Apparently schoolchildren and civil servants are having a day off today in Rome because an earthquake was prophesied for May 11 2011 by Raffaele Bendandi, an Italian pseudoscientist who died in 1979.

So far, nothing has happened. It is also very unlikely because (a) it is impossible to predict earthquakes and (b) Rome does not lie over a major fault line. Tremors are sometimes felt in Rome, but the city is never at the epicentre. Most earthquakes occur on the Appenine mountain chain that runs down the middle of Italy.