TOKYO

Strong earthquakes rock northern Japan

Two strong earthquakes shook northern Japan on Saturday, leaving at least 246 people with mostly minor injuries. Officials said area rail traffic was halted, power was cut to tens of thousands of homes and dozens of houses were damaged.

The costliest quake struck shortly after dawn, shaking Miyagi state, about 190 miles northeast of Tokyo, the Meteorological Agency said. The magnitude-6.2 quake was followed by smaller aftershocks.

So far, 246 people were treated at local hospitals for minor injuries, including 17 from an earlier quake, mostly cuts and bruises, Miyagi state police spokesman Kazuo Horie said. Two people were hospitalized with head injuries.

NHK showed houses with roofs partly collapsed and others with pieces of walls shorn off. A two-story house collapsed, crushing a car parked inside its garage. About 120 houses were damaged, including 50 in the town of Nango.

India

16 killed in Kashmir

Indian soldiers killed 11 suspected Muslim rebels and five unarmed Bangladeshis trying to sneak into the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir on Friday, police said. Two Indian soldiers were killed.

India and Pakistani troops also pounded each other with artillery along the Line of Control, the cease-fire line that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan. No casualties were reported.

Indian and Pakistani troops routinely shell each other, but there has been a comparative lull since April, when leaders of the two countries renewed efforts to resume talks on Kashmir after two years of bitter relations.

Russia

Colonel guilty of killing Chechen teenager

A Russian colonel was convicted Friday of kidnapping and murdering an 18-year-old Chechen woman and sentenced to 10 years in a maximum-security prison.

Col. Yuri Budanov, the first Russian officer to be prosecuted for a crime against a civilian in Chechnya, admitted strangling Heda Kungayeva, saying he did it in a fit of rage during an interrogation.

In December, a court ruled that Budanov was temporarily insane at the time and was not criminally responsible. However, the Supreme Court overturned that decision and ordered a new trial.

Budanov’s trial has been widely watched throughout Russia for a signal into how the military will handle reports of abuses in Chechnya, which have undermined the Kremlin’s efforts to build trust in the war-ravaged republic.