A 4.5 magnitude aftershock jolted Virginia and the region around the U.S. capital early Thursday, rattling residents recovering from a rare east coast earthquake two days earlier.

The epicenter of the tremor which struck at 1:07 am (0507 GMT) was just eight kilometers (five miles) south of Mineral, Virginia, the epicenter of Tuesday's 5.8 magnitude quake, the National Earthquake Information Center reported.

Russia has grounded its Soyuz rockets after one of the unmanned craft crashed shortly after blast-off while carrying tons of cargo for the International Space Station, a space official said Thursday.

"A decision has been taken to halt the launch of Soyuz carrier rockets until the reasons for the accident become clear," the unnamed Russian official told the Interfax news agency.

Twenty-six miners have been trapped for two days in a flooded coal mine in northeastern China.

The state-run China Daily newspaper said rescuers Thursday were rushing to pump water from the mine in Qitaihe, in Heilongjiang province, but hadn't yet made contact with the trapped miners.

A powerful but deep 7.0-magnitude earthquake shook eastern Peru near the Brazilian border on Wednesday and was felt more than 480 kilometers away in the Andean nation's capital Lima.

Seismologists from the U.S. Geological Survey said the epicenter of the quake, which occurred at 1746 GMT, was 82 kilometers south of Puccalpa, a city isolated by mountains and the Amazon rainforest.

Washington's iconic monuments were off-limits to disappointed tourists and schools around the region were also shuttered Wednesday, as authorities assessed the damage from a rare U.S. east coast earthquake the previous day.

Officials announced that the Washington Monument, one of the most recognizable symbols of the U.S. capital city, would be closed to visitors indefinitely after cracks were found near the summit of the soaring obelisk.

Thousands of supporters of detained Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko Wednesday defied a court ban to stage a tense protest on Independence Day in central Kiev, an Agence France Presse correspondent said.

The protestors engaged in brief clashes with security forces who blocked their intended march route to the offices of President Viktor Yanukovych. After a tense standoff, with protestors shouting "Revolution!" and "Shame!" the crowds started to disperse.

Afghanistan's parliament on Wednesday rejected a decision by the war-torn country's vote authorities to replace nine MPs as part of efforts to settle a long-running dispute over last year's elections.

After almost a year of street protests and controversy over last September's fraud-tainted parliamentary polls, the Independent Election Commission (IEC) this week ordered that nine MPs be replaced.

Hurricane Irene bore down on the Bahamas Wednesday, churning on a track that could see it slam the U.S. mainland as an even stronger storm later in the week.

Irene packed winds of 175 kilometers per hour, making it a category two storm on the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said in its 0900 GMT bulletin.

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard refused Wednesday to detail her dealings with an MP accused of misusing a credit card to pay for prostitutes in a scandal that threatens her government.

Opposition leader Tony Abbott interrupted question time to demand Gillard make a statement about discussions she or her office had with backbencher Craig Thomson over a Labor Party loan that helped him pay legal fees.

North Korea's leader Kim Jong-Il on Wednesday promised Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, in rare talks, that his reclusive state was prepared to renounce nuclear testing and allow transit of a gas pipeline.

The meeting followed Kim's four-day train ride through Russia's Far East and Siberia, his third visit to the giant neighbor in the last decade but first since 2002.