A large earthquake shook a remote part of central Pakistan Tuesday, and so far local authorities have only reported a few dozen fatalities so far. But according to estimates by the U.S. Geological Survey, the death toll could be far higher. The quake also gave rise to a mysterious island off the coast of Pakistan. The island was likely created by frozen methane that was shaken loose by the shaking. It pushed its way to the surface and created a muddy piece of land that will soon be washed away. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=225842908&ft=1&f=2&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NprProgramsATC+%28NPR+Programs%3A+All+Things+Considered%29&utm_content=Yahoo+Search+Results …

Colorado Flooding: 3 Dead, Mountain Towns Cut Off Heavy rains sent walls of water crashing down mountainsides Thursday in Colorado, cutting off remote towns, forcing the state's largest university to close and leaving at least three people dead across a rugged landscape that included areas blackened by recent wildfires. A warm, moist storm system has been dropping rain on the region for much of the week. Up to 8 inches fell in an area spanning from the Wyoming border south to the foothills west of Denver. Flooding extended all along the Front Range mountains, including the cities of Colorado Springs, Denver, Fort Collins, Greeley, Aurora and Boulder. "A slow-moving area of low pressure over the Rockies combined with a moist, southerly flow at all levels of the atmosphere will keep the threat of locally heavy rain and flooding in place into the weekend," said weather.com meteorologist http://www.weather.com/news/weather-severe/flash-flood-swamps-boulder-northern-colorado-20130912

(AP) — Voyager 1 has crossed a new frontier, becoming the first spacecraft ever to leave the solar system, NASA said Thursday. Thirty-six years after it was launched from Earth on a tour of the outer planets, the plutonium-powered probe is more than 11 1/2 billion miles from the sun, cruising through what scientists call interstellar space — the vast, cold emptiness between the stars, the space agency said. Voyager 1 actually made its exit more than a year ago, according to NASA. But it's not as if there's a dotted boundary line or a signpost out there, and it was not until recently that the space agency had the evidence to convince it that the spacecraft had finally plowed through the hot plasma bubble surrounding the planets and escaped the sun's influence. http://bigstory.ap.org/article/out-there-voyager-1-enters-space-between-stars