Buildings in Boston were evacuated, while witnesses said the quake was felt as far away as Toronto. In New York, many office buildings were evacuated. The Capitol Building was also evacuated after the quake struck. Pictures hanging on the walls at the Capitol reportedly fell to the floor from the shocks.

The 5.8 magnitude earthquake brought panic to the Pentagon and the White House, and sparked fears that the iconic Washington Monument would fall.

As ripples from the tremor hit Washington and New York, city streets across the coast were filled with thousands of people hauled out of buildings for fear they could collapse.

Traffic was snarled for miles in downtown Washington as employers released workers early at the same time and thousands of commuters tried to drive home or cram onto trains already overloaded and slowed by speed restrictions because of the quake. Rush hour began several hours early throughout the city, and several extra frustrations — malfunctioning traffic lights, blocked-off streets — added to the commuting headache.

“Not that yesterday was chaos, but definitely, it was not as smooth as it could have been,” said Justin Thorp, 27, a marketing manager who works downtown and who escaped the congestion with a bicycle he found through a bike-sharing program.

No mandatory evacuation order followed the earthquake, which isn’t surprising given the sporadic and relatively minor damage the region sustained.

Very few circumstances would trigger a mandatory exodus of the entire city, said David Robertson, executive director of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, an organization of Washington-area local governments.

Nonetheless, many office buildings, government agencies and other businesses emptied on their own, setting off an early rush hour.

It’s natural to want to leave a building during an earthquake. After all, who wants to be in a building that crumbles to the ground? This fear, however, drove people into the streets and sidewalks, and ironically enough, into perhaps the most dangerous place of all. As FEMA explains:

The greatest danger exists directly outside buildings, at exits and alongside exterior walls. Many of the 120 fatalities from the 1933 Long Beach earthquake occurred when people ran outside of buildings only to be killed by falling debris from collapsing walls. Ground movement during an earthquake is seldom the direct cause of death or injury. Most earthquake-related casualties result from collapsing walls, flying glass, and falling objects.

Here are some pointers from FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency if you are caught in a major earthquake:

If You’re Indoors:

• Drop to the ground and take cover. Get under a sturdy table or other piece of furniture, and hold on until the shaking stops.
• If you can’t get under something, cover your face and head with your hands and crouch in an inside corner.

If You’re Outdoors

• Stay there. Stay away from buildings, power lines, streetlights and other things that could fall on you.
• People are rarely injured by the actual shaking of an earthquake. Instead, falling debris is the greater danger.
• If you’re in a car, try to ease to a stop, preferably in an open area away from buildings, trees or overpasses.

The 5.9-magnitude tremor struck at about 2pm local time with shallow tremors of about 3.7 miles deep, which is thought to explain why the shaking was so widespread.

It is though to have been the strongest quake to hit the Virginia area for seven decades.

The previous record for an earthquake in Washington D.C. was on July 16, 2010, when a 3.6 magnitude one struck.

There were no immediate reports of deaths, but fire officials said there were injuries.

Jamie starts his album with “Best Night of My Life” and it’s the classic R & B type of song about trying to get a girl home. The slow jam “Sleeping Pill” finds Foxx hung over and barely remembering his randy night with a shorty who had her way with him after an Ambien. The fact that Soulja Boy is on “Yep Dat’s Me” speaks to Jamie’s efforts to remain relevant to a younger generation, but the song is really nothing beyond its catchy hook and Luda’s hard-spitting verse. “Freak” (Featuring Rico Love) has an electro-pop feeling and it reminds me of what Diddy is doing right now with Last Train to Paris. Closing the album is All Said And Done, one of the worst offerings on the project. “Sex on the Beach” (bonus track) reminds me of something that would be on the Jersey Shore soundtrack.

On this album, Jamie Foxx isn’t taking his singing career as seriously as he used to. The album is lacking in the big hits department other than “Living Better Now.” There is no “Blame It”, “Gold Digger” or “Unpredictable” on this album. If you want depth from Jamie Foxx, go see one of his movies.

Packaged like a classic ‘60s album, a handful of songs are clearly designed to evoke the sound of that era; the pleading “Radio Message” as well as the pained “How Do I Tell Her?” and the bouncing “Love Is”, are too well-crafted and convincingly delivered to be heard as mere genre exercises. “Can I bring the love songs back to the radio?” Kelly sings on “Lost in Your Love,” a curious request for the notoriously lascivious singer.

Scarlett Johansson

Halle Berry

Anne Hathaway

Sandra Bullock

Leighton Meester

Robert Pattinson

Zac Efron

James Franco

Jake Gyllenhaal

Andrew Garfield

The Official Charts Company said Elvis Presley was the last artist to achieve such a feat, scoring number ones each year from 1957 to 1963.

“What’s my name?” is the second single taken from Rihanna’s fifth studio album, Loud. Her album held on to its number one slot beating off competition from British rapper Plan B’s “The Defamation of Strickland Banks” which had been ahead in the race for pole position last week.

“What’s my name?” was produced by Norwegian production duo StarGate with strong reggae and ska beats. The R&B song was also particularly successful reaching the top five in France, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, Scotland and the U.S. It also became Drake’s first ever number one single.

Rihanna was spotted leaving Wolfgang Puck’s The Cut in Beverly Hills on January 8.

The Barbadian singer and Nicki Minaj are gearing up to shoot a music video for their song “Fly.”

“We’re shooting the video with Rihanna for ‘Fly’ this weekend. We’re going to save the world in more ways than one with the video and that’s all I can say about that,” Miss Minaj said.

