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WELLINGTON, New Zealand – A powerful 7.1-magnitude earthquake struck much of New Zealand’s South Island early Saturday and caused widespread damage, but there were just two reports of serious injuries. Looters broke into some damaged shops in Christchurch, police said.

The quake, which hit 19 miles (30 kilometers) west of the southern city of Christchurch according to the state geological agency GNS Science, shook a wide area, with some residents saying buildings had collapsed and power was severed. No tsunami alert was issued.

GNS Science initially reported the quake as magnitude 7.4, but later downgraded it after re-examining quake records. The U.S. Geological Survey, in America, measured the quake at 7.0.

Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker declared a state of emergency four hours after the quake rocked the region, warning people that continuing aftershocks could cause masonry to fall from damaged buildings.

The emergency meant parts of the city would be closed off and some buildings closed as unsafe, he said.

Minister of Civil Defense John Carter said a state of civil emergency was declared as the quake was “a significant disaster,” and army troops were on standby to assist.

Parker said the “sharp, vicious earthquake has caused significant damage in parts of the city … with walls collapsed that have fallen into the streets.”

Chimneys and walls had fallen from older buildings, with roads blocked, traffic lights out and power, gas and water supplies disrupted, he said.

“The fronts of at least five buildings in the central city have collapsed and rubble is strewn across many roads,” Christchurch resident Angela Morgan told The Associated Press.

“Roads have subsided where water mains have broken and a lot of people evacuated in panic from seaside areas for fear of a tsunami,” she said, adding that “there is quite significant damage, really, with reports that some people were trapped in damaged houses.”

Christchurch fire service spokesman Mike Bowden said a number of people had been trapped in buildings by fallen chimneys and blocked entrances, but there were no reports of people pinned under rubble. Rescue teams were out checking premises.

Christchurch Hospital said it had treated two men with serious injuries and a number of people with minor injuries.

One man was hit by a falling chimney and was in serious condition in intensive care, while a second was badly cut by glass, hospital spokeswoman Michele Hider said.

Christchurch police reported road damage in parts of the city of 400,000 people, with a series of sharp aftershocks rocking the area. Police officers cordoned off some streets where rubble was strewn about. Video showed parked cars crushed by heaps of fallen bricks, and buckled roads.

“There is considerable damage in the central city and we’ve also had reports of looting, just shop windows broken and easy picking of displays,” Police Inspector Mike Coleman told New Zealand’s National Radio.

Police Inspector Alf Stewart told the radio that some people had been arrested for looting.

“We have some reports of people smashing (storefront) windows and trying to grab some property that is not theirs … we’ve got police on the streets and we’re dealing with that,” he said.

Suburban dweller Mark O’Connell said his house was full of smashed glass, food tossed from shelves, with sets of drawers, TVs and computers tipped over.

“She was a beauty, we were thrown from wall to wall as we tried to escape down the stairs to get to safety,” he told the AP. “It was pitch black (with the power cut) and we walked through smashed glass everywhere on the floor.”

The quake hit at 4:35 a.m. (1635 GMT) shaking thousands of residents awake, New Zealand’s National Radio reported. Some 12 aftershocks have rocked the region since, ranging from 5.3 to 3.9 in magnitude, GNS Science reported on its web site.

Prime Minister John Key, Carter and Energy Minister Gerry Brownlee were to fly to Christchurch to inspect damage and review the situation, officials said.

Civil defense agency spokesman David Millar said at least six bridges in the region had been badly damaged, while the historic Empire hotel in the port town of Lyttelton was “very unstable” and in danger of collapse. Roads, shops and other buildings in rural towns around Christchurch had also suffered damage, with some shop fronts knocked down in the jolt.

Inspector Coleman said residents of the city’s low-lying eastern suburbs had been advised to be ready to evacuate their properties, after power, gas, sewerage and water systems were cut by the quake.

Resident Colleen Simpson said panicked residents ran into the street in their pajamas. Some buildings had collapsed, there was no power, and the mobile telephone network had failed.

“Oh my God. There is a row of shops completely demolished right in front of me,” Simpson told the Stuff news Web site.

