An undersea earthquake with a magnitude of 6.5 jolted an area off the coast of Papua New Guinea early on Monday, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said, Reuters reported The survey's Web site said the epicentre was off the New Britain area of the country, which lies north of Australia and east of Indonesia. The survey, which later revised its original magnitude of 6.8, said it occurred at 00:20 on Monday (1420 GMT Sunday). Geophysicist Don Blakeman of the USGS National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colorado, told Reuters by phone the quake occurred "in the crust of the ocean, not on land". He said it was located 250 km (155 miles) south-southwest of Taron, on the island of New Ireland. There were no reports of damage and no reports of tsunami warnings. New Britain, which has a population of about 20,000, lies 475 km (295 miles) northeast of the PNG capital, Port Moresby. Seismically active, Papua New Guinea lies on "the Ring of Fire", a zone of volcanic activity which accounts for 75 percent of the world's active and dormant volcanoes. The town of Rabaul, on New Britain's northern tip, was destroyed in the September 1994 eruption of Tuvurvur volcano. In July 1998, two undersea quakes measuring 7.0 created three tsunamis that killed at least 2,100 people near the town of Aitape on Papua New Guinea's north coast. ---SP 2134 Local Time 1834 GMT
