Earthquake in China

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Within a day of covering various earthquakes aound the world comes this earthquake in China

Earthquake in southwest China kills dozens

At least 60 people killed and 20,000 homes damaged as tremor hits Yunnan and Guizhou provinces, state media reports.

al-Jazeera,

7 September, 2012

At least 60 people have been killed and 20,000 homes damaged by a series of earthquakes, one measuring 5.7 in magnitude, in southwestern China, local authorities and state media say.

The largest of the tremors struck the border between Yunnan and Guizhou provinces at about 11:00am local time (03:00 GMT) on Friday. The state-run Xinhua news agency said the earthquake hit the border area of Yiliang county of Yunnan and Weining county of Guizhou.

By mid-afternoon, authorities had moved more than 100,000 from the area as a series of more than 60 aftershocks struck.

Zhang Junwei, a spokesperson from the Yunnan seismological bureau, said that the deaths all occurred in Yiliang, and that another 150 people were hurt.

The main tremor, which occurred at a depth of 14km, was followed by a series of aftershocks, the China Earthquake Networks Centre said. The earthquake was also felt in neighbouring Sichuan province.

Xinhua said the provincial government had sent work teams to the quake-hit area and the civil affairs department was shipping thousands of tents, blankets and coats to the area.

Al Jazeera's Marga Ortigas, reporting from Hong Kong, said that the military had been deployed to conduct search and rescue operations in the area.

The US Geological Survey put the magnitude of the largest quake at 5.6 and said it struck at a depth of 10km.

Buildings damaged

Footage from state broadcaster CCTV showed boulder-covered roadways, abandoned cars and black smoke pouring from buildings.

"The hardest part of the rescue now is traffic. Roads are blocked and rescuers have to climb the mountains to reach hard-hit villages," Xinhua quoted Li Fuchun, an official from Luozehe, the town at the epicentre of the quake, as saying.

The death toll may rise as rescuers reach villages cut off by landslides, the news agency said.

Local residents described how people ran out of buildings screaming as the quake hit.

"I was walking on the street when I suddenly felt the ground shaking beneath me. People started rushing outside screaming, it still scares me to think of it now," posted one on Sina Weibo, a microblogging service similar to Twitter.

Photographs posted online showed streets strewn with rocks and bricks from damaged buildings.

Mobile phone services were down and regular phone lines disrupted in the area.

Xinhua said that so far no casualties had been reported in Guizhou, but that homes had been damaged or destroyed there.

"This is a very agricultural, rural area of southwestern China [and it is] also very mountainous and hilly," reported Al Jazeera's Ortigas. "The buildings in those areas and the construction is known to be quite poor."

Southwestern China is prone to earthquakes. In May 2008, an 8.0-magnitude tremor hit Sichuan province and parts of neighbouring Shaanxi and Gansu provinces, killing tens of thousands of people and flattening many areas.

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Yangtze River Turns Red and Turns Up a Mystery

For a river known as the "golden watercourse," red is a strange color to see.

ABC News,

7 September, 2012

Yet that's the shade turning up in the Yangtze River  and officials have no idea why.

The red began appearing in the Yangtze, the longest and largest river in  China  and the third longest river in the world, yesterday near the city of Chongquing, where the Yangtze connects to the Jialin River.

The Yangtze, called "golden" because of the heavy rainfall it receives year-round, runs through Chongqing, Southwest China's largest industrial and commercial center, also known as the "mountain city" because of the hills and peaks upon which its many buildings and factories stand.

The red color stopped some residents in their tracks. They put water from the river in bottles to save it. Fishermen and other workers who rely on the river for income kept going about their business, according to the UK's Daily Mail.

While the river's red coloring was most pronounced near Chongqing it was also reported at several other points.

Officials are reportedly investigating the cause.