A magnitude 5.0 earthquake rattled parts of Western Australia's northeastern wheatbelt on Tuesday just before 10:00 a.m. local time, but there were no immediate reports of injuries or damage. Seismologists at GeoScience Australia reported that the tremor, which was centered near the city of Burakin, was followed by aftershocks felt as far away as Perth, 250 km (155 miles) to the southwest. Gary Lewis, communications director at the agency, said, "We would not expect any major structural damage to have taken place with an earthquake of this magnitude. However, people close to the epicentre may have experienced items in their house falling over, windows rattling, there may be the possibility that they have some cracked masonry."

time, but there were no immediately available reports of injuries or damage.

Local television reports said the quake was centred about 2,880 km

(1,790 miles) northwest of the capital Yangon.

At least 150 people are now thought to have died in the magnitude 7.3 temblor that struck northern Afghanistan on Sunday.The quake was felt across six countries of Central and South Asia, including Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India,Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Officials reported on Monday that the powerful quake loosened a cliff in the Hindu Kush mountain province of Samangan that slid onto a community, crushing homes and killing at least 100 people. The slide blocked a river and triggered flooding that left hundreds of other homes submerged. Village elder Abdul Qodoos reported, "It was a big, savage sound, like a woman screaming."Women and children were evacuated from the area to more stable ground as boulders continued to cascade down the escarpment. In Tajikistan, the Khovar News Agency reported that nearly 90 homes in that country were destroyed and numerous roads and power lines damaged. Officials reported that the main highway in Tavildara was fractured in 25 places. Nigel Fisher, deputy envoy for U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, said that U.N. and Red Cross teams had been dispatched to the stricken region on Monday to assess the damage.

A woman in Rugby, Warwickshire, was killed by falling rubble from a building on Saturday as 129 km/h (80 mph) winds swept across England and Wales. Hundreds of soccer fans narrowly escaped injury as the powerful winds tore off sheets of corrugated metal roofing that landed on empty seats in the stadium. One attendee described the airborne roofing as a "flying razor blade." The storm ripped roofs from other buildings and toppled hundreds of power lines and trees, forcing the closure of key rail lines and roads and causing travel chaos. More than 12,000 homes across East Anglia were left without power overnight. Power failures also left hundreds of people stranded on seven trains near Hanslope, while other trains were blocked by heavy snowfall or fallen trees. A spokesman from the Met Office said the storms disappeared as rapidly as they had arrived. He said, "The system ran through very quickly from west to east and died again."

Unseasonably warm weather in the American Midwest that turned to freezing cold during the weekend, was blamed for at least 23 deaths on Monday. Victims died of hypothermia, storm-related accidents and snowmobiling mishaps. The icy cold spread across a wide section of America's Heartland from Chicago to the Mexican border. Temperatures plunged to record levels in Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri and Texas. The Texas capital of Austin recorded a low of -8 degrees Celsius (17 degrees Fahrenheit), and at least 500 traffic accidents were reported statewide. Officials at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport were forced to cancel about 100 flights. A blanket of snow 12.4 cm (9.9 inches) deep at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport forced the cancellation of dozens of flights. On Saturday, more than 43 cm (17 inches) of snow fell in Michigan's Marquette area, and Grand Rapids recorded a one-day March record of 34.5 cm (13.6 inches). Steve Fano, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Texas, said, "It's unseasonably cold, but it's not out of the ordinary to have one of these arctic fronts moving through this time of year."

A magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck the southern Philippines island of Mindanao on Wednesday at 5:15 a.m. local time, panicking hospital patients and hotel guests who fled from cracked buildings. Witnesses reported that walls crumbled at a number of schools. About 100 workers at a fish canning factory suffered injuries as they rushed out in panic when power supplies were cut. Raymundo Pungongbayanm, director of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, said, "This is strong. If a building is weak and the engineering and design are not good, it could collapse." He reported that the temblor was powerful enough to generate a seismic sea wave. He said, "We considered that, just to play it safe, so we issued an alert for tsunami, but nothing happened." Seismologists at the U.S. Geological Survey reported that the offshore tremor was centred about 115 km (70 miles) west of the city of General Santos, located about 1,000 km (620 miles) south-southeast of Manila. The tremor occurred above the convergence of the Sunda and the Philippine Sea tectonic plates.