7.4 magnitude earthquake strikes off Japanese coast, USGS says
Table indicating the escape route in the case of tsunamis. (Getty stock photo)
(TOKYO) — A 7.4 magnitude earthquake struck on Monday off Japan’s northeastern coast, the U.S. Geological Survey said, prompting authorities to issue tsunami warnings and advisories along parts of the coast that were later downgraded to advisories and then cancelled.
“Based on the preliminary earthquake parameters, hazardous tsunami waves are possible for coasts located within 300 km of the earthquake epicenter,” USGS said after the quake was detected.
The Japan Meteorological Agency initially said tsunami warnings were in place for some of the coast along the Pacific, along with lesser advisories and forecasts farther away from the quake’s center.
“Residents in areas where tsunami warnings have been issued should immediately evacuate to higher ground or evacuation buildings and other higher, safer locations,” Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said.
The tsunami waves that were expected to have been the highest struck the coast within hours, with the largest one registering about 80 cm, or about 2.5 feet, but officials said they had not ruled out further waves. Official warnings were still in place, although the U.S. weather officials said in an update that, based on available data, “the tsunami threat from this earthquake has now passed.”
Preliminary U.S. data pinpointed the quake about 100 km, or about 62 miles, off the eastern coast of Miyako, USGS said. Light rumbling could be felt as far away as Tokyo. A 5.6 magnitude earthquake struck nearby about 40 minutes afterward, according to USGS data.
The Japanese agency held a press conference on Monday, during which it identified the quake as having been a 7.5 magnitude one. The depth was 10 km, or about 6.2 miles. It occurred at 4:53 p.m. local time, the agency said.
A tsunami warning was issued under twenty seconds after the initial earthquake, an official said. Officials warned people to stay on the alert for about week, as an equal or lesser than quake may occur. The risk was especially elevated for the next two or three days, officials said.
The U.S. Tsunami Warning System said a “destructive” Pacific-wide tsunami was not expected “and there is no threat to Hawaii.”
ABC News’ Joe Simonetti and Victoria Beaule contributed to this report.
Residential and commercial buildings damaged by Israeli Air strikes that were targeting the Hezbollah affiliated al-Qard al-Hassan financial institution on March 22, 2026 in Tyre, Lebanon. (Photo by Guy Smallman/Getty Images)
(LONDON) — The escalating Israeli operation against the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia in Lebanon may prove to be the most intractable theater of the wider U.S.-Israeli confrontation with Iran, analysts who spoke with ABC News warned.
But the showdown unfolding in Lebanon could pose an existential threat to both Hezbollah and the Lebanese state, experts said, with the latter having long struggled to rein in the powerful militia but now facing growing pressure — and threats — from Israel to do more despite the danger of civil instability.
The technocratic government that came to power in Beirut on a wave of optimism in February 2025 is now facing “the worst possible combination of factors,” Emile Hokayem of the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank told ABC News during a recent webinar hosted by the U.K.-based Chatham House think tank.
Lebanon “is a secondary front at the moment that is likely to burn for longer both because the Israelis see the political-military opportunity, but also the Iranians see it as a place where they can bleed and distract the Israelis,” Hokayem added.
Cascading crises Even before the latest round of violence erupted, observers were noting rising discontent with Hezbollah among the wider Lebanese population and their elected representatives.
The recent scars of Hezbollah’s activities were all too visible. On the edges of Beirut’s stylish downtown area and the trendy Mar Mikhael neighborhood is the devastated port area, wrecked by a massive explosion in 2020, with efforts to apportion responsibility for the disaster allegedly repeatedly stymied by Hezbollah. While some blame Hezbollah, others blame the entire political ruling class and the systemic corruption in the country.
Villages across the Hezbollah-dominated south and east of the country lay in ruins from Israeli missiles, bombs and artillery shells fired in clashes since Hezbollah attacked Israel in solidarity with Hamas after the latter’s deadly surprise Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. In a U.S.-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon in 2024, the Israeli army partially withdrew, holding on to five positions in southern Lebanon.
