“The bed shook for about 20 seconds,” Helsingborg resident John O’Leary told The Local.

O’Leary said the quake woke him at about 6:20am and that the shaking knocked over several items in his apartment.

Uppsala University seismologist Reynir Bödvarsson estimated the quake measured between 4.5 and 5.0 on the Richter scale.

“It was likely felt in much of southern Sweden. For Sweden, this is a very strong quake,” Bödvarsson told the TT news agency.

Seismologists in Sweden estimate the quake’s epicentre was located 18 kilometres underground, beneath a point about one kilometre east from Malmö’s Sturup Airport, located about 30 kilometres east of the city.

According to the US Geological Survey, the earthquake had a magnitude of 4.7, which would make it the strongest earthquake to hit Sweden in more than 100 years.

Back on October 23rd, 1904, an earthquake with an epicentre near the Koster Islands off Sweden’s west coast reached a magnitude of 6.0 on the Richter scale.

Much of the Baltic region, including southern Sweden, was rattled in 2004 by a 5.3 magnitude quake with its epicentre in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad on the south shores of the Baltic Sea.

Tuesday’s tremor was felt primarily by residents in Skåne. People living in Malmö reported feeling strong tremors and buildings throughout the city shook.

“It’s not dangerous for people, but there certainly may be some cracking in the facades of buildings,” said Bödvarsson.

“I’ve never been so scared in my life,” said Tina Morris, who resides in Skurup, about 40 kilometres south east of Malmö.

“The roar of the quake was horrible, but it was the bed shaking that woke me up. I could hear the plates and glass rattling downstairs.”

Residents in Blekinge, just east of Skåne, also reported feeling the ground shake beneath them.

Danish news agency Ritzau also reported that the tremor was felt in Copenhagen and other parts of northern Själland in Denmark.

The Local

Heavy snowfall continues to affect the Massif Central and severe downpours have hit the south east.

Four departments will remain under orange alert by Météo France until 16.00 today - the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, the Hautes-Alpes, the Alpes-Maritimes and the Savoie, with warnings of snow, black ice and avalanches.

The alert has however been lifted for the Auvergne region and the departments of the Ardèche, the Loire, the Lozère and the Var.

Evacuations have taken place in the Vaucluse in the towns of Apt, Bédarrides, Piolenc and Cavaillon due to flooding.

Around 80,000 homes are still without electricity in the Massif Central after heavy snowfall. Power was restored Sunday evening to around 13,000 of 25,000 homes affected in Aveyron.

Around 10,000 residents in Marvejols in Lozère look set to be without electricity throughout the day. A special telephone line has been set up on 0811 000 648.

Traffic has been affected by the bad weather. Heavy lorries and coaches are still banned in both directions on the A89, the Clermont/Brive route, the A71, the Paris/Clermont, route between Montmarault and Clermont-Ferrand, and on the A75, the Clermont/Montpellier route, between Lempdes and Lodève.

Many smaller roads have been closed in the Vaucluse, the Var and the Alpes de Haute-Provence, as well as several sections of the seafront roads in the Alpes-Maritimes, between Antibes and Villeneuve-Loubet, Cagnes-sur-Mer and Saint-Laurent-du-Var and between Roquebrune and the Italian border via Menton.

Trains have been delayed in the south due to torrential rain and strong winds. Around 15 trains were yesterday delayed between two and five hours in the Var, the Bouches-du-Rhône and the Alpes Maritimes.

Four TGVs heading for Metz, Paris, Lille and Brussels were hit by delays of between three and five hours due to a fallen tree.

A 50-year-old motorist died yesterday afternoon after losing control of his car in the bad conditions, which careered into the Loire at Lavoûte-sur-Loire, in the Haute-Loire. A 58-year-old Swiss snow-shoe hiker died in an avalanche in the Jura and his wife has been seriously injured.

The Connexion

At one point, there were more than 300 flood warnings in place, with south-western England accounting for about a third of incidents. The Midlands, South Coast and parts of Wales and Scotland were also affected.

The body of the 86-year-old man and his Ford car were found floating in a deep pool on a road near Martock in Somerset. A spokesman for Avon and Somerset Constabulary said: “It looks as if he had got out of the car to walk away from the floods and got into difficulties.” He is thought to have drowned or succumbed to hypothermia after being swept off his feet. In Dorset, a 22-year-old woman died when her car crashed off the A35 road near Poole during heavy rain.

Across Devon and Somerset, 30 motorists had to be rescued from their cars and more than 200 houses were flooded with up to four feet of water in lower-lying areas. Water levels subsided as the skies cleared, but more bad weather was forecast for tomorrow and Wednesday.

