The earthquake hit Lushan county of the Ya’an city in southwest China’s Sichuan Province at 8:02 AM local time.

The epicenter of the quake was reported to be at a depth of 13 Kms and was monitored at 30.3 degrees north latitude and 103.0 degrees east longitude.

The earthquake was powerfully felt by residents in Sichuan’s capital city of Chengdu, which is about 140 kilometers from Ya’an. The airport in Chengdu was closed as it suffered the damage.

“A resident in Chengdu, who was on the 13th floor of a building when the earthquake happened, said, he felt the building shaking for about 20 secs and he saw tiles fall off nearby buildings, according to the report .

People in Leshan of the Sichuan Province and the neighboring Chongqing Municipality also felt the quake. Chengdu closed down the airport due to damage.

Several aftershocks also hit the area after the 7.0 magnitude earthquake took place, the biggest aftershock in magnitude being the 5.1 magnitude one which shook the surrounding area of Lushan and Baoxing areas of Sichuan at 8:07 AM.

A earthquake in 2008 the same province killed over 90,000 people, since then the province was virtually from the brink.

China’s State Administration of Work Safety and supervision bureau said Saturday that the cause of the blast at a state-owned mine outside the city of Baishan, Jilin province is under investigation.

The explosion was reported at 10. 40 pm in Babao coal mine in Baishan city of Jilin province, according to report.

The incident happened at the Babao Coal Mine in the city of Baishan, which is part of Jilin province near the Korea North border.

The incident occurred on the same day that a huge landslide came crashing down a mountainside in Tibet, burying 83 employees in a gold mining area, state media said.

The China is the world’s biggest consumer of coal, relying on the fossil fuel for 70 % of its growing power needs.

But its mines are between the most harmful in the world for the reason that of lax regulation, corruption and inefficiency. Accidents are common because safety is often ignored by bosses seeking quick profits.

Mr Xi Jinping, appointed to the Communist Party’s top leader in November after replaces Hu Jintao, who is stepping down from the post.

Xi Jinping will take the controls of the world’s second-largest economy alongside incoming premier Li Keqiang, who is due to be anointed on Friday.

The 59-year-old Mr Xi was also elected Central Military Commission head, the parallel govt post to the party’s top military position which he already holds, ensuring that he has full power over the party, state and armed forces.

The name of the website that is now closed was  www.gougou.com. The website announcement for thanking the people for making the website a success. China said that it is done for the security reasons and there were more than 30,000 cases of violating the terms and conditions as prescribed the China govt.

The state-run Beidou Navigation Satellite Program (BDS) would initially provide positioning, navigation, timing and short-message services in China and the Asia-Pacific region, it said official website.

The Beidou, or Compass, system was compatible with other global positioning systems, said Beidou spokesman Ran Chengqi, who also heads the China Satellite Navigation Office.

State media quoted Ran as saying it could provide positioning accuracy of 10 meters, velocity accuracy of 0.2 meters per second and one-way timing accuracy of 50 nanoseconds.

“We hope industries based on the Beidou Navigation Satellite System will hold 15 to 20 per cent of the market share by 2015,” the reports said.

The agency quoted unidentified sources as saying China’s market for navigation services was worth some 120 billion yuan (19.2 billion dollars) this year.

Li Hao was also charged with causing death of 2 of the women, reports said.

He was convicted by a court in Henan provinceof murder, rape, organised prostitution, illegal detention and spreading pornography for profit.

Li dug the dungeon himself in the basement he purchased in Luoyang in August 2009 just to lock up women he tricked into coming to his place.

The women had been held there for 2 to 21 months, cops said.

The court said Li regularly raped the women, forced them to appear in obscene online shows in 2011 and pressured them to have sex with customers in August-September last year.

The secret dungeon was found after one woman left and reported the situation to cops.

In a twist in the case, 3 of the women locked up by Li, were also found guilty of murder. They murdered 2 women in the dungeon under Li’s instruction.

However, they were shown leniency for committing crimes under such circumstances. One lady was sentenced to 3 years in jail, while the other 2 were put on probation.

The man worked as a clerk for Luoyang’s technological supervision bureau, was married and had an 8 month-old son.

The women had worked at karaoke bars, hair salons and a massage shop prior to being kidnapped.

The launch marks the completion a plan initiated by China in 2003 to create a small environmental monitoring satellite constellation, according to north China’s Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center.

The radar satellite will join the other two operating optical satellites “Environment I” satellites, which were launched in Sept. 2008, to form a network covering most of China’s territory.

This “2+1″ formula will help provide scientific evidence for assessing natural disaster situations, emergency aid and reconstruction as well as enable China to monitor and forecast ecological changes, pollution and natural disasters around the clock, the center said.

The satellite was carried by a Long March 2C rocket.

The rocket also carried two additional satellites designed to run tests and carry out in-orbit experiments for new-type aerospace equipment, materials, methods and miniature satellite platforms.

“…Under the new conditions, our Party faces many severe challenges, and there are also many pressing problems within the Party that need to be resolved, particularly corruption, being divorced from the people, going through formalities and bureaucratism caused by some party officials,”

Xi said after he led the other newly-elected members of the Standing Committee of the 18th CPC Central Committee Political Bureau to meet the press on Thursday morning at the Great Hall of the People.

“”We must make every effort to solve these problems. The whole party must stay on full alert,” Xinhua quoted Xi, who will take over from Hu Jintao as China President, as saying.

For the past week, China has been witness to a once-in-a-decade leadership transition that began with the 18th National Congress of the CPC. The congress ended on Wednesday.

China started building its own satellite navigation system in 2000 to break its dependence on the US global positioning system. It will make China one of the leading super powers in the field of communication. It can also be said a follow up launch after India had made great success in the field.

Hundreds began lining up as early as Friday evening for the 9 a.m. grand opening and a chance to get their hands of special T-shirts commemorating the new store. A pair of high school students, Wang Xueang and Chang Dawei, were first in line at 8:30 p.m. Friday night, bringing snacks in tow. They wanted to be among the first to see the store, they said, because they admired the “unique” brand.