The nation's strongest quake since 1980, Italy's latest earthquake may have a long-term impact on fault lines.

Monks walk in front of the Cathedral of St. Benedict in Norcia, central Italy after a powerful earthquake hit destroying a Benedictine cathedral, a medieval tower and other landmarks that had survived the earlier jolts across a mountainous region of small historic towns.

SAN FRANCISCO – Earthquake cloaks, or huge arrays of precisely drilled holes and trenches in the ground, could — at least in theory — protect important structures like nuclear power plants from powerful seismic waves, researchers say.

The array of holes, drilled at specific angles and depths, would extend sometimes hundreds of feet and scatter earthquake waves like pinballs, according to the scientists.

SAN FRANCISCO — The magnitude-7.8 Kaikoura earthquake  that rattled New Zealand last month may have set up the country for another major quake underneath its capital of Wellington.

In the next year, there is a nearly 5 percent chance that a magnitude-7.8 or greater earthquake will strike the southern tip of New Zealand's North Island, Bill Fry, a seismologist and tectonophysicist with GNS Science, a geoscience consultancy service, said Tuesday (Dec. 13) here at the American Geophysical Union's (AGU) annual meeting.

A magnitude 2.5 earthquake shook Northern California Thursday afternoon, according to United States Geologic Survey officials.

Officials report the quake was centered about seven miles southwest of Woodland.

No injuries or damage have been reported at this time.