A magnitude-7.8 earthquake struck off Vanuatu in the Pacific Ocean, triggering a tsunami warning for nations including Australia and New Zealand and prompting authorities to evacuate people in some coastal areas to higher ground before the alert was lifted.

Earthquakes

“For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.”
—Mat 24:7

Distress of Nations

……”the sea and the waves roaring;”
Luke 21:25b

The temblor hit at 9:03 a.m. local time today at a depth of 35 kilometers (22 miles), about 295 kilometers north-northwest of Vanuatu, the U.S. Geological Survey said. It earlier measured the quake at magnitude 8.1 and said at least three aftershocks hit the region.

The tsunami alert was canceled at 11:21 a.m. Sydney time, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said, while advising that local authorities may continue to issue advisories.

The alert came nine days after a tsunami spawned by a magnitude-8.0 earthquake killed 137 people, injured 310 and left six still missing in Samoa, according to the United Nations.

On Fiji’s main island of Viti Levu today, tourists were advised to seek refuge on a hill about 100 meters above sea level, where visitors and locals gathered to await a possible tsunami wave.

“A few people are a bit concerned and trying to telephone their parents at home,” tourist Jarred Penley, 23, who was checking out of the Mango Bay resort when he was told to evacuate, said by mobile phone from the hill.

The warning covered countries including Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, Samoa, American Samoa, Tonga and Australia. There were no immediate reports of damage or casualties.

Coast Line

New Zealand authorities said any wave was unlikely to be destructive along the country’s coast line.

A tsunami watch for Australia’s Queensland state was canceled after no threatening waves were observed, the country’s Bureau of Meteorology said.

Residents in Vanuatu, including the capital, Port Vila, raced to higher ground after the alert, Agence France-Presse reported. Authorities in New Caledonia evacuated schools and ordered people away from the coast, the news agency said.

Vanuatu is a group of 83 islands in the southwestern Pacific to the northeast of New Caledonia and northwest of Fiji. It has an international offshore financial center and is a tourist destination about 2 1/2 flying hours from Brisbane, Australia.

Vanuatu is in a zone where the Pacific and Indo-Australian plates meet. These tectonic plates constantly shift, sometimes causing earthquakes that can trigger tsunamis. Earthquakes of magnitude 5 or more can cause considerable damage, depending on their depth.

Distress of Nations

“And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity the sea and the waves roaring;”
—Luke 21:25

Perilous Times

“But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse,deceiving, and being deceived”
—2Timothy 3:13

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the draft encourages countries to be vigilant in their dealings with Iran to prevent the illegal transfer of nuclear material, but “does not foresee any harsh sanctions.”
“It calls for countries to be vigilant while maintaining trade and economic and transport and other ties with Iran so that they are not used for the transfer of forbidden nuclear material,” he said at a news conference a day after the draft was approved by the five permanent U.N. Security Council members and Germany.
These terms “will be enforced until the International Atomic Energy Agency’s concerns are resolved,” Lavrov said, referring to the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dismissed new sanctions as irrelevant.
“From our point of view, the issue is over. The issuance of a new resolution won’t have any impact on the behavior of the Iranian nation,” Iran’s official news agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.
Iran has condemned as illegal two previous resolutions that ordered a ban on the supply of specified materials and technology that could contribute to Iran’s nuclear and missile programs. Those sanctions also imposed an asset freeze on key Iranian companies and individuals named by the United Nations.
Saeed Jalili, Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, said the country would continue with its civilian nuclear program.
“We have been committed to our obligations and did a lot of things beyond our obligations, but we also insist on our rights,” Jalili said from Brussels, Belgium, where he was meeting with members of the European Parliament. “We need 20,000 Megawatts of nuclear electricity and for this we have to build 20 nuclear power plants.”
In November, 18 months of negotiations collapsed after European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana failed to persuade Jalili to suspend Iran’s development of its nuclear program.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said his government has responded to 70 percent of the IAEA’s questions about its nuclear activities and that its ongoing cooperation with the U.N. would remove the need for further sanctions.
The new draft was not publicly released and details of its content were sketchy.
After the text was agreed upon during talks in Berlin on Tuesday, U.S. and European diplomats said it bolstered existing sanctions, notably asset freezes and travel bans on Iranian officials. But they disagreed on whether it contained new measures.
The draft was described as a sign of international resolve that Iran should not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons and unity on the need to press the country into suspending uranium enrichment, a process that can produce material needed to make an atomic bomb. Iran says it aims to use the technology only for generating power.
In Davos, Switzerland, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said agreement on the draft “showed that we remain united, that we do not want Iran to become a nuclear weapons power, and that we will continue to hold Iran to its international obligations.”
The U.S. had been pushing for sweeping new sanctions, mirroring unilateral measures it imposed last year on select Iranian banks and elements of Iran’s military. But Russia and China, which along with some European nations have significant investments in Iran, had balked.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said the draft resolution included “on the one hand, sanctions, new and precise sanctions, and there is encouragement toward dialogue.”
Associated Press writer Ali Akbar Dareini contributed to this report from Tehran, Iran.

