Strong quake stirs panic in Indonesia capital

Jakarta, Indonesia

A powerful magnitude-7.5 earthquake under the Java Sea rattled Indonesia's capital early today, violently shaking tall buildings and sending panicked residents into the streets.

There were no immediate reports of damage, and geophysicists said there was little risk of a tsunami. The quake was centered about 65 miles east of Jakarta at a depth in the Earth of 180 miles, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

It reportedly was felt from Sumatra island in the west to Bali to the east, as well as parts of Malaysia.

"Because this earthquake was so far below the ocean bottom, it didn't trigger a tsunami or cause a lot of damage," said John Bellini, a USGS geophysicist.

Paris

Chernobyl reactor to get new cover

A French-led consortium will build a new encasement for Ukraine's Chernobyl power station, which exploded in 1986, becoming history's worst nuclear accident.

The new shelter will enclose the existing concrete sarcophagus erected hastily after the accident. That structure has been crumbling and leaking radiation for more than a decade.

Tbilisi, Georgia

Russian jet ditched missile, official says

A missile that landed in Georgia was ditched, not fired, by a Russian jet as it fled Georgian airspace, a Georgian official said on Wednesday.

The missile, weighing about a ton, landed — but did not explode — in a farmer's field about 40 miles west of the capital, Tbilisi, on Monday.

Georgia initially said the missile had been fired by Russian jets. But a Georgian official told Reuters on Wednesday that the Russian pilot dumped the missile after coming under fire from separatist forces in South Ossetia, a Moscow-backed breakaway region of Georgia, in an apparent mix-up.

Mexico City

Top cleric queried about abuse case

Mexico's top clergyman, Cardinal Norberto Rivera, was questioned by U.S. lawyers Wednesday in the latest sex-abuse case involving the Roman Catholic Church.

The lawyers asked Rivera about charges in a U.S. civil case that he colluded with Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony to protect a Mexican priest wanted for multiple child rapes. The attorneys allege that former altar boy Joaquin Aguilar Mendez was raped at age 13 in Mexico in 1994 by a priest named Nicolas Aguilar, whom the church shunted between Mexico and the United States to avoid abuse charges.

Also

Snow coated the fields of Chile's normally temperate Maule central valley wine and farm region for the first time in half a century Wednesday, causing officials to declare an emergency to avoid traffic accidents. Chile is facing its coldest winter in 30 years.

Seattle Times news services