Mother Nature goes to extremes in the summer, spoiling the gift of good weather with hurricanes, heat waves, fires and floods. This year she started early. On May 2, Cyclone Nargis laid waste to large parts of Myanmar. According to the latest counts, the disaster left 2.4 million people destitute, more than 50,000 missing and [...]

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James C. Mulvenon, a specialist on the Chinese military at the Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis, a government contractor in Washington that performs classified analyses on overseas military programs, said the earthquake showed the army’s best and worst sides. It mobilized quickly, but the troops were unprepared to save lives in the first 72 [...]

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Since February, abnormal seismic activity has been noted in southern Lebanon, which had suffered some 500 minor earthquakes in a three-month period, health ministry director-general Avi Yisraeli said in the letter.
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Some seismological experts point out quakes historically have rocked the region every eight decades, and the last one was just about 81 years ago. About [...]

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In fact, some analysts argue that fresh protests could break out as early as this weekend, when the Olympic torch relay passes through the Tibetan capital Lhasa, a route some protesters have claimed was a deliberate provocation. In an apparent concession, Beijing shortened the time that the torch would be present in Tibet but refused [...]

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Given China’s incredibly dark earthquake history, there is absolutely no excuse for the government to allow any of this. In fact, in 1976, China suffered an earthquake that resulted in the highest number of quake-related casualties in the last four centuries. This earthquake occurred in the Tangshen area of China and damage reached as far [...]

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This article seems like a bit much to believe. I haven’t seen anything that confirms it. The source for this article is the Epoch Times.
From the article:
An unnamed expert believes that a nuclear explosion caused the recent 8.0 magnitude Sichuan earthquake in China, where three weeks after the catastrophe the death toll has reached 69,000 [...]

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Like Su, China is already trying to look ahead after the magnitude-7.9 earthquake. Reconstruction has started, even as the communist government attempts to feed and shelter about 5 million people left homeless by the massive disaster.
Shopkeepers who lost years of investment are plotting how to get their businesses running again. The government’s open response may [...]

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Thousands of Chinese children died in the Sichuan earthquake when poorly constructed schools collapsed on top of them. Now, grief-stricken parents are demanding a reckoning.
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Video: China earthquake: Angry parents protest collapse of China’s School

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This is a fascinating article about survival in a disaster. Most people tend to freeze in a disaster, but the thing to do is act. I recommend reading this article.
From the article:
But survival is not just a product of luck. We can do far more than we think to improve our odds of preventing and [...]

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There is a reason why it took almost three days to agree to accept foreign aid from Japan and why the Chinese authorities accepted Korea and Russia’s aid, but not high-tech aid from the United States and other Western nations. Reporters have learned that within the Chinese leadership, a group of senior officials supporting [...]

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Just ten months before a deadly earthquake struck Sichuan Province’s Beichuan county on May 12, a scientific study warned that the Chinese region was ripe for a major quake.
“The faults are sufficiently long to sustain a strong ground-shaking earthquake, making them potentially serious sources of regional seismic hazard,” the Chinese, European, and U.S. geoscientists wrote [...]

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The earthquake that devastated southwest China has left many dams badly damaged, posing an unknown threat of collapse and flooding made worse by poor management and information, the country’s water minister said.
In Sichuan and Chongqing, at least 17 reservoirs have been damaged, with some dams cracked or leaking water since the quake struck on Monday, [...]

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China’s Communist Party leaders now face another stern test: to show its citizens and the world that the government can cope with a horrific disaster. Keenly aware of the opprobrium heaped on Burma’s rulers for their callous and incompetent handling of the killer cyclone earlier this month, Beijing will want to demonstrate that it has [...]

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FP: What potential disasters keep you up at night?
ALL: We’re all concerned about major, disastrous earthquakes. In particular, I’m worried about disastrous earthquakes in Asia. Large cities are built near faults, and there are cities that haven’t seen earthquakes in 500 years but are due. It is entirely conceivable that we could see an earthquake [...]

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As the death toll soars from the powerful earthquake that ravaged central China’s Sichuan province, the scale of the devastation is raising questions about the quality of China’s recent construction boom.
“This building is just a piece of junk,” one newly homeless resident of Dujiangyan yelled today, her body quivering with rage. Her family salvaged clothing [...]

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In the aftermath of China’s devastating earthquake, Prime Minsister Wen Jiabao is running around the earthquake zone like a fireman, introducing himself as “Grandpa.” The Communist Party is seeking a PR coup that will help end China’s international isolation over Tibet. By Wieland Wagner in Shanghai more…

Photo Gallery: Destruction, Shock and Fear after the Quake
Earthquake [...]

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