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A year ago today, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake rocked Northern Japan. In the wake of this earthquake, a massive tsunami would flatten the Northern Tohoku region , killing nearly 20,000 people and knocking out power to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant

By Scott DiSavino (Reuters) - Regulators on Friday told the owners of the nation's nuclear reactors to implement new safety rules based on the lessons learned from the earthquake and tsunami that crippled Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant a year ago. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said it authorized its staff to issue three immediately effective orders implementing some of the more urgent recommendations. The NRC gave the plants until December 31, 2016, to complete modifications and requirements for the three orders.

Three days after the earthquake that struck Haiti, Shelove Julmiste was told her crushed leg would have to be amputated. She thought she would never walk again. Now two years later, Shelove is running Haiti's first rehab program and helping people get back on their feet

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With its banking and financial infrastructure still in tatters, a new mobile service that allows Haitians to make and receive payments via text message is taking off and allowing commerce to flourish. Last year, Haiti suffered a catastrophic earthquake that caused widespread devastation--a tragedy that puts yesterday's quake, which sent shockwaves of worry up and down the East Coast despite little damage, into stark perspective. The impoverished country is still recovering--but slowly, as several reports have indicated

To be honest with you, I didn’t feel a thing.

By Nicola Nosengo of Nature magazine Six Italian seismologists and one government official will be tried for the manslaughter of those who died in the earthquake that struck the city of L'Aquila on 6 April 2009. The seven were on a committee that had been tasked with assessing the risk associated with recent increases in seismic activity in the area. [More]

In emergency situations, establishing reliable comms can be vital for saving lives--but often established grids are taken out by the disaster itself. Enter AT&T's portable cell phone tower. AT&T's new product, the Remote Mobility Zone, is specifically designed for fast deployment in post-disaster situations, and as well as connecting to existing cell networks in situations where a local tower is not working, it can even send phone signals up to sat-com systems.

AUGUSTA, Georgia (AP) -Ryo Ishikawa understands that whatever pressure he faces this week at the Masters doesn't even compare with what his people in Japan are facing as they try to recover from the earthquake and tsunami that destroyed so many lives.

When an earthquake strikes, the shaking doesn't start instantaneously. Instead, the most violent energy spreads out from the epicenter at a relatively modest 3.5 kilometers per second

Three weeks after the earthquake and tsunami that crippled Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant workers have made some headway in cooling the facility's overheated fuel rods. But overall, the situation remains "very serious," according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) . Despite the ongoing work to stabilize the plant and fears that radioactive materials had contaminated tap water as far away as Tokyo, 240 kilometers to the south, most of the recommended restrictions on drinking water have been lifted.

By Risa Maeda TOKYO, March 22 (Reuters) - Japan's economy may not feel the harshest blow from this month's disasters until summer, when surging power demand could spark a new round of power blackouts in Tokyo and its neighbouring prefectures which account for 40 percent of the country's GDP.

On Friday, March 11, Japan was rocked by an earthquake. People were displaced, a nuclear reactor was in trouble, and the world watched as a tsunami flooded Japan, threatened the islands of the Pacific, and ultimately hit the western coasts of North and South America.

Plans to build the nation's first tsunami-resistant building are unfolding in Cannon Beach, Ore., in a region that is almost identical, seismically, to the subduction zone that triggered the earthquake and tsunami in Japan last week.

By Richard Monastersky "This earthquake is a lesson in humility," says Emile Okal, a geophysicist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, who studies great earthquakes and tsunamis. [More]