EarthquakesThe strongest quake to strike southeast Canada...

Earthquakes

The strongest quake to strike southeast Canada in seven years was felt widely across southern Quebec, and as far away as Maine and New York.

A swarm of temblors occurred along the California-Nevada border, including a magnitude 5.3

Quakes were also felt in central Italy, Greece, Crete eastern Turkey, Iran, northern Pakistan, the Nepal-Tibet border, Taiwan, Japan, coastal Peru, and along the coast of central Chile.

Nepalese Man Eater

A ferocious tiger that killed 100 people in western Nepal during the past 10 months was finally tracked down and shot, according to the country’s state-run news agency RSS. “The people of Baitadi district can now heave a sigh of relief,” RSS reported after hunters downed the 220-pound man-eater. According to villagers, the tiger had taken shelter in a nearby den, but sometimes hid under roofs of local houses, pouncing at anyone who would venture out. The victim included infants, children playing in courtyards and people working in the fields,

Tropical Storms

Typhoon Linda became the most destructive storm to strike Southeast Asia this century as it tore through southern Vietnam, Cambodia and parts of Thailand. Hundreds of people were killed by flash floods and high winds. Nearly 150,000 buildings were wrecked in southern Vietnam alone.

Typhoon Martin battered the remote Cook Islands of the South Pacific, killing at least five people and forcing the evacuation of the Mopelia atoll.

The Northern Mariana Islands were pounded by large surf and 100-mph winds when Typhoon Keith passed through the chain. The islands of Rota and Tinian were the hardest hit.

Solar Storm

A massive solar flare that burst off the sun was predicted to cause a geomagnetic storm around Earth late in the week. Scientists at the U.S. Space Environment Center in Boulder, Colo., warned that the flare was rated as a class X, the highest intensity classification, and that the stream of charged-particles could cause problems with satellite communications and power grids when it interacts with Earth’s magnetic field.

El Nino Floods

Meteorologists in East Africa have been expecting the El Nino ocean warming to produce another round of drought across the region, but recent weather patterns have instead produced fierce flooding. Heavy rains unleashed widespread inundations from Somalia and Ethiopia southward to Kenya. In eastern Ethiopia, at least 57 people were swept away when rivers swollen by heavy rains turned into raging water-ways that wiped out villages and left more that 4,000 homeless during the past month. Authorities say the sudden and deadly rains may destroy next year’s harvest, already in the ground.

Additional Sources: Geological Survey of Canada, U.S. Climate Analysis Center, U.S. Earthquake Information Center and the United Nations World Meteorological Organization