World News joined 2

[JohnCenaFan28]

Thanks for the news.

[JohnCenaFan28]

Thanks for the story.

[Edgehead82593]

How bored do you have to be to think that up? I know it's wrong, but really, don't you have other things to do than smoke pot through a skull?

[OMEN]

QUAKE CASUALTY: Rescuers try to carry an injured man out from the debris of a collapsed building at Juyuan Middle School after the earthquake in Dujiangyan, Sichuan province
China's most devastating earthquake in three decades has killed nearly 9000 people, with the toll likely to soar as authorities struggle to reach casualties in large areas cut off from relief.

The earthquake that hit China's southwestern province of Sichuan killed 8533 people, the official Xinhua news agency said on Monday, citing the provincial government.

The epicentre of the 7.8 magnitude quake was in a mountainous region about 100km from Sichuan's capital Chengdu, a bustling city of 10 million.

"The road started swaying as I was driving. Rocks fell from the mountains, with dust darkening the sky over the valley," a driver for Sichuan's seismological bureau was quoted by Xinhua as saying, as he was driving near the epicentre.

The quake hit in the middle of the school day, toppling eight schools in the region. Chemical plants and at least one hospital were also flattened, trapping many hundreds, state media said.

About 900 teenagers were buried in the rubble of a collapsed three-storey school building in the Sichuan city of Dujiangyan.

Local villagers had already helped dozens of students out of the ruins and five cranes were excavating the site as anxious parents looked on, Xinhua said.

"Some buried teenagers were struggling to break loose from underneath the ruins while others were crying out for help," the agency said.

Nightfall, severed communications and blocked roads have hampered rescue efforts and the death toll was likely to rise significantly.

An estimated 3000 to 5000 people were killed in Beichuan Qiang Autonomous County alone, state media said.

As many as 10,000 in Beichuan were feared injured and 80 per cent of the buildings there had been destroyed, Xinhua said. There had been more than 300 aftershocks, state television said.

Beichuan's population is 161,000, meaning about one in 10 residents were killed or injured. The county is a part of Mianyang city, and about 160km from the provincial capital, Chengdu.

Hundreds of people were buried in two collapsed chemical plants in Shifang in Sichuan, the online edition of the official Xinhua news agency said.

About 6000 people were evacuated, Xinhua said, adding that more than 80 tonnes of highly corrosive liquid ammonia had leaked.

Hundreds of people were buried under rubble in Shifang in Sichuan as several schools, factories and dormitories collapsed during the quake, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Hundreds were also buried under rubble in a collapsed hospital in Dujiangyan city in Sichuan.

The quake's epicentre was in nearby Wenchuan, a mountainous county of about 100,000 people, but its force was enough to cause buildings to sway across China and as far away as the Thai capital Bangkok.

The Sichuan plain is one of China's most fertile agricultural areas, but it relies heavily on an irrigation system linked to the 2000-year-old Dujiangyan flood control works.

Which means the quake could exacerbate inflation, already running at the fastest pace in 12 years.

The quake is also the worst to hit China in 32 years since the 1976 Tangshan earthquake in northeastern China where up to 300,000 died.

It has come at a bad time for China, which holds the Olympic Games in August, and has been struggling to keep a lid on unrest in ethnic Tibetan areas and the heavily Muslim northeastern Xinjiang region.

The US Geological Survey said on its website (http://earthquake.usgs.gov) the main quake struck at 0628 GMT at a depth of 10km.

In Beijing and Shanghai, office workers poured into the streets as the tremor hit. In the capital, there was no visible damage and the showpiece Bird's Nest Olympic stadium was unscathed.

Premier Wen Jiabao arrived in Chengdu and President Hu Jintao ordered an "all-out" rescue effort, Xinhua reported.

Thousands of army troops and paramilitary People's Armed Police carrying medical supplies were also headed to the region, state television said. But a landslide had blocked a mountain road leading to Wenchuan, preventing troops from reaching the scene, state radio said.

In Washington, President George W Bush said the United States was ready to help.

"I extend my condolences to those injured and to the families of the victims of today's earthquake. I am particularly saddened by the number of students and children affected by this tragedy.

"The United States stands ready to help in any way possible," Bush said in a statement.

At least 45 had died in Chengdu, Xinhua said, citing an official with the local seismological bureau. Another 600 people were injured, 58 of them critically, in the sprawling city.

Some 57 have been confirmed killed in northern Shaanxi, 48 in northwestern Gansu, 50 in Chongqing municipality, and one in Yunnan province, Xinhua said, citing the national headquarters of disaster relief.

- Reuters

[OMEN]

The first US military aid flight has landed in Myanmar on Monday, but relief supplies continued to just dribble into the reclusive state nine days after a devastating cyclone.

A C-130 military transport plane left Thailand's Vietnam War-era U-Tapao airbase carrying 12,700 kg of water, mosquito nets and blankets. US aid officials said they hope it will the first of many US flights to the army-ruled former Burma.

Greeting the plane at Yangon airport was Navy commander-in-chief Soe Thein, who promised to deliver the supplies "as soon as possible" to the cyclone-hit region, a US embassy official in Yangon said.

"This is Burma's hour of need and the need is urgent," US Agency for International Development administrator Henrietta Fore said before boarding the plane with a Thai-US delegation for the short flight to the cyclone-hit city of Yangon.

Admiral Timothy Keating, head of the US Pacific Command, is also on the plane, to try to meet with Myanmar's generals to urge them to allow a "long, continuous train of flights" that could carry up to 90,000kg of relief goods a day.

