Magnitude-6.7 earthquake rocks Japan

An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.7 struck northeastern Japan early on Thursday, the U.S. Geological Survey reported. The quake hit around 7 a.m. (03:00 GMT) off the northern Iwate Prefecture on the Honshu Island, some 530 kilometers (330 miles) to the northeast of Tokyo, in the same area of the Pacific where a powerful magnitude 9 quake struck in March, triggering a deadly tsunami. The Japan Meteorological Agency issued a tsunami warning for the Iwate Prefecture, stating, however, that there was a small possibility of a destructive local tsunami, Japan's Kyodo news agency said. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries caused by the tremor. There is no tsunami threat to Russia's Far East following the quake, a spokeswoman for the Sakhalin Tsunami Center said. The March 11 earthquake and tsunami killed more than 15,400 people in Japan and left hundreds of thousands of others homeless, with over 8,000 listed as missing as of June 11. The disaster seriously damaged the Fukushima Daiich Nuclear Power Plant in the Fukushima Prefecture, causing a major nuclear crisis in the region