“The commercial challenges have to be confronted,” bassist Adam Clayton said during an interview backstage at “Saturday Night Live,” as awaits the band’s performance on the show’s season kickoff. “But I think, in a sense, the more interesting challenge is, ‘What is rock ‘n’ roll in this changing world?’ Because, to some extent, the concept of the music fan – the concept of the person who buys music and listens to music for the pleasure of music itself – is an outdated idea.”

The first single from U2′s new album – the driving, upbeat “Get on Your Boots” – didn’t have a similar platform and didn’t crack Billboard’s top 30 singles pop chart. Meanwhile, “I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight” was featured in a Blackberry ad as part of the new partnership between the mobile device and U2 but was not released as a single.

Songs from the new album are clearly resonating with die-hard fans. “Get on Your Boots” drew one of the more frenetic responses from the crowd during a recent concert in Foxborough, Mass., outside of Boston, as did the anthemic show closer, “Moment of Surrender.” Yet the album hasn’t had the impact for which U2 had hoped.

While noting that signature U2 songs such as “Beautiful Day” and even “One” weren’t massive or immediate hits, Bono does acknowledge disappointment that the band didn’t quite “pull off the pop songs” with the new work.

“But we weren’t really in that mindset,” U2′s charismatic front man said, “and we felt that the album was a kind of an almost extinct species, and we should approach it in totality and create a mood and a feeling, and a beginning, middle and an end. And I suppose we’ve made a work that is a bit challenging for people who have grown up on a diet of pop stars.”

Some would argue that the Irish rockers remain pop’s biggest act. They are entering their fourth decade of music-making with a string of awards, from Grammys to Billboard to Golden Globes, tens of millions of records sold and a social impact that few musical acts can ever hope to achieve. Still, they find themselves in the same challenging position as most pop groups today, who must seek new ways to connect with music buyers in a declining industry and an increasingly fractious entertainment world.

“Music exists in an environment where people are multitasking, and I think that’s a very different environment,” said Clayton, who grew up appreciating jazz but realized “it was for people who took life a certain way, but it wasn’t part of the modern world for me.

“I worry that the world of rock ‘n’ roll that I grew up in is destined to end up that way.”

U2 is still hustling to promote the CD. When it was released in March, the group did “Good Morning America” and an unprecedented five-night appearance on “Late Show With David Letterman.” More recently, U2 appeared on “SNL.”

“I love to see an outsized band like U2 behaving like they’re in the kindergarten and just doing what you do with your first album — taking it to the market, setting up your table, selling your wares, selling it out the street corners, giving out fliers,” says an animated Bono, breaking into a wide grin behind his trademark sunglasses. “I think selling out is when you stop believing enough in your music to put yourself out to explain it to people.”

U2′s “360″ tour is a massive undertaking that has the band performing in the center of stadiums, hence the “360″ title. The production, which includes stages that take days to dismantle, has been one of the top grossing tours in the country since it kicked off in September, despite a price tag that runs upward of $250 (at least 10,000 tickets for $30 have been made available for every show).

And when the band played at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., last month, it broke attendance records with a crowd of about 84,500 fans.

“In many ways, U2 has had such an enormous amount of success over the years we’re almost proof against that,” the band’s longtime manager, Paul McGuinness, says, talking about U2 and the music industry’s decline. “We’re still selling a lot of recorded music, but it’s a much smaller part of our business than playing live. This tour, by the time it’s finished, we would have played … to roughly 6 million people.”

It is during live shows when U2 feels the most connection with its audience. Despite the stadium shows and the immense stage structure, the band insists that this time, the set up has created perhaps a greater intimacy with fans than the group has enjoyed in the past. They are literally surrounded by fans.

“The staging itself is something we’ve tried to do for a long, long time. The idea of playing 360 — it’s never been done successfully, … where everybody gets good sound and good visuals, and we managed to achieve that, I think,” says Mullen, who, like the rest of his band mates, is affable and thoughtful as he talks about U2 backstage at “SNL.”

“The thing about U2 has always been its audience, and in this environment, I think the audience is so important, and the reaction is so important,” he said.

On tour, U2 can best gauge fan reaction to the new material. Last month at the cavernous Gillette Stadium near Boston, it was almost as frenzied and passionate as the reaction U2 gets for its classics. A roar came from the crowd as the band opened the show with “Magnificent,” and the energy kept building as U2 performed four more new songs, including “Get on Your Boots.”

U2′s Blackberry partnership includes an application that allows users to download the CD and photographs, liner notes and more.

Yet the band is also careful not to be too unwieldy when it comes to attempting new avenues to promote its music.

“We’re trying to do everything we can on that front without having to change what we’re about artistically: The music stays sacrosanct,” The Edge says. “We are much more focused on being the best than being the biggest.”

And that means perhaps making the kind of album that doesn’t guarantee hits but does guarantee surprises and new ideas, which “No Line” has delivered.

“The biggest danger for a band like U2 is accepting that you’ve reached a certain age, and, therefore, you can just actually sit back,” says Mullen.

“That’s not what we signed up to do. We want to make relevant, great music, and Bono has said numerous times, ‘One crap album and you’re out,’” he adds. “We’ve avoided it so far.”

“No Line on the Horizon” is U2′s twelfth studio album. The band collaborated with producers Brian Eno and Danny Lanois from June 2007 to December 2008 for the album, allowing them to be involved in the songwriting process. Writing and recording for the album took place in four different cities. No Line on the Horizon was released in five different formats and was made available for pre-order on the iTunes Store on 19 January 2009, the day “Get on Your Boots” premiered on radio. iTunes album pre-orders contained bonus tracks unavailable with any other version. Digital versions were also initially available from Amazon.com in MP3 format, as well as U2.com in both MP3 and FLAC formats. In addition to the digital versions of the album, five physical formats of the album were released, four of which were considered “limited editions”.