Kiwirail rail transport group spokesman Kevin Ramshaw said 13 mostly freight trains had been halted on South Island lines, with some damage already confirmed to rail lines north of Christchurch.

Christchurch International Airport was closed after the quake as a precaution, as experts checked runways and terminal buildings, a spokesman said.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said “no destructive widespread tsunami threat existed, based on historical earthquake and tsunami data.”

New Zealand sits above an area of the Earth’s crust where two tectonic plates collide. The country records more than 14,000 earthquakes a year — but only about 150 are felt by residents. Fewer than 10 a year do any damage.

New Zealand’s last major earthquake was a magnitude 7.8 in South Island’s Fiordland region on July 16, 2009 — a tremblor which moved the southern tip of the country 12 inches (30 centimeters) closer to Australia, seismologist Ken Gledhill said at the time.

Gledhill, director of GNS Science’s “GeoNet” national earthquake monitoring project, said the island’s geographic shift showed the immensity of the forces involved.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – A UPS cargo plane with two crew members on board crashed shortly after takeoff Friday outside Dubai, officials said.

The state news agency WAM, quoting the General Civil Aviation Authority, reported that the “bodies of two pilots” had been found at the scene, but UPS did not confirm that.

The plane went down inside an Emirati air base near a busy highway intersection about 10 miles (16 kilometers) southeast of Dubai’s international airport. WAM said the crash occurred in an unpopulated desert area, suggesting there may not have been casualties on the ground.

Smoke rose from the crash site, which was shielded from the highway by walls. Migrant laborers from a nearby camp gathered along the roadside to watch.

UPS spokeswoman Kristen Petrella said the Boeing 747-400 — which has a wingspan of 212 feet (64.6 meters) and length of 232 feet (70.7 meters) — went down at about 8 p.m. in Dubai (12 p.m. EST). Flight 6 was en route to the UPS hub in Cologne, Germany, she said. Petrella said the plane had two crew members but the company has not confirmed any casualties.

Two U.S. aviation experts said the plane had taken off and then turned around and was returning to land when the accident took place. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to the media.

UPS, an Atlanta-based company formally known as United Parcel Service Inc. and the world’s largest shipping company, dispatched an investigation team to the scene.

A Dubai-based spokesman for the General Civil Aviation Authority, Ismail al-Baroushi, said an investigation was under way, but it was “too early to speculate” on the cause of the crash. National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Ted Lopatkiewicz also said the U.S. agency will send a team of experts to Dubai to assist with the investigation.

A witness, who refused to give his name, said he was sitting on the balcony of his home when he heard a “big boom.”

“There was fire and too much smoke,” he said.

In October 2009, a Sudanese Boeing 707 cargo plane crashed in the desert outside Dubai after taking off from Sharjah airport north of Dubai, killing six crew members. Emirati regulators have banned the plane’s Sudanese owner, Azza Transport, from operating in the country.

There are about 300 747 freighters in service, carrying about half the world’s air cargo.

UPS planes have been involved in four accidents since 1985, none fatal, according to an aviation safety database. The most recent involved a fire that broke out in the cargo hold of a McDonnell Douglas DC-8 en route from Atlanta to Philadelphia. Smoke was billowing from the plane when it landed, but the three pilots were able to evacuate safely, said the database, maintained by the Flight Safety Foundation of Alexandria, Va.

In 2005, pilot error cause the nose gear of a McDonnell Douglas MD-11F to collapse during a landing in Anchorage, causing $10 million in damages to the plane.

Prior to Friday’s accident, five major airline accidents have been linked to Dubai Airport since 1973, with no fatalities, according to the database. The most recent was on March 12, 2007, when a Biman Bangladesh Airlines Airbus A310 with 236 passengers and crew members aborted a takeoff. The plane came to rest at the end of the runway with a collapsed nose gear.

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Associated Press Airlines Writer Samantha Bomkamp in New York and AP writers Michael Casey in Dubai and Joan Lowy in Washington contributed to this report.

