Strong earthquake kills 3 people in China
BEIJING – A strong, shallow earthquake struck a moderately populated part of western China on Monday morning, and state media reported at least three deaths.
The quake hit near the city of Dingxi in Gansu province, a largely desert and pastureland region with a population of 26 million. That makes it one of China’s more lightly populated provinces, although the Dingxi area has a greater concentration of farms and towns with a total population of about 2.7 million.
The three deaths were reported in Min County in the rural southern part of Dingxi municipality, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
The government’s earthquake monitoring center said the magnitude was 6.6, which can cause severe damage. More quakes were detected during the morning, including a magnitude-5.6.
Pentagon chief: Cuts to defense may grow
JOINT BASE CHARLESTON, S.C. – The audience gasped in surprise and gave a few low whistles as Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel delivered the news that furloughs, which have forced a 20 percent pay cut on most of the military’s civilian workforce, probably will continue next year, and it might get worse.
“Those are the facts of life,” Hagel told about 300 Defense Department employees, most of them middle-aged civilians, last week at an Air Force reception hall on a military base in Charleston.
Future layoffs also are possible for the department’s civilian workforce of more than 800,000 employees, Hagel said, if Congress fails to stem the cuts in the next budget year, which starts Oct. 1.
Japan’s ruling bloc wins upper house
TOKYO (AP) – Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ruling coalition won a comfortable majority in the upper house of parliament in elections, gaining control of both chambers and a mandate to press ahead with difficult economic reforms.
The win is an endorsement of the Liberal Democratic Party’s “Abenomics” program, which has helped spark a tentative economic recovery in Japan. It’s also a vindication for Abe, who lost upper house elections in 2007 during his previous stint as prime minister.
“We’ve won the public’s support for decisive and stable politics so that we can pursue our economic policies, and we will make sure to live up to the expectations,” Abe told public broadcaster NHK after he was projected to win based on exit polls and early results. Official results were expected early today.
Obama to begin series of economic addresses
WASHINGTON – Drawing renewed attention to the economy, President Barack Obama will return this week to an Illinois college where he once spelled out a vision for an expanded and strengthened middle class as a freshman U.S. senator, long before the Great Recession would test his presidency.
The address Wednesday at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., will be the first in a new series of economic speeches that White House aides say Obama intends to deliver over the next several weeks ahead of key budget deadlines in the fall. A new fiscal year begins in October, and the government will soon hit its borrowing limit as debit continues to rise.
The speech comes just a week before Congress is scheduled to leave for its monthlong August recess and is designed to build public pressure on lawmakers in hopes of averting the showdowns over taxes and spending that have characterized past budget debates.
Associated Press
