San Diego – The shaking from a magnitude 4.6 earthquake in northern Mexico was lightly felt in the San Diego area, seismologists said.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake hit at 8:25 p.m. PDT Saturday about 100 miles east-southeast of Tijuana, Mexico and was felt throughout San Diego County as far north as the Orange County line.

U-T San Diego said the epicenter was along the Laguna Salada fault in a sparsely populated area of Baja California.

The USGS said a larger 4.8 quake was recorded a few hours later in the same area. There were no reports of any damage in Mexico or shaking north of the border.

Northern California was also shaking overnight. A smaller 3.5 quake was recorded before dawn Sunday about 132 miles outside Sacramento.

The Los Angeles Times said it was the second quake in the area in the past 10 

Reader Comments

Who helps in an emergency?

A forest fire in eastern Spain forced 700 people to evacuate their homes and indirectly caused a brief power cut at a nuclear plant, authorities said Friday.

The fire had burned 10 square kilometres (3.8 square miles) of land in the Valencia region, its government said in a statement.

“This is one of the biggest fires in recent years,” regional president Alberto Fabra said after visiting the affected area.

“The weather conditions are adverse, with high temperatures, little moisture and lots of wind.”

An electrical plant was evacuated in Cortes de Palla and the resulting loss of current forced a nuclear plant in nearby Cofrentes to briefly switch to generator power before normal functions resumed, a spokeswoman for the region said.

“The nuclear plant is not in any danger. The fire is not coming near it,” she said.

The fire was started by an act of negligence during the installation of solar panels in a home, the regional government statement said.

Since Thursday about 700 people had been evacuated from Dos Aguas and other surrounding villages and were being housed by local families or in shelters, the spokeswoman said.

Around 1,000 emergency personnel were working to fight the blaze, along with 28 helicopters and airplanes.

“The number of hectares burnt is more than 1,000 and all the work is focussing on preventing the fire from spreading and on channeling it towards an area where it is easier to extinguish,” the government said.

It was one in a series of bush fires around Spain this year that have followed one of the driest winters for decades.

In neighbouring Catalonia to the north, the fire service said Friday it had evacuated 90 people due to a fire that had burned 700 hectares (7.0 square kilometers, 2.7 square miles) in Prats de Rei, near Barcelona.

Spanish media reported at least two other smaller fires, in the north of the Valencia region and southern Catalonia.

Sizzling high temperatures punished much of the eastern United States again on Saturday, one day after hurricane-like thunderstorms killed at least 11 people and cut power supply to millions.

Thermometers brushed the 100 degree Fahrenheit (37.7 Celsius) mark from the Mississippi River to the Mid-Atlantic coast as a vast area of high pressure squatted over the southern states with no signs of moving on soon.

The storms delayed third-round play at the USPGA Tour’s AT&T National in the suburbs of the US capital Washington for several hours, and organizers barred golf fans from attending, creating a surreal atmosphere for the players.

At least 11 people died in storms triggered by the heat wave, CNN reported, and four states — Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and Ohio — declared states of emergency. Some 3.7 million homes in nine states lost power.

President Barack Obama telephoned the four states’ governors to express concern for the loss of life and property, and to pledge federal government help, the White House said.

Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell said it would take several days for his state to recover from what he called the biggest non-hurricane-related power outage in its history.

On Saturday, those without power — and hence without air conditioning — had no respite from the punishing heat.

“High temperatures this afternoon will exceed 100 degrees across the mid/lower Mississippi River Valley eastward through the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast today,” the National Weather Service said.

“In fact, some locations are expected to break record high temperatures,” it said, as it issued excessive heat warnings for areas stretching from Illinois to Georgia.

Five of the reported fatalities occurred in and around Washington, where storms packing winds of up to 80 miles (130 kilometers) an hour barreled into the area Friday night.

Two of the dead were elderly women, aged 90 and 71, who were in their beds when trees fell on their respective homes, the Washington Post reported. Another victim died after touching a downed, live electrical wire.

In many communities Saturday, local authorities set up “cooling centers” in schools, libraries and other public buildings to give refuge to those without air conditioning.

Crowds also flocked to relatively cool shopping malls, or lined up at gas stations that still had electricity to power their filling pumps. Screenings at air-conditioned movie theaters sold out.

