Sun, Jan 17 08:56 PM
A 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck off the southern coast of Argentina on Sunday, the U.S. Geological Survey said, but there were no reports of injuries or damages.

The quake was centered about 220 miles (355 km) southeast of Ushuaia, Argentina, at a depth of 6.2 miles (10 km), USGS said. It struck at 8 a.m. local time (1200 GMT).

No tsunami warnings were issued by the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center or the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.

"The quake was not felt in Ushuaia and there are no victims or damages," Hector Varela, an Argentine civil defense official told the Telam state-run news agency.

A 5.8-magnitude earthquake struck Tuesday off the Cayman Islands, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The 6.2-mile deep quake hit at 9:23 a.m. ET, 40 miles from George Town, Cayman Islands, the USGS reported. George Town, the capital, is on the western shore of Grand Cayman Island.

There were no immediate reports of injuries in the three-island chain in the Caribbean.

The British territory of the Cayman Islands is about 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) west of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, which was devastated last week by a 7.0-magnitude earthquake.

Tuesday's quake struck about 32 miles (52 kilometers) east-southeast of Bodden Town in the center of the southern coast of Grand Cayman Island.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) - A strong earthquake struck Haiti on Wednesday morning, shaking buildings and sending screaming people running into the streets only eight days after the country's capital was devastated by a previous quake.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the 6.1 magnitude quake hit at 6:03 a.m. (1103 GMT) about 35 miles (56 kilometers) northwest of the capital of Port-au-Prince. It struck at a depth of 13.7 miles (22 kilometers) but was located too far inland to generate any tidal waves in the Caribbean.

Wails of terror rose Wednesday from frightened survivors of the apocalyptic quake that struck eight days ago as people as people poured out of unstable buildings.

It was not immediately possible to ascertain what additional damage the new quake may have caused.

DENVER — In the last two weeks, more than 100 mostly tiny earthquakes a day, on average, have rattled a remote area of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, putting scientists who monitor the park’s strange and volatile geology on alert.

Researchers say that for now, the earthquake cluster, or swarm — the second-largest ever recorded in the park — is more a cause for curiosity than alarm. The quake zone, about 10 miles northwest of the Old Faithful geyser, has shown little indication, they said, of building toward a larger event, like a volcanic eruption of the type that last ravaged the Yellowstone region tens of thousands of years ago.

The area is far from any road or community, and the park is relatively empty in winter. Swarms of small quakes, including a significant swarm last year, are relatively common.

But at a time when the disastrous earthquake in Haiti on Jan. 12 has refocused global attention on the earth’s immense store of tectonic energy, scientists say that the Yellowstone swarm, if only because of its volume, bears close observation: as of Sunday, there had been 1,608 quakes since Jan. 17.

“We’re not seeing a pattern that is really discernible yet,” said Henry Heasler, a coordinating scientist for the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, a joint venture of Yellowstone, the United States Geological Survey and the University of Utah. Dr. Heasler said plans were in place to intensify observations in case the swarm continued for a long time or got larger. “We’re ready to ramp up,” he said, including using flights to monitor the area.

Researchers at the University of Utah’s Seismograph Stations who have tracked Yellowstone swarms said they thought it was coincidental that another big swarm of more 1,000 quakes had struck the park just over a year ago. At the time, it was the second-biggest cluster recorded there. The largest swarm was in 1985, when 3,000 earthquakes struck over three months.