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By ALICIA CHANG

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The huge earthquake that struck off the coast of Chile belongs to an “elite class” of mega earthquakes, experts said, and is similar to the 2004 Indian Ocean temblor that triggered deadly tsunami waves.

The magnitude-8.8 quake was a type called a “megathrust,” considered the most powerful earthquake on the planet. Megathrusts occur when one tectonic plate dives beneath another. Saturday’s tremor unleashed about 50 gigatons of energy and broke about 340 miles of the fault zone, according to the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Earthquake Information Center.

The quake′s epicenter was offshore and occurred about 140 miles north of the largest earthquake ever recorded - a magnitude-9.5 that killed about 1,600 people in Chile and scores of others in the Pacific in 1960.

“It′s part of an elite class of giant earthquakes,” said USGS geologist Brian Atwater.

If the magnitude holds, it will tie with the 1906 offshore Ecuador quake as the fifth largest since 1900.

“We call them great earthquakes. Everybody else calls them horrible,” said USGS geophysicist Ken Hudnut. “There′s only a few in this league.”

The Chile quake was smaller than the Sumatra quake of 2004, a magnitude-9.1 and was not expected to be anything nearly as destructive. That quake and ensuing tsunami killed 230,000 people. Another difference is that the Chile quake triggered tsunami warnings hours ahead of time in Hawaii and Pacific islands, allowing people time to flee to higher ground.

In 2004, there was little measuring technology in place to warn Indian Ocean countries about incoming killer waves.

More than 100 aftershocks measuring magnitude-5 or larger rattled Chile throughout the day. So far, the quake death toll has surpassed 300 - a number that will likely rise. Several more died when tsunami waves swamped an island off the country′s coast.

Chile is no stranger to violent jolts. In fact, USGS geophysicist Ross Stein called the country an “earthquake hatchery.” Thirteen temblors of magnitude 7 or larger have hit Chile since 1973.

The latest quake took place at a boundary where two plates of the Earth’s crust grind and dive. While that type of action gave rise to the Andes mountains that form the backbone of South America, it′s also the source of some of the largest quakes.

The Chile temblor struck a day after a smaller earthquake shook the southern coast of Japan. Experts said the quakes appear to be unrelated.

There′s also no connection between this quake and the disaster in Haiti, said University of Miami geology professor Tim Dixon.

A quake like the one that hit Haiti, a magnitude 7, happens somewhere in the world about every month, usually underwater. But the type that hit Chile is among the most powerful recorded in recent history.

The faults in Haiti and Chile are distant enough that stress from one would not affect the other, Dixon said.

By ROBERT F. WORTH

BEIRUT, Lebanon — The Dubai police released the names of 15 more suspects on Wednesday in the killing of a senior Hamas operative in a Dubai hotel room last month, expanding the range of an investigation that has already fostered diplomatic tensions between several European countries and Israel, whose intelligence service is widely suspected of planning the assassination.

The new suspects carried Irish, British, French and Australian passports, and they bring the size of the assassination team to 26, including six women, police officials in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, said in a written statement. The roles of the suspects included “preparations and helping to facilitate” the Jan. 19 killing of the Hamas official, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, the statement said.

At least 7 of the 11 suspects the Dubai police identified earlier this month carried what appeared to be expertly copied European passports bearing the names of people living in Israel. Several of the new suspects were similarly identified by names belonging to people living in Israel and carrying foreign passports, according to a report Wednesday evening on Israel』s Channel Two News. One — Gabriella Barney — is believed to be the daughter of a man identified in the first group of suspects.

The initial identifications drew sharp questions from British, Irish and German diplomats about how the fraudulent passports came to be, as well as statements of concern from the European Union. They also reinforced suspicions about the involvement of the Israeli secret service, Mossad. Dubai』s police chief, Dahi Khalfan al-Tamim, was quoted in the Emirati news media last week as saying that he was 「99 percent, if not 100 percent」 sure that Mossad was behind the killing.

Israel has declined to comment on the accusations, as is its custom with claims related to the Mossad.

The Dubai police statement issued Wednesday included a striking detail: two of the new suspects, identified as Nicole Sandra McCabe and Adam Marcus Korman and carrying Australian passports, left Dubai on a ship bound for Iran. All the others traveled by plane to European and Asian countries, according to the statement. The statement included no further information about the two suspects or why they would have gone to Iran.

The police had stated previously that the suspects obtained credit cards issued by an American bank using their passports, and then used them to buy plane tickets and other items related to the assassination. On Wednesday, the police statement identified the bank as MetaBank, and added that 14 of the suspects had used credit cards issued by the bank.

All 26 suspects appear to have traveled on passports from countries that do not need prior visas to travel to the United Arab Emirates, and do not need travelers to go through eye scans or provide other biometric data required of some nationalities. Emirati officials said this week that they might revise their visa guidelines.