Parts of Beirut’s southern Dahiyeh area — a longtime Hezbollah stronghold — were cratered, with giant posters of its slain totemic leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in a massive 2024 Israeli airstrike on the city, seen by ABC News late last year rising above the arterial road which runs through the area from the airport to the rest of the city.
The conflict significantly degraded Hezbollah’s capabilities, apparently setting the stage for Lebanon to appoint a new government with fewer ties to the group — led by Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and President Joseph Aoun — after more than two years of a caretaker cabinet amid a political deadlock.
Neither were formally endorsed by Hezbollah. Aoun, the country’s former army chief, and his new government said they were committed to disarming Hezbollah, appealing to foreign partners to help.
Many observers suggested Hezbollah appeared to be in a historically weak position from late 2024 into early 2026. Its patrons in Tehran were themselves weakened by confrontations with Israel and, later, the U.S. Discontent inside Iran exploded into multiple rounds of anti-government protests, with Tehran’s funding and direction of foreign proxy forces a common grievance among demonstrators.
The fall of Tehran-aligned and Hezbollah-bolstered Syrian President Bashar al-Assad across the border in December 2024 robbed Hezbollah of strategic depth, vital arms smuggling routes and financial opportunities. Nasrallah — an icon of the Iran-directed “Axis of Resistance” — was dead, as were many of the group’s most senior military and strategic minds, according to long-time observers of the group.
Meanwhile, strikes that Israel described as targeted against Hezbollah personnel and infrastructure in Lebanon continued, killing hundreds of people despite the November 2024 ceasefire deal. Hezbollah did not respond, apparently pursuing a policy of strategic patience that some observers interpreted as operational weakness.
Before the outbreak of its latest war with Israel in 2023, estimates of Hezbollah’s military strength ranged from 30,000 to more than 50,000 personnel. Its parliamentary party won 15 seats in the last Lebanese legislative elections in 2022, securing around 20% of all votes to the tune of nearly 360,000 ballots, according to data from Lebanon’s Interior Ministry.
Aoun’s government took some steps to curtail Hezbollah’s uniquely powerful position, in which it had been able to establish — with Iranian help — what analysts often described as “a state within a state.”
The Lebanese Armed Forces claimed in January to have completed the first phase of the plan to disarm all non-state groups in the area south of the Litani River — around 18 miles north of Israel’s border — as part of the 2024 ceasefire deal.
Those efforts continued after the U.S. and Israel launched their latest military campaign against Iran in late February. In early March, the Lebanese government declared all military activities by Hezbollah illegal. The army also set up checkpoints to search vehicles headed south for weapons.
But the idea of the state’s open confrontation with the Iranian-backed militia group prompts fears of a slide back into the bloody anarchy of the 1975-1990 civil war that killed more than 100,000 people and devastated the young nation.
Sectarian tensions are again rising in Lebanon. Last month, Salam criticized the country’s sectarian political system — designed to ensure power sharing between the country’s ethnic and religious groups — as “a source of harm both for the state and for the citizens.”
The state’s forces, while popular, are broadly considered to be weak relative to other regional militaries and non-state actors. Meanwhile, despite its recent setbacks, Hokayem said Hezbollah remains “a very powerful coercive force domestically in Lebanon, where they can punish, intimidate and possibly assassinate their enemies.”
Hezbollah’s new leader, Naim Qassem, said in August that the group would not surrender its weapons to the state, warning there would be “no life in Lebanon” if its arms were taken by force.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if we see, in addition to communal violence, more targeted hits — including assassinations — inside the country,” Hokayem said of intensifying Hezbollah activity. “If the military, the security forces are not able to prevent that or contain this, then you can easily see a loss of trust in central institutions, which is already very low.”
“Given the trajectory of events, more likely than not the state will weaken despite what some people in Washington say or would like to believe,” he added.
