Residents in Madison County and throughout eastern and central Kentucky got a lunchtime scare when an earthquake rattled through the area.The 4.3-magnitude earthquake happened at 12:08 p.m. Saturday, according to the U.S. Geological Service. The epicenter was about 8 miles west of Whitesburg.

Madison County Emergency Management Agency Director Carl Richards said there were no reports of damage or calls for assistance in the county following the temblor. Some people did call 911 wondering what was happening, he added.Richards noted that people who were inside noticed the shaking more than those who were outside, like himself, when the earthquake struck. Also, people in the southern end of the county reported feeling the earthquake's affects more.

"I not only felt the whole house shake but also heard a 'roar' of some sort ... my dishes were rattling, light fixtures were shaking, and floors and walls were vibrating," reported Dawn Agee Truett, of Berea, on the Register's Facebook page shortly after the quake. "... Definitely a very strange feeling!"

"Felt a nice rattle in north Richmond!" Jacqulyn Howell also commented.

Dozens of local residents related stories of their pets acting strangely and their houses being shaken for about 10 to 30 seconds.

Event Time
2012-11-11 01:12:38 UTC
2012-11-11 07:42:38 UTC+06:30 at epicenter

Location
23.014°N 95.883°E depth=9.8km (6.1mi)

Nearby Cities
52km (32mi) NNE of Shwebo, Myanmar
64km (40mi) W of Mogok, Myanmar
116km (72mi) N of Mandalay, Myanmar
124km (77mi) NNW of Maymyo, Myanmar
362km (225mi) N of Nay Pyi Taw, Myanmar

Technical Details

Event Time
2012-11-10 12:08:12 UTC-05:00 at epicenter

Location
37.135°N 82.978°W depth=1.1km (0.7mi)

Nearby Cities
13km (8mi) W of Whitesburg, Kentucky
74km (46mi) NNW of Kingsport, Tennessee
88km (55mi) NE of Middlesboro, Kentucky
92km (57mi) NW of Bristol, Tennessee
179km (111mi) SW of Charleston, West Virginia

Technical Data

Early this week, Mr. Bui Van Nguyen, a resident of Don Village in My Hoa commune, Tan Lac district found an exotic fish under the mud while pumping water from a spring.

"The fish is very strong so I had to ask for help from my two neighbors. It took us 30 minutes to take the fish to the shore," Nguyen said.

The unknown catfish has a snake head while its body and tail look like an eel. It is 1.14m long and 4.2 kg in weight. The weird thing is that it has a pig tongue.

Many people in Don Village said they had never seen such a fish.

Dr. Nhezdoli, an expert of ichthyology, from the Vietnam-Russia Tropical Center, was very surprised when he saw the picture of this strange fish. However, the world's leading expert on freshwater fish guessed that the fish may belong to the Ophicephalidae snakehead family.

"To determine the name and species I need a specific specimen," he said.

The snakeheads are members of the freshwater perciform fish family Channidae, native to Africa and Asia. These elongated, predatory fish are distinguished by a long dorsal fin, large mouth and shiny teeth. They breathe air with gills as well as with suprabranchial organs developing when they grow older, which is a primitive form of a labyrinth organ. The two extant genera are Channa in Asia and Parachanna in Africa, consisting of 30-35 species.

Canada - Days after the remote B.C. archipelago of Haida Gwaii emerged virtually unscathed from Canada's second-strongest earthquake, locals discovered that the shifting earth had mysteriously switched off a centuries-old hot spring considered sacred by the Haida.

"It's a very culturally significant site - even today Haida people would go down to take advantage of healing properties of the springs," said Ernie Gladstone, a field unit superintendent for Gwaii Haanas National Park, of which Hot Spring Island is a part.

Earlier this week, scattered reports began drifting in that the familiar cloud of steam over the island (known as Gandll K'in Gwaayaay in the Haida language) had disappeared.

A Parks Canada inspection party set out to investigate and stepped ashore to find that the island's three main hot spring pools, which once bubbled with water as warm as 77 Celsius, were bone dry. "Not even a small puddle," said Mr. Gladstone.