"We're limited only by the permission from the authorities in Burma," Keating said at the Thai air base.

Agencies report that deliveries to more than a million increasingly desperate cyclone victims have been minimal.

Reuters

[OMEN]

Mercedes Corby has denied that she was ever involved in drugs and had no knowledge of any drugs that were in her sister Schapelle Corby's luggage when she was arrested in Bali in 2004.

Giving evidence at NSW Supreme Court today in her defamation case against Channel Seven, Ms Corby, 33, said that the allegations made by her former best friend Jodie Power on Today Tonight in February last year were false and that she had been close to two men, Ron Bakir and Robin Tampoe, who had undertaken to represent Schapelle but were then disaffected.

She said that on January 27, 2006, when she got word that Channel Seven was putting the programs together, she had sent a long email to Channel Seven warning them that Ms Power was not a reliable witness.

She told the court that Ms Power was mentally unstable, was prone to hallucinations and that she had had to call a mental health team to Jodie's home on one occasion when she was hysterical.

"Jodie's husband says until he kicked her out six months ago he was aware she was in constant contact with them [Ron Bakir and Robin Tampoe] and witnessed it as recently as a few weeks ago," she said.

"I believe they are also probably manipulating her from behind the scenes. Ron knows she is a little mad and used to call her 'my crazy friend'."

She also said she had been photographed pulling marijuana out of a package and putting it into a bowl but it was a long time ago, when she was 17. She said she had not smoked the drug.


Called by her counsel, Stuart Littlemore QC this afternoon, she said she had received very short shrift from Channel Seven.

The main addressee of the email, Neil Mooney, said he no longer worked for Today Tonight and Craig McPherson told her to ring the following week. When she did, she was told he was out of the office.

Heather Moore, 52, who appeared as a witness for Seven today, told the court she was invited to a Queensland property in late 2003, where she had drinks and smoked marijuana with a group of people on the verandah of the house.

When asked who was part of the group Ms Moore said, "Mercedes and her husband and two others."

Ms Moore told the court she had seen marijuana drying in a shed at the property and that Ms Corby and her husband had visited the shed.

Under cross-examination, Ms Moore admitted to a $1500 a day heroin habit which she had fed by shoplifting, but said she had quit 32 years ago.

Schapelle Corby was jailed in Bali after being convicted of smuggling marijuana into Indonesia.

The defamation hearing continues.

- with AAP

[OMEN]

The woman locked in a cellar dungeon by her father for 24 years has reportedly told her family that she never wants to see his face again.

London's Daily Mail has reported that Elizabeth Fritzl - who was repeatedly raped and had seven children by her father - broke down when she saw her mother for the first time in nearly a quarter of a century and said: "I can't believe I'm free - is it really you?".

Rosemarie Fritzl, the mother of 42-year-old Elizabeth, had lived upstairs with her husband Joseph, unaware that her daughter was locked in the cellar below along with three of her children.

Another three children were taken to the surface by Joseph Fritzl, who told his wife that Elizabeth had run away to join a cult and had left the babies on their doorstep.

The Daily Mail reported that the one thing Elizabeth wanted more than anything was to feel raindrops on her skin.

"I can't believe I'm out. I didn't think I would ever see you again," Elizabeth reportedly told her mother.

"It's all too much for me. I don't ever want to see him again."

Elizabeth has also been reunited with the children taken away from her while she was living in the confined cellar, according to the report.

"My babies. You are so beautiful," Elisabeth reportedly said as she held them close and stroked their faces.

Elizabeth's sister Gabriele Helm, 36, speaking for the first time, told the UK's Sunday Mirror: "None of us can believe how normal Elisabeth seems. She is healthy and very chatty and doing very well.

"Every day she gets a bit stronger. I can't say what the family is going through. It's more than anyone can believe. It has devastated us.

"We are working together to support Elisabeth. She is overjoyed to see her children. She told them they were beautiful and she is spending all the time getting to know them."

Elizabeth's lawyer, Christoph Herbst, told the newspaper: "Elisabeth is very happy to be rediscovering the world. She is very keen to go outside and feel the rain on her skin. But it is important for them to adjust slowly.

"For now they just talk to each other. But Elisabeth and her children who lived in the cellar have no concept of time and of the future. Some people who hear the story think Elisabeth is like something from a horror film. But rumours that she has no teeth and cannot talk are not true.

"If you met her you would not realise what she has been through, as she seems just like every normal person.

"She tells her family that all she longs for is a normal life - or as normal a life as they can get. That's her only wish."

Mr Herbst told the paper one of Elizabeth's children was keeping the family's spirits up despite their ordeal.

"They are all happy and there is a lot of laughter, which you might not expect. Felix makes everyone laugh. They are teaching him to run because inside the cellar he could not run.

"It is really brilliant how Elisabeth has reacted to the outside world. They are all rather fine. Elisabeth is really an impressive person. She is very strong. She's happy now for the first time."

Prosecutor Gerhard Sedlacek was quoted as saying authorities were gathering evidence to charge Fritzl with murder in relation to a baby who he incinerated after it was born in the cellar.

Elizabeth was imprisoned in Amstetten, Austria, when she was just 18.

- smh.

[Edgehead82593]

I wouldn't want to see the bastard either if he locked me up for that long. I probably would have tried to kill him.

[JohnCenaFan28]

That was awful, natural disasters scare me a lot...

[JohnCenaFan28]

Thanks for the news.