Japan quake shifted Earth 4 inches on its axis

Washington:  The massive earthquake that shook Japan and triggered a huge tsunami appears to have shifted the Earth on its axis and moved an island of Japan, a media report said on Saturday.

Kenneth Hudnut, a geophysicist at the US Geological Survey, told CNN: "At this point, we know that one GPS station moved (8 feet), and we have seen a map from GSI (Geospatial Information Authority) in Japan showing the pattern of shift over a large area is consistent with about that much shift of the land mass."

Reports from an Italian institute estimated that Japan earthquake shifted Earth on its axis by as much as 4 inches, CNN said.

The earthquake measuring 8.9 on the Richter scale rocked Japan on Friday and spawned a tsunami that slammed into the northeastern coast, leaving about 1,000 people dead.

Shengzao Chen, a geophysicist, explained that the quake occurred as the Earth's crust ruptured along an area about 400 km long by 160 km wide, as tectonic plates slipped more than 18 metres.

The Japan quake follows the Feb 22 earthquake in New Zealand that killed 150 people.

World rushes aid to quake-hit Japan

A residential area damaged by tsunami in Sendai,
Japan. (Getty Images)

Paris:  International rescue teams were rushing to Japan Sunday after a 8.9-magnitude earthquake and tsunami left more than 1,000 dead, at least 10,000 missing and seriously damaged a nuclear power plant.

The world has rallied behind Japan, where tsunami waves up to 10 metres (33 feet) high rolled across the low-lying northeast on Friday, washing away everything in their path.

US aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan arrived off the coast of Japan early Sunday to provide logistical support for Japanese forces.

Japan has asked it to refuel its helicopters and help transport its troops to affected areas, the US Pacific Fleet said on its Facebook page.

A 144-member rescue team of the US Agency for International Development was also due at Misawa, northern Japan, later Sunday, to join inland operations, the Japanese foreign ministry said.

They included 12 dogs trained to detect victims trapped under rubble and about 150 tonnes of rescue equipment, USAID said.

With more than 1,000 people feared dead and authorities scrambling to bring reactors under control at two nuclear plants, Japanese officials have asked other nations to provide sniffer dogs to help search for trapped survivors.

Australia, South Korea and Singapore on Saturday all pledged to send dogs and search and rescue teams, as they also offered their condolences to Tokyo.

On Sunday, Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd said they had offered self-contained field hospitals and disaster victim identification teams to help in the process of both rescuing survivors and recovering bodies.

They had also offered the expertise of nuclear specialists to help address the threat from the damaged power station, he added.

And two experts from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission were headed for Japan, the commission announced on Saturday.

Japan reported that an estimated 200,000 people had been evacuated so far from the areas around the Fukushima No.1 and No. 2 nuclear plants, the UN atomic watchdog said.

After an explosion at the plant's No. 1 reactor Saturday afternoon despite efforts to control high temperatures and growing inside pressure, the operator said Sunday another reactor was at risk.

In a message to the Japanese prime minister the Dalai Lama, who has a huge following among Japanese Buddhists, expressed his "sadness" at the catastrophe and praised Japan's high level of disaster preparedness for saving lives.

And Britain's Queen Elizabeth II sent her "heartfelt sympathy" in a message to Japan's Emperor Akihito.
After the European Union vowed to get aid to Japan Friday, many member states were quick to make their contribution.

From Britain, a 59-strong search and rescue team was headed for Japan Sunday, with two rescue dogs, a medical support unit -- and 11 tonnes of specialist rescue equipment including heavy lifting and cutting gear.

France said it was sending two civil security teams to help with rescue efforts.

The Japanese Red Cross on Saturday sent 62 emergency teams to rescue victims of the earthquake, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said from its Geneva headquarters.

Around 400 doctors, nurses and other experts had been deployed to help victims of the disaster using mobile clinics, the federation added.

China's Red Cross also pledged 1 million yuan ($150,000) to its Japanese counterpart, state media reported.

The Afghan province of Kandahar announced $50,000 in aid.

And a 66-strong Japanese team which has spent more than two weeks searching the rubble left by last month's 6.3-magnitude quake in Christchurch in New Zealand was due back home to confront the unfolding tragedy.

The United Nations said Japan had also accepted help from Germany, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea.

Rescue teams from another 39 countries were on standby, it added.

A team from the United Nations Disaster and Assessment body (UNDAC) was on the way.

