“Hope fading as Turkey, Syria quake deaths passes 16,000…”

Turkey-Syria earthquake: first aid convoy due to reach Syria today

The official death toll of the devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria jumped to more than 16,000 people on Thursday, as overwhelmed rescuers warned that the number would grow significantly with families still trapped under the rubble.

The magnitude 7.8 quake – the deadliest in Turkey since 1999 hit early on Monday and was followed by a second hours later.

Thousands of buildings were toppled, hospitals and schools wrecked, and tens of thousands of people were injured or left homeless in several Turkish and Syrian cities.

Harsh winter weather hampered search efforts and the delivery of aid and made the plight of the homeless even more miserable. Some areas were without fuel and electricity.

Aid officials voiced particular concern about the situation in Syria, already afflicted by a humanitarian crisis after nearly 12 years of civil war.

Turkish authorities say some 13.5 million people were affected in an area spanning roughly 450 km from Adana in the west to Diyarbakir in the east, and 300 km from Malatya in the north to Hatay in the south. Syrian authorities have reported deaths as far south as Hama, some 100 km from the epicentre.

“It’s now a race against time,” World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in Geneva. “Every minute, every hour that passes, the chances of finding survivors alive diminishes.”

Across the region, rescuers toiled through the night and into the morning searching for survivors as people waited in anguish by mounds of rubble, clinging to the hope that friends and relatives might be found alive.

In the Turkish city of Antakya, capital of Hatay province near the Syrian border, a woman’s voice was heard calling for help under a pile of rubble.

Families slept in cars lined up in the streets.

Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) said 5,775 buildings had been destroyed in the quake, which was followed by 285 aftershocks.

“It’s a terrifying scene in every sense,” said Dahan, contacted by phone. “In my whole life I haven’t seen anything like this, despite everything that has happened to us.”

Mosques had opened their doors to families whose homes were damaged.

Time was running out to save hundreds of families trapped under the rubble of buildings and urgent help was needed from international groups, he said.

“The infrastructure is damaged, the roads that we used to use for humanitarian work are damaged, we have to be creative in how to get to the people,” U.N. resident coordinator El-Mostafa Benlamlih told Reuters from Damascus.

The earthquake was the biggest recorded worldwide by the U.S. Geological Survey since one in the remote South Atlantic in August 2021.

Poor internet connections and damaged roads between some of the worst-hit Turkish cities, homes to millions of people, hindered efforts to assess the impact and plan help.

With tight elections scheduled in just three months, President Tayyip Erdogan’s government faces a multi-billion-dollar reconstruction challenge just as he was ramping up his re-election campaign.

Two-year euro zone yields leap after ECB cuts government deposit rate

Short-dated euro zone bond yields jumped for a fourth day on Wednesday, following a sharp leap the previous day after the European Central Bank said it would cut the interest rate it pays governments on deposits.

Two-year German yields DE2YT=RR, the most sensitive to any shifts in expectations for interest rates and inflation, rose by as much as 11 basis points (bps) to 2.725% in early trading, their highest since Jan. 3.

The ECB, which is fighting runaway inflation with steady rate hikes, started to remunerate public-sector deposits late last year to prevent that cash from flooding the fixed-income market, where top-rated government bonds have become scarce after years of ECB purchases.

By cutting the rate it pays, the ECB is giving governments in the euro zone an incentive to deploy some of their cash, rather than leave it parked at the central bank.

A return to 0% would have made holding government deposits in the Euro system very unattractive, given where short-term money market rates are, he said.

Starting on May 1, the ECB will apply a 20-bps discount to the Euro Short-Term Rate (ESTR) when paying for deposits held by euro zone governments and other public-sector entities at euro zone central banks.

Apple, Google and Amazon post disappointing results as tech giants face gloomy economic outlook

Apple, Amazon and Alphabet all posted disappointing quarterly results this week, while Facebook parent Meta bucked the gloomy trend in technology with better-than-expected revenue.

Apple reported its first revenue drop in nearly four years after COVID-19 restrictions on its factories in China curtailed iPhone sales during the crucial Christmas holiday season.

The company’s sales of $117 billion (€107 billion) for the October-December period represented a 5 per cent decline from the same time a year ago, a sharper downturn than analysts had projected.

Apple’s quarterly profit also declined to $30 billion (€27.5 billion), a 13 per cent year-on-year decrease. This is the first time in nearly seven years that its earnings fell short of market expectations.

However, Apple hasn’t signalled any intention to resort to mass layoffs like its rivals. “We manage for the long term,” Apple CEO Tim Cook told analysts in a conference call on Thursday. “We invest in innovation and people”.

MH17 crash: ‘Strong indications’ Vladimir Putin ordered missile supply

An international team of investigators said Wednesday it found “strong indications” that Russian President Vladimir Putin approved the supply of heavy anti-aircraft weapons to Ukrainian separatists who shot down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in 2014 with a Russian missile.

However, members of the Joint Investigation Team said they had insufficient evidence to prosecute Putin or any other suspects. They have suspended their eight-and-a-half-year inquiry into the shooting down of the plane that killed all 298 people onboard, flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.

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