Earthquakes, N. Korea, Terrorism, Pestilence: All In The News Headlines

Just another day of prophecy watching:

Has anyone else noticed the recent increase in quakes?

A quick glance at the monitor reveals the magnitude and frequency of recent quakes:

IRIS Seismic Monitor

The headlines:

Five Earthquakes Rattle Oklahoma, Nerves Tuesday Morning

OKLAHOMA CITY -

Several earthquakes shook central Oklahoma in the early morning hours of Tuesday, including one that hit while News 9 was on the air.

News 9 received hundreds of phone calls, emails, Facebook and Twitter messages soon after the first earthquake hit.

The first quake was reported around 1:45 a.m. about three miles west of Chandler. The United State Geological Survey says it had a magnitude of 3.0.

United States Geological Survey

Oklahoma Geological Survey

Fifteen minutes later, the strongest earthquake of the morning hit the Oklahoma City metro area. The 4.3 quake  was centered near Luther, 29 miles east and northeast of Oklahoma City. This earthquake awakened many residents and shook buildings from Oklahoma City to Stillwater.

The USGS reported a third quake at 2:15 a.m. near Boley, Oklahoma. This one had a magnitude of 2.8. One minute later, a fourth early-morning quake shook the area of Luther and Choctaw.   The USGS says this one had a magnitude of 3.3.

At 5:16 a.m., a fifth earthquake measuring 4.2 was recorded four miles east northeast of Luther. This one struck while News 9 Meteorologist Jed Castles was on the air sharing the forecast, but he was so focused Stan Miller and Bobbie Miller had to interrupt him and point out the lights in the studio were swinging because of the latest earthquake.

Very Strong Earthquake: New Guinea

USGS has calculated that some coastal settlements may experience a MMI VIII Severe shaking. These data are based on a M6.8 Magnitude at an extremely shallow depth of 8 km.

Normally a M6.8 is not strong enough to generate a tsunami but due to the location near the shoreline and eventual local circumstances, we call the conditions dangerous.

The MMI VIII shaking may also be a problem for concrete houses near the coast. PNG houses are often struck by very strong to massive earthquakes but mostly the earthquake data are more favorable.

Update 23:15 UTC
Pacific Tsunami Center message for the Pacific :

EVALUATION

NO DESTRUCTIVE WIDESPREAD TSUNAMI THREAT EXISTS BASED ON  HISTORICAL EARTHQUAKE AND TSUNAMI DATA.

HOWEVER – EARTHQUAKES OF THIS SIZE SOMETIMES GENERATE LOCAL  TSUNAMIS THAT CAN BE DESTRUCTIVE ALONG COASTS LOCATED WITHIN A HUNDRED KILOMETERS OF THE EARTHQUAKE EPICENTER. AUTHORITIES  IN THE REGION OF THE EPICENTER SHOULD BE AWARE OF THIS  POSSIBILITY AND TAKE APPROPRIATE ACTION.

A very strong earthquake struck near the shoreline of the road from Wewak to the the west.

Update 23:59 UTC : We expect that it will take a number of hours before we will get more information from PNG. It may however be quicker than normally as it was close to Aitape and especially Wewak, 2 populated areas interconnected with a coastal road.

Update 23:50 UTC : Earthquake-Report.com calls AITAPE (6000 inhabitants) at risk for potential damage and injuries.

Update 23:46 UTC : USGS did calculate the theoretical shaking impact at the most important cities near the epicenter :

VII  (very strong shaking)  Aitape    6000

Update: Massive Earthquake Below Iran/Pakistan Border Region

Update 21:33 UTC :

The United States offered to provide humanitarian assistance to the victims of the Tuesday’s massive earthquake that severely jolted parts of Pakistan’s Balochistan province bordering Iran. We offer our condolences to the families who lost loved ones during the earthquake,” a State Department spokesman said.

“The United States does stand ready to assist either Iran or Pakistan at this point,”  Patrick Ventrell said in response to a question at the daily briefing.

Update 21:15 UTC :

As you can see below, we have listed only 4 aftershocks of M3.5 or more since the mainshock. These were reported by the international agencies. Also the Iranian seismological agency has counted only 4 which is very few for such a massive earthquake.

Update 18:23 UTC :

The death toll in Pakistan has further increased to 34 according to Pakistan TV. 150 have been reported injured in Mashkeel Tehsil.

Over 1‚000 houses have been damaged in the area.

Also see:

Bird Flu Fears Mount In China As Herbal Remedies Run Out

Chinese authorities are struggling to identify the source and mode of transmission of the virus, which has sickened 77 people and killed 16 so far, most of them in China’s eastern provinces. While there is no evidence that H7N9 is spreading easily among people, it hasn’t been detected in humans before, so they have no natural immunity. That raises public health concerns, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta said last week.

Sinovac Biotech Ltd. (SVA), the first company to win regulatory approval for a swine flu shot in 2009, is preparing to make immunizations against the new virus, Chief Executive Officer Yin Weidong said in an interview Monday. The Nasdaq-traded company could have a first batch of the vaccine ready for commercial use by late July in the event of a pandemic, according to Yin.

North Korea Vows Blitz Attack On South Warning 'Retaliation Will Start Without Notice'

"The supreme command of the Korean People's Army Tuesday issued an ultimatum to the South Korean puppet group," Pyongyang's official news agency, KCNA, said.

Threatening that it would not give any advance notice before attacking South Korea, the North warned: "Our retaliatory action will start without any notice from now."