Libya unrest: Arab League endorses no-flight zone

Cairo:  The Arab League asked the United Nations Security Council on Saturday to impose a no-flight zone over Libya in hopes of halting Col. Moammar el-Gaddafi's attacks on his own people, providing the rebels a tincture of hope even as they were driven back from a long stretch of road it had captured in the three-week war.

The extraordinary move by the 22-nation bloc -- an extremely rare invitation for Western military forces on Arab territory -- increases the pressure on the Obama administration, which has been reluctant to intervene in a war that could turn out to be prolonged and complex.

However, by inviting the West to take such action, it also clears the way for the United States and Europe to press for a strong Security Council resolution and to counter the objections of China and Russia, which traditionally oppose foreign intervention in a country's internal disputes.

But it was far from clear that, even if action were forthcoming, it would be enough to stall the march of Colonel Gaddafi's troops eastward to the rebel capital of Benghazi. As the rebels withdrew from the strategic oil town of Ras Lanuf 100 miles east to Brega, and by nightfall on to Ajdabiya, superior government forces pressed their advantage on an insurgency that began as a disparate protest movement and even as it tried to construct a government and an army remained chaotic, splintered and largely leaderless.

The government sweep intensified pleas from the rebels for Western military support. Abdul Hafidh Ghoga, the vice chairman of the rebels' shadow government, the Libyan National Council, said a no-flight zone would give the rebels a fighting chance against Colonel Gaddafi's superior armaments.

"We feel we have the right to ask for help," he said in the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, Libya. "If the international community chooses to play the role of bystander, we will have to defend ourselves."

The Arab League vote drew loud cheers when it was announced in Benghazi, but the prospects that a no-flight zone would become reality were far from assured.

Even if the Security Council authorized the measure, American officials have said it would be warranted only if it appeared that Colonel Gaddafi's forces were acting effectively from the air. A no-flight zone, they have said, would have little effect against helicopters or artillery, both of which the Libyan government has used extensively.

In a statement on Saturday, the White House said it welcomed the Arab League decision, "which strengthens the international pressure on Gaddafi and support for the Libyan people."

However, the statement said nothing about a no-flight zone, which Defence Secretary Robert M. Gates has largely dismissed as ineffective and ill-advised. Other administration officials have said privately that the level of violence in Libya would have to approach the scale of that in Rwanda or Bosnia in the 1990s before the United States would engage militarily.

While the Arab League resolution did not specifically mention the United States or any other country, an effective no-flight zone would require a leading Western role. No one else, with the possible exception of Russia, has the level of military sophistication, firepower and surveillance ability it would take to first disable Libyan air defences, and then enforce the zone.

American officials have also said that the Arab League would have to do more than endorse action -- it would have to participate in it, too. "That doesn't mean they have to fly airplanes," one official said, "but there is much they can do, from providing airfields to gas and maintenance."

At the Security Council, a diplomat from one member nation said the Arab League decision was "helpful, but there are quite a lot of reservations around the Council table still."

The objections, mainly from Russia and China, have centred on questions about whether the need for a no-flight zone has been demonstrated, and whether it has a strong legal basis and clear regional support.

The Arab League action checked one condition off the list, the diplomat said, but the others remain unsettled.

The Europeans have also been divided on the issue and have said that Arab League backing was critical to their ultimate decision. The European Union's foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, was expected in Cairo on Sunday to discuss the no-flight decision with the Arab League.

Amr Moussa, the secretary general of the Arab League, said that a no-flight zone would protect ordinary people. "Our one goal is to protect the civilian population in Libya after what has been reported of attacks and casualties in a very bloody situation," he said at a news conference after the vote.

Mr Moussa said that he and other Arab League delegates were shocked by recent statements in Tripoli about the group. He was referring to a derogatory statement about the league made last week by Colonel Gaddafi's son Seif al-Islam al-Gaddafi.

But the measure did not pass without tense debate. Syria and Algeria, in particular, argued that foreign intervention would destabilize the region.
Syria's ambassador, Youssef Ahmed, said Arab states should oppose any step that "violates the sovereignty, independence and unity of Libyan territory."

Those objections appeared to account for wording in the resolution that the Arab League rejected "foreign intervention," and Mr Moussa's caveat that the action end as soon as the crisis is over.

The League has suspended Libya's membership and opened contact with the rebels through the Libyan National Council, but it stopped short of recognizing the shadow government as the country's legitimate authority.

In Libya, the government proudly took journalists on tours of the recently recaptured cities of Bin Jawwad and Ras Lanuf.

