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"Saturday's 6.5 temblor off California's remote North Coast was the strongest to hit the state in six years, but it caused few injuries and little major damage aside from downed chimneys, broken windows and rattled nerves. But experts say it could have been far worse. Because the epicenter was located in solid rock about 25 miles offshore - and the rural region's population is scattered and resides primarily in wood-frame housing - damage was minimal for a quake of that size. The quake was also a powerful reminder that the area is the seismic capital of our state, yet its turbulence receives far less attention than quakes in the Bay Area and Los Angeles Basin. Every year at least 80 temblors with magnitudes over 3 are recorded off the Cape Mendocino coast, according to the University of California-Berkeley Seismology Laboratory. Humboldt County officials reported that more than two dozen residents sought emergency medical care, with only one serious injury - a broken hip. The picturesque city of Eureka, the hardest-hit community in the region, reported $12.5 million in structural damage, with 14 residents displaced. "On the whole, I think we dodged a bullet," said state Assemblyman Wesley Chesbro, D-Eureka. Most Californians are anxious about the San Andreas Fault, yet the so-called Cascadia subduction zone - which created Mount Lassen - is twice the length of the San Andreas and is believed capable Advertisement Quantcast of generating larger quakes than our notorious fault."

"Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has proposed that the Obama administration negotiate the final borders of a Palestinian state with Israel, a Palestinian official said Wednesday, as a U.S. envoy headed to the region for another attempt to restart Mideast peace talks. Such a proxy arrangement could provide a way around the current deadlock over reviving Israeli-Palestinian talks, which broke off more than a year ago. Abbas says he won't return to the table without a complete Israeli settlement freeze, something Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to do. As an alternative, U.S. officials could replace Palestinian negotiators in border talks with Israel, said an Abbas aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the content of internal meetings. The U.S. negotiators would be given clear parameters, the aide said. Advertisement The state would have to be established in the territories Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast War - the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem - but the Palestinians would agree to swap up to 3 percent of the territory to accommodate some Israeli settlements, the aide said. Abbas made the proposal in recent meetings with Egyptian officials who passed the idea along to Washington, the aide said. It was not clear how the Americans reacted. Officials at the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem, which serves the West Bank, had no comment. Abbas has said much ground has been covered in his talks with Netanyahu's predecessor, Ehud Olmert, and that the time has come for decisions. In those talks, Abbas offered a swap of up to 1.9 percent of West Bank land for Israeli territory, while Olmert proposed 6.5 percent. Alternately, Abbas could resume negotiations with Netanyahu, provided the Israeli leader agrees to a six-month settlement freeze in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. Netanyahu would not have to announce the freeze, the aide said, presumably to avoid a rebellion in his hardline coalition. The

"By Kang Juan China made stern representations to the US Thursday after the Obama administration approved a sale of upgraded Patriot air-defense missile equipment to Taiwan. The decision was denounced by Chinese military scholars as a representation of US-style pragmatism and its long-term containment policy toward China. The US defense department announced the contract late on Wednesday, allowing Lockheed Martin Corp to sell an unspecified number of Patriots, said the American Institute in Taiwan, Washington's de facto embassy in the absence of formal ties, Reuters reported Thursday. Wendell Minnick, Asia bureau chief of Defense News, told Reuters that the sale rounds out a $6.5 billion arms package approved in late 2008, which included 330 Patriot Advanced Capability (PAC-3) missiles worth up to $3.1 billion. "This is the last piece that Taiwan has been waiting on," Minnick said. Late last month, Raytheon, the world's largest missile maker, won contracts totaling $1.1 billion to produce the Patriot Air and Missile Defense System for Taiwan, including ground-system hardware and spare parts. According to a Wednesday press release by the US Department of Defense on its website, the contract with Lockheed, awarded December 30, included "basic missile tooling upgrades, command and launch control tooling, spares and ground support equipment." The completion date of the work is estimated to be October 31, 2012. In a regular press conference in Beijing Thursday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu said China has urged the US to cancel any planned arms sales to Taiwan to avoid damaging its ties with Beijing. The PAC-3 missile is the world's "most advanced, capable and powerful theater air defense missile," which defeats tactical ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and fixed and rotary winged aircraft, and significantly increases the Patriot system's firepower, Lockheed said on its website."