North Korea said it was responding to insults from the "puppet authorities" in the South, who yesterday held a rally against the North in Seoul.

Anti-North Korea protesters burnt effigies of past and present leaders of the secretive state while the North celebrated the 101st anniversary of its founder's birth.

Branding the rally a "monstrous criminal act," the North warned "all the service personnel and people of the DPRK are simmering with towering resentment" towards the South.

"Our retaliatory action will start without any notice from now as such thrice-cursed criminal act of hurting the dignity of the supreme leadership of the DPRK is being openly committed in the heart of Seoul under the patronage of the puppet authorities."

"The DPRK's revolutionary armed forces will start immediately their just military actions to show how the service personnel and people of the DPRK value and protect the dignity of the supreme leadership."

"The military demonstration of the DPRK's revolutionary armed forces will be powerful sledge-hammer blows at all hostile forces hurting the dignity of the supreme leadership of the DPRK."

Saudi Terror Cell, Possibly Al Qaeda, Behind Boston Marathon Bombings. Manhunt For Suspect

[I haven't seen this reported elsewhere (specifically), so take this with a grain of salt]

FBI Special Agent Richard Deslauriers told reporters Tuesday, April 16, that the probe had no leads 18 hours after two explosions blew up at the annual Boston Marathon’s finishing line, killing three people and injuring 176 – 17 critically. DEBKAfile’s counterterrorism sources can disclose however that the investigation has in fact homed in on a suspected terror cell of three Saudi nationals, very possibly tied to Al Qaeda.

The flat they share in the Revere, Massachusetts, near Boston, was searched after the questioning of one of the suspects, a Saudi student, who was hospitalized with badly burned hands. One of his flatmates was taken into custody over “visa problems.” A third is on the run. All three hail from a prominent Saudi family belonging to a tribe from the Asir province bordering on Yemen.

The search for the wanted man led to the grounding of a plane at Logan International Airport Tuesday.  The investigation has meanwhile broadened out to places in and outside Boston in a search for the cell’s accomplices.

The origins of the Saudi cell, if confirmed, strongly suggest that Al Qaeda of Arabia – AQAP –succeeded in planting a cell in the United States for the bombing attack in Boston – and possibly more than one in other parts of the US. Asir Province is known as a hotbed of resistance to the Saudi throne in Riyadh.

...a determined official effort is being made in Washington and London to present the Boston bombings as the work of a lone wolf.

However, experts experienced in these matters maintain that an attack on this scale and of this type would have required four or five bombers on the ground and a support team of about 10 spotters and accomplices familiar with the terrain, further back. They would have needed more than one vehicle and communications gear, in addition to mobile phones which are easily tracked.

The two explosions, 400 meters apart, were obviously coordinated and designed to cause maximum casualties. The ball-bearings scattered across the crime scene and found in the pockets of some of the casualties were familiar to Israelis and others and telling evidence of Middle East terrorist authorship.

The explosive device which caused such havoc and agony was small yet deadly – another pointer to the “professionalism” of the attackers. A similar device was discovered in time three years ago in a bomb-rigged car parked in Times Square New York and left there by the Pakistani student Faisal Shahzad.

Unlike the president, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Chairperson of the Senate Intelligence Committee, had no compunctions about putting into words the general suspicion. Straight after the event, she said, “My understanding is that it’s a terrorist incident” - although it is too soon to say whether it was carried out by a foreign or domestic element.

Suspicion of a foreign hand was strengthened when the US media reported that a Saudi national suffering from severe burns was being questioned in hospital. The Boston Police Department denied the report and the FBI, now in charge of the case, said that no one has so far been taken into custody. They did not deny questioning “persons of interest.”

The first response to the explosions in Boston from Middle East itself came from Mohammad al-Chalabi the head of an extremist Jordanian Muslim Salafi group, who said he's "happy to see the horror in America…American blood isn't more precious than Muslim blood," he said. "Let the Americans feel the pain we endured by their armies occupying Iraq and Afghanistan and killing our people there."

A Mideast counterterrorism official based in Jordan said the blasts "carry the hallmark of an organized terrorist group, like al-Qaeda."

National Guard forces were streaming Tuesday into Boston in long convoys of armored Humvees.

Boston residents are in for upsets from the massive security measures that will continue throughout the week, as the area of the bombings is declared a crime scene and kept under lockdown; law enforcement officials patrol the streets and carry out random bag checks; and transport services are delayed.

German State Raids Homes Of 200 Alleged Tax Cheats

German authorities launched dawn raids on the homes of over 200 suspected tax cheats Tuesday, acting on information gleaned from a CD containing the confidential account details of thousands of Swiss bank clients.

The top tax officials in the southwestern state of Rhineland-Palatinate said he expected to net some 500 million euros ($654 million) from the data, which German investigators bought for €4 million ($5.2 million) after deeming it "authentic and of excellent quality."

"This amount is testament to the high criminal energy used to hide capital gains," Carsten Kuehl, the state's finance minister, said in a statement.

Kuehl didn't say who had sold the CD containing the data or which Swiss banks were involved in the case.

But prosecutors in the western city of Koblenz said Tuesday they had opened an investigation against unknown employees of Credit Suisse AG and its subsidiaries Clariden Leu AG and Neue Aargauer Bank. The probe focuses on whether the bank employees helped clients evade taxes and was sparked by the contents of the CD, said prosecutors.

Credit Suisse said it was unaware of the existence of a "tax CD" or a legal investigation against its staff.

Spokesman Marc Dosch said the bank has been warning its German customers for some time to resolve any outstanding tax issues.