A deep 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck near the Northern Mariana Islands in the western Pacific on Tuesday, the US Geological Survey said, but no tsunami warning was issued. The quake hit 42 kilometres (26 miles) west of Agrihan and 395 kilometres north of the main island Saipan, but it was at a depth of 603 kilometres and seismologists said it was too deep to cause any impact. "Obviously people may get a small shake but there's hardly any population around there," Geoscience Australia seismologist David Jepson told AFP.

LONDON - A U.K. budget airline will create an artificial volcanic ash cloud over Europe this summer to test ash detection technology. The experiment aims to avoid the kind of chaos that paralyzed air traffic during eruptions three years ago.

Three German tourists and their Filipino tour guide were crushed to death when one of the Philippines' most active volcanoes spewed a giant ash cloud and a hail of rocks on Tuesday, authorities said. Up to 20 foreigners and their guides were on the slopes of picturesque Mount Mayon when it erupted without warning, and rescue workers had been dispatched on helicopters to search for survivors, officials and a tour operator said. "It rained like hell with stones," local tour operator Marti Calleja quoted an Austrian woman who survived the ordeal as saying.

Three people are feared dead after one of the Philippines' most active volcanoes spewed a giant ash cloud on Tuesday, with foreign tourists on its slopes during the eruption, authorities said. National Disaster Rick Reduction and Management Council chief Eduardo del Rosario said local officials had reported that three people had been killed and four were injured, although this had yet to be confirmed.