A ‘prolonged’ conflict Israeli forces are now moving deeper into southern Lebanon, with the Israel Defense Forces having issued a series of “urgent” warnings for the full evacuation of the country south of the Zahrani River, which sits around 36 miles north of the border. That order came on top of an evacuation order for all residents south of the Litani River — 18 miles north of the border — and for all residents in the southern Beirut suburbs.
Human Rights Watch said that more than a million people have been forced to flee their homes — nearly one-fifth of the entire population of the country. More than 1,000 people have been killed by Israeli attacks in Lebanon in the latest round of fighting, the country’s health ministry said.
Israel’s aggressive policy in Lebanon came after Hezbollah fired on northern Israel on March 2, joining Tehran in its response to the U.S.-Israeli campaign launched against Iran on Feb. 28.
Hezbollah defied assessments it had been substantially weakened by its two-year involvement in the war in Gaza, firing rockets and drones daily toward northern Israel.
The IDF said this week that Hezbollah had fired over 2,000 projectiles toward Israel so far. That fire has killed four people — two civilians and two soldiers.
IDF Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said on March 22 that the Israeli operation “has only just begun,” describing the nascent campaign as “a prolonged operation.” As of March 24, the IDF had destroyed multiple bridges spanning the Litani River.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said he instructed the IDF to “accelerate the destruction of Lebanese homes in the line of contact villages, to thwart threats to Israeli communities, in accordance with the model of Beit Hanoun and Rafah,” referring to Israel’s destruction of Gaza towns during the war on Hamas.
Katz said troops would seize and hold southern Lebanon up to the Litani River to create what he called a “defensive buffer.”
More extreme voices have demanded a permanent occupation. Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, for example, said the Litani should form “the new Israeli border,” in an echo of longheld ambitions of Israeli ultranationalists.
Lebanon’s president described the destruction of the bridges over the Litani and continued Israeli strikes elsewhere as a “dangerous escalation and flagrant violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty.” The measures, Aoun said, “are considered a prelude to a ground invasion.”
But there appears little hope of relief from Beirut’s two prime foreign partners — the U.S. and France — Hokayem said. “The Americans essentially have washed their hands of Lebanon,” he said, citing frustration with the government’s inability or unwillingness to rein in Hezbollah.
“In Washington there are people who have this illusion that you can break the back of Hezbollah, if only there was a bit more spine in some in Beirut,” Hokayem said. “It’s very difficult to see that.”
Barbara Leaf, who served as the assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs under President Joe Biden, said during the Chatham House event that the U.S. had taken a “hectoring” approach with the new Lebanese government. The message, Leaf said, is, “Take care of Hezbollah, and if not, the Israelis will.”
The U.S. Department of State has urged all Americans in Lebanon — of whom there were around 86,000 in 2022, according to the State Department — to leave the country as soon as possible.
Earlier this month, President Donald Trump said of the situation in Lebanon, “We’re working on it very hard. We love Lebanon. We love the people of Lebanon, and we’re working very hard.” Hezbollah, he said, “has been a disaster for many years.”
Days later, Trump again said Hezbollah has been “a big problem” that was “rapidly being eliminated” by Israeli military action.
With clear U.S. backing, Israeli leaders appear set on a decisive operation in Lebanon, which forms one theater of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s drive to create what he calls a “new Middle East” shorn of Iranian influence.
Those ambitions will require a long-term presence on Lebanese territory, Yezid Sayigh, of the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center think tank in Beirut, wrote in early March. “A complementing Lebanese effort is necessary, hence the effort to force the Lebanese government’s hand one way or the other,” he added.
But the ongoing operation may undermine the very partners Israel needs in Beirut, Hokayem said. “A Lebanon in which so much territory is occupied will struggle to enter any kind of genuine peace negotiations with Israel,” he said.
“I don’t think they could be a central authority with enough strength and legitimacy,” he added.
