Residents in Tennessee and Georgia were jolted Saturday morning by an earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 4.1, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The earthquake had its epicenter just outside of Greenback, Tennessee, a town of about 1,000 people, but was felt as far away as Atlanta.

Shortly after the quake, people in the region logged reports with the U.S. Geological Survey about where they felt it. Reports of shaking came from as far away as Nashville, Tennessee, and Charlotte, North Carolina.

There were only a few instances of light damage reported around the epicenter, and no reports of moderate or heavy damage, according to those who self-reported to the USGS.

The area, known as the Eastern Tennessee Seismic Zone, extends across Tennessee into northwestern Georgia and northeastern Alabama. Minor earthquakes occur annually, but the zone is not known to have major tremors.

Ohio man sent threats with names on bullets

An Ohio man who over the past 10 months sent dozens of threatening messages to 34 people, including politicians and members of law enforcement, is facing criminal charges of cyberstalking and making threats, federal prosecutors said Friday.

The man, Ronald Lidderdale, sent 65 letters and emails, including some in which he said that he would send the recipients bullets with their names on them or said that he was prepared to kill them.

Lidderdale, 39, who was described by officials as being from central Ohio, was arrested Friday and appeared in federal court to face charges of making interstate communications with a threat to kidnap or injure, mailing threatening communications, false information and hoaxes, and cyberstalking.

He admitted to FBI agents this past week that he sent the letters and emails intending to incite fear “with the goal of changing behavior,” prosecutors said.

Some of the letters he sent contained a white powder that he claimed in writing was the lethal poison ricin, prosecutors said. Authorities did not say what the powder was.

At least one of his letters was sent with a bullet with the last name of a public official etched onto it using a screwdriver.

The targets of the messages were not publicly identified. The letters featured return addresses with various names of people around Columbus, Ohio.

Soviet spacecraft crashes back on Earth

A Soviet-era spacecraft plunged to Earth on Saturday, more than a half-century after its failed launch to Venus.

Its uncontrolled entry was confirmed by both the Russian Space Agency and European Union Space Surveillance and Tracking. The Russians indicated it came down over the Indian Ocean, but some experts were not so sure of the precise location. The European Space Agency’s space debris office also tracked the spacecraft’s doom after it failed to appear over a German radar station.

It was not immediately known how much, if any, of the half-ton spacecraft survived the fiery descent from orbit. Experts said ahead of time that some if not all of it might come crashing down, given it was built to withstand a landing on Venus, the solar system’s hottest planet.

Launched in 1972 by the Soviet Union, the spacecraft known as Kosmos 482 was part of a series of missions bound for Venus. But this one never made it out of orbit around Earth, stranded there by a rocket malfunction.

Much of the spacecraft came tumbling back to Earth within a decade of the failed launch. No longer able to resist gravity’s tug as its orbit dwindled, the spherical lander — an estimated 3 feet (1 meter) across — was the last part of the spacecraft to come down. The lander was encased in titanium, according to experts, and weighed more than 1,000 pounds (495 kilograms).

Any surviving wreckage will belong to Russia under a United Nations treaty.

New York pauses sale of popular cannabis vapes

New York state has paused sales of millions of dollars of top-selling cannabis vapes and prerolled joints amid an investigation into whether they were made with legally approved ingredients produced in the state, according to documents obtained by The New York Times.

In a series of orders issued on April 23, the Office of Cannabis Management, which oversees businesses that grow and sell cannabis in the state, directed dispensaries to remove from their shelves mostly vapes and prerolled joints from the companies Stiiizy and mfused, among other products.

The orders offered a window into the cannabis agency’s investigation of companies accused of pumping marijuana from unlicensed growers into licensed dispensaries, which is illegal. The Times obtained two of the documents through a public records request and another order from two people with whom they were shared.

The strategy of using unlicensed growers, known as “inversion,” undercuts promises that legalization offers consumers a safe supply of cannabis products that can be traced back to local farms. It is a federal crime to transport marijuana across state lines, so legal cannabis has to be grown and sold in the same state through licensed businesses.

According to the orders, investigators were questioning the origin of cannabis oil that was used to fill the vapes and the accuracy of lab tests that certified all of the mfused-branded varieties as safe.

Embassy says citizens swabbed entering China

The U.S. embassy in China said it received reports that American citizens are being subjected to “invasive medical testing” upon arrival in the country.

A U.S. citizen on a plane that arrived at Pudong International in Shanghai on May 2 told Bloomberg all foreign passport holders on the flight were corralled into an area after landing. A Chinese inspector scraped their tongues with a swab repeatedly, the person who was a former genetics researcher said, asking not to be identified for privacy reasons.

The passengers on the plane that were from the U.K. weren’t told why they were swabbed or what the samples would be used for, the person said.