TEHRAN, Iran – Pro-government crowds swarmed outside the battered home of a key Iranian opposition leader Friday after militiamen attacked with firebombs and beat a bodyguard unconscious in a brazen message of intimidation and pinpoint pressure on dissent.

The assault on Mahdi Karroubi’s five-story residence late Thursday — just hours before major state-backed rallies — displayed the growing tactics of trying to isolate and harass top opposition figures after relentless crackdowns appear to have driven protesters from the streets.

The 72-year-old Karroubi, a cleric and former parliament speaker, has been the most public protest leader in recent months — and has paid the price with repeated damage to his car and tense confrontations with backers of the Islamic state. But the latest backlash, described by a pro-reform website, was by far the most aggressive.

Mobs of hard-line militiamen — known as Basij — began breaking down the front door of Karroubi’s residence before being driven back by warning shots from guards, according to the Sahamnews website, which supports Iran’s pro-reform movement.

Karroubi was at home at the time, but was not injured, his son Hossein told The Associated Press.

Media restrictions imposed by Iranian authorities blocked journalists from reaching the site and independently verifying the accounts. A video posted on the Internet by a group backing the opposition showed smashed windows and graffiti on the walls and door panel of the house, located on a tree-lined street in north Tehran.

Hossein Karroubi said dozens of hard-liners — some on motorbikes — continued to damage the opposition leader’s home on Friday and that police were not responding to the scene. Some security cameras outside the building were torn down, he said.

“The reason for attacking my father is the challenge he raised against the centers of power,” another son, Taghi Karroubi, told the AP. “The attack was very harsh and we feared they wanted to kill (my father).”

The melee came after nearly a week of pro-government gatherings outside Karroubi’s home. The trigger for the assault apparently was to keep him from attending annual pro-Palestinian rallies on Friday and becoming a draw for opposition protesters. Last year, the event turned into street riots after tens of thousands of counter-protests staged marches claiming massive ballot fraud in the June 2009 re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

At the time, the momentum of the opposition rallies seemed formidable. Marchers openly denounced Ahmadinejad and his backers and tangled with Basij vigilantes, a paramilitary force aligned with the powerful Revolutionary Guard.

But authorities gradually began to reclaim the upper hand. The Revolutionary Guard gathered stronger and more mobile forces — including club-swinging Basij on motorbikes — while authorities conducted arrest sweeps and widely choked off the Internet and mobile phone messaging used to organize the protesters. Internet service was slow or inaccessible in Tehran on Friday.

The opposition has not held any street demonstrations since February and canceled plans for a rally on the anniversary of the election.

Security forces, meanwhile, have turned their attention to squeezing Karroubi and others in the opposition vanguard, including Green Movement head Mir Hossein Mousavi and former President Mohammad Khatami.

Karroubi’s car has been attacked and he has been jostled by angry crowds, including during a visit in June to visit a pro-reform cleric in the holy city of Qom, opposition websites reported.

Khatami — despite his elder statesman role — was barred from traveling to Japan in April to attend a conference on dialogue between cultures. Khatami’s former vice president and others in his government have been arrested on charges of trying to overthrow the Islamic system.

Mousavi has kept a lower profile recently than Karroubi. But Mousavi’s wife, Zahra Rahnavard, was surrounded and mocked last week by a group of hard-liners, according to the Mousavi-backed website Kaleme.

Last week, opposition websites carried a copy of a purported government directive banning all Iranian newspapers and news agencies from mentioning the three pro-reform leaders or showing their pictures.

Mousavi condemned the attack on Karroubi’s home, saying it proved the government’s “enmity against Israel is an excuse” for attacking opposition figures. “Karroubi and figures like him and other freedom-seekers are the real enemies of authoritarians.”

Karroubi, meanwhile, was visited by well-wishers including Yasser Khomeini, a grandson of the Islamic Republic’s founder, the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, according to Sahamnews.

Elsewhere in Tehran, Ahmadinejad addressed a rally for Quds Day, or Jerusalem Day, which is used to both support Palestinians and condemn Israel. In his speech, Ahmadinejad said Israel and its supporters are too weak to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Israel, the United States and other nations believe Iran intends to develop atomic weapons under the cover of its civil nuclear power program. Iran denies that, saying its nuclear work is only for peaceful purposes.

