percent for a 2.7 percent share.

Other pockets of bright news hardly bore up under scrutiny. Sales of private passenger vehicles were up 2.7 percent in Portugal, one of the countries suffering most under the debt crisis. Even so, that was still 32.5 percent lower than the average for that quarter between 2009 and 2012.

With Europe's economy forecast only to show some signs of recovery towards the end of this year ? and possibly not until into 2014 ? any hopes of improving sales for Europe's car industry appear some way off.

"Once again, it is difficult to put a positive spin on the latest passenger car figures," Fletcher said.

____

Barry Hatton in Lisbon and Dee-Ann Durbin in Detroit contributed.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/european-car-sales-plummet-even-solid-germany-184949810--finance.html

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Apr 15 (Reuters) - Leading money winners on the 2013 PGATour on Monday (U.S. unless stated): 1. Tiger Woods $4,139,600 2. Brandt Snedeker $3,137,920 3. Matt Kuchar $2,442,389 4. Adam Scott (Australia) $2,100,469 5. Steve Stricker $1,935,340 6. Phil Mickelson $1,764,680 7. Dustin Johnson $1,748,907 8. Jason Day $1,659,565 9. Hunter Mahan $1,553,965 10. Keegan Bradley $1,430,347 11. Charles Howell III $1,393,806 12. John Merrick $1,375,757 13. Russell Henley $1,331,434 14. Michael Thompson $1,310,709 15. Kevin Streelman $1,310,343 16. Bill Haas $1,271,553 17. Billy Horschel $1,254,224 18. ...

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Antarctic Melt Has Increased Tenfold Over Past 1,000 Years

Summer ice melt has increased tenfold over the last millennium in the Antarctic Peninsula, with most of the melt occurring during the last several decades in conjunction with global warming, new research suggests.

Rapid melt can destabilize glaciers and ice shelves (the tongues of glaciers that float on the ocean), suggesting that there could be some dramatic collapses and a resulting increase in sea levels if the melting continues.

"What that means is that the Antarctic Peninsula has warmed to a level where even small increases in temperature can now lead to a big increase in summer ice melt," study co-author Nerilie Abram, a researcher at the Australian National University and the British Antarctic Survey, said in a statement.

The ice melt in the Antarctic Peninsula, located in the northeastern part of the continent, is almost certainly caused by human-induced climate change, said study co-author Eric Steig, an Earth and space sciences professor at the University of Washington. The peninsula is one of the fastest-warming places on the planet, and other recent research has shown that the melt season there is longer than it used to be.

To study the historic Antarctic climate, the study team drilled a 1,194-foot-long (364 meters) ice core from James Ross Island, near the northeastern tip of Antarctica.

The core provided insight into historic temperatures in Antarctica, and contained visible layers where summer snow melted and then refroze. The thickness of these layers revealed the extent of melt in the region over the past 1,000 years.

That summer melt is now at the highest levels seen over the past millennium. And while the temperature increased gradually for the first several hundred years, snowmelt dramatically increased in the latter half of the 20th century, Abram said in the statement.

The findings, detailed in the April 14 issue of the journal Nature Geoscience, suggest that the Antarctic Peninsula may now be particularly vulnerable to climate change.

The picture from an ice core drilled in West Antarctica is less clear. Similar large temperature spikes have been seen in the past there, but the picture is more complex and the exact causes are harder to tease out. It is possible that increased snowmelt there may be due to the El Ni?o weather pattern in the 1990s, the study authors said.

Follow Tia Ghose on Twitter @tiaghose.?Follow?LiveScience @livescience, Facebook?& Google+. Original article on?LiveScience.com.

Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/antarctic-melt-increased-tenfold-over-past-1-000-182537419.html

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Carnival to U.S.: Thanks for the help, but we won't pay you back

MIAMI (AP) ? Carnival Corp. says all maritime interests must assist without question those in trouble at sea, a duty that would not include reimbursing the U.S. government nearly $780,000 for costs associated with the rescue of the crippled Triumph cruise ship.

Carnival released letters Friday replying to an inquiry by U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee, about the Triumph stranding and the cruise line's overall safety record. Among Rockefeller's questions was whether Carnival would repay the government for Coast Guard costs in the Triumph case as well as $3.4 million to the Coast Guard and Navy from the 2010 stranding of the Carnival Splendor in the Pacific Ocean.

"These costs must ultimately be borne by federal taxpayers," Rockefeller said in his March letter, adding that Carnival appears to pay little or no federal income taxes.

In response, Carnival said its policy is to "honor maritime tradition that holds that the duty to render assistance at sea to those in need is a universal obligation of the entire maritime community." The cruise line noted that its ships frequently participate in rescues at the Coast Guard's request, including 11 times in the past year in Florida and Caribbean waters. It did not make direct reference to repaying any money.

In a statement, Rockefeller called the response "shameful" and that he is considering "all options to hold the industry to higher passenger safety standards."

Those options could include a congressional hearing and legislation, perhaps even a closer look at taxation. Rockefeller's letter asked Carnival whether the money it pays in taxes covers the costs of various federal benefits it receives, a question the cruise line again did not directly answer. It did mention port taxes and fees and other payments and said it paid $16.5 billion in wages to U.S. workers in 2011.

"Every state where our ships call or home port benefits from the dollars spent by cruise lines to buy products and retain services from local businesses," Carnival added.

The exchange marked the latest chapter in the saga of the Triumph, which was disabled by an engine fire during a cruise in February in the Gulf of Mexico. Thousands of passengers and crew had to endure five days at sea with no power and under squalid conditions while the 900-foot vessel was towed to Mobile, Ala., where it continues to undergo repairs.

Rockefeller had asked Carnival for details about 90 incidents aboard its ships that were filed with the Coast Guard in the past five years. Carnival responded that 83 were not considered serious under federal regulations. Three were the Triumph and Splendor mishaps and the capsizing of the Costa Concordia off Italy's coast, which killed 32 people in January 2012. The others were more minor ship collisions, an illness and one passenger who jumped off a ship.

The cruise line said it takes each incident "very seriously" and undergoes reviews and corrective measures when needed, such as a review of safety and emergency response practices across all of Carnival's brands following the Concordia accident. In a separate letter, Carnival Chairman and CEO Micky Arison said the company takes the issues raised by Rockefeller very seriously.

"We remain committed to the safety and comfort of our guests and we are proud of our ability to provide millions of people with safe, fun and memorable vacation experiences," Arison wrote.

_____

Associated Press writer Vicki Smith in Morgantown, W.Va., contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/carnival-no-reimbursement-us-disabled-ship-214126861.html

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