A 5.9-magnitude earthquake that rattled Taiwan on Thursday killed one woman and caused temporary power outages that affected over 10,000 homes, authorities said.

Tremors were felt across the island and high-rises in Taipei swayed as the quake struck off the northeastern coast at dawn, waking sleeping residents.

A 60-year-old woman was killed outside the capital after a closet fell on her during the quake, the National Fire Agency said.

More than 10,000 houses around the greater Taipei area and neighbouring Yilan lost power, while rail authorities suspended some train services in Yilan affecting thousands of passengers.

Taiwan was already on alert for typhoon Lekima, which is gaining momentum and is expected to buffet the island with powerful winds and heavy rains through to Friday.

"We will continue to monitor if there could be a combined impact from the aftershocks of the earthquake and the approaching typhoon," President Tsai Ing-wen told reporters.

Taiwan lies near the junction of two tectonic plates and is regularly hit by quakes.

In April, a 6.1-magnitude earthquake struck eastern Hualien, disrupting traffic and injuring 17 people.

Taiwan's worst tremor in recent decades was a 7.6-magnitude quake in 1999 that killed around 2,400 people.

Five dead, several injured after powerful quake rocks Indonesia
Jakarta (AFP) Aug 3, 2019 - Five people died and several were injured after a powerful undersea earthquake rocked Indonesia's heavily populated Java island, triggering a brief tsunami warning, the national disaster agency said Saturday.

The 6.9 magnitude quake on Friday evening sent residents fleeing to higher ground, while many in the capital Jakarta ran into the streets.

An official from Indonesia's national disaster agency warned the quake could generate a tsunami as high as three metres (10 feet), but the alert was lifted several hours later.

Three people died of heart attacks as the strong quake rocked the region, agency spokesman Agus Wibowo said on Saturday.

Another person fell to his death while trying to flee his house when the jolt happened, he said, while a fifth victim died from a panic attack.

Four more people were injured and more than 200 buildings were damaged, with about 13 houses destroyed, he added.

More than 1,000 people, who had earlier fled to temporary shelters, returned home after authorities convinced them it was safe to do so, Wibowo said.

"There was thundering noise -- it sounded like a plane overhead -- and I was just so scared that I ran," said 69-year-old Isah, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, at an evacuation shelter in Pandeglang at the southwest end of Java.

In December, the area was hit by a volcano-sparked tsunami that killed more than 400 people.

Indonesia experiences frequent seismic and volcanic activity due to its position on the Pacific "Ring of Fire", where tectonic plates collide.

Last year, a 7.5-magnitude quake and a subsequent tsunami in Palu on Sulawesi island killed more than 2,200 people, with another thousand declared missing.

On December 26, 2004, a 9.1-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Sumatra and triggered a tsunami that killed 220,000 across the Indian Ocean region, including around 170,000 in Indonesia.

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Mathematical model identifies acoustic signal preceding seismic shake
Washington (UPI) Jul 30, 2019
Researchers have identified a unique acoustic signature that may precede seismic ruptures. In the lab, scientists deployed an earthquake machine to produce seismic waves. Researchers used numerical simulations to analyze the seismic signatures produced by the synthetic ruptures. Their analysis - detailed this week in the journal Physical Review Letters - revealed a unique acoustic signal preceding the seismic rupture. "Previous machine-learning studies found that the acoustic si ... read more