The Dubai police have made public extensive video surveillance showing the suspects tracking Mr. Mabhouh at the airport and at his hotel, sometimes even donning wigs and posing as tennis-playing tourists, rackets in hand, as they followed Mr. Mabhouh.

In all, the team suspected of carrying out the assassination now includes 12 traveling on British passports; 6 on Irish passports; 4 on French passports; 3 on Australian passports; and 1 on a German passport.

Two Palestinians have also been arrested in connection with the killing, but their role in it is not clear.

Mr. Mabhouh had a role in the 1989 abduction and killing of two Israeli soldiers, and he was also involved in smuggling weapons into Gaza, Israel and Hamas have said. Israel officials say the weapons came from Iran.

By Sayed Salahuddin and Hamid Shalizi

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - The number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan has reached 1,000, an independent website said on Tuesday, with deadly bombings in the south and east highlighting the struggle to stabilize the country.

Civilian and military casualties hit record highs last year as violence reached its worst levels since the Taliban were ousted in late 2001, with foreign forces launching two big offensives in the past eight months to stem a growing insurgency.

A website which tracks casualties, www.icasualties.org, said 54 U.S. troops have been killed in Afghanistan this year, raising the total to 1,000 since the Taliban’s fall. This compares with eight this year in Iraq, where 4,378 have been killed since 2003.

Afghanistan is high on U.S. President Barack Obama’s foreign policy agenda and more American casualties or a military campaign that fails to bring stability to the country in an increasingly unpopular war could harm his presidency.

Also on Tuesday, Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s office said he had signed into law changes that remove foreign observers from the electoral watchdog tasked with reviewing voting fraud.

That could put Karzai in conflict with Western donors who have said they will not fund September 18 parliamentary elections without electoral reforms, following a 2009 presidential poll beset by massive fraud.

“The Afghan government for long has wanted to ‘Afghanize’ the electoral process and 10 days ago, the cabinet ratified the amendment and the president endorsed it,” Karzai spokesman Siamak Herawi said.

Free and fair elections are part of a Western strategy to stabilize the nation, alongside military plans to push the Taliban out of its strongholds and give control of them to the Afghan government.

BLAST KILLS CIVILIANS

The Islamist militants have made a comeback, operating out of strongholds in the south into the east and north, and are resisting efforts by President Hamid Karzai’s government to impose control.

The second of the offensives, Operation Mushtarak, was launched by NATO-led troops 10 days ago to flush militants out of the Marjah district of Helmand, where they had set up their last big stronghold in Afghanistan’s most violent province.

Western forces say they have broken the Taliban’s grip and only face pockets of resistance, some of it fierce, in Marjah.

But violence is continuing. A bomb that killed at least seven civilians and wounded 14 near a government building in Helmand’s capital, Lashkar Gah, underscored the vast security challenges facing NATO and Karzai’s U.S.-backed government.

“The blast was caused by explosives attached to a bicycle and was controlled remotely,” said Dawud Ahmadi, spokesman for Helmand’s provincial government.

Karzai condemned three separate bombings in the past 24 hours, including a suicide attack which killed 16 people in eastern Nangahar province. Ghulam Ghamsharik, a former commander in the war against Soviet occupation troops, and a provincial refugee ministry official were among those killed.

The latest Helmand operation is an early test of Obama’s plan to add 30,000 troops to win control of Taliban bastions and hand them over to Afghan authorities before the start of a gradual U.S. troop withdrawal in 2011.

In an example of the Taliban’s tenacity, U.S. Marines who pushed 5 km (3 miles) east of Marjah said they were engaged in a firefight lasting more than eight hours on Monday as they picked their way through rudimentary fortifications.

They called in two strikes by Cobra attack helicopters, which fired Hellfire missiles on dug-in insurgents.

“The clearance went quicker than expected, even though the resistance was more than anticipated,” Marine Lieutenant Mark Greenlief told Reuters on Tuesday.

Greenlief said “a lot” of militants were killed but would not say exactly how many. He said Monday’s patrol uncovered “multiple” roadside bombs, weapons caches and enemy fighting positions. “We enveloped the insurgents,” he said.

Marjah is a prime example of the challenge facing U.S. troops and their NATO allies. The operation’s success hinges on whether they can keep Taliban fighters from re-capturing the area and make sure Afghan forces can secure the area on their own.

By The Associated Press

FUNCHAL, Portugal (AP) — Rescue workers dug through heaps of mud, boulders and debris on Sunday on the Portuguese island of Madeira, searching for victims buried by flash floods and mudslides that had already killed at least 42 people in the popular tourist area.

More than 120 others were injured and an unknown number were missing, possibly swept away or smothered, the authorities said, adding that the death toll could still rise. About 250 people were forced to flee their homes and go to shelters.