S. Korea conservatives agree to unify campaign

South Korea’s conservative presidential hopefuls have agreed to end their rift, Yonhap News Agency reported, uniting behind a single candidate ahead of a snap election triggered by the impeachment of the country’s former president.

People Power Party nominee Kim Moon-soo won a vote among rank-and-file members, prompting former Prime Minister Han Duck-soo to drop his bid, according to Yonhap. The two had held a series of failed talks to discuss how to unite their campaigns and avoid splitting the vote against front-runner Lee Jae-myung of the opposition Democratic Party in the June 3 election.

Earlier Saturday, the PPP convened its emergency committee to cancel Kim’s nomination and reopen candidate registration due to the failure of the talks. But after the rank-and-file vote, the PPP reinstated Kim’s candidacy.

Former independent Han served as South Korea’s acting president after Yoon Suk Yeol was impeached for his failed martial law decree in December. Han, who resigned from that position to launch his bid for the presidency, has the most public support among conservative contenders, according to polls.

Cutting Newark flights is temporary fix

Airline chief executives are poised to work with U.S. aviation officials to throttle back more Newark airport flights, a fix that may ease short-term safety concerns but won’t solve long-term challenges.

The move comes as a key facility that routes planes into Newark suffered a second radar failure in as many weeks, making it the face of a beleaguered air-traffic system, with hundreds of flights delayed or canceled and operations snarled for days.

The Federal Aviation Administration said talks will be held with airline officials on May 14 in Washington. The FAA said it plans to propose limiting the airport to no more than 56 total operations per hour.

Aviation officials and legislators are racing to address a crisis that’s been years in the making, thanks to outdated technology and staffing shortages.

The situation came to a head after an alarming incident on April 28 in which the Philadelphia air-traffic control facility that guides flights into Newark’s airspace lost radar and radio contact for 90 seconds. A second 90-second outage hit controllers there early Friday morning. No one was injured, but the fallout for United customers has been severe.

Diddy denied dismissal of some charges in trial

A federal judge on Friday denied efforts by disgraced hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs to dismiss some charges and exclude evidence obtained during search warrants on the eve of opening statements at his sex trafficking trial.

Manhattan Federal Court Judge Arun Subramanian rejected the move by Combs to dismiss two separate counts in the sweeping indictment that accuse him of transporting two victims and commercial sex workers to engage in prostitution.

Combs had argued the allegations amounted to “a clear case of selective prosecution” that was “invidiously deployed against a prominent Black man.”

Subramanian found Combs had failed to provide any evidence that he’d been singled out unfairly by prosecutors based on his race, selected for prosecution in bad faith, and other elements necessary to win his arguments.

Suspected drone strike hits Sudanese prison

A suspected drone strike launched by Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces hit a prison in the southern region of Kordofan on Saturday and killed at least 20 inmates, authorities said.

Fifty other detainees were wounded in the attack on the main prison in Obeid, the capital city of North Kordofan, Information Minister Khalid Aleiser said in a statement.

Aleiser, who is also the spokesman of the military-allied government, accused the Rapid Support Forces for the attack, which came as the militia escalates drone strikes on the military-held areas across the country.

Sudan plunged into civil war on April 15, 2023, when simmering tensions between the military and the RSF exploded into open warfare in the capital Khartoum and other parts of the country. Obeid is 363 kilometers (225 miles) south of Khartoum.

There was no immediate comment from the RSF, which earlier this month launched multi-day drone attack on Port Sudan, the Red Sea city serving as an interim seat for the Sudanese government. The strikes hit the city’s airports, maritime port and other facilities including fuel storages.

The military earlier struck Nyala airport in South Darfur, where the RSF receives foreign military assistance, including drones. Local media say dozens of RSF officers were killed in last week’s strike.

At least 30 dead in attack in Nigeria

At least 30 people have been killed after gunmen attacked travelers on a major highway in the southeastern part of Nigeria, rights group Amnesty International said.

The rights group said Friday that more than 20 vehicles and trucks were set ablaze during the Thursday attack along the Okigwe-Owerri highway in Imo state. Police confirmed the attack but not the death toll.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but police suspect the Eastern Security Network, the paramilitary wing of the proscribed separatist group Indigenous People of Biafra.

The secessionist campaign in southeastern Nigeria dates back to when the short-lived Republic of Biafra fought and lost a civil war from 1967 to 1970 to become independent from the West African country. An estimated 1 million people died in the conflict, many from starvation.

The rights group said “international law requires the Nigerian government to promptly investigate unlawful killings with a view to bringing perpetrators to justice.”

One suspect connected to the attack was killed in a joint operation by law enforcement agencies, police spokesperson Okoye Henry said in a statement.

— From news reports