Strong storms hit Alabama, kill two

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama (Reuters) - Search and rescue team combed through debris in Alabama after powerful thunderstorms pummeled the state early on Monday, killing at least two people and leaving heavy damage just hours after tornadoes struck portions of Arkansas.

Alabama Governor Robert Bentley declared a state of emergency after the predawn storms hit the Birmingham area, with the towns of Center Point and Trussville just to the northeast of the city hit particularly hard.

Two people were confirmed dead, according to Pat Curry, Jefferson County's chief deputy coroner; one in Clay, a city of roughly 10,000 people, and another in the western part of the county.

Earlier, an emergency management official had reported three deaths.

"We have major, major damage," said Bob Ammons, a Jefferson County Emergency Management Agency (EMA) official, referring to Center Point, Trussville and some unincorporated areas of the county.

About 100 people were treated for injuries, said Jefferson County EMA spokesman Mark Kelly.

Last April, massive tornadoes tore through Alabama killing more than 240 people, including 64 in the Jefferson and Tuscaloosa areas.

On Monday, in St. Clair County, Alabama, spokeswoman Katie Reese said a local fire department estimated some 36 homes had been damaged, and some of them destroyed.

The possibility for sporadic thunderstorms in the region lingered, according to AccuWeather.com senior meteorologist Henry Margusity, but overall the severe weather was calming down.

THOUSANDS WITHOUT POWER

Clean-up and recovery efforts were under way across Alabama on Monday afternoon.

Food safety inspectors had been dispatched to assess damage and power outages at retail food establishments, state officials said, adding that any compromised products would be taken off shelves.

Search and rescue efforts were ongoing, according to Matt Angelo of the Center Point fire department. The injury count in that area northeast of Birmingham remained at about 12, he said.

At nearby Parkway Veterinary Clinic animals were being transported to a safe location after the structure sustained a direct hit during the storm, a spokeswoman said.

Earlier, rescue crews were dispatched to investigate reports of an overturned mobile home with people trapped inside, said Debbie Orange, city clerk for the city of Clanton, about midway between Birmingham and Montgomery. No injuries could be confirmed.

A preliminary report from the weather service's storm prediction center indicated a radio station in Clanton, Alabama was destroyed and a 302-foot (92-meter) transmission tower "toppled" due to the severe weather.

A tornado is suspected, but not yet confirmed, in the radio station destruction, according to the National Weather Service.

In Tennessee, the worst storm damage was in the middle of the state, with downed trees and power lines. In western Tennessee, structural damage resulted from winds whipping up to 65 mph, meteorologists said.

These were the latest in a series of powerful January storms to have torn through the Southeast.

On Sunday, twisters downed trees and powerlines in Arkansas leaving thousands without power.

A tornado ripped into an area outside of Fordyce, some 70 miles south of state capital Little Rock, damaging houses and felling trees and power lines as it moved, according to Accuweather.com.

The National Weather Service in Little Rock rated the Fordyce area tornado as an EF2, on a scale that ranges from EF0 to EF5, the most severe. The town of just under 5,000 people was one of the hardest hit areas in a series of storms that struck Arkansas on Sunday night.

Significant damage occurred to houses northwest of the small town, the city's country club and a set of transmission towers, it said in a statement.

The weather service has reported as many as eight possible tornadoes may have touched down on Sunday night in Arkansas, which was pelted by soft-ball sized hailstones and buffeted by winds gusting up to 70 miles per hour.

By Monday, almost 8,000 customers across Arkansas were still without power, according to utility provider Entergy Arkansas, Inc.

(Additional reporting by Tim Ghianni in Nashville, Suzi Parker in Little Rock and Kelli Dugan in Mobile, Alabama; Writing by Dan Burns and Lauren Keiper; Editing by Greg McCune and Sandra Maler)

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Strong earthquake strikes off Japan

(CNN) -- A major earthquake struck off Japan's northeastern coast Sunday, prompting tsunami advisories that were later canceled, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said.

