D'après le site indépendant chinois Shanghaiist, sans doute le meilleur site d'infos anglophone (128 mises à jour en 24h) dans le monde sur la catastrophe, le bilan du tremblement de terre s'élève à 11h30, à 12 000 victimes. En Chine, des voix s'élèvent face l'incapacité des autorités chinois à prévoir une telle catastrophe. Une conférence de presse en direct au cours de laquelle un journaliste demandait quelles méthodes avaient été utilisées pour détecter le tremblement, a été subitement interrompue.
Source Shanghaiist.com
UPDATE 115, 1:07pm: Beijing-based Huffington Post contributor Michael Standaert posts his suggestions for how to best help those effected by the earthquake.
UPDATE 116, 1:11pm: The Olympic Torch relay will go on as planned.
UPDATE 117, 1:16pm: Shanghai Stock exchange lists a number of companies that have stopped trading as of this morning.
UPDATE 118, 1:21pm: According to Xinhua, Gansu province was also hard-hit by the earthquakes with thousands of apartments and cave dwellings destroyed. 32,000 evacuated, 189 dead, and close to a thousand residents injured.
UPDATE 119, 1:30pm: More on the 66 companies that suspended trading today from Forbes and Marketwatch.
UPDATE 120, 1:33pm: A panda research facility near the epicenter 60 pandas are safe. Still no word yet about the status of the pandas at the Wolong reserch center.
UPDATE 121, 1:39pm: American National Public Radio (NPR) correspondents Melissa Block and Robert Siegel were accidentally caught in the middle of the earthquakes while reporting an unrelated story on Chengdu. Expect several internet radio stories from them on the NPR website.
UPDATE 122, 1:47pm: 1300 soldiers from Chengdu have finally arrived in Wenchuan. Rain and landslides continue to hamper rescue efforts.
UPDATE 123, 1:51pm: Ogilvy's Digital Watch Blog reports on the impact of Twitter on the reporting of the Wenchuan earthquake.
UPDATE 124, 1:57pm: According to Shanghaiist contributor James Creegan, all flights to the Chengdu Airport (around 90km from the earthquake's epicenter) have resumed as of 8am this morning after almost a day of cancellations.
UPDATE 125, 2:17pm: Business Week on some of the questions bloggers are raising about the earthquake:
One famous Chinese blogger, the television reporter Luqiu Luwei, raised a few questions on her blog: Why were so many middle school students among the dead from the disaster? What did that say about the quality of those school buildings?
Another blogger, Zeng XianNan, was suspicious about whether the quake could have been predicted based on seismic activity. "I saw the Sichuan Net news quoting Sichuan Earthquake Bureau official Deng Chang Wen saying before the earthquake no forecast indicated any macro anomolies," Zeng wrote. "If this was true, then it means that our technology is not strong enough. But wasn't [it true] that we have successfully forecast earthquakes before? If it were the case that it was detected but reporting was delayed, how would [they] explain that?"
UPDATE 126, 2:33pm: Multiple sources are reporting that Flickr images of the Sichuan provincial government website of the Abeizhou Seismic Bureau assuring residents that news of an impending earthquake were just rumors (as reported in UPDATE 90), are now blocked.
UPDATE 127, 2:45pm: Gasoline-filled freight train derailed in Gansu province during the earthquake, subsequently bursting into flames. 149 cargo trains have been stranded on their way to Chengdu.
UPDATE 128, 3:09pm: From Xinhua, 15 British tourists among the missing. The group of tourists were perhaps in the Wolong research center area. 2,000 other tourists are stranded in Tibetan-Qiang autonomous prefecture of Aba (阿坝藏族羌族自治州).
UPDATE 129, 4:17pm: Live State Council press conference on CCTV News now. In response to a reporter's question about rumors of official warnings on the Internet before the earthquake occurred, one official said, "Such speculation is unreasonable."
UPDATE 130, 4:27pm: Gas, electricity, and power plants all at risk:
China ordered coal mines, chemical plants and oil and gas wells to halt production to avoid further casualties after the country's strongest earthquake in 58 years killed almost 10,000 people.
Companies in affected areas must evacuate workers and can't resume output until conditions allow for safe operations, the Beijing-based State Administration of Work Safety said on its Web site today.
UPDATE 131, 4:50pm: State Council press conference update: 11,922 now dead.
UPDATE 132, 4:56pm: State Council press conference update: The Li Ka-Shing Foundation donates 30 million RMB ($4.3 million) to the rescue efforts.
UPDATE 133 5:01pm: State Council press conference update: During a question about the methods that the Earthquake Bureau uses to detect earthquakes, the broadcasts suddenly cuts to footage of the reporters waiting for the officials to arrive from earlier in the broadcast, then cuts to a montage of the damage from the earthquake. We guess the press conference is over.
Les dernières photos (certaines peuvent heurter votre sensibilité)