“If you have air conditioning and have not lost power, consider opening your home to family members or friends who may not have air conditioning and may not tolerate the heat well,” Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley said.

Pepco, the electric utility that serves Washington and some of its suburbs, said in an automated telephone message Saturday that 440,000 of its customers were still without power.

“Due to widespread damage, we expect power restoration efforts to take about a week,” it said.

At the White Flint shopping mall in Maryland, visitors sat on floors and chairs and plugged their computers and mobile devices into electrical sockets to take advantage of precious free power.

In Bethesda, Maryland, just outside Washington, organizers delayed the start of the third round of the US PGA Tour’s AT&T National for six hours at the Congressional Country Club.

“There are trees and tents down all over the course and roads leading to the course. Clean-up has begun. Electricity is out at the course,” the PGA said, adding that fans and volunteers would be kept off the course Saturday.

Even social media took a hit, with servers in Virginia that host the popular photography social media site Instagram getting knocked out for several hours, tech blog Mashable reported.

Torrential monsoon rains triggered floods which swamped villages in eastern India and forced at least 1.3 million people to leave their homes for higher ground, officials said Friday.

The death toll from flood-related accidents in worst-hit Assam rose to 31 with five more deaths reported overnight from the northeastern state, regional Agriculture Minister Nilamoni Sen Deka told AFP.

An estimated 1.3 million people have been displaced from their homes due to the flooding, Deka said in Guwahati, Assam’s largest city.

“We have opened makeshift relief camps for the displaced,” he said as 21 of Assam’s 27 districts faced floods which began last weekend when annual monsoon rains lashed the tea and oil-rich state bordering Bangladesh.

In the adjoining northeastern Indian states of Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur, pounding rains brought flash floods, local officials said by telephone.

There were no casualties reported from Arunachal Pradesh, which borders China, and Manipur which is adjacent to Myanmar.

“The situation is very critical as floods have destroyed property and crops,” Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Nabam Tuki told AFP from capital Itanagar.

In Manipur, state disaster management official A. Singh said major rivers were “flowing menacingly” above danger marks.

“We are taking all precautionary measures to ensure safety of the locals,” Singh said.

Authorities were also keeping a close watch on swollen rivers in rain-lashed West Bengal state in eastern India.

“Heavy rains in northern districts of the state have raised concerns of flooding in many areas as most rivers are in spate,” Gautam Dev, a regional minister, told AFP in state capital Kolkata.

In neighbouring Bihar state, people fled their homes in two districts as the Kosi river threatened to overflow its banks, officials said.

“Flood waters have already entered dozens of villages following incessant rains in catchment areas,” one official said.

The annual monsoon, crucial to India’s food production and economic growth, hit the tropical country earlier in the month.

strs-pc/pmc/ac

Thousands of Sri Lankan troops Friday joined a massive clean up operation to eliminate mosquito-breeding grounds as part of a national effort to contain the dengue virus, officials said.

Soldiers removed garbage piles and helped clear blocked drains in public schools to fight dengue, which is spread by mosquitoes, after more than 75 deaths from the disease this year.

“The clean up operation began in schools with the help of the military,” health ministry spokesman Dharma Wanninayake said. “The programme is being extended across the country in the coming days.”

Official figures show that 15,000 people were infected with dengue in the first five months of this year compared to 10,300 in the corresponding period last year.

However, health officials say the numbers could be much higher because many sufferers are not counted or seek treatment from private hospitals.

Dengue fever causes severe flu-like symptoms and there are no specific medications available to treat the disease.

Most people recover within two weeks, but it can be fatal if it leads to haemorrhaging.

ISS Expedition 31 Crew Returns Safely to Earth

by Nancy Atkinson  

Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter

We’re sure going to miss Don Pettit’s and Andre Kuipers’ reports and images from the International Space Station. Pettit, Kuipers and Russian Commander Oleg Kononenko undocked from the International Space Station and returned safely to Earth on July 1, wrapping up their six-and-a-half-month mission in orbit.

They landed in their Soyuz TMA-03M spacecraft in Kazakhstan at 08:14 a.m. UT (2:14 p.m. local time) after undocking from the space station’s Rassvet module at 04:47 UT. This video shows a great view of the Soyuz slowly drifting down (it’s interesting to see the parachute undulate, looking almost like a jellyfish!) and then visible are the breaking thrusters firing just a second before the hard landing.