Faced with yet another national crisis, many in Lebanon are pessimistic. The country must consider “the worst-case scenarios,” political scientist Ziad Majed wrote earlier this month.
This means, Majed said, huge destruction in Hezbollah’s heartlands in the south, the eastern Bekaa Valley and southern Beirut combined with a military occupation blocking hundreds of thousands of displaced people from returning to their homes.
Such a scenario, Majed warned, could “lead to suffocating living crises and social and political tensions that many might exploit for political opportunism, incitement and other forms of sectarian conflict.”
(NEW YORK) — U.S. Southern Command announced on Monday that its forces conducted a new airstrike against an alleged drug smuggling boat in the Eastern Pacific, killing two people aboard and leaving one survivor.
SOUTHCOM said in a statement posted to X that it “immediately notified U.S. Coast Guard to activate the Search and Rescue system for the survivor.”
The statement was accompanied by video of the strike.
“Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations,” SOUTHCOM said, noting that the strike was launched at the direction of commander Gen. Francis L. Donovan.
Monday’s operation is the 38th airstrike conducted by U.S. forces since Sept. 2. The killings bring to 130 the number of people killed in these strikes.
Burrowing sea anemone from the San Julian Peninsula in Argentina. (The Nippon Foundation-Nekton Ocean Census/Agustín Garese)
(NEW YORK) — Marine scientists have discovered a record number of new species living in the depths of the world’s oceans over the past year.
A total of 1,121 new marine species were discovered in a single year, marking a “significant step” in the research needed to understand and protect the oceans, according to the scientists behind The Nippon Foundation-Nekton Ocean Census, the world’s largest mission to accelerate ocean species discovery.
The whopping number of discoveries marks a 54% jump in identifications in a single year, the researchers said.
Among the new species discovered include corals, crabs, shrimps, sea urchins and anemones — some found living at depths of more than four miles beneath the ocean surface.
The “Ghost Shark” Chimaera, a distant relative of sharks and rays, was discovered in the Coral Sea Marine Park off the coast of Queensland, Australia. Chimaeras are among the most mysterious inhabitants of the deep ocean, the researchers said. They predate dinosaurs and diverged from rays and sharks into their own distinct evolutionary lineage nearly 400 million years ago.
Symbiotic bristle worms were found living within a “glass castle” on volcanic seamounts in Japan. The “castle” is actually intricate chambers of a glass sponge, whose skeleton is made of crystalline silica.
The ribbon worm, a predator marked by striking pigmentation, was discovered close to the surface, between depths of 3 and 16 feet.
A striking new species of shrimp — the Mediterranean shrimp — was also found in a sea cave off Marseille, France, the researchers said. It is marked by a vivid orange banding and intricate appendages.
The species were identified amid 13 expeditions across some of the world’s most remote and least-explored ocean regions, as well as nine discovery workshops, the researchers said.
“This year, Ocean Census has shown what is possible when scientific ambition is matched by global collaboration at scale,” Mitsuyuku Unno, executive director of the Nippon Foundation, said in a statement. “Through expeditions reaching polar depths to tropical seas, and the science to turn samples into discoveries, this team is revealing the extraordinary richness of ocean life.”
Up to 90% of ocean species remain undiscovered, previous research has suggested.
Documenting the breadth of species living in the oceans is necessary for policymakers and marine managers to properly protect the ocean, the researchers said.
The average time between a species’ initial discovery and its formal “description” in scientific literature is historically about 13.5 years, which puts species at risk of extinction before they are even catalogued, the researchers said.
“With many species at risk of disappearing before they are even documented, we are in a race against time to understand and protect ocean life,” Michelle Taylor, head of science at Ocean Census, said in a statement. “For too long, thousands of species have remained in a scientific “limbo” because the pace of discovery couldn’t keep up.”
To address this, marine scientists are now recognizing “discovered” as a formal scientific status that can immediately be recorded.
