International briefs

Islamabad:  An earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale hit parts of central and northern Pakistan Wednesday, the Met office said. The earthquake jolted the capital Islamabad, northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab province, triggering panic, Xinhua reported. No loss of life or property was reported. The quake’s epicenter was determined at a focal depth of 100 km in Hindu Kush, a mountainous area along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border located 214 km northwest of Islamabad.Pakistan is among the most earthquake-prone areas of the world with high vulnerability to quakes. Geographically, Pakistan lies at the collision zone between the India tectonic plate to the south and the Eurasian plate to the north.

Vatican City: Pope Francis now has more than 7.2 million followers on microblogging website Twitter, where his tweets are published in nine languages. The Argentine Pope’s tweets in Spanish at his @Pontifex account have the highest number of followers (some 2.73 million), followed by his English tweets (around 2.6 million).