Geologists say a fault in central Arkansas where hundreds of earthquakes have been recorded in recent months is longer and potentially more destructive than initially believed.

Scientists had thought the fault is 3.7 miles long. Now they estimate it to be 6 to 7.5 miles long.

Arkansas Geological Survey geohazard supervisor Scott Ausbrooks told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that the length is a concern because a longer fault could trigger bigger earthquakes.

All cooling water is gone from the spent-fuel pool at one of the crippled nuclear reactors in Japan, causing the release of high levels of radiation, Gregory Jaczko, chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told members of Congress.

Jaczko's testimony followed warnings by the International Atomic Energy Agency, physicians and nuclear engineers that the greatest threat to public health from the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant is spent fuel in pools of water atop of the plant's six reactors.

Radioactivity has been heating the pools at three of the plant's reactors since the plant's cooling systems were disabled by a March 11 earthquake and tsunami, officials said. Exposed, the spent fuel rods can catch fire and melt, spewing radiation into the atmosphere, said Robert Kelley, an engineer in Vienna who used to lead the Nuclear Emergency Response at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Unlike the plant's reactors, the pools aren't encased by steel and concrete.

A 4.3-magnitude earthquake struck an area covering eastern Ontario and western Quebec Wednesday afternoon, with people from Ottawa to the Greater Montreal Region reporting that they felt the temblor.

Natural Resources Canada says the quake was centered in Hawkesbury, Ont. -- not Lachute, Que., as had earlier been reported. It struck at about 1:36 p.m. ET and lasted about 10 seconds.

There were no reports so far of any damage.

Viewers from across the region have been emailing CTV.ca to say they felt the earth shake beneath their feet. One reader sent an email to CTV News saying she felt a tremor in Ste-Adele, Ste-Anne de Lacs in the Laurentians. Another said she felt a "deep rumble" around 1:35 p.m. in Orleans, Ont., that lasted a "full minute."

Last summer, a 5.0-magnitude quake rattled Ontario, Quebec, and parts of the northeastern United States, sending some residents running into the streets. That quake's epicentre was about 56 kilometres northeast of Ottawa.

Just like last year's shaker, Wednesday's earthquake brought down the website for Earthquakes Canada as Canadians rushed to the site for information.

Date-Time:
Thursday, March 17, 2011 at 02:48:02 UTC

Thursday, March 17, 2011 at 01:48:02 PM at epicenter

Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location:
17.364°S, 167.696°E

Depth:
26.6 km (16.5 miles)

Region:
VANUATU

Distances:
77 km (47 miles) WNW of PORT-VILA, Efate, Vanuatu

210 km (130 miles) SSE of Luganville, Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu

293 km (182 miles) NW of Isangel, Tanna, Vanuatu

1880 km (1168 miles) NE of BRISBANE, Queensland, Australia

NASA's Aqua satellite spotted some strong convection in a recently formed low pressure area that strengthened into Sub-Tropical Storm Arani in the South Atlantic. Arani formed near the coast of Brazil and is now moving away from it. Tropical cyclones in the Atlantic are a rare occurrence and since 2004 there have only been three of them, Arani being the third.

On March 14, 2011 at 1553 UTC (11:53 a.m. EST) the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured an infrared image of Sub-Tropical Storm Arani moving away from the Brazilian coast. Most of the convection and thunderstorms were limited to the eastern half of the storm at the time of the image. The strong areas of convection (rapidly rising air that condenses and forms the thunderstorms that power a tropical cyclone) appeared on the imagery as a sideways boomerang, and were off-shore, paralleling the coast.

AIRS measured the temperatures in those strong areas of convection and found they were as cold as or colder than -63 Fahrenheit (-52 Celsius) indicating some strong thunderstorms with heavy rainfall. That heavy rainfall was occurring off-shore. NASA's AIRS imagery is created at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

On March 15 at 1500 UTC (11 a.m. EST), the Brazilian Navy issued a special marine warning for the Brazilian coast. The warning stated that Sub-Tropical Storm Arani was located near 24.0 South latitude and 37 West longitude. Arani had a minimum central pressure of 998 millibars and was moving east-southeast near 10 to 15 knot winds.

Washington - The chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave a significantly bleaker appraisal of the threat posed by Japan's nuclear crisis than the Japanese government, saying on Wednesday that the damage at one crippled reactor was much more serious than Japanese officials had acknowledged and advising to Americans to evacuate a wider area around the plant than the perimeter established by Japan.


Japanese television showed what appeared to be steam rising from reactor No. 3 at the Fukushima Daiichi plant about 10 a.m. Wednesday.

The announcement marked a new and ominous chapter in the five-day long effort by Japanese engineers to bring four side-by-side reactors under control after their cooling systems were knocked out by an earthquake and tsunami last Friday. It also suggested a serious split between Washington and Tokyo, after American officials concluded that the Japanese warnings were insufficient, and that, deliberately or not, they had understated the potential threat of what is taking place inside the nuclear facility.

Gregory Jaczko, the chairman of the commission, said in Congressional testimony that the commission believed that all the water in the spent fuel pool at the No. 4 reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station had boiled dry, leaving fuel rods stored there exposed and bleeding radiation. As a result, he said, "We believe that radiation levels are extremely high, which could possibly impact the ability to take corrective measures."

