Japan has recorded a series of powerful aftershocks in the past several hours, including a magnitude 5.7 earthquake near the east coast of Honshu and a 4.9 earthquake in the Hokkaido region shortly after.

Officials said the megaquake advisory is not a prediction and the probability of a magnitude 8 or larger quake is only about 1%, but there's hope it will serve as a wake-up call.

Fears of a devastating tsunami faded Wednesday for the U.S. and Japan after one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded struck off a sparsely populated Russian peninsula, but new alerts along South America's Pacific coast forced evacuations and closed ...