Indonesia

6.8 earthquake shakes building

A strong earthquake rocked a large swath of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island on Tuesday, shaking buildings and causing panic, witnesses and a meteorological official said. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.

The U.S. Geological Survey issued a preliminary report saying the quake measured 6.8.

It struck off the west coast of the island at 8:52 a.m. local time and was “strongly felt,” across west Sumatra and outlying islands, said Budi Waluyu, from the government’s geophysical and meteorological agency.

Callers to el-Shinta radio station from Medan, a large city on Sumatra, said tall buildings shook and some residents ran from their homes.

Earthquakes have struck the region regularly since a monster 9.1 magnitude earthquake on Dec. 26 that triggered a tsunami, killing more than 176,000 people in Indonesia and 10 other countries across the Indian Ocean.

Iran

President-elect calls allegations “baseless”

Iran’s ultraconservative president-elect on Monday dismissed as “baseless” allegations of his involvement in the 1979 hostage-taking at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and in killing dissidents.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also said Iran was seeking “fair and expanding” relations with the world.

“The dissemination of baseless information by Western countries despite enjoying advanced intelligence gathering capabilities is questionable,” the official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying during a meeting with Iranian lawmakers.

Seven former American hostages held in the embassy take-over have claimed that Ahmadinejad was one of their captors, though organizers of the hostage-taking have said he was not among them.

A separate allegation stems from a report by the Austrian newspaper Der Standard, quoting a top official with Austria’s Green Party as saying authorities have “very convincing” evidence linking Ahmadinejad to the 1989 slaying of Abdul-Rahman Ghassemlou, an Iranian opposition Kurdish leader in Vienna.

Aruba

Judge orders two freed in missing teen case

Two Surinamese brothers held in the disappearance of an Alabama teenager were freed Monday on the orders of a judge, but the 17-year-old son of a top justice official was ordered jailed for 60 more days.

The justice official’s son, Joran van der Sloot, and Surinamese brothers Deepak Kalpoe, 21, and Satish Kalpoe, 18, had been held since June 9 on suspicion of murder in the disappearance of 18-year-old Natalee Holloway, of Mountain Brook, Ala. The three young men have acknowledged that they were with Holloway the night she disappeared.

Holloway vanished in the early hours of May 30, the last day of a five-day vacation on the Dutch Caribbean island to celebrate her high school graduation with 124 other students.

Haiti

Migrants feared dead trying to flee by boat

A boat carrying dozens of migrants fleeing Haiti sank off the island’s coast, killing two people and leaving 11 others feared dead, a U.N. official said Monday.

The boat left the northern region of Cap-Haitien on Saturday and was heading toward Turks and Caicos, said Damian Onses-Cardona, spokesman for the U.N. mission in Haiti. Officials did not know immediately what caused the boat to sink.

Haitian authorities found the bodies of two people and 11 others who disappeared were presumed dead, Onses-Cardona said. Twenty-three people survived, he said.

Elima Joseph, director-general of the mayor’s office in Cape Haitien, put the number of deaths at 19. He said the victims were all from about 19 to 25 years old.