Magnitude 7.3 quake hits northern Venezuela coast

ing an Al-jazeera television reporter and a French magazine journalist over their reporting on Xinjiang.

Megha has now been appointed as the world correspondent for Buzzfeed News based in the Middle East.

In a statement, the Foreign Correspondents' Club of China said it has found the treatment meted out to Megha "extremely regrettable and unacceptable for a government that repeatedly insists it welcomes foreign media to cover the country."

"We are attempting to get clarity from the Foreign Ministry on its reasoning for effectively ejecting a credentialed foreign journalist from China,"

the FCC said.

Resource-rich Xinjiang, bordering Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Afghanistan, is on the boil for years following unrest among Uighur Muslims over the increasing settlements of majority Han Chinese from other provinces.

It has witnessed some of the deadly terrorist attacks in recent years which also spread to other parts of China.

China blames the separatist East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) for the violent attacks in the province and spreading Islamic militancy.

The ETIM was previously linked to al-qaeda and now to the ISIS. CARACAS: A major earthquake of magnitude 7.3 struck Venezuela's eastern coast, home to largely poor fishing communities, on Tuesday afternoon, shaking buildings as far away as Colombian capital Bogota and knocking power out in parts of Trinidad.

But the quake's depth - 76.5 miles (123 km) below the surface - appeared to have mitigated the damage.

Venezuelan officials said there were no immediate reports of injuries and two sources at state oil company PDVSA told Reuters the OPEC member's refineries and oil fields were operating normally. PDVSA did not immediately comment.

Venezuela is not in a good shape to deal with a natural disaster. It is already wrestling with a crippling economic crisis with medicine running short, hospitals barely able to function and some severe shortages of basics such as chicken and milk.

The tremor - one of the country's strongest ever - hit at 5.31 p.m. (2131 GMT). Along Venezuela's picturesque palm tree-dotted northern coast, residents said the long quake was terrifying and frightened people into dashing into the streets.

"I had gotten into bed to watch the news on TV and my bed started to move as if it was made of water," said Elia Sanchez, a doctor in Cumana, the capital of the eastern state of Sucre that was the closest to the coastal epicentre. "We had to go down nine floors, it felt like it would never end."

Rosymer Rodriguez, also in Cumana, said she could not see any significant damage but that people were still fearful.

"There are still people in the street. There are people packing bags in case there are aftershocks," said Rodriguez.

Damage in Caracas was limited, but the quake did tilt the top five floors of an abandoned 45-story skyscraper known as the 'Tower of David', Interior Minister Nestor Reverol said.