“And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity the sea and the waves roaring;”
—Luke 21:25

“Fear thou not, O Jacob my servant, saith the LORD: for I am with thee; for I will make a full end of all the nations whither I have driven thee: but I will not make a full end of thee, but correct thee in measure; yet will I not leave thee wholly unpunished.”
—Ezekiel 34:28

“The sixth load of nuclear fuel arrived at the Bushehr plant on Thursday morning,” said a statement from the Organisation for Production and Development of Nuclear Energy quoted by the news agency.

The delivery brings the nuclear fuel supplied by Russia so far to 66 tonnes or around 80 percent of the total order of 82 tonnes, IRNA said.

Previous deliveries were made on December 17 and 28, and January 18, 20 and 22. Two more consignments are due by February according to a timetable agreed by the two sides.

Late last month, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said the Bushehr reactor would be working at 50 percent capacity by mid-2008.

But the Russian constructors insist the 1,000-megawatt plant will not go on line until the end of the year.

After delivery of the first shipment of fuel, Russia said Iran no longer needed to pursue its own uranium enrichment, a message repeated by US President George W. Bush.

Tehran has so far defied successive UN Security Council ultimatums to suspend enrichment prompting two sets of UN sanctions.

The six major powers, the five veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — plus Germany drew up a new text on Tuesday to put before the council.

The contents of the text agreed by the foreign ministers of the so called 5+1 were not released.

But a senior US official said the new draft “increases the severity of the sanctions already in place and will also introduce new elements.”

Iran on Wednesday described as illegal and ineffective the threat of new UN sanctions and said it would clear up any remaining questions about its nuclear programme in talks with the UN watchdog.

The Western powers fear that Iran’s nuclear programme is a cover for a drive to develop a bomb, a charge Tehran strongly denies.

Distress of Nations

“And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity the sea and the waves roaring;”
—Luke 21:25

Ishmael

“And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.”
—Genesis 16:12

“I fear greatly that the connectivity between narcoterrorism and Islamic radical terrorism could be disastrous in this region,” Admiral James Stavridis, head of the US Southern Command, told a conference on Latin America.

“What I worry about in this region with outside actors coming into it is the potential for those streams to cross, if you will, for the fuel of narcoterrorism to become engaged in Islamic radicalism here in the Americas, here in our home,” he said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington.

Stavridis accompanied his comments with a photograph of Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad standing alongside Bolivian President Evo Morales.

“This gentleman is Mahmud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran, a state that sponsors terrorism,” he said pointing to the Iranian leader.

“He is a very dangerous man and he is in this area of the world,” the admiral said, adding that Iran had already opened 10 embassies in Latin America.

“President Ahmadinejad says he wants to have an embassy in every country in this region,” he added.

Earlier, Stavridis showed another photograph with Morales standing next to presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Rafael Correa of Ecuador.

At the close of Chavez’ fourth visit to Iran in November, he and Ahmadinejad vowed to stand together in defense of their national interests and ideals.

“Today in Latin America there is a competitive environment for us politically,” Stavridis said, alluding to leftist Venezuela’s growing influence across the region.

