Chile's M8.2 quake not 'the big one'

Getty Images: Aldo Solimano, AFP

A man stands among sunken fishing boats April 2, 2014, at the Riquelme Cove, in Iquique, northern Chile, after a powerful 8.2-magnitude earthquake hit off Chile's Pacific coast. The quake killed at least six people and generated tsunami waves that may ripple as far as Indonesia.

IQUIQUE, Chile (AP) — Authorities in northern Chile discovered surprisingly light damage and just six reported deaths Wednesday from a magnitude-8.2 quake — a remarkably low toll for such a powerful shift in the Earth's crust.

President Michelle Bachelet declared a state of emergency and was reviewing the damage in Iquique, a northern coastal city of nearly 200,000 people near where the quake struck in the Pacific Ocean. A planeload of 100 anti-riot police was deployed along with 300 soldiers to prevent looting and round up escaped prisoners.

Photos: Chile earthquake triggers tsunami alerts

Thousands of people evacuated from low-lying areas were returning home after a spending a long night outside due to the threat of a tsunami. The government's mandatory order to leave the coast was spread through cellphone text messages and Twitter, and reinforced by blaring sirens in neighborhoods where people regularly practice earthquake drills.

The tsunami lifted fishing boats onto city streets and sunk others in the port of Iquique, but no other major damage from the sea was apparent. Chile's entire coast was initially subject to the mandatory evacuation order, which lasted nearly 10 hours in coastal communitiesclosest to the offshore epicenter.

The shaking that began at 8:46 p.m. Tuesday also touched off landslides that blocked roads, knocked out power for thousands, damaged an airport and started fires that destroyed several businesses. Some homes made of adobe were destroyed in Arica, another city close to the quake's offshore epicenter.

Shaky cellphone videos taken by people eating dinner show light fixtures swaying, furniture shaking and people running to safety, pulling their children under restaurant tables, running for the exits and shouting to turn off natural gas connections.

Reuters: Stringer

People are evacuated from their shelter after a tsunami alarm at Antofagasta city, north of Santiago on the southern Pacific coast, April 1, 2014.

Mining in Chile, which is the world's top copper producing nation, was not affected, althoughworld prices for the red metal jumped as the quake raised supply concerns because most of the Chilean mining industry is in the northern regions.

About 300 inmates escaped from a women's prison in the city of Iquique, forcing the closure of the border with Peru. Several dozen were quickly captured, officials said.

Bachelet, who just returned to the presidency three weeks ago, waited five hours after the quake struck to address her nation. It was not lost on many Chileans that the last time she presided over a major quake, days before the end of her 2006-10 term, her emergency preparedness office prematurely waved off a tsunami danger. Most of the 500 dead from that magnitude-8.8 tremor survived the shaking, only to be caught in killer waves in a disaster that destroyed 220,000 homes and washed away large parts of many coastal communities.

"The country has done a good job of confronting the emergency. I call on everyone to stay calm and follow the authorities' instructions," Bachelet tweeted after Tuesday night's temblor.

Reuters: Cristian Vivero

A military convoy travels along a road after a tsunami alarm at Iquique city, north of Santiago on the southern Pacific coast, April 1, 2014.

She put her interior minister in direct charge of coordinating the emergency response, and announced that schools would be suspended in evacuated areas while authorities assessed the damage.

The only U.S. impact might be higher waves Wednesday for Hawaii's swimmers and surfers, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii said.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the temblor was centered in the Pacific Ocean 61 miles (99 kilometers) northwest from coastal Iquique. More than 20 significant aftershocks followed, including one of magnitude 6.2.

The quake was so strong that the shaking experienced in Bolivia's capital about 290 miles (470 kilometers) away was the equivalent of a magnitude-4.5 tremor, authorities there said.

But Tuesday night's quake was not the big one seismologists expect eventually.

