Massive Earthquake Hammers China

A series of massive Earthquakes hammered China this morning, the largest of which registered 7.8 on the Richter scale.

How big is 7.8? The image below from my Earthquake map mashup shows that the 'rumble zone' (the area over which the quake could be felt) covered all of China.


There's been over a dozen after-shocks registering over 5, so the 'impact' zone is harder to view, but if you look at the 'Australia' tab they're only showing the largest quake which gives a better idea of its scale.

For comparisons sake the 'damage zone' (the area susceptible to severe damage) covers an area about the size of Ohio or Austria. In the image below it's represented by the darker red circle about the size of Thailand.


The humanitarian result of a quake of this size is predictable. You can read more about the effect of a quake of magnitude at Google News.

Google Finance Gets More Financials

As of this morning Google Finance is providing price information (including pricing graphs) for stocks listed on the Australian (ASX) and New Zealand (NZX) stock exchanges. Great news for market sleuths in the Great Southern Land (and its neighbor).

This comes a week after Google Finance started providing real-time pricing information on the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges in China.

Google Finance still lags a little behind Yahoo Finance, both in terms of global coverage and userbase; but these updates, and a promise of real-time updates on the US exchanges as soon as the SEC gives them a green light, suggest they've not given up the chase.