Look's like Japan has picked up on the electromagnetic precursors to earthquakes:

Early warning for earthquakes
By Stephen Reucroft and John Swain, 7/9/2002

Earthquakes may signal their impending arrival by radio, according to scientists in Japan. Seiya Uyeda and his colleagues have reported measuring anomalous variations in the electrical and magnetic fields at Japan's Izu islands since the end of March 2000, and within about three months of a series of earthquakes. Using telephone wires as antennas for very low-frequency radio signals, they identified changes in them over the three-month period preceding the quakes - and a peak in their amplitude just before the first large earthquake on July 1. With very little chance that the signals are man-made, the work lends strong support to the idea that earthquakes may be predictable by careful observation of very low-frequency electromagnetic disturbances.

ref.: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, May 28, 2002.

• Early warnings