The Iranian leader also dismissed the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks held in Washington this week, saying “the fate of Palestine will be decided in Palestine and through resistance and not in Washington.” Iran supports the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

Meanwhile, Egypt canceled a visit by Iran’s foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, to protest comments in which he accused Arab leaders of betrayal for attending the new round of Mideast peace talks in Washington.

Mottaki had been scheduled to visit Cairo Monday for a meeting of Nonaligned Movement members.

Iran has an uneasy relationship with U.S.-allied Arab nations, which have watched Tehran’s growing influence in the Middle East with concern because of suspicions over its nuclear program and its support for radical Islamic groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordanian King Abdullah II attended the talks in Washington.

Iran severed ties with Egypt after it signed a peace deal with Israel in 1979 and provided asylum to Iran’s deposed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

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Murphy reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

NEW ORLEANS – BP PLC said the blowout preventer that failed to stop oil from spewing into the Gulf of Mexico was removed from the company’s well on Friday afternoon.

A BP spokesman said in an e-mail to The Associated Press that the 50-foot, 300-ton device was detached from the wellhead at 1:20 p.m CDT.

The device was slowly being lifted to the surface and wouldn’t likely reach the top until sometime Saturday.

Earlier in the day, a vessel had latched onto the equipment to raise it from a mile beneath the sea.

Undersea video showed the device suspended in the water. A crane on the Helix Q4000 was being used for the task.

The blowout preventer is considered a key piece of evidence in the spill investigation. Investigators will examine it and hope to gain insight into why the device failed to prevent the spill.

The April 20 explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon killed 11 workers and led to 206 million gallons of oil spewing from BP’s undersea well.

Investigators know the explosion was triggered by a bubble of methane gas that escaped from the well and shot up the drill column, expanding quickly as it burst through several seals and barriers before igniting.

But they don’t know exactly how or why the gas escaped. And they don’t know why the blowout preventer didn’t seal the well pipe at the sea bottom after the eruption, as it was supposed to. While the device didn’t close — or may have closed partially — hearings have produced no clear picture of why it didn’t plug the well.

Lawyers will be watching closely, as hundreds of lawsuits have been filed over the oil spill. Future liabilities faced by a number of corporations could be riding on what the analysis of the blowout preventer shows.

The raising of the blowout preventer followed Thursday’s removal of a temporary cap that stopped oil from gushing into the Gulf in mid-July. No more oil was expected to leak into the sea, but crews were standing by with collection vessels just in case.

The government wants to replace the failed blowout preventer first to deal with any pressure that is caused when a relief well BP has been drilling intersects the blown-out well.

Once that intersection occurs sometime after Labor Day, BP is expected to use mud and cement to plug the blown-out well for good from the bottom.

MIAMI – A senior law enforcement official says the scientist detained at Miami International Airport because of a suspicious item in his luggage had once been charged with illegally transporting bubonic plague.

The official told The Associated Press on Friday that no dangerous material was found on 70-year-old Thomas Butler after he was detained Thursday night. He was released Friday.

Butler was acquitted of illegally transporting the deadly germ, which he was accused of doing while teaching at Texas Tech in 2003. But he was convicted of fraud and served a two-year sentence.

The official said Butler cooperated fully after he arrived on a flight from the Middle East. The official requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to release the information.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

MIAMI (AP) — A senior law enforcement official says the scientist detained at Miami International Airport because of a suspicious item in his luggage had once been charged with illegally transporting bubonic plague.

The official told The Associated Press on Friday that no dangerous material was found on 70-year-old Thomas Butler after he was detained Thursday night. He was released Friday.

The official said Butler cooperated fully after he arrived on a flight from the Middle East. The official requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to release the information.

Butler was teaching at Texas Tech in 2003 when he was accused of illegally transporting the deadly germ. He was acquitted on those counts but convicted of fraud. He served a two-year sentence.