A major earthquake rocked Pakistan’s southwest on Saturday, killing at least 15 and sending panicked people running into the street just days after another quake in the same region killed hundreds, officials said.
The US Geological Survey said on its Web site that a magnitude 6.8 quake was felt in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan Province.
Pakistan’s Meteorological Department measured the earthquake at magnitude 7.2, saying its epicenter was about 150km west of the town of Khuzdar.
Balochistan government spokesman Jan Mohammad Buledi said those killed on Saturday died in the Mushkay area of Awaran District, adding that the death toll from Tuesday’s disaster was 359.
Little may have been left to damage after Tuesday’s disaster. Few of the mud and homemade brick houses in the area survived the magnitude 7.7 quake that leveled villages and buried people in the rubble. Since then, tens of thousands of people have been sleeping under the open sky or in tents.
Chief Pakistani meteorologist Arif Mahmood told Pakistani television that Saturday’s earthquake was an aftershock and such tremors could continue for weeks.
Pakistani television showed people at the main hospital in Awaran fleeing into the street. In the provincial capital of Quetta, the tremor was so strong it prompted members of the local parliament to evacuate the building.
THE TRAGEDY OF PUNCH: Footage of the seven-month-old Japanese macaque has gone viral online after he was rejected by his mother and formed a bond with a soft toy A baby monkey in Japan has captured hearts around the world after videos of him being bullied by other monkeys and rejected by his mother went viral last week. Punch, a Japanese macaque, was born in July last year at Ichikawa City Zoo. He has drawn international attention after zookeepers gave him a stuffed orangutan toy after he was abandoned by his mother. Without maternal guidance to help him integrate, Punch has turned to the toy for comfort. He has been filmed multiple times being dragged and chased by older Japanese macaques inside the enclosure. Early clips showed him wandering alone with
South Korea would soon no longer be one of the few countries where Google Maps does not work properly, after its security-conscious government reversed a two-decade stance to approve the export of high-precision map data to overseas servers. The approval was made “on the condition that strict security requirements are met,” the South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said. Those conditions include blurring military and other sensitive security-related facilities, as well as restricting longitude and latitude coordinates for South Korean territory on products such as Google Maps and Google Earth, it said. The decision is expected to hurt Naver and Kakao
MONEY GRAB: People were rushing to collect bills scattered on the ground after the plane transporting money crashed, which an official said hindered rescue efforts A cargo plane carrying money on Friday crashed near Bolivia’s capital, damaging about a dozen vehicles on highway, scattering bills on the ground and leaving at least 15 people dead and others injured, an official said. Bolivian Minister of Defense Marcelo Salinas said the Hercules C-130 plane was transporting newly printed Bolivian currency when it “landed and veered off the runway” at an airport in El Alto, a city adjacent to La Paz, before ending up in a nearby field. Firefighters managed to put out the flames that engulfed the aircraft. Fire chief Pavel Tovar said at least 15 people died, but
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday said he did not take his security for granted, after he was evacuated from his residence for several hours following a bomb threat sent to a Chinese dance group. Albanese was evacuated from his Canberra residence late on Tuesday following the threat, and returned a few hours later after nothing suspicious was found. The bomb scare was among several e-mails threatening Albanese sent to a representative of Shen Yun, a classical Chinese dance troupe banned in China that is due to perform in Australia this month, a spokesperson for the group said in a statement. The e-mail