The Night Note: 1/12/10

News you need to know.

The following stories are brought to you by the fine folks on the News4 assignment desk.

MAJOR QUAKE HITS HAITI
A powerful earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale shook Haiti on Tuesday. Media reports said the quake caused several buildings to collapse in the Western hemisphere's poorest nation and led to an unknown number of fatalities.

The earthquake was centered 10 miles southwest from the Caribbean nation's capital of Port-au-Prince, and was relatively shallow at a depth of 5 miles, the U.S. Geological Survey said. Shallow earthquakes can cause more damage.

"I think it's really a catastrophe of major proportions," Haiti's ambassador to the U.S., Raymond Alcide Joseph, told CNN. (Wall Street Journal)
 

CONAN SAYS NO TO MIDNIGHT MOVE
Conan O'Brien has refused to play along with NBC's plan to move "The Tonight Show" and return Jay Leno to late-night, abruptly derailing the network's effort to resolve its scheduling mess.

O'Brien said in a statement Tuesday that shifting "Tonight" will "seriously damage what I consider to be the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting," and he expressed disappointment that NBC had given him less than a year to establish himself as host at 11:35 p.m. EST. (MSNBC)

I-395 HEADED FOR A TRAFFIC CATASTROPHE?
One of the region's busiest highways is about to be congested in ways that are unthinkable, and there's no solution to fix the oncoming mess.

A huge office complex called BRAC 133 is being built on 16 acres at the Mark Center, right off Seminary Road and Interstate 395.

Virginia leaders say it will have a catastrophic effect on traffic. (WTOP)

MANY CARIBBEAN, LATIN AMERICA AIRPORTS LACK SAFETY ZONES
Many of the busiest airports in the Caribbean and Latin America lack basic safety features that could have prevented the recent crash of an American Airlines jet in Jamaica, according to pilots, aviation safety experts and public documents.

No one died when the American Boeing 737-800 slid off a wet runway and slammed onto an adjacent rocky beach on Dec. 22, but dozens were hurt and the jet's fuselage was torn open in several places. It was the most serious accident involving a U.S. carrier since 50 people died in a commuter plane crash near Buffalo on Feb. 12. (USA Today)

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