Thursday, November 05, 2009 LISBON: A strong 6.0-magnitude earthquake struck Wednesday hundreds of kilometres off Portugal's Azores Islands in the Atlantic Ocean, US and Portuguese geologists said.The US Geological Survey said that the quake struck 445 kilometres (277 miles) south of the islands at a depth of 10 km at 4:41 pm (1841 GMT), but it was not felt in the region.The remote islands form a quake-prone Portuguese archipelago located some 1,500 kilometres from Lisbon and are home to some 240,000 Azoreans. "The event was not felt in the region," said the Azores's volcanic and seismic activity institute, CIVISA.
BEIRUT: Thousands of people converged Saturday on central Beirut to mark the fourth anniversary of the assassination of Lebanese former premier Rafiq Hariri.Waving Lebanese flags and carrying pictures of the slain leader, men, women and children gathered under sunny skies in Martyr's Square where members of the parliamentary majority were to address the crowd. The rally comes as final preparations are underway in The Hague for the launch of the international tribunal set up to bring Hariri's killers to justice. It also comes as the country prepares for legislative elections in June that will pit Western-backed political parties against a Hezbollah-led alliance backed by Syria and Iran.Hariri died in a massive car bombing on February 14, 2005 that also killed 22 others. The assassination was widely blamed on then Lebanese power-broker Syria, which has denied any involvement. The attack on the Beirut seafront was one of the worst acts of political violence to rock Lebanon since t...
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