If his analysis is accurate and Japanese workers have been unable to keep the spent fuel at that inoperative reactor properly cooled - it needs to remain covered with water at all times - radiation levels could make it difficult not only to fix the problem at reactor No. 4, but to keep workers at the Daiichi complex from servicing any of the other problem reactors at the plant.

Mr. Jaczko (the name is pronounced YAZZ-koe) said radiation levels may make it impossible to continue what he called the "backup backup" cooling functions that have so far helped check the fuel melting at the other reactors. Those efforts consist of using fire hoses to dump water on overheated fuel and then letting the radioactive steam vent into the atmosphere.

Those emergency measures, implemented by a small squad of workers and firemen, are the main steps Japan is taking at Daiichi to forestall a full blown fuel meltdown that would lead to much higher releases of radioactive material.

Mr. Jaczko's testimony came as the American Embassy in Tokyo, on advice from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told Americans to evacuate a radius of "approximately 50 miles" from the Fukushima plant.

The advice represents a graver assessment of the risk in the immediate vicinity of Daiichi than the warnings made by the Japanese themselves, who have told everyone within 20 kilometers, about 12 miles, to evacuate, and those between 20 and 30 kilometers to take shelter.

Mr. Jaczko's testimony, the most extended comments by a senior American official on Japan's nuclear disaster, described what amounts to an agonizing choice for Japanese authorities: Send a small number of workers into an increasingly radioactive area in a last-ditch effort to cover the spent fuel, and the fuel in other reactors, - with water, or do more to protect the workers but risk letting the pools of water protecting the fuel boil away - and thus risk a broader meltdown.

The Japanese authorities have never been as specific as Mr. Jascko was in his testimony about the situation at reactor No. 4, where they have been battling fires for more than 24 hours. It is possible the authorities there disagree with Mr. Jascko's conclusion about the exposure of the spent fuel, or that they have chosen not to discuss the matter for fear of panicking people.

Experts say workers at the plant probably could not approach a fuel pool that was dry, because radiation levels would be so high. In a normally operating pool, the water provides not only cooling but also shields workers from gamma radiation. A plan to dump water into the pool, and others like it, from helicopters was suspended because the crews would be flying right into a radioactive plume.

In the documentary Urban Danger, 84-year-old Republican , who is serving his tenth term as the representative of Maryland's Sixth District, explains why US citizens should avoid living in cities.

"There are a number of events that could create a situation in our cities where civil unrest could be a very high probability," Bartlett said in the film. "And I think that those who can and those who understand need to take advantage of this opportunity when the winds of strife are not blowing to move their families out of the city."

"It's just plain fun when you're looking at the challenge of what do I have to do so that I'm independent of the system," he added.

Before becoming a member of Congress, Bartlett worked as a professor at the University of Maryland, research scientist, small business owner, and farmer. He was awarded 19 military patents for his inventions of life support equipment.

FIRST it was a cyclone, then flooding, and then came the earthquake.

At 4.08pm yesterday a magnitude-4 earthquake struck about 30km off the coast of Innisfail, in far north Queensland, an area already hard hit by Cyclone Yasi last month and inundated by torrential monsoon rains.

Locals reported the quake to Geosciences Australia from Innisfail, Gordonvale and even Cairns, 70km away from its epicentre.

It was insufficient to cause a tsunami and there were no early reports of damage but locals took to Twitter to bemoan the recent trifecta of natural disasters. Geoscience Australia seismologist David Jepsen said it would have produced "a bit of a shake" and "some rattling of windows" in the Innisfail area.

He ruled out any connection to recent earthquakes in Christchurch or Japan, saying those incidents were too far away to generate a far north Queensland quake.

Hovering in the sky, this rainbow cloud over Mount Everest took an astonished astronomer by surprise.

Oleg Bartunov, 51, caught the spectacle on camera during a Himalayas expedition in Nepal.

His two images show almost the whole spectrum of the rainbow in a natural event rarely recorded at Mount Everest.

The phenomenon is caused by light reflecting off tiny ice crystals inside the body of the cloud's water vapour.

'I only took a couple of shots as I was overwhelmed with feelings and wanted to see everything with my eyes and prolong the moment,' Mr Bartunov said.

When will Nyiragongo erupt? Nyiragongo is a two-mile-high volcano towering over the eastern edge of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) - one of the most active volcanoes on the planet and also one of the least studied. Two million people would be affected by a potential eruption of the volcano or the neighboring lake.

According to Tedesco, there is no question the volcano will erupt again, potentially transforming Goma into a modern Pompeii. "Goma," he says, "is the most dangerous city in the world." At the base of the volcano sprawls the city of Goma, growing by the day as villagers from the countryside seek refuge from rebel and government forces.

An estimated million people are now crammed into Goma. Twice in recent years Nyiragongo's eruptions have sent molten rock flowing toward the city. In 1977 lava raced down the mountain at more than 60 miles an hour, the fastest ever observed.

Several hundred people died, even though the flow had hardened before it reached the main part of the city. In 2002 the volcano shot more than 15 million cubic yards of lava into downtown Goma, destroying 14,000 homes, burying buildings to the top of the first floor, and forcing 350,000 citizens to flee.