East Coast earthquake; student loan relief; no candidate for No Labels
Tremors: A magnitude-4.8 earthquake shook a huge swath of the East Coast last week. The quake—the strongest in 240 years— originated 40 miles west of New York City, but rumbles were felt from Pennsylvania to Maine. Aftershocks followed throughout the day. No casualties were reported, but air and ground traffic suffered delays. New York’s John F. Kennedy International and New Jersey’s Newark Liberty airport halted departures for up to two hours. Geologists said compounded stress on a tectonic plate’s fault line caused the quake, but they still aren’t sure exactly which fault line is to blame. “It likely occurred on an unnamed fault, but we really don’t know. It’s hard to figure that out,” said Dara Goldberg, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey. The survey now predicts a 39 percent chance that another earthquake, magnitude 3 or above, will rattle the region within the next year.