Small tsunamis were observed along the coast, measuring between 10 and 20 centimeters, said the JMA.

There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage, according to the Japanese news agency Kyodo.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake struck at 10:57 a.m. at the epicenter, about 130 miles east of Sendai.

The earthquake was more than 20 miles deep and had a magnitude of 7.0, the USGS said.

The JMA measured the magnitude of the quake at 7.1.

Tsunami advisories were issued -- and then canceled --for the coastal regions of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima. The areas were among the hardest hit by this year's devastating earthquake and tsunami.

Officials in Ofunato, a city in Iwate, advised residents to evacuate.

The JMA, immediately after the quake, forecast the height of the tsunami could reach half a meter (about 20 inches).

No immediate abnormalities were reported at nearby nuclear facilities, according to Kyodo.

Three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant suffered meltdowns after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that devastated northern Japan. The tsunami swamped the plant and knocked out cooling systems that kept the three operating reactors from overheating, leading to the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.

Tremors from Sunday's quake were felt as far away as Tokyo.

"It's just a continuing of the aftershocks of that devastating 9.0," said Dale Grant, a geophysicist with the USGS, referring to the March quake. "These kinds of aftershocks are likely to occur for some time."

CNN's Yoko Wakatsuki contributed to this report.

CNN

Strong quakes again rock shaken New Zealand city (AP)

WELLINGTON, New Zealand – Strong aftershocks rattled New Zealand's quake-devastated city of Christchurch again Monday, toppling one of the few buildings still standing downtown and sinking thousands of homes into darkness.

Bricks crashed down in the cordoned-off city center, where only workers have tread since it was devastated in February's major earthquake. About 200 people were there when the quakes struck Monday, and two were briefly trapped in a church. More than 40 people have been taken to hospitals with minor injuries from falling debris, the city council said.

"We are being enveloped with dust," Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker told New Zealand's National Radio. "It is very, very scary."

All across the city, people fled buildings in panic when a 5.2-magnitude quake struck during lunchtime; just over an hour later, a 6.0 hit, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Smaller quakes were also recorded.

Several buildings were damaged in the central city and suburbs.

"All the shops have fallen down," said Renee Murray, who works at a Domino's Pizza in a suburb. "Half of the roof has fallen in (but) they have not fully collapsed."

Thousands of aftershocks have followed the 6.3-magnitude quake that killed 181 people on Feb. 22. That tremor and its aftershocks have been very shallow, which along with proximity to the city, have made them very destructive. Monday's temblors were six miles (10 kilometers) deep, according to the USGS.

About 47,000 homes in the city's eastern suburbs were without power Monday night, when temperatures were expected to approach freezing. Rocks tumbled down hills in the area, which was among the hardest hit in February, and silt bubbled from the earth — a process known as liquefaction that sometimes happens during a quake.

After the February quake, 300,000 tons of silt had to be scraped away, and the silt alone made thousands of homes uninhabitable.

On one road Monday, an SUV tipped front-first into a sinkhole that opened in the asphalt. A police car sank into another.

Roger Sutton, chief executive of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority, said the extra damage to the city center means some buildings that had been salvageable "are now seriously damaged and will have to be brought down."

The group's demolition manager "was driving (during the 6.0 quake), and there were buildings coming down in front of him, coming down behind him," Sutton said. "He's very lucky to be alive."

Two people who were injured were salvaging windows from St. John's Church when the facade, the last wall standing after February's quake, collapsed. Police said they were rescued and taken to a hospital with cuts and bruises.

Another building nearby fell, according to police, and the dean of Christchurch Cathedral said the collapsed building suffered new damage.

"This has been a setback for Christchurch and its people, but it does not lessen our resolve to rebuild," Prime Minister John Key told reporters. "The people of Christchurch should know all New Zealanders are thinking of them and will continue to support and stand by them in this very difficult time."

New Zealand's earthquake monitoring service GNS Science said Monday's quakes were within a predicted range but are likely to trigger new aftershocks themselves.