The trio originally arrived at the station back on Dec. 23, 2011, and during this mission spent a total of 193 days in space, 191 of which were aboard the station.

During their expedition, the crew supported more than 200 scientific investigations involving more than 400 researchers around the world. The studies ranged from integrated investigations of the human cardiovascular and immune systems to fluid, flame and robotic research. They also were part of the team that successfully berthed the first commercial spacecraft to visit the ISS, the SpaceX Dragon capsule.

Before leaving the station, Kononenko handed over command of Expedition 32 to the Russian Federal Space Agency’s Gennady Padalka, who remains aboard the station with NASA astronaut Joe Acaba and Russian cosmonaut Sergei Revin. NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Akihiko Hoshide will join them July 17. Williams, Malenchenko and Hoshide are scheduled to launch July 14 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

During Expedition 31, Pettit used household objects aboard the station to perform a variety of unusual physics experiments for the video series “Science Off the Sphere,” like his recent video showing water balloons in space. Through these demonstrations, Pettit showed more than a million Internet viewers how space affects scientific principles.

On June 25, Pettit reached a milestone: spending one cumulative year in space, combining his time in orbit on Expedition 6, Expedition 30/31 and the STS-126 space shuttle Endeavour flight to the station in November 2008. Pettit now has 370 days in space, placing him fourth among U.S. space fliers for the longest time in space.

Kuipers conducted over 50 scientific experiments for ESA, and shared, almost daily, images and reports of his stay in space. The next ESA astronaut to board the Space Station is Luca Parmitano of Italy, who will fly on Soyuz TMA-09M in 2013 as member of Expedition 36/37.

India’s crucial monsoon rains should pick up in July after a slow start over vast swathes of the country, which has threatened crops from rice to sugar, forecasters said.

Some 26 out of India’s 36 weather zones received “deficient” or “scanty” rains in the past week from the monsoon which typically sweeps the subcontinent from June to September, according to the weather office’s website on Saturday.

“The monsoon rains are expected to pick up in the latter half of next week,” Swati Basu, acting Director General of the India Meteorological Department (IMD), told the semi-official news agency Press Trust of India late on Friday.

Basu forecast good rains in July which along with August are key months for planting and when India usually receives the maximum amount of rain.

For the past week, monsoon rains were 18 percent below average while for June as a whole they have been 23 percent below average — fanning worried murmurs about a repeat of a drought that devastated Indian farmers in 2009.

“The monsoon has definitely started off on a sour note,” economist Indranil Pan from the Indian investment house Kotak said in a note to clients.

The monsoon is dubbed an “economic lifeline” in the country of 1.2 billion people that is one of the world’s leading producers of rice, sugar, wheat and cotton.

India’s 235 million farmers still rely on the erratic rains to soak around 60 percent of the country’s farmland — despite calls for the government to improve irrigation and water-harvesting methods to ensure more stable crop output.

The rains have been abundant in India’s northeast where raging floods have forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee homes but weak in the vital northwestern grain bowl and oil seed-growing central regions.

“Meteorological conditions indicate an increase in rainfall activity over east, central and also over northwest India” in coming days, said the weather office forecast.

But still, authorities have told India’s 29 states to draft plans to shift from thirsty crops such as rice and sugarcane to others such as beans and wheat which require less water if the monsoon does not become stronger by mid-July.

The uncertain start to the rainy season means more worries for the beleaguered Congress government, already buffeted by corruption scandals and an economy growing at its slowest pace in nine years.

The monsoon season “will be crucial given the existing challenges to the economy,” said Kotak’s Pan.

Farming’s contribution to India’s gross domestic product has fallen from 50 percent in the 1950s to around 15 percent. But it remains vital to the economy by supporting 700 million rural Indians and fuels demand for everything from TVs and refrigerators to motorcycles and gold.

India this month said it would maintain its forecast for an average monsoon.

But the meteorological department was spectacularly wrong in its forecast in 2009 when it predicted a normal monsoon and the country suffered its worst drought in 37 years.

The drought sent food prices rocketing, causing huge hardship for the country’s hundreds of millions of poor.