“The United States needs to be a good competitor in this marketplace. We need to show why our ideas are better, are sensible (and) will produce good results,” he said, referring to “capitalism, free trade agreements, human rights, democracy and liberty.”

Stavridis’ comments followed President George W. Bush’s warning in Abu Dhabi on Sunday that “Iran’s actions threaten the security of nations everywhere.”

“And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity the sea and the waves roaring;”
—Luke 21:25

In what is widely being called “Black Monday,” a worldwide sell-off today has sent stocks into a nose dive, with global markets from Hong Kong to Europe experiencing the sharpest one-day losses since the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

The broad equity sell-off shows investors see tax rebates proposed by President Bush as large as $800 for the average U.S. family as too little and too late in a U.S. economy suffering a housing and credit crisis. The president’s economic stimulus plan calls for $145 billion worth of tax relief to encourage consumer spending.

Investors worldwide also appear to soundly reject the administration argument advanced notably by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson that equity strength in global markets would be sufficient to withstand a downturn in U.S. equities experienced by the bursting of the real estate bubble.

Assurances by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke that the U.S. central bank likely will respond with a big interest rate cut also apparently did not impress investors.

The stock sell-off began in Japan, where the Nikkei Index ended at 13,325.94, down 535.35 points, hitting a new two-year low.

In Hong Kong, the blue chip Hang Seng Index plunged 1,838.01 points, or 5.49 percent, to 23,818.86, the largest one-day loss since 9/11.

In China, the Shanghai Composite index fell 5.1 percent and in India stocks on the Bombay Exchange fell some 7.41 percent.

The losses then extended to Europe, where Germany’s blue-chip DAX 30 was down 7.2 percent and France’s CAC-40 Index ended 6.8 percent lower.

Britain’s FTSE-100 lost 323.5 points to close at 5,578.2, a loss of 5.5 percent, reflecting the largest one-day drop since the 9/11.

The FTSE is now within range of being 20 percent off from its most recent high of 6,754, reached last July.

In the worldwide market plunge, equity investors lost hundreds of billions of dollars in a single day.

In the UK alone, the drop in the FTSE today reflected a loss of nearly 60 million pounds in share values on the exchange.

In the U.S., where stock markets were closed for Martin Luther King Day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed Friday at 12,099.30, down 59.91 points.

The Dow has dropped nearly 9 percent so far this year. As recently as Oct. 9, the index closed at an all-time high of 14,164.53.

Since then, weakness in the equity portfolios of U.S. banks and securities firms has forced several of the largest to seek foreign investors to provide additional capital to make up for hundreds of billions in losses experienced from defaulting Collateral Loan Obligations, or CLOs, many of which were securitized packages of mortgage loans.

As WND reported, Citibank has turned to investors from Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia and China for more than $20 billion to prop up the troubled bank.

The list of struggling banks and financial institutions turning to foreign investors includes some of the most prestigious in the U.S., with names such as Morgan Stanley, Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch on the list.

“Black Monday” previously has referred to the stock market plunge of Oct. 19, 1987, when the Dow fell 508 points, losing 22.6 percent of its value in one day.

Distress of Nations

“And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity the sea and the waves roaring;”
—Luke 21:25

Ishmael

“And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.”
—Genesis 16:12

MADRID — Intelligence agents on Sunday were sifting through evidence collected during a weekend crackdown on a group of suspected Islamic militants who the police say were plotting an attack on Barcelona.

The police arrested 14 men and raided several apartments, two mosques and a bakery in Barcelona, the capital of the northeastern region of Catalonia, a security official and local Muslim representatives said. The group included 12 Pakistanis, an Indian and a Bangladeshi, they said.

Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, the Spanish interior minister, said Saturday that the detainees “belonged to a well-organized group that had gone a step beyond radicalization.”

They confiscated material for making bombs, including four timing devices, Mr. Rubalcaba said. Local news reports said the police had also taken phone records from the mosques and the bakery. Photographs of material found in the raids included the timing devices, a small bag of ball bearings, batteries and cables.

“When someone has timers in their home, you have no option but to think violent acts are being planned,” he said.

Spanish intelligence acted with the help of information from foreign intelligence agencies, Mr. Rubalcaba said, though he did not say from which countries.