The storm was the worst to hit Madeira, an island in the Atlantic off northwest Africa, since 1993. It lashed the capital, Funchal, on Saturday and turned some streets into raging torrents of liquid brown mud, water and debris.

“We heard a very loud noise, like rolling thunder,” said Simon Burgbage of Britain. “The ground shook, and then we realized it was water coming down.”

The flash floods were so powerful they carved paths down mountains and through the city, churning under bridges and even tearing some down. Residents had to cling to railings to avoid being swept away. Cars were consumed by the force of the water, and the streets were littered with the battered shells of overturned vehicles that had been swept downstream.

“It was horrible,” said Andreas Hoisser, a German tourist. “There were cars on rooftops, there were vans and trucks that had fallen and been totally crushed.”

The water swept even a heavy fire truck downstream, slamming it into a tree.

The death toll “will likely increase, given the circumstances of this flood,” said Francisco Ramos, a regional social services spokesman. He added that there were still “great difficulties” with communications on the island because phone lines had been ripped out by the deluge.

Firefighters used pumping equipment to try to drain an underground parking garage at a downtown department store close to where the flooding was heaviest. The local authorities feared that shoppers might have been trapped below ground.

Feb. 21 - Amateur video shows extent of damage as floods and mudslides engulf Madeira over the weekend.

“The store is totally destroyed, damaged, full of slurry,” said the owner, João Andrade.

A medical team backed up by divers and rescue experts arrived Sunday on Madeira, the main island in an archipelago of the same name about 550 miles southwest of Lisbon. The plane was also carrying telecommunications equipment.

By ROBERT MACKEY

Updated | 4:16 p.m. On Thursday morning, as my colleague Sewell Chan reports, authorities in Texas said that a 53-year-old man named Joseph A. Stack III crashed a small plane into an office building in Austin that houses offices of the Internal Revenue Service. The pilot was killed and at least two people were injured.

Soon after the crash, Jeff Lake, a user of the photo-sharing Web site TwitPic, uploaded several images of the burning building, including the one embedded above.

Another witness in Austin, Kain Shin, who works nearby, uploaded video of the building in flames to Facebook and wrote: “We heard and felt a giant thud and went out to see what it was. There is a plane sized hole in the side of the building down the block from us.”

KVUE, an Austin television station, broadcast this raw video of the fire:

That was just one of two fires connected to Mr. Stack on Thursday. The Austin-American Statesman’s Blotter blog reported that “A federal official confirmed for the Statesman that the tail number of the Piper Cherokee plane is registered to a plane owned by Joseph Andrew Stack, the private plane pilot whose nearby home was on fire at roughly the same time.”

By Pat Jackson

AUSTIN, Feb 18 (Reuters) - An apparently disgruntled man crashed a small plane into a federal building housing U.S. tax offices in Austin, Texas on Thursday in what local officials said was likely a deliberate attack.

Two people were taken to the hospital after the crash that set ablaze the seven-story building, Austin fire officials said. The pilot, identified by law enforcement sources as Joseph Andrew Stack, was found dead.

The incident renewed fears of domestic terrorism and gaps in security for private aircraft. The White House said it had no reason to believe there was a link to foreign terrorism and that President Barack Obama was briefed on the situation.

It was probably “a deliberate attack by one individual acting alone,” Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo said, downplaying the threat of more attacks.

U.S. Representative Michael McCaul of Texas called it “a deliberate and intentional attack against a federal building.”

A rambling note posted on the Internet and signed “Joe Stack” spelled out problems he had with the Internal Revenue Service tax agency. A law enforcement source said authorities were investigating the note.

“Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let’s try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well,” the note said. It was not possible to independently determine the authenticity of the note, dated Feb. 18, or its authorship.

In the note, Stack complained that he ran afoul of U.S. tax laws when he failed to file a return after not earning any income one year. He also said in the note that he had trouble resolving some undocumented income.

CNN reported the pilot had set his own house in Austin on fire before taking off in the plane and crashing it into the building at about 10 a.m. CST (1600 GMT). The authorities were also investigating that report, the law enforcement source said.

The plane, identified by the Federal Aviation Administration as a single-engine Piper Cherokee, took off from the airport in nearby Georgetown and was flying under rules that did not require the pilot to maintain contact with air controllers.

SUICIDE NOTE

A Piper aircraft was registered to Joseph Stack under a Lincoln, California, address, according to the FAA’s registry. In the note, Joe Stack said he had moved to Austin from California.

The damaged building housed IRS offices with about 190 employees, including the criminal investigation division as well as auditors and tax collectors, according to agency officials. It sits across the street from an FBI office.

As a precaution, two F-16 fighter aircraft were scrambled after the crash and patrolled above the Texas state capital, according to North American Aerospace Defense Command which is responsible for guarding U.S. airspace.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, whose department includes the IRS, expressed concerns about the incident during an appearance in North Carolina. “We are closely monitoring the situation,” he said, adding the crash “is of deep concern to me.”

