Strong quake rattles northern Japan, dozens injure

Thursday 24 July, 2008: A strong earthquake jolted northern Japan early on Thursday, injuring at least 76 people, trapping hundreds in halted trains and temporarily cutting off electric power to thousands of homes.

The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said there was no threat of a tsunami from the quake, which struck at 00:26 (4:26 p.m. British time Wednesday) and had a preliminary magnitude of 6.8 and could be felt as far away as Tokyo.

A National Police Agency official said that 76 people were confirmed injured, including nine seriously. Many were hurt in falls or suffered cuts from broken glass.

Public broadcaster NHK put the injured toll at 103.

The focus of the quake was 108 km (67 miles) below the surface of the earth in Iwate prefecture, a mountainous, sparsely populated region.

The JMA initially put the focus at a depth of 120 km.

"I woke up immediately. It felt like it was shaking for a long time. Books and other things that were piled up fell on the floor. All the doors were open and things were shattered," Sho Koseki, a city official in Hachinohe, about 550 km northeast of Tokyo, said.

Koseki said that troops had arrived in the area to assist, and the Defence Agency said that military planes were flying over the area to assess the extent of the damage.

Zimbabwe crisis talks to begin

Pretoria, July 24: Talks were to begin in earnest on resolving Zimbabwe's political crisis on Thursday after President Robert Mugabe gave his top lieutenants the final go-ahead to negotiate power-sharing with the opposition.

Sources in the opposition Movement for Democratic Change and the governing ZANU-PF parties confirmed their top negotiators had finally flown out of Harare and would now sit down together at a secret venue in the South African capital Pretoria, two days after the initial scheduled start.

"The talks will definitely begin today at an undisclosed location," said a senior South African-based MDC official.

"Tendai Biti (the party's chief negotiator) is around. He is with us and he will participate in the talks."

Meanwhile a report in Zimbabwe's state-run newspaper said that Biti had caught the same Johannesburg-bound flight on Wednesday evening with ZANU-PF's negotiators after Mugabe chaired a meeting of the party's politburo.

The government mouthpiece said the politburo had discussed a memorandum of understanding signed by Mugabe and MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai on Monday which laid out a framework for their talks which should be wrapped within two weeks.

"We met as the politburo to be briefed of the signing of the MoU and chart the way forward. The issues that came up were whether we accept that our people should continue in these negotiations," said ZANU-PF's deputy secretary for information and publicity Ephraim Masawi.

"We gave Comrade Chinamasa and Comrade Goche the green light for them to go ahead with the negotiations within the parameters signed by the principals."