Emergency services admitted they were “very stretched” at times with calls for help coming in every few minutes at the height of the crisis. Rail lines between London and the South-west were also affected, with suspensions and “severe delays”, although yesterday afternoon services between London Paddington and Bristol Temple Meads were fully operational and problems between Paddington and Taunton, Exeter St Davids, Plymouth and Penzance were listed as “cleared”.

Chard, Ilminster, Shepton Mallet, Glastonbury and Street experienced some of the heaviest downpours and almost all the houses in one Somerset street – Hempitts Road in the village of Walton – were flooded yesterday. Residents Jane and Tony Bird said their 11-year-old son, Jack, who was sleeping on a mattress downstairs with friends, woke up to find he was floating. In Dorset, 18 homes in Rowan Close, Southill, Weymouth, were flooded by several inches of water.

Firefighters in Wales were kept busy with calls to flooding in the Fishguard area; a block of flats in Emsworth, Hampshire, was evacuated when a 50ft branch fell, crushing two cars; a woman was rescued from the roof of a car after flooding in Crewe; and in Scotland, 100 sheep “huddled” on high, dry ground in a field near Perth, after the river Earn burst its banks, were rescued.

Figures obtained by the Conservatives from the Environment Agency showed the number of properties at risk of flooding has gone up from 1.9 million in 2001 to an estimated 2.3 million in 2006, which the party described as “a resounding call to action”.

The shadow Floods minister Anne McIntosh called on the Government to take action. “More and more people are living with the worry that heavy rainfall might flood their home. With 2.3 million properties now at risk it is vital that the Government takes the steps necessary to ensure that people, homes and businesses are better equipped to deal with flooding emergencies.” Sir Michael Pitt’s review of last year’s devastating floods made recommendations for dealing with flooding events, which he said should be treated as seriously as terrorism or pandemic flu threats. A spokesman for the Environment Department said: “Defra has increased flood defence spending to a total of £2.15bn over the next three years, and £20m of this is being brought forward to next year to help those homes most at risk.”

The Independent

Dual carriageways in both Devon and Somerset were under up to 18in (46cm) of water, trees down and people trapped in their cars.

A Dorset Police spokesman said officers were investigating whether the weather was a factor in an accident on the A35 at Upton, Poole, which left a 22-year-old Poole woman dead.

The Vauxhall Astra left the road at 2.05am and hit fencing close to the Bakers Arms roundabout. A female passenger, also 22, escaped injury in the accident.

Around 270 homes are thought to be flooded in Somerset, with most of the problems concentrated in the southern third of the county.

The Devon and Somerset control centre said it had received one emergency call every two or three minutes since 5am with some homes under 4ft of water.

A fire service spokeswoman said: “We’ve had 270 calls since 2am and most of those are relating to flooded homes. In Ilminster most of the main roads going in were impassable a few hours ago.

“We are getting to properties but we are having to queue incidents because there’s such a large volume.”

One Somerset street - Hempitts Road, in the village of Walton - has seen most of its houses flooded.

Residents Jane and Tony Bird told BBC Somerset their 11-year-old son, Jack, who was sleeping on a mattress downstairs with friends, woke up “floating”.

Silver and Bronze Command centres have been set up in the county to deal with the situation.

The Environment Agency had 68 flood warnings in place for the South West this morning. One severe warning was in place on the River Lyd, near Lydney in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire.

Times Online

The black box was to be dried out in Paris before data was retrieved, said Air New Zealand’s Ed Sims.

Four of the airline’s staff, one aviation official and two German pilots were on the plane. Only two bodies have been found off the Perpignan coast.

More than 40 divers have been searching the sea for bodies and wreckage.

Mr Sims said the recorder appeared to be in a good condition.

“This marks a significant step in the process of understanding what caused this tragic accident.

“French authorities continue to put every effort into the recovery operation.”

Family visit

They will continue to search for the flight data recorder, he added.

Airline officials and family members have travelled to France, as well as representatives from the airline’s investigation unit, the New Zealand police, and New Zealand’s Transport Accident Investigation Commission.

The plane, built in 2005, was leased by Germany’s XL Airways from Air New Zealand, and was undergoing checks after a refit before being handed back to Air New Zealand.

AFP news agency said some of the debris had drifted towards the Spanish coastline, about 20 miles (30km) from the crash site.

Airbus said the plane had been built in 2005 and had accumulated about 7,000 hours of flying time.

The A320 is a single-aisle aircraft that can seat about 150 passengers and is one of the most popular Airbus jets in use.

BBC NEWS

Another attendant suffered wrist injuries as the crew forcibly removed the co-pilot from the cockpit controls and restrained him in a seat in the cabin, the Air Accident Investigation Unit (AAIU) said.

As the Air Canada plane made its way over the Atlantic, the captain of the Boeing 767 from Toronto to Heathrow asked staff to seek out any trained pilots onboard.