Powerful Chile Earthquake Shakes Coast

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"Could be tomorrow, could be in 50 years; we do not know when it's going to occur. But the key point here is that this magnitude-8.2 is not the large earthquake that we were expecting for this area. We're actually still expecting potentially an even larger earthquake," said Mark Simons, a geophysicist at the California Institute of Technology.

Chile is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries because just off the coast, the Nazca tectonic plate plunges beneath the South American plate, pushing the towering Andes cordillera to ever-higher altitudes. Nowhere along this fault is the pressure greater than in far northern Chile, an area known as the "Iquique seismic gap".

The USGS says the seismic gap last saw a major quake in 1877, when a magnitude-8.8 quake unleashed a tsunami that caused major damage along the Chile-Peru coast and fatalities as far away as Hawaii and Japan. Another quake of similar force hit just north of the area in 1868.

AP: Cristian Viveros

A fire burns at a restaurant after an earthquake in Iquique, Chile, April 1, 2014. A powerful magnitude-8.2 earthquake struck off Chile's northern coast Tuesday night.

"This is the one remaining gap that hasn't had an earthquake in the last 140 years," said Simons. "We know these two plates come together at about 6, 7 centimeters a year, and if you multiply that by 140 years then the plates should have moved about 11 meters along the fault, and you can make an estimate of the size of earthquake we expect here."

The latest activity began with a strong magnitude-6.7 quake on March 16 that caused more than 100,000 people to briefly evacuate low-lying areas. Hundreds of smaller quakes followed in the weeks since, keeping people on edge.

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Luis Andres Henao reported from Santiago. Also contributing to this report were Eva Vergara in Santiago, Michael Warren in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Frank Bajak in Lima, Peru.

Suicide bomber kills six police at Afghan ministry ahead of vote

Afghan policemen secure the site at the main checkpoint leading to the Interior Ministry, after a suicide bomb blast in Kabul.

KABUL, April 2 (Reuters) - A Taliban suicide bomber blew himself outside Afghanistan's interior ministry in central Kabul on Wednesday, killing himself and at least six policemen, the latest in a string of attacks ahead of Afghanistan's April 5 presidential election.

Taliban insurgents also killed nine civilians including a provincial council candidate in northern Afghanistan, local officials said.

The Islamist Taliban have promised to do everything in their power to disrupt the April 5 vote when Afghans elect a successor to the incumbent president, Hamid Karzai, who is barred by the constitution from running again.

The Kabul attack came on the last day of campaigning for an election that is intended to mark the first democratic transfer of power in Afghanistan's history.

"A suicide bomber wearing a military uniform ... detonated his explosives at the main gate of the interior ministry," the ministry said in a statement.

"As soon as the bomber saw some policemen he detonated his explosives. It was impossible for him to enter the facility with the suicide vest," a ministry spokesman added.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in an e-mail, saying the bomber had penetrated a third ring of security at the ministry before setting off the blast.

The Taliban have stepped up the pace of attacks in the run-up to the vote, targeting those organising the election and foreigners, but campaign rallies have been largely undisturbed.

In the northern province of Sar-e-Pul, militants shot dead nine people, including provincial council candidate Hussain Nazari, after kidnapping them two days ago, officials said.

"They were travelling from Balkhab district to central Sar-e-Pul to attend a campaign two days ago but the Taliban kidnapped them," Abdul Jabar Haqbeen, governor of Sar-e-Pul, told Reuters.

"Last night our security forces found nine dead bodies separately in areas between Balkhab and Sar-e-Pul. All were shot by the Taliban. One person was found seriously wounded."

Global powers are closely watching the election which comes at a crucial time in Afghanistan as most foreign troops prepare to pull out.

In a separate statement, the Taliban warned voters against participating in what they described as a "fake election process".

"The Islamic Emirates announces one last time that all elements of the fake elections will be under our Mujahideen attack," they said in a statement.

"Every official and every voting centre will be in danger and a surge of attacks will start all over the country."

