309 DIE IN INDONESIA QUAKE

Story 1-300 die in Indonesia quake, 2-No Jews allowed on Temple Mount, 3-SWEDEN QUAKE.

Strong earthquake kills 309 in Indonesia By IRWAN FIRDAUS, Associated Press Writer 21

minutes ago YOGYAKARTA, Indonesia - A powerful earthquake rocked Indonesia's Central Java province early Saturday, killing at least 309 people, injuring scores, and flattening buildings. The magnitude 6.2 quake struck at 5:54 a.m. 15 miles southwest of the city of Yogyakarta, causing damage and casualties there and in at least two other nearby population centers, officials said. Yogyakarta, on the island of Java, is around 18 miles from the sea and about 250 miles east of the capital, Jakarta.

In the chaos that followed the quake, rumors of an impending tsunami sent thousands of people on Java fleeing to higher ground in cars and motorbikes. But Japan's Meteorological Agency said there was no danger of a tsunami.The quake also triggered heightened activity in nearby Mount Merapi volcano, which has been spewing out clouds of hot ash, gas and lava for several weeks, a scientist said. Five hours after the quake struck, at least 291 bodies had been recovered, and the death toll was expected to climb, morgue officials told The Associated Press by telephone.

Please tell the central government to send help, we need help here," said Kusmarwanto of Bantul Muhammadiyah Hospital, the closest hospital to the quake's epicenter. There so many casualties. Houses ... are flattened. Many people still need to be evacuated," he said, adding that his hospital alone had 39 dead bodies and the numbers were rising. We are overwhelmed with bodies," said Subandi, a morgue official at Bethseda hospital in Yogyakarta. Witnesses at hospitals said hundreds of injured were arriving for emergency treatment, many with broken bones and cuts.

TV footage showed damaged hotels and government buildings, and several collapsed buildings. The quake cracked the runway in Yogyakarta's airport, closing it to aircraft until at least Sunday while inspections take place, Transport Minister Hatta Radjasa said.Electricity and communications were also down in parts of the city, police said. It felt really powerful, and the whole building shook, said Narman, a receptionist who goes by one name at a hotel in Yogyakarta. "Everyone ran from their rooms. The quake's epicenter was close to the Mount Merapi, which has been rumbling for weeks. Activity increased as a result of the temblor, with one eruption soon after the earthquake sending debris some 2 miles down its western flank, said Subandrio, a vulcanologist monitoring the peak.

The quake has disturbed the mountain," he said. There were no reports of injuries as a result of the eruption. Activity at Mount Merapi, one of the world's most active volcanoes, has picked up in recent weeks and almost all villagers living near the danger zone have been evacuated. Indonesia, the world's largest archipelago, is prone to seismic upheaval due to its location on the so-called Pacific "Ring of Fire," an arc of volcanos and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin. A magnitude 9.1 earthquake on Dec. 26, 2004, under the sea off the coast of Indonesia's Sumatra Island triggered a tsunami that killed more than 131,000 people in nearby Aceh province, and more than 100,000 others in nearly a dozen other countries.

Police Reverse Stand, Ban Jews from Temple Mount 18:33 May 25, '06 / 27 Iyar

5766 (IsraelNN.com) Police authorities have reversed their stand and prohibited a group of Jews from visiting the Temple Mount Thursday, Jerusalem Reunification Day, because of fears of violence.The police originally said that the group of the Temple Faithful could visit the holy site without its leader, Gershon Solomon. Authorities later denied the entire group access after Moslem leaders called on Arabs to swarm the Temple Mount in protest.

Earthquake shakes StockholmPublished: 25th May 2006 10:33 CET

A seismologist has confirmed that the vibrations and shaking overnight in Stockholm, which prompted hundreds of residents to call SOS Alarm fearing a mysterious explosion, was in fact an earthquake. Reynir Bödvarsson at Uppsala University told TT on Thursday morning that the quake was localised in the western part of the city. We hardly noticed anything here in Uppsala. But this morning when I analysed the data I saw that it was an earthquake," he said.

Bödvarsson told Swedish Radio that the earthquake measured "a little over two on the Richter scale". The epicentre was located seven kilometres south east of Bromma. Police thought at first that the quake was an explosion, as hundreds of panic-stricken residents called SOS Alarm. Nobody was injured.It was primarily in the vicinity of Alvik, the Essinge islands and Kungsholmen, said Thomas Ibstedt, at Stockholm police.

A resident of Stora Essingen, Hans-Olov Zetterström, was one of those woken by the rumbling.It was as though there was rock-blasting being carried out on a building site," he told The Local. But it was the middle of the night - and there's no building site near here. Officers were sent to investigate the incident and a helicopter was called in to help find the cause of the noise.The rarity of earth tremors in Stockholm meant that this explanation was not even considered by police, who speculated that it could have been an explosion set off by someone from a boat.

But Bödvarsson said that across Sweden these kinds of quakes are not unheard of. There are over ten earthquakes like this each year somewhere in Sweden. But when it happens in central Stockholm there are obviously many more people who experience it than when it happens somewhere in Lappland," he said. An earthquake of this size can be usually felt within a radius of maybe five to ten kilometres from the epicentre. There is very little seismic activity in the Stockholm, Uppland and east coast regions. Around Vänern, Bottenviken and Lappland, earthquakes are more common.

Bödvarsson said there was very little risk of further disturbances in Stockholm. If there are aftershocks, they will probably be so small that nobody will notice them. That's not to say that there can't be another earthquake in Stockholm, but the probability is not increased because of this. (Louis Roper)