Northeastern United States

A moderate earthquake measuring 4.7 struck the Canadian province of Quebec early Friday and was felt in parts of the northeastern United States, officials said. There were no reports of damage or injuries, the National Earthquake Information Center said.

At a recent solar energy conference in Anaheim, economic development officials from Ohio talked up a state that seemed far removed from the solar panels and high-tech devices that dominated the convention floor. Ohio, long known for its smokestack auto plants and metal-bending factories, would be an ideal place for green technology companies to set up shop, they said. "People don't traditionally think of Ohio when they think of solar," said Lisa Patt-McDaniel, director of Ohio's economic development agency.

A late autumn storm is expected to dump up to six inches of snow today across the northeastern United States, threatening to snarl road, rail and air traffic on one of the busiest travel days of the year. "It's going to be a nasty day to travel," said Robert Sinclair Jr., a spokesman at the Automobile Club of New York. Weather forecasters said they expect the system will bring from three to six inches of snow from Ohio to Massachusetts, with heavier amounts inland.

Temperatures fell over the ice-coated Northeast on Saturday, where storm-related power failures had already plunged more than a million homes and businesses from Pennsylvania to Maine into the dark and cold. "If you don't have power, assume that you will not get it restored today, and right now make arrangements to stay someplace warm tonight," warned Gov. John Lynch of hardest-hit New Hampshire.

Soot from coal-burning factories in northeastern United States may have been the most important factor in the warming of the Arctic region during the first half of the 20th century, U.S. researchers reported Friday. At its peak, soot produced about double the warming effect that modern-day carbon dioxide levels produce -- 3.2 watts per square meter, compared with about 1.6 watts -- the team reported in the online journal Science Express.

With an estimated 15,000 U.S. troops in Haiti today, following the footsteps of thousands of others deployed in the Caribbean throughout this century, there's little doubt what Washington considers the United States' back yard. When Latin America was still looking to Europe for its language, its culture and its trade, the Caribbean was already an American sea. Sometimes it has been overwhelmed by soldiers, other times by tourists, always by economic power.

An electrical malfunction plunged much of the northeastern United States and parts of Canada into a power blackout Thursday afternoon, sending anxious throngs into the streets in New York City, Cleveland, Detroit, Toronto and Ottawa and trapping thousands of people at airports, in elevators and on subways. Nuclear power plants, caught without electricity needed to operate, shut down throughout the area. Prisons and hospitals switched to backup generators. Traffic signals blinked out.

Under cover of morning darkness, the Merrie Men of Downtown rumbled through the city, loaded for deer. A pickup and a van passed the baseball stadium and the high-rise business district to converge, as planned, on Weebetook Lane. The drivers parked on a block of stately dwellings. They drew camouflage outfits over their jeans and reached for their crossbows and quivers. They waved to a passing dog-walker.

Bitter Arctic cold magnified by stiff winds numbed the Northeast on Tuesday, with weather so foul that even meteorologists in a mountaintop observatory in New Hampshire were temporarily stranded. Millions bundled up, homeless shelters were crowded and phone lines for reporting insufficient heat in buildings were jammed. Cars wouldn't start and stores reported brisk sales of ice-melting chemicals, portable heaters, propane torches and long underwear.

Another snowstorm swept across New England on Wednesday, toppling seasonal snowfall records and dumping so much heavy snow on buildings that some collapsed. An unoccupied pizza shop collapsed at Weirs Beach in Laconia after the roof sagged about halfway into the two-story building and bowed the walls out, officials said. On Tuesday, several people had to flee as the roof fell in at the Over Easy Cafe in Ossipee, N.H. The dangerous snow load has kept roofing contractors and homeowners busy.

Residents of the region braced for a winter storm that could dump as much as 9 inches of snow in upstate New York and northern New England today, adding a new coating to the foot or more that fell from the storm that just moved out.

A wind-blown brew of snow, sleet and freezing rain cut visibility and iced over highways from the Great Lakes to New England on Sunday, stranding air and road travelers and causing a jetliner to skid off a runway. At least three traffic deaths have been blamed on the weather. The National Weather Service posted winter storm warnings from Michigan and Indiana all the way to Maine. About a foot of snow had fallen on parts of the Chicago area, with 10 inches in Vermont.

A winter storm responsible for deaths in the Midwest blasted the Northeast on Thursday, dumping snow and sleet and clogging some of the nation's most heavily traveled highways. Some areas could receive up to a foot of snow. Schools, businesses and government agencies in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Connecticut closed early. The resulting exodus choked highways and streets. Authorities reported hundreds of mostly minor accidents throughout the region.

A storm system slid across the Northeast bringing snow, sleet and freezing rain Sunday, glazing roads and tying up air travel after knocking power out for thousands of customers in the Midwest. At least 10 traffic deaths in the Midwest have been blamed on weather-related traffic accidents. Winter storm warnings were in effect into today in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine and into Tuesday in parts of New York state.

The remnants of Hurricane Noel brushed parts of the Northeast with strong winds and heavy rain, causing some coastal flooding and knocking out power to tens of thousands of people, but sparing the New England region widespread damage. Sustained winds of up to 50 mph along the New England coast were expected to die down by midnight; some areas had 70 mph gusts. Up to three inches of rain was reported in southern New Hampshire and Maine.

In New Jersey, where I grew up, names such as Washington, Monroe, Mercer, Knox, Stockton and Morris are commonplace, found on street signs, municipal halls, schools and liquor stores. When you live in one of the 13 original colonies, the Revolution is part of the landscape, but for countless schoolchildren it's otherwise insignificant. Sometimes it takes the wisdom of age to appreciate history, to want to peer beyond the names to the events.

A holiday blizzard walloped New York and New England on Monday with up to 2 feet of snow, shutting down airports, closing major highways and causing widespread power outages from the mid-Atlantic states to Maine. At least 28 deaths were blamed on the slow-moving storm, which forecasters said was the worst to hit the East Coast in seven years. The swirling blizzard, which drifted north after burying Washington, D.C.

Staying healthy is a costly business in the United States, particularly in the Northeast, government statistics show. Annual healthcare spending per person totaled $6,409 in New England and $6,151 in the rest of the Northeast, compared with a national average of $5,283, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reported in the journal Health Affairs.

Soot from coal-burning factories in northeastern United States may have been the most important factor in the warming of the Arctic region during the first half of the 20th century, U.S. researchers reported Friday. At its peak, soot produced about double the warming effect that modern-day carbon dioxide levels produce -- 3.2 watts per square meter, compared with about 1.6 watts -- the team reported in the online journal Science Express.