Dead estimated at 12,000 in China's 7.9 earthquake

From the Globe and Mail:
Yesterday's quake was the result of motion along the Longmenshan Fault that runs through Sichuan province, in which one side of the fault pushed up and over the other. The instability of this fault stems from the fact that the Tibetan Plateau is continually being pushed eastward by the collision of the Indian Plate with the Eurasian Plate, the same geological process that created the Himalayan range. (Click on post title for complete story.)