One of the female cabin crew came forward saying she had a commercial pilot’s licence and was asked to take over in the co-pilot’s seat.

The captain praised the attendant to investigators for helping him safely land the plane at Shannon, where the sick flight officer was removed and admitted to the acute psychiatric unit of Ennis Regional Hospital for 11 days.

He was later flown home to Canada by an air ambulance for further care, according to the investigation.

The official report did not directly refer to the co-pilot’s medical condition, but it did record the views of two doctors onboard that he was in a “confused and disorientated state” when the incident happened, in January this year.

The captain also reported that his senior colleague became uncharacteristically “belligerent and uncooperative” and was “effectively incapacitated”.

One passenger at the time reported seeing the distraught co-pilot yelling for God as he was being restrained.

The AAIU praised the actions of both the captain and crew in diverting to the nearest airport and removing the co-pilot from the controls.

“For his own well-being and the safety of the aircraft, the most appropriate course of action was to stand him down from duty and seek medical attention which was available on board,” said the report.

“The commander, realising he was faced with a difficult and serious situation, used tact and understanding and kept control of the situation at all times.

“The situation was dealt with in a professional manner… As such the commander and flight attendants should be commended for their professionalism in the handling of this event.”

There were no safety recommendations from the investigation.

Times Online

The Russian Navy said the submarine itself was not damaged in Saturday’s accident and returned to its base on Russia’s Pacific coast under its own power Sunday. The accident also did not pose any radiation danger, the navy said.

Yet it was Russia’s worst naval accident since torpedo explosions sank another nuclear-powered submarine, the Kursk, in the Barents Sea in 2000, killing all 118 seamen aboard.

Overcrowding may have been a significant factor on Saturday.

The submarine being tested had 208 people aboard, including 81 seamen, according to Russian navy spokesman Capt. Igor Dygalo. Yet Russian news agencies said a sub of this type normally carries only a crew of 73.

“A submarine is the most vulnerable during trials. With both navy and civilian personnel on board, it’s very dificult to keep such a large number of people organized,” Gennady Illarionov, a retired submarine officer, told the RIA Novosti news agency.

The victims suffocated after the submarine’s fire-extinguishing system released Freon gas, said Vladimir Markin, an official with Russia’s top investigative agency. He said forensic tests found Freon in the victims’ lungs.

Seventeen civilians and three seamen died in the accident and 21 others were hospitalized after being evacuated to shore, Dygalo said, adding that none of the injuries were life-threatening.

“The submarine’s nuclear reactor was operating normally and radiation levels were normal,” Dygalo said, explaining that the accident affected two sections of the submarine closest to the bow.

Markin’s agency, the Investigative Committee under the Prosecutor General’s office, has launched a probe into the accident, which he said will focus on what activated the firefighting system and possible violations of submarine operating rules.

Lev Fyodorov, a top Russian chemical expert, agreed that the Freon pushed oxygen out, causing those inside to die of suffocation. But he wondered why the individual breathing kits that everyone on board is supposed to have did not keep people from dying.

“People on board the sub may have failed to use their breathing equipment when they found themselves in an emergency,” he told the AP.

Igor Kurdin, a retired navy officer who heads an association of former submariners, told Ekho Moskvy radio that the high death toll probably resulted from shipyard workers who lacked experience in dealing with the breathing kits.

A siren warning the crew that the firefighting system was turning on also may have failed, RIA Novosti quoted an unidentified navy official as saying, so those on board might not have realized that Freon was being released until it was too late.

The submarine returned Sunday to Bolshoi Kamen, a military shipyard and a navy base near Vladivostok. Officials at the Amur Shipbuilding Factory said they built the submarine and it is called the Nerpa. Dygalo said it was to be commissioned by the navy later this year.

Construction of the Nerpa, an Akula II class attack submarine, started in 1991 but was suspended for years because of a shortage of funding, they said. Testing on the submarine began last month and it submerged for the first time last week.

The U.S.-based intelligence risk assessment agency Stratfor said the Akula is an established design, with the Nerpa being the 11th ship of the class.

“Such a catastrophic accident calls into question the way the Russian navy has sustained its institutional knowledge in terms of design expertise, not to mention issues of quality control, both in fabrication and inspection,” Stratfor said.

Saturday’s accident came as the Kremlin is seeking to restore Russia’s naval reach, part of a drive to show off the nuclear-armed country’s clout amid strained ties with the West. A naval squadron is heading to Venezuela for joint exercises this month in a show of force near U.S. waters.

Despite a major boost in military spending during Vladimir Putin’s eight years as president, Russia’s military is still hampered by decrepit infrastructure, aging weapons and problems with corruption and incompetence.

