China allows foreign workers to help with quake effort

Chinese authorities said that the death toll from Monday’s earthquake in Sichuan will likely rise to 50,000, and allowed the first groups of foreign experts to help with rescue efforts, the Wall Street Journal reported. A Japanese team of relief workers, along with a team from Taiwan were granted permission to enter China to assist in the rescue, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced Thursday. The ministry also said that China will now accept offers from abroad to bring sniffer dogs, fiber-optic probes and other emergency-response technology to help search for survivors. Beijing had previously declined the help of foreign experts, saying they could not gain access to earthquake sites because of Sichuan’s shattered transportation network.