(Reporting by Mirwais Harooni in Kabul and Bashir Ansari in Mazar-I-Sharif; Writing by John Chalmers; Editing by Nick Macfie and Simon Cameron-Moore)

Suicide bomber kills six police at Afghan ministry ahead of voteReuters: Ahmad Masood
An Afghan policeman takes up a position at the main checkpoint leading to the Interior Ministry, after a suicide bomb blast in Kabul April 2, 2014. The suicide bomber blew himself up outside the Afghan interior ministry building in the centre of Kabul on Wednesday, wounding several police officers, the ministry said in a statement.

Poll: US marijuana legalization inevitable

Grower Steve Jenkins checks out his marijuana plants at the Botanacare marijuana store in Northglenn, Colo., on Dec. 31, 2013.

DENVER (AP) — Marijuana legalization in the U.S. seems inevitable to three-fourths of Americans, whether they support it or not, according to a new poll out Wednesday.

The Pew Research Center survey on the nation's shifting attitudes about drug policy also showed increased support for moving away from mandatory sentences for non-violent drug offenders.

The telephone survey found that 75 percent of respondents — including majorities of both supporters and opponents of legal marijuana— think that the sale and use of pot eventually will be legal nationwide. It was the first time that question had been asked.
Some 39 percent of respondents said pot should be legal for personal adult use. Forty-four percent of those surveyed said it should be legal only for medicinal use. Just 16 percent said it should not be legal at all.
The responses come as two states have legalized recreational marijuana, with more than 20 states and Washington D.C. allowing some medical use of the drug.
"It's just a matter of time before it's in more states," said Steve Pratley of Denver, a 51-year-old pipefitter who voted for legalization in Colorado in 2012.
Pratley, who did not participate in the Pew survey, agreed with 76 percent of respondents who said people who use small amounts of marijuana shouldn't go to jail.
"If marijuana isn't legalized, it fills up the jails, and that's just stupid," Pratley said.
Legalization opponents, however, drew a distinction between making pot legal for all and thinking that pot users belong in jail.
"It's an illegal drug, period. I don't see it spreading," said Laura Sanchez, a 55-year-old retiree in Denver who voted against legalization. She agreed that pot smokers don't belong in jail, but she disagreed with legalization.
"I've seen no proof that it's good for anybody," said Sanchez, who also did not participate in the survey.
The poll suggested that despite shifting attitudes on legalization, the public remains concerned about drug abuse, with 32 percent of those surveyed calling it a crisis and 55 percent of respondents viewing it as a serious national problem.
And a narrow majority, 54 percent, said that marijuana legalization would lead to more underage people trying it.
As for mandatory minimum sentences, public attitudes have been shifting for years.
In 2001, the survey was about evenly divided on whether it was a good thing or bad thing for states to move away from mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenders. In 2014, poll respondents favored the move by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, or 63 percent to 32 percent. The other 5 percent either didn't respond or said they didn't know.
Public officials are well aware of the public's shifting attitudes on drug penalties.
Just last month, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder testified in support of proposed sentence reductions for some non-violent drug traffickers in an effort to reserve the "the harshest penalties for the most serious drug offenders."
"Certain types of cases result in too many Americans going to prison for too long, and at times for no truly good public safety reason," Holder said last month at the U.S. Sentencing Commission.
Drug legalization activists said the Pew results come as no surprise.
"We see a growing bipartisan recognition that mandatory minimums went too far and did more harm than good," said Ethan Nadelmann, head of the Washington-based Drug Policy Alliance, which opposes criminal penalties for non-violent drug users.
Marijuana legalization opponents saw signs of hope in the survey, too.
Kevin Sabet, co-founder of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, which opposes pot legalization, pointed to the fact that 63 percent said it would bother them if people used marijuana openly in their neighborhood.
"Saying that we don't want people to serve prison time for marijuana is very different from saying I want a pot shop in my neighborhood selling cookies and candies and putting coupons in the paper," Sabet said.
The poll of 1,821 adults was conducted Feb. 14-23. The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.6 percentage points.