Illarionov said the accident appeared to reflect the loss of crucial skills in conducting sea trials.

“During the Soviet times, we commissioned three to five submarines a year, and now we get just one in five years,” Illarionov was quoted by RIA Novosti as saying. “People forgot caution and lost their skills.”

The Kremlin said President Dmitry Medvedev was told about the accident immediately and ordered a thorough investigation. Putin, now prime minister, was criticized for his slow response to the Kursk disaster.

In 2003, 11 people also died when a Russian submarine that was being taken out of service sank in the Barents Sea.

World Catastrophe

Eleven people were killed in the village of Driouch, 500km north of Rabat, when 20 homes collapsed in what local authorities described as the heaviest rains in the area for more than 20 years.

Local officials confirmed on Friday that a two-year-old child was among the dead.

Two more people were swept away by flood waters in Tangier after a river overflowed its banks, submerging 170 manufacturing plants.

Workers trapped

Thousands of the city’s industrial workers were left stranded for most of Thursday night as water levels reached 1.5 metres. The men were eventually rescued by the emergency services.

Morocco’s official news agency, MAP, quoted a Tangier’s businessman as saying: “All the plants in the manufacturing area, which employs up to 30,000 workers, were shut down and will need four weeks to three months to resume work.”

Business leaders have reported damage to machinery and products - mostly textiles for export to Europe.

Khalid Naciri, a government spokesman, said: ‘It’s been exceptionally bad weather, and the government has mobilised to help the affected populations and repair infrastructure destroyed by the floods.”

Morocco’s interior ministry confirmed emergency services, including army units, had been dispatched to help residents. Officials said the northeastern city of Taza had also suffered major damage caused by the floods.

Rain levels in the north African country have been at their highest for 35 years during the past month, according to weather officials.

Al Jazeera English

Civil guard police reinforced the border near the 30-metre (yard) stretch of damaged wall, which was built to stem a flow of Africans trying to get into Spain in search of work, the Spanish government’s office in the city said.

Air and sea traffic to the city stopped during the storm. The River Oro burst its banks and television showed trees washed along flooded streets.

Weather services forecast heavy rain to continue lashing Melilla, which is one of two small Spanish enclaves in North Africa, both of which are claimed by Morocco.

Reuters AlertNet

Ivo Pukanic, founder and owner of the Nacional independent weekly, was killed outside his paper’s offices in downtown Zagreb on Thursday night in the third mafia-style killing in the capital since the beginning of the month.

The blast also claimed the life of his marketing director Niko Franjic, while two other people were also injured in the explosion.

“The blast occurred when Pukanic and Franjic approached the car,” parked near Nacional’s premises, police spokesman Krunoslav Borovec told reporters on Friday.

He said that the explosive device was placed near the car.

“It was done by a professional, there is no doubt about it since certain skills and knowledge are needed for such an act,” he added.

Police already has some useful leads, Borovec added, without giving details.

Speaking late Thursday, Sanader said that his government would “fight even more decisively and more strongly against organised crime and terror which is entering Croatian streets.”

“We will not allow Croatia to become another Beirut,” he added in reference to the Lebanese capital which has been a byword for bloodshed and car bombings since the 1980s.

Earlier this month Sanader sacked his interior and justice ministers and the head of the national police after a daughter of a prominent lawyer was shot dead in the stairway.

Pukanic, 47, had been considered one of Croatia’s most controversial journalists. His murder came only months after he survived a gun attack in downtown Zagreb in April. The attacker was not found.

The Croatian Journalists’ Association said Pukanic was the first Croatian journalist to be killed locally since the country’s 1991-1995 independence war.

The Nacional owner hit the headlines in 2003 when he published an interview with former Croatian general Ante Gotovina, two years after he fled following a war crimes indictment by The Hague-based UN tribunal.

During the past few years, independent media were accusing Pukanic of being close to some criminal circles.

Meanwhile, Croatian media voiced outrage over the killing which figured on the front pages of the country’s main dailies.

“Terrorism” and “State of Emergency” read the headlines of the Jutarnji List and the Vecernji List which both carried large photos of the car’s burnt-out wreckage.

In a column entitled “Victory of Organised Crime Over the State,” the Jutarnji List labeled Pukanic’s murder as “one of the most serious blows to Croatia’s political system aimed also at destabilizing the whole state.”

“It showed that the Croatian State is not capable of preventing violence … including the attack against the publisher who was in personal conflict with a series of dangerous people.”

“A quick, energetic and merciless repression is the only way to stop a killing wave which culminated yesterday evening in the Vlaska street,” the paper concluded.

The largest circulation Vecernji List daily said that “criminals have sent the message: We rule in Croatia; life and death are in our hands.”

AFP: Croatia security chiefs to meet after deadly car-bomb