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Strong PlayBook Sales Threaten Tablet-Less Microsoft (NewsFactor)

RBC said Wednesday that Research In Motion appears to have sold approximately 250,000 PlayBook tablets in the first month of availability, with the BlackBerry maker on track to sell 500,000 PlayBooks by the end of the current quarter. If the financial firm's estimates are accurate, it would suggest that RIM has been successful in leveraging the widespread enterprise presence of its BlackBerry smartphones -- and to a higher degree that anyone expected.

The RBC forecast is also surprising given the mixed reviews the PlayBook received last month, in part because the Playbook is expressly designed to function in tandem with a BlackBerry handset. If RIM's dual-device strategy is succeeding, it raises questions about the extent to which Microsoft can recover the mobile-market share it lost in recent years without launching its own tablet platform.

Gartner analysts strongly believe there is a tight link between smartphones and tablets in the minds of users. "They want a similar experience, a tight ecosystem and applications and content that run across devices," explained Gartner Research Vice President Carolina Milanesi. So Microsoft and Nokia "need a tablet strategy sooner rather than later," she said.

A Strategic Mistake

Microsoft's current focus is on bringing enterprise-class capabilities to its next-generation Windows Phone 7 mobile platform, and a tablet platform is not expected anytime soon. But Milanesi believes that waiting for Windows 8 may be a strategic mistake.

It may be too late for Microsoft "to catch up with competitors and allow Windows Phone 7 to grow -- not just in the enterprise but also in the consumer space in the high end, where users will be looking for that link," Milanesi explained. "As with any new products, I think we should wait and see what RIM does next quarter. Even Motorola sold a similar amount of Xoom [tablets] to start."

However, other wireless analysts believe Microsoft still has time to establish a strong tablet presence.

"Right now, in terms of sheer volume, between the two device types smartphones easily have the lion's share of the installed mobile-device base," noted Lisa Pierce, an independent wireless analyst with the Strategic Networks Group. "Tablets are complementary to smartphones, not competitive," as opposed to the "growing degree of cannibalization between tablets and notebooks/laptops."

Time To Catch Up

What Microsoft needs to do is really bring the full weight of the PC ecosystem into the tablet world, noted Al Hilwa, director of applications software development at IDC. "That can be done with the right changes to Windows and its programming model to make sure that it accommodates touch apps better," Hilwa said. "We are really in the early stages [and] I don't blame Microsoft for taking its time to get [its mobile-platform] formula right."

Pierce also believes Microsoft still has plenty of time to launch a worthy mobile OS rival that can compete with the tablet platforms launched by Apple and RIM. "In the future, I fully expect Microsoft will release a platform for tablets that has business features, with a very high degree of interworking between Mango and the future tablet platform," Pierce said.

Still, Apple continues to command the lion's share of tablet sales and is expected to blow away the competition this year and beyond. Piper Jaffray, for example, is currently pegging Apple's sales "at seven million iPads in the June 2011 quarter and 31.7 million in calendar year 2011."

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Strong quake hits off southern Indonesia

By AP

Motorists evacuate their homes after a tsunami warning was issued following a magnitude-6.7 earthquake in Java, Indonesia on Monday.

EnlargeCloseBy AP

Motorists evacuate their homes after a tsunami warning was issued following a magnitude-6.7 earthquake in Java, Indonesia on Monday.

There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage from the 6.7-magnitude quake, which struck shortly after 3 a.m. Monday.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the temblor was centered nearly 200 miles off southern Java, just 15 miles beneath the ocean floor.

Thousands of people in the town of Cilacap poured into the streets and ran to high ground, many gathering in mosques, witnesses told El Shinta radio.

Ninety minutes later, when the threat of a tsunami had passed, they were told to go home.

Indonesia, the world's largest archipelago, is prone to seismic upheaval due to its location on the so-called "Ring of Fire," an arc of volcanos and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin.

A magnitude 9.1 quake and subsequent tsunami on Dec. 26, 2004, killed more than 230,000 people in a dozen nations, nearly three-quarters of them in western Indonesia.

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