The attack is not the first on the IRS, which periodically draws the wrath of taxpayers.

The crash and burned out building also brought back memories of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in which hijackers crashed commercial jetliners into the World Trade Center twin towers in New York and the Pentagon outside Washington.

“It’s something that has exposed a weakness we’ve seen since 9-11 — airplanes can fly into buildings,” McCaul said.

In a separate incident on Thursday, a United Airlines flight from Denver to San Francisco was diverted to Salt Lake City because of a threatening note found aboard, according to local airport officials. The passengers, luggage and plane were were rechecked and the flight was cleared to continue.

By Michael Georgy

KABUL (Reuters) - Three U.S. soldiers died after a roadside bomb attack in southern Afghanistan on Saturday, NATO said in a statement.

No details were given. U.S.-led troops launched a NATO offensive on Saturday in the Taliban′s last major stronghold in Helmand, Afghanistan′s most violent province. It was not clear whether the three were killed in that campaign.

9/11 Photos Obtained by ABC News: World Trade Center Terror

搭載中國第三顆北斗導航衛星的「長征三號丙」火箭助推器，前天在西昌發射。

搭載中國第3顆北斗導航衛星的「長征三號丙」火箭助推器，前天順利墜落預定地點貴州省仁懷市，官方事先疏散4個鄉鎮共10萬居民，落地時除撞出一個大洞外，並沒有造成人員傷亡。

搭載北斗衛星升空

新華社報導，載有北斗導航衛星的「長征三號丙」火箭，前天凌晨在西昌衛星發射中心升空7分鐘後，火箭助推器順利分離，墜落貴州省仁懷市的九倉鎮山區。
村民劉運金目睹殘骸墜落的過程，他指出，火箭助推器殘骸是個白色圓筒，長約10公尺，直徑約2公尺，墜地時的高熱讓直徑60公尺內的草木焚燬，巨大的衝擊力在地面上砸出大洞，所幸沒有造成人員和財產損失。
報導指出，當地16日晚上就出動2000多名警力和醫療人員，疏散九倉鎮等4鄉鎮共10多萬居民。目前當地已嚴加保護殘骸，等待回收。
中國的北斗衛星導航系統（Compass，中文音譯名Beidou）計劃，預計發射5顆靜止軌道衛星和30顆非靜止軌道衛星，建成覆蓋全球的北斗衛星導航系統。先前已成功發射兩顆衛星，最新發射的為靜止軌道衛星。

提供亞太導航服務

按照計劃，北斗衛星導航系統於2012年首先提供覆蓋亞太地區導航和通訊服務，約2020年可覆蓋全球，屆時中國將成為全球第3個擁有自主衛星導航系統的國家。

日環食於台灣時間昨下午1時14分開始，從中非查德南部開始，向東越過烏干達、肯亞、索馬利亞，經馬爾地夫群島、印度南部、斯里蘭卡北部和緬甸，最後在中國山東結束。環食帶寬約307到362公里，全長1萬2900公里。

鸕鶿伴日昨天下午5時許日偏食、夕陽共存，與金門歸巢的鸕鶿相映成一幅美麗畫面。董森堡攝

破紀錄得等3043年

美國航太總署表示，此次日環食長達11分8秒，想超越此紀錄，要等到3043年12月23日。最佳觀賞地點是馬爾地夫西方海面，可看到最完整日環食。
台北天文館指，日環食是因發生日食時月球離地球較遠，當月球擋在太陽正前方，也無法完全遮蔽太陽，會在周圍留下一圈黃金戒指般的太陽。
日環食帶於下午4時37分從雲南省瑞麗進入中國，經雲南省中部、四川省南部、貴州省北部、湖北省、河南省等地，下午4時59分在山東半島結束，有11個省市看得到，超過1億人可觀看。
台北天文館指，這是台灣今年唯一可見的一場日食，從下午3時42分初虧（日食開始），日偏食缺角最大的食甚發生在下午4時57分，當時太陽右側有54.8%的面積被月球所遮掩，由於下午5時26分就落日，無法見到復圓。
昨有上百民眾湧入天文館，以日食眼鏡和望遠鏡投影觀看日偏食。上班族曾小姐說：「傍晚偶然看辦公室窗外，竟然就直接看到太陽缺角，實在是很神奇，全辦公室的人都跑到窗邊拍照。」中央氣象局天文站技士鄭振豐說，由於日食時間發生在日落前，夕陽受到大氣層減光作用，民眾可直視太陽被遮掉一半。

印度藍美斯瓦藍市昨可見完整日環食過程，月亮緩緩遮住太陽，最後太陽只見環狀光芒。

日偏食與101大樓昨在黃昏時刻共構美景

日偏食與101大樓昨在黃昏時刻共構美景。方萬民攝