And a few hours later the death toll has exceeded 1000 :-(

At least 320 people have died in strong earthquakes that battered northwestern Afghanistan on Saturday, the United Nations has said.

Two 6.3-magnitude quakes struck an area 25 miles northwest of the city of Herat, and were followed by four large aftershocks, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) reported.

Four villages in the Zenda Jan district in Herat province bore the brunt of the quakes and aftershocks as dozens of houses were destroyed following the devastating quakes.

The United States Geological Survey reported the 6.3 magnitude tremblors, with an aftershock measuring a magnitude of 5.5......

At least 128 people have been killed and dozens injured after an earthquake struck western Nepal on Friday, with witnesses saying houses in the area collapsed and buildings as far as New Delhi, India, shook.

Nepal's National Earthquake Monitoring and Research Center measured a magnitude-6.4 earthquake and said its epicentre was at Jajarkot, which is about 400 kilometres north-west of the Nepal capital, Kathmandu.

Officials said early on Saturday that the death toll was expected to rise, noting that communications were cut off with many villages.

The US Geological Survey had initially said the earthquake had a preliminary magnitude of 5.6 and occurred at a depth of 17.9 kilometres......

Iceland's famed Blue Lagoon geothermal spa says it is temporarily closing as a precaution, after thousands of small recent tremors raised fears of a potential volcanic eruption.

"The Blue Lagoon has made the proactive decision to temporarily close its operations for one week although the current phase of uncertainty has not been elevated by the authorities during this seismic period," it said in a statement posted to its website.

The closure of the Blue Lagoon, Iceland's most popular tourist site, known for its steaming milky blue water was set to take place on Thursday local time.

The announcement came after frightened guests left the Blue Lagoon hotel in the night, with at least 40 being picked up by taxis, according to a report in the local Vikurfrettir newspaper.....

An update from this side of the world on Iceland and the future is looking bleak. :-(

Thousands have been evacuated as experts warn “time is up” for an imminent volcano eruption that is expected to burn for centuries.

Three eruptions have occurred since 2021, which experts say mark the beginning of a new geological era on Iceland’s southwestern peninsula, which had previously laid dormant for 800 years.

[...] But earlier this month, scientists tracked what appeared to be a huge volume of magma gathering below the Svartsengi area. It quickly rose toward the town of Grindavík last Friday night, stopping just shy of the surface and consequently prompting the town’s swift evacuation.

Even knowing that the next eruption could happen in one of several places on the peninsula, including somewhere a little closer to urban infrastructure, this development still shocked scientists. “The extension of the seismic activity under the town of Grindavík and the shallow waters south of the town did come as a surprise, simply because previous volcanic fissures have not extended so far southwest,” says Þorvaldur Þórðarson, a volcanologist at the University of Iceland.

Why the sudden shift? Scientists suspect that the 2021 eruption kicked off a decades-long period of fissure eruptions across the peninsula; something similar happened 800 years prior. This possible fourth eruption is certainly part of that new era. [...]

Initial estimates hint that the amount of magma involved is more substantial than the peninsula’s past three eruptions, and it also flowed into the Svartsengi area at an astonishing speed. “Why the magma inflow rate appears to be so much higher this time, and indeed where it was sourced from, remains an important open question,” says Winder. Considering the seemingly hefty volume of magma, the potential for a long-lived eruption, or an otherwise very prolific eruption of lava, is high—but paradoxically, as with many eruptions, it could be that only a fraction of that molten rock sees daylight.