New Delhi, Oct. 16 -- At 12:40 p.m. on Friday, the Japan Meteorological Agency issued an earthquake early warning for a stretch of Japan running from Hokkaido to the Chubu region. It rested on a magnitude 9.9 earthquake in the Kuril Islands. No such earthquake existed. A magnitude 6.9 had struck near Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula, and the agency withdrew the warning about eight minutes later.

its processing placed the epicenter in the Kuril Islands and overestimated the magnitude at 9.9. It says the reason for the overestimate is still under investigation. Japan has recent cause to take such alerts seriously, since the Kumamoto earthquake killed 34 people in Kyushu in July.

That makes the error, not the earthquake, the story. In Russia, ...