In Bin Jawwad, a small, green government flag decorated a blown-out house amid a sea of burned-out cars. In Ras Lanuf, officials said a ransacked hospital and a still-burning oil refinery were the work of drug-addled rebels.

The satellite television channel Al Jazeera reported that one of its cameramen, Ali Hassan al-Jaber, was killed after gunmen fired on a car that he and his colleagues were traveling in. The journalists were attacked on the outskirts of Benghazi, the channel reported.

In Brega, the mood was grim as fighters formed a line to carry ammunition out of a makeshift depot along the road, loading boxes onto a flatbed truck headed to Ajdabiya. By nightfall, rebel checkpoints along the road to Ajdabiya were manned by far fewer fighters than in recent days.

In Benghazi, Omar al-Hariri, the rebel defence minister, insisted the rebels would be able to defend the city "with weapons and also with our bodies." A former army captain who was jailed by Colonel Gaddafi, Mr Hariri said that the opposition was taking steps to better organize their youthful volunteers into "a military force."

"We will fight, and we are powerful," he said. "We know how to win, with God's will.

New iPad cover opens to instant gratification

New York:  In technology, fast is never fast enough.

When Apple begins selling its iPad 2 on Friday evening, many of the new device's features may be upstaged by a lowly accessory, the "smart cover," a protective case designed by Apple that snaps onto the iPad through magnets and doubles as a stand.

The cover's "smarts," though, come in part from being able to turn the iPad 2 on when you open it and off when you close it. The click and finger swipe -- three to four seconds, in an unscientific test -- that stood between you and the digital world in the original iPad? Gone.

The cover turns on the iPad 2 faster than you can wake up your PC or Mac and faster than you can turn on your car or television. It is a bit like the refrigerator door. You open it, and the light goes on, revealing all there is to eat.

The smart cover underscores Apple's knack for design, not to mention the legendary marketing chops of its chief executive, Steven P. Jobs. But more than that, it taps into our apparently insatiable hunger for instant gratification and desire to be one with our favorite gadgets.

"We are in an environment where there is no downtime anymore," said Gary Small, a professor at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at the University of California, Los Angeles. "We have become impatient."

Three seconds may not be much, but it suggests to us that we may be able to send one more message or read one more tweet, he said. "Where does it end?"

The marriage of speed and technology did not start yesterday and it will not end tomorrow. When AT&T unveiled the first commercial push button phone in 1963, part of its pitch was simple: calling someone would be faster than it was on rotary phones. For years, makers of computers and Web browsers have competed on the speed of their products.

More recently, computer makers have been hard at work trying to cut the boot-up time of PCs -- minutes of idle time that have become increasingly infuriating. Most hand-held devices turn on much faster. And with its smart cover, the new iPad 2 goes one step further.

"This is the story of our lives," said James Gleick, the author of "Faster," "The Information" and other books on the cultural ramifications of technology. "These little technologies that save us a fraction of a second or a gesture, they're a form of crack."

Paul Saffo, a veteran technology forecaster in Silicon Valley, likened it to another vital need. "Connectivity has become like oxygen," he said. "If you don't have it, you notice its absence at about two seconds."

Apple has said little about the smart cover since Mr. Jobs showcased it before a rapt audience in San Francisco last week. He said the cover was not an afterthought, but was designed simultaneously with the iPad 2. To highlight its importance, Mr. Jobs gave the smart cover a starring role in its own movie -- a playful 32-second clip that, he said, reminded him of a Pixar short.

Tech bloggers are reacting with effusive praise for the cover, with comments ranging from "magical" to "mind blowing." John Gruber, an influential blogger, said the smart cover may be the main reason some owners of the original iPad want to upgrade to the new version.

How well the cover works in real life remains to be seen. Will it slip off when the iPad 2 is pulled out of a bag? Will it work as well for left-handed users and right-handed users? Will it slide easily into a larger case?

Regardless of the answers, the smart cover appears to have carved its spot in tech history, if only for the praise it has earned for its stylish marriage of form and function. "It is well on its way to becoming a design icon," Mr. Saffo said.

Maybe you can judge a tablet by its cover.

Japan's industrial heart escapes heaviest blows

New Delhi:  As bad as the toll might eventually be in lives and property from Japan's earthquake and tsunami, the fact that the disaster hit far from Japan's industrial heartland will at least soften the economic blow, both at home and abroad.

The epicentre was in and around the coastal city of Sendai, nearly 200 miles northeast of Tokyo, the nation's population centre, and well north of Japan's primary manufacturing region running from Nagoya to Osaka and farther south and west.