Surrounding rocks, once warm to the touch, were cold.

Edmonton police say roads are faring better following the city's near-record snowfall, despite frigid overnight temperatures that left surfaces slick and icy.

The number of crashes recorded so far Thursday morning is down by half compared with Wednesday. Between 6 a.m. and 9:30 a.m., police responded to 23 crashes, including three that caused injuries, compared with 53 crashes, seven of which caused injuries, at the same time one day earlier, said spokeswoman Lisa Sobchyshyn.

Environment Canada reports that Edmonton received between 14 and 31 centimetres of snow, while St. Albert got a whopping 35 cm.

With more than 200 crashes recorded between 6 a.m. and 4 p.m. Wednesday, auto body shops around the city saw a major increase in customers.

A new report from the National Research Council revealed that at least 126,000 sites across the U.S. have contaminated groundwater that requires remediation.

Approximately 10 percent of those sites are considered "complex," which means that restoration efforts will likely be unsuccessful for 50 to 100 years due to technical limitations. The estimated cleanup cost ranges from $110 billion to $127 billion, however, the report states that both the number of sites and the cost are likely underestimated.

Over the last 30 years, several national and state groundwater cleanup programs have been developed with the aim to mitigate the human health and ecological risks posed by underground contamination. Included in these programs are the cleanup at Superfund sites; facilities that treat, store, and dispose of hazardous wastes; leaking underground storage tanks; and military installations. In order to clean up past industrial operations, the Department of Defense has already spent an approximate $30 billion in hazardous waste remediation. Although DOD sites only represent 3.4 percent of the total sites, many of these sites present the greatest technical challenges to restoration and come with a very high price tag. This realization prompted the DOD to create the report detailing the future of groundwater restoration efforts and the challenges faced.

"The complete removal of contaminants from groundwater at possibly thousands of complex sites in the U.S. is unlikely, and no technology innovations appear in the near time horizon that could overcome the challenges of restoring contaminated groundwater to drinking water standards," said Michael Kavanaugh, chair of the NRC committee and a principal with Geosyntec Consultants, Inc. "At many of these complex sites, a point of diminishing returns will often occur as contaminants in groundwater remain stalled at levels above drinking water standards despite continued active remedial efforts. We are recommending a formal evaluation be made at the appropriate time in the life cycle of a site to decide whether to transition the sites to active or passive long-term management."

Some islanders frantically searched for their cameras after a funnel cloud was seen to the west of Guernsey yesterday.

Guernsey Airport senior meteorological officer Martin Crozier said the sighting had been recorded and reported to air traffic control at 8.20am.

'What we mean by funnel cloud, is a rotating cloud that descends from the normal cloud but doesn't necessarily touch the surface,' he said.

'If it touches the sea we call it a waterspout and if it touches land, it's a tornado and can do a lot of damage, but that's quite unusual.'

Funnel clouds are reported in or near Guernsey on average between three and six time each year.

Data from the 2011 earthquake centered in Virginia shows East Coast tremors can travel much farther and cause damage over larger areas than previously thought, the U.S. Geological Survey said Tuesday.

The agency estimated about one-third of the U.S. population could have felt the magnitude 5.8 tremor centered about 50 miles northwest of Richmond, which would mean more people were affected than any earthquake in U.S. history. Scientists also found the quake that caused more than $200 million in damage triggered landslides at distances four times farther and over an area 20 times larger than research from previous quakes has shown.

"Scientists are confirming with empirical data what more than 50 million people in the eastern U.S. experienced firsthand: this was one powerful earthquake," USGS Director Marcia McNutt said in a news release about the findings presented at the Geological Society of America conference in Charlotte, N.C.

At least 52 people have been killed and hundreds remain missing after a powerful earthquake struck off the Pacific coast of Guatemala, where a tsunami warning has now been issued.

About 125,000 people were without power as a result of the quake.

The 7.4-magnitude earthquake centered about 160km southwest of Guatemala City. It is the strongest to hit the country since a deadly 1976 quake that killed 23,000.