Newspaper reports on Sunday said intelligence officials based in Pakistan had tipped off the Spanish authorities about a known Pakistani militant having left Pakistan for Barcelona to help put a terrorist plot in motion. Those reports could not be independently confirmed.

With a general election scheduled for March 9, the Spanish authorities are on the alert for terrorist attacks by Islamist groups or the Basque militant group ETA. An Islamist terrorist attack on Madrid commuter trains on March 11, 2004 — three days before the last general election — killed 191 people.

Since the Madrid bombings, the Spanish police have become very aggressive in their efforts to break up suspected Islamist plots. Groups of suspects are arrested fairly frequently, and often many are released within five days, which is the standard period that someone suspected of being a terrorist can be held without charge.

Muslim representatives based in the Raval neighborhood of Barcelona said that around 3 a.m. the police raided the Torek Ben Ziad mosque, one of the city’s most prominent mosques, as well as a nearby Muslim prayer house. They also raided apartments in different parts of the city and searched a bakery in Raval late on Saturday.

One prominent Muslim representative in Barcelona, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the matter, said Sunday that several of those arrested belonged to Tabligh Jamaat, a group based in Pakistan. The group publicizes a benign type of revivalist Islam, but is suspected by Western intelligence agencies of being a recruiter for jihadists.

Those arrested included one of the imams of the Torek Ben Ziad mosque and a 70-year-old man, he said.

The Muslim representative said Tabligh was quite active in the Barcelona area of Raval. The group strongly proselytizes in the area and is secretive but not known among local Muslim organizations to be extremist, he said.

“And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity the sea and the waves roaring;”
—Luke 21:25

“And say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal:”
—Ezekiel 38:3

Russia delivered the first batch of about 80 tonnes of uranium fuel rods to Iran on December 17 and urged Tehran to scrap its own, controversial program for making fuel.

Iran says it wants the capability to make its own fuel so that it will have secure supplies in the future.

“The fourth shipment of Bushehr nuclear power plant fuel arrived in Iran,” IRNA news agency reported, quoting Iran’s atomic energy production and development company.

The shipment of 11 tonnes arrived on Sunday.

“The process of delivering the remaining four shipments will take place based on a specific timetable,” it said without giving dates.

Washington and other Western powers fear Iran’s uranium enrichment and other nuclear activities are aimed at building nuclear weapons. Iran says it needs nuclear fuel for electricity production.

Bushehr has caused friction for many years between Russia and Western powers who are pressing for restrictions on economic cooperation with Iran because of its refusal to heed U.N. demands to halt uranium enrichment.

Russia says the Bushehr project is being built under the control of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki has said the Bushehr plant, on the Gulf coast in southwest Iran, would start up in mid-2008.

Foreign ministers from major powers will meet in Berlin on Tuesday to discuss a possible third U.N. Security Council sanctions resolution against Iran for its refusal to halt enrichment.

(Reporting by Zahra Hosseinian, writing by Edmund Blair; editing by Robert Woodward)

Distress of Nations

“And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity the sea and the waves roaring;”
—Luke 21:25

Perplexity:

”ajpori÷a aporia, ap-or-ee´-a; from the same as 639; a (state of) quandary:—perplexity. 639. ajpore÷w aporeo, ap-or-eh´-o; from a compound of 1 (as a negative particle) and the base of 4198; to have no way out, i.e. be at a loss (mentally): — (stand in) doubt, be perplexed.”
—Strongs 640.

Time To Look Up

“And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.”
—Luke 21:28

Watch Video and Keep Looking Up, Our Redemption Is Near”

Distress of Nations

“And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity the sea and the waves roaring;”
—Luke 21:25

Perilous Times

“But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse,deceiving, and being deceived”
—2Timothy 3:13

The C.I.A.’s judgment is the first formal assessment by the American government about who was responsible for Ms. Bhutto’s Dec. 27 assassination, which took place during a political rally in the garrison city of Rawalpindi.

“There are powerful reasons to believe that terror networks around Baitullah Mehsud were responsible,” said one American intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

The official said that “different pieces of information” have pointed toward Mr. Mehsud’s responsibility, but he would not provide any details about the information that led to the C.I.A’s conclusion.

Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the C.I.A. director, discussed the agency’s conclusion in an interview with The Washington Post published on Friday.

Some friends and supporters of Ms. Bhutto questioned the C.I.A. conclusions, especially since the former leader was buried before a full forensic investigation had been conducted. The British government has since sent a team from Scotland Yard to participate in the investigation into the assassination.

“The C.I.A. appears too eager to bail out its liaison services in Pakistan, who are being blamed by most Pakistanis,” said Husain Haqqani, a former adviser to Ms. Bhutto and a professor at Boston University.

“Given the division inside Pakistan on this issue, it might be better to have an international investigation under the aegis of the U.N.,” Mr. Haqqani said.

Within days of Ms. Bhutto’s assassination, Pakistani authorities announced they had intercepted communications between Mr. Mehsud and militant supporters in which they said the leader congratulated his followers for the assassination and appeared to take credit for it.

Mr. Mehsud, through a spokesman, has denied responsibility for the assassination and suggested that the assassins were directed by Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s president and a longtime rival of Ms. Bhutto.

Members of Ms. Bhutto’s political party, along with some of her family members, have also challenged Pakistani government accounts of the assassination. They have blamed Mr. Musharraf for failing to provide Ms. Bhutto with adequate protection as she campaigned around the country, and some have hinted that elements of Pakistan’s government may have been behind the assassination.

Mr. Mehsud’s followers have been blamed for many recent suicide attacks against government, military and intelligence targets in Pakistan. Based in the South Waziristan tribal areas along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, Mr. Mehsud is known to run training camps and to dispatch suicide bombers beyond the border areas in both countries. He is also believed to have links to the Arab and Central Asian militants who have established a stronghold in the tribal areas.

Government officials in Pakistan and independent security analysts believe that the Qaeda network in Pakistan is increasingly made up not of foreign fighters but of homegrown militants who have made destabilizing Pakistan’s government a top priority.

American intelligence officials believe that Al Qaeda has steadily built a safe haven in the mountainous tribal areas of western Pakistan, constructing a band of makeshift compounds where both Pakistani militants and foreign fighters conduct training and planning for terror attacks.

This has led to mounting frustration among intelligence and counterterrorism officials, many of whom believe that the United States should take more aggressive unilateral steps to dismantle terror networks in the tribal areas. The Bush administration is currently considering various proposals to step up covert actions in Pakistan against the Qaeda network.

“And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity the sea and the waves roaring;”
—Luke 21:25

“Be thou prepared, and prepare for thyself, thou, and all thy company that are assembled unto thee, and be thou a guard (strongs 4929)unto them.”
—Ezekiel 38:7

Russia last month delivered the first shipment of nuclear fuel to Iran’s first nuclear power plant in Bushehr, a step which both Moscow and Washington said should convince Tehran to stop its own uranium enrichment program.

But Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said during a visit to Russia that the fuel might help Iran develop its nuclear weapons program.

“Now Russia has started delivering nuclear fuel to Bushehr, (Iran’s) uranium enrichment may serve military goals,” Russian news agencies quoted Livni as saying.

Israel, Washington’s staunchest ally in Middle East, says Iran could have a nuclear bomb by 2010 and says an Iranian nuclear weapon would threaten the existence of the Jewish state.

Israel itself is widely believed to be the only Middle East country with a nuclear arsenal.

Iran has said it will not halt its efforts to enrich uranium — fuel it says it needs for other power plants but which foreign powers fear could be used in a nuclear bomb.

The United Nations Security Council has imposed two rounds of sanctions on Iran for its refusal to halt enrichment. Iran says its nuclear program is purely civilian.

The U.N. sanctions have put “certain pressure” on Tehran, but their overall effect “has not been critical”, Livni said in a speech at the Russian Diplomatic Academy which news agencies quoted in Russian.

“Those taking decisions on Iran are being watched by everyone in our region, including Israel and moderate Arab regimes,” she said. “We expect the world will not allow the appearance of a nuclear Iran.”

“When I am being told about the inadmissibility of a nuclear Iran, I understand that these words should be translated into action.”