If this had been a couple hundred miles to the south, the economic and human toll would have been almost incomprehensible," said Marcus Noland, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. "In that respect, Japan dodged an enormous bullet here."

The disaster could prompt the Japanese government to pump more money into the economy, analysts say, and is very likely to result in increased public spending on buildings and roads.

And it could propel Japan's already strong currency, the yen, even higher against the dollar and other global currencies, as Japanese money invested abroad returns to help in the rebuilding. In global currency trading on Friday, after the earthquake, the yen did edge higher.

Japan is a major exporter of cars, consumer electronics goods, and parts and sophisticated industrial machinery. In the wake of the disaster, some factories were shut down temporarily. Japanese ports were closed, and so were several airports, including Narita International Airport, which serves Tokyo.

The ripple effects, analysts say, are likely to be some delays in shipping goods, and possibly higher prices in certain products and components. But the impact is expected to be relatively modest and short-lived.


Japan, for example, produces 40 percent of lightweight memory chips most commonly used for storage in digital music players, smart phones and tablet computers, estimated Jim Handy, an analyst at Objective Analysis, a research firm. But most of the plants that make such chips, and other electronics components, are south and west of Tokyo.

Still, a high-tech factory does not have to topple to halt production. A strong shaking, like that generated by the magnitude-8.9 earthquake -- the most powerful ever recorded in Japan, and felt across much of the nation -- can upset the delicate machinery used in production.

Recalibrating the machines, analyst say, can take a week or two, crimping supplies.

"We do expect some upward price pressure because of this," said Dale Ford, an analyst at IHS iSuppli, a technology market research firm. But it is too soon, Mr Ford noted, to predict how much prices might rise, though it should not have a long-term impact.

Because Japan occupies an unstable slice of the earth's crust and tremors are a routine part of life, Japan's government, scientists and industry are almost continually engaged in moderating the impact of earthquakes through innovative building designs, strict construction codes and advance planning.

Japan's major automakers, for example, have long had contingency plans in place to keep supplies moving. Car companies on Friday did report damage to some factories and offices, and Honda said one employee was killed at a research centre in Tochigi, north of Tokyo, when a cafeteria wall collapsed.

Toyota, Japan's largest automaker, reported that its car assembly plants had resumed production after a brief stoppage -- though four factories operated by Toyota subsidiaries remained closed while workers were evacuated to safer areas.

But most of Toyota's Japanese production is done south of Tokyo, especially around Nagoya, including the Prius hybrid, which is built only in Japan.

And over the past two decades, the Japanese automakers have shifted a large portion of production of cars sold for the United States to American plants, while Japanese parts suppliers have set up shop in North America as well.

"Given their contingency plans for earthquakes, and all the production done abroad these days, I'd be amazed if this had a real impact on Toyota or other leading Japanese car companies," said Clyde V. Prestowitz Jr., a Japan expert and the president of the Economic Strategy Institute, a nonpartisan policy research group in Washington.

In 1995, after the devastating earthquake centred in Kobe, a port and industrial city, which killed more than 6,000 people and caused more than $100 billion in damage, the yen rose in value against the dollar 20 percent in the following two months. Some analysts predict that the yen will strengthen in the wake of this earthquake, too.

Why would a disaster cause a nation's currency to gain in value? In Japan's case, the answer lies partly in the country's high savings rate and sizable investments abroad. "As households see their physical assets destroyed, need funds for reconstruction and become more risk averse," Michael Hart, an analyst for Roubini Global Economics, wrote on Friday, "they are likely to repatriate their savings."

In doing so, they would convert their foreign holdings back into yen, increasing the demand for the Japanese currency, thus driving up its value. Still, a strong yen could pose problems for Japanese exporters, by making their products relatively more expensive on the global market.

For Japanese consumers, spending to increase household inventories of food and other daily necessities will probably increase, but outlays for luxury goods and services, notably tourism, will fall sharply, Masaaki Kanno, a Tokyo-based economist for JPMorgan Securities, predicted in a note to clients.

Japan's central bank announced on Friday that it would speed up its monetary policy meeting, to conclude on Monday instead of Tuesday. The bank, analysts say, is expected to add to the money supply, probably by expanding a program to buy government bonds and thus inject more funds into the economy.

The disaster, economists say, may well prod Japanese policy makers to increase government spending to stimulate the economy, despite adding to the nation's sizable debt burden in the near term. And private investment on construction should increase as well.

