TOKYO – A magnitude-5.9 earthquake today rocked northern Japan near where the deadliest earthquake to strike the country in years hit last month. No injuries were immediately reported.
The quake appeared to be an aftershock to last month’s magnitude-6.8 temblor. It was centered close to the Earth’s surface in the Chuetsu area of Niigata prefecture, the Meteorological Agency said. The quake posed no danger of a tsunami, the agency said.
The Oct. 23 quake that struck Niigata and aftershocks in the days that followed killed 39 people and injured more than 2,000. It was the deadliest quake to hit Japan since 1995, when a magnitude-7.2 quake killed 6,000 people in the western city of Kobe.
Lebanon: Drone sent over Israel
Hezbollah sent a reconnaissance drone into Israeli territory over northern Jewish settlements Sunday in the first hostile aerial incursion from Lebanon since a hang glider attack 17 years ago killed six soldiers. Hezbollah said it retrieved the drone safely, but Lebanon’s largest TV station, LBC, quoted witnesses as saying the aircraft crashed into the sea off the border town of Naqoura, adding that fishermen found the wreckage of the aircraft and gave it to Hezbollah members.
Afghanistan: Kidnappers’ demands
Taliban-linked militants holding three kidnapped U.N. workers demanded on Sunday the release of 26 prisoners, some possibly in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, in return for sparing the hostages’ lives. The kidnapping of Annetta Flanigan of Northern Ireland, Angelito Nayan of the Philippines and Shqipe Hebibi of Kosovo was the first against foreigners in the capital since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.
Haiti: Peacekeepers guard station
Argentine U.N. peacekeepers guarded the police station in Gonaives, Haiti’s third-largest city, on Sunday, a day after an attack by armed men led officers to flee. Two dozen police reinforcements also arrived from Port-au-Prince. None of the city’s 40 police had returned to work by Sunday.
France: Protester hit by train dies
A French anti-nuclear protester was killed Sunday in eastern France when his leg was severed by a train carrying radioactive waste to Germany, officials said. Paramedics quickly cared for protester Sebastien Briat, 21, after the incident near Avricourt, but he died on way to a nearby hospital, officials said. He had been surprised by the train while trying to chain himself to the tracks as part of a protest.
England: Train crash motive probed
Police were trying on Sunday to determine whether a suicide was the cause of a train crash west of London, in the village of Ufton Nervet, that killed six people and seriously injured 11 after a car stopped on the tracks as the high-speed train approached. Investigators were examining the car wreckage to determine whether the vehicle had stopped because of a mechanical problem or whether the driver intended to place the vehicle at the crossing.
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