Japan Earthquake | featured news

Google on Saturday released its first satellite images of Japan since the devastation that followed a massive 8.9-magnitude earthquake and tsunami that hit the island nation Friday afternoon local time.

The tsunami warnings have been lifted, and California coastal communities damaged by Friday's waves were assessing the damage to harbors and boats this morning.

Navy ships, Marine forces and non-governmental relief teams are being dispatched to the disaster-stricken areas of Japan to provide humanitarian assistance and to search for survivors.

In the coastal Miyagi prefecture town of Minamisanriku, 9,500 people out of the population of 17,000 are unaccounted for, according to Kyodo News. We could hear many more stories like that in the next few days. The overall picture of the destruction remains patchy, with rescue workers unable to reach some of the worst-hit areas due to wrecked roads and tsunami warnings.

A U.S.-led research team may have finally located the lost city of Atlantis, the legendary metropolis believed swamped by a tsunami thousands of years ago in mud flats in southern Spain.

In the Los Angeles area and other U.S. regions with large Japanese-American and Japanese expatriate populations, those with ties to the Asian ...

Japan declared states of emergency for five nuclear reactors at two power plants after the units lost cooling ability in the aftermath of Friday's powerful earthquake. Thousands of residents were evacuated as workers struggled to get the reactors under control to prevent meltdowns....

People are desperately trying to reach loved ones in areas of Japan affected by earthquake; Google is trying to help.

Waves generated by the quake have forced evacuations in Hawaii and tsunami warnings for the West Coast.

U.S. airlines canceled most of their flights to and from Japan on Friday, although limited service remained after the country suffered a major earthquake that hobbled operations at Tokyo's main international airport at Narita.