"There should be some positive impact because of the rush to rebuild," said Edward J. Lincoln, a Japan expert at New York University's Stern School of Business. "Perversely, you may have an economic benefit from this over the next year or two."

Befriend the pope? John Paul II gets Facebook page

Vatican City:  The Vatican will unveil the latest installment in its social media transformation next week - a Facebook page dedicated to the upcoming beatification of Pope John Paul II, officials said.

The site, which will link to video highlights of John Paul's 27-year papacy, is designed to promote the May 1 beatification. But it may well continue beyond given the global and enduring interest in the late pontiff, Vatican officials told The Associated Press.

The Vatican's first attempt at an event-themed Facebook page - to promote Pope Benedict XVI's September trip to the United Kingdom - is still active six months later and updated near-daily with 10,000-15,000 regular fans checking in, said Monsignor Paul Tighe, the No. 2 in the Vatican's social communications office.

"What we found is that Facebook doesn't just share information, it creates community," Tighe said in an interview Friday. "People begin talking to each other and sharing ideas."

That interactivity - and the potential it brings to the church's evangelization mission - is behind the Vatican's new social media push, the culmination of which will be launched at Easter with a new Vatican information web portal whose contents are specifically designed to be tweeted, posted and blogged.

The portal will serve as a one-stop-shop aggregator of news from the Vatican's various information sources: Vatican Radio, Vatican Television, the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, the Holy See's press office and Fides, the Vatican's missionary news agency, Tighe said.

The Vatican's current website - www.vatican.va - will remain since that's more of a stable site with basic information about the Holy See, key Vatican documents and offices, and papal activities.

The new site, rolled out first in English and Italian and then other languages, will be more news-based, bringing together onto one page the current disorganized web presence of Vatican media.

Designed thematically, with each format's take on, say, the Japan earthquake or the Libyan uprising posted together, it will be multimedia focused but specifically designed for social media use, so people can tweet, post and blog its contents onto their own friends and fans, Tighe said.

"For us it will be a beginning of drawing on the riches of what we have, of our existing communications apparatus, and integrating that to ensure that its formally working with new media," he said.

The Vatican's communications and public relations woes are well known: muddled papal messages, flat-footed responses to crises like the sex abuse scandal and a certain lack of Internet savvy that allowed, to cite one egregious case, for the pope to lift the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop. (Benedict now says he never would have rehabilitated the bishop had he known his views about Jews, which were widely available with a Google search.)

That said, the Holy See has improved getting its message out online, with a dedicated YouTube channel and Twitter accounts, and its increasing presence on Facebook. Pope Benedict XVI has spoken out recently about how the church's message can get out effectively and in entirely new ways using the interactivity of social media.

"A lot of our communications in the past was: I have a message. I broadcast it. TV takes it, radio takes it, newspaper takes it, and people passively receive it," Tighe said. "With the Internet you have this possibility of getting people's comments, getting their responses, and also of hearing their questions."
Benedict himself will take a step in that direction on April 22, Good Friday, when he responds to questions posed by the faithful that were submitted online. His prerecorded responses will air on Italian state television, and presumably then find their way onto YouTube.

"This is a beginning, in a simple way, of allowing the pope to interact with the questions of people and allowing people a direct form of access to the pope," Tighe said. "With time we'll see how different initiatives can develop, but the commitment there is to interactivity, to engagement."

Fresh tremors jolt Tokyo

Tokyo:  Huge earthquakes rocked northeastern Japan on Saturday, a day after a giant temblor set off a powerful tsunami that killed hundreds of people, turned the coast into a swampy wasteland and left two nuclear reactors dangerously close to meltdown.

The United States Geological Survey said a strong earthquake struck just before noon in the sea in virtually the same place where the magnitude 8.9 quake on Friday unleashed one of the greatest disasters Japan has witnessed -- a 23-foot (7-meter) tsunami that washed far inland over fields and smashed towns.

Saturday's magnitude 6.8 quake was followed by a series of temblors originating from the same area, the USGS said. It was not immediately known whether the new quakes caused any more damage. All were part of the more than 125 aftershocks since Friday's massive quake, the strongest to hit Japan since officials began keeping records in the late 1800s.

It ranked as the fifth-largest earthquake in the world since 1900 and was nearly 8,000 times stronger than one that devastated Christchurch, New Zealand, last month, scientists said.

The official death toll stood at 413, while 784 people were missing and 1,128 injured. In addition, police said between 200 and 300 bodies were found along the coast in Sendai, the biggest city in the area of the quake's epicenter. An untold number of bodies were also believed to be lying in the rubble and debris. Rescue workers had yet to reach the hardest-hit areas.

"The flood came in from behind the store and swept around both sides. Cars were flowing right by," said Wakio Fushima, who owns a convenience store in this northern coastal city of 1.02 million people, 80 miles (125 kilometers) from the quake's epicenter.

Smashed cars and small airplanes were jumbled up against buildings near the local airport, several miles (kilometers) from the shore. Felled trees and wooden debris lay everywhere as rescue workers coasted on boats through murky waters around flooded structures, nosing their way through a sea of detritus.
"The tsunami was unbelievably fast. Smaller cars were being swept around me and all I could do was sit in my truck," said truck driver Koichi Takairin, 34, who was pinned in his four-ton vehicle and later escaped to a community center.

His rig ruined, he joined the steady flow of mud-spattered survivors who walked along the road away from the sea and back into city. Smoke from at least one large fire could be seen in the distance.

But basic commodities were at a premium. Hundreds lined up outside of supermarkets, and gas stations were swamped with cars. The situation was similar in scores of other towns and cities along the 1,300-mile-long (2,100-kilometer-long) eastern coastline hit by the tsunami.

Japan also declared its first-ever states of emergency for five nuclear reactors at two power plants after the units lost cooling ability in the aftermath of the earthquake, and workers struggled to prevent meltdowns.

Two of the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Futaba town were in danger and could face a meltdown if all possible safety procedures fail.

Authorities said the breakdown happened after the quake knocked out power, turning off the water supply needed to cool the system. Although a backup cooling system was being used, Japan's nuclear safety agency said pressure inside the reactor had risen to 1 1/2 times the level considered normal.
Authorities said radiation levels had jumped 1,000 times normal inside Unit 1 and were measured at eight times normal outside the plant.

They expanded an earlier evacuation zone more than threefold, from 3 kilometers to 10 kilometers (2 miles to 6.2 miles). About 3,000 people were urged to leave their homes in the first announcement.
Japan gets about 30 percent of its electricity from nuclear power plants. Authorities warned citizens to be prepared for severe power cuts. More than 1 million households across Japan, mostly in the northeast, still didn't have access to water.

In Sendai, as in many areas of the northeast, cell phone service was down, making it difficult for people to communicate with loved ones.

"I'm waiting for my son to come here. But I cannot tell him he should come over here because mobile phones aren't working," a woman in her 70s at a shelter told Japanese TV in the town of Rikuzentakada, which appeared to be largely destroyed by the tsunami.

"My husband is missing," she said. "Tsunami water was rising to my knees, and I told him I would go first. He is not here yet."

The tsunami swept inland about 6 miles (10 kilometers), and beyond that most buildings appeared undamaged from the outside.

TV footage showed several people standing on the roof of a three-story building in Miyagi prefecture (state), surrounded by mud. A man waved a big white flag, and a woman was lifting two pink umbrellas, signaling for help.

Elsewhere, aerial footage showed military helicopters lifting people on rescue tethers from rooftops and partially submerged buildings surrounded by water and debris. At one school, a large white "SOS" had been spelled out in English.

"The energy radiated by this quake is nearly equal to one month's worth of energy consumption" in the United States, USGS scientist Brian Atwater told The Associated Press.

The entire Pacific had been put on alert -- including coastal areas of South America, Canada and Alaska -- but waves were not as bad as expected.

President Barack Obama pledged U.S. assistance following what he called a potentially "catastrophic" disaster. He said one U.S. aircraft carrier is already in Japan and a second was on its way. A U.S. ship was also heading to the Marianas Islands to assist as needed, he said.

Most trains in Tokyo started running again Saturday after the city had been brought to a near standstill the day before. Tens of thousands of people had been stranded with the rail network down, jamming the streets with cars, buses and trucks trying to get out of the city.

The city set up 33 shelters in city hall, on university campuses and in government offices, but many spent Friday night at 24-hour cafes, hotels and offices.

Japan's worst previous quake was a magnitude 8.3 temblor in Kanto that killed 143,000 people in 1923, according to the USGS. A magnitude 7.2 quake in Kobe killed 6,400 people in 1995.

Japan lies on the "Ring of Fire" -- an arc of earthquake and volcanic zones stretching around the Pacific where about 90 percent of the world's quakes occur, including the one that triggered the Dec. 26, 2004, Indian Ocean tsunami that killed an estimated 230,000 people in 12 countries. A magnitude-8.8 quake that shook central Chile in February 2010 also generated a tsunami and killed 524 people.