Tsunami advisory lifted after strong earthquake hits Japanese coast
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(TOKYO and LONDON) — A tsunami advisory has now been lifted after an earlier warning in the wake of a strong earthquake Monday off the coast of Japan’s Miyazaki Prefecture, officials said.
The U.S. Geological Survey put the quake’s preliminary magnitude at 6.8. The Japan Meteorological Agency said it had an intensity of lower 5 on the Japanese scale of 0 to 7.
The quake began at around 9:19 p.m. local time, with its epicenter a few miles offshore at a depth of about 19 miles, Japanese and American officials said.
The Japanese weather agency had issued a tsunami advisory for Miyazaki and Kochi prefectures, with expected heights of about 1 meter. One tsunami wave measuring about 8 inches reached some coasts and ports at about 10 p.m., authorities said. They warned residents to continue staying away from the coast and other waterways.
In Kochi Prefecture, residents of some areas were advised to evacuate.
Japanese weather officials said about an hour after the quake that they were still gathering information about disruptions. Some train services were halted, and it was unclear when they would be restarted.
Authorities warned that aftershocks and other jolts may still arrive, so residents should stay in a safe place. Residents were cautioned be wary of broken glass or other debris.
Significant damage has not yet been reported, and there have been no abnormalities in the radiation levels or operations in regional nuclear power plants, officials said.
ABC News’ Joe Simonetti contributed to this report.
(LONDON) — Georgia’s Saturday parliamentary elections have been cast by all parties as an era-defining moment for the country’s 3.8 million people.
For one of the country’s best known men, the results of the election could mean the difference between incarceration and freedom.
Former President Mikheil Saakashvili, 56, has been jailed since 2021 on charges of abuse of power and organizing an assault on an opposition lawmaker — charges he contends are politically motivated.
“My imprisonment is purely political and everyone knows that,” Saakashvili told ABC News in an interview conducted from his prison cell via intermediaries. “Once the politics changes, it will be finished.”
Saturday’s election will pit the Moscow-leaning Georgian Dream government against several pro-Western opposition parties, among them the United National Movement party founded by Saakashvili in 2001.
Among the UNM’s priorities, if it wins power as part of a pro-Western coalition, will be to free Saakashvili.
The campaign has been fraught with allegations of meddling and political violence on behalf of GD. The opposition is hoping to mobilize a historic turnout to defeat what they say are GD efforts to undermine the contest.
“The only recipe for tackling election meddling is erecting the wall of mass turnout at the ballot box,” Saakashvili said.
People power has proved a serious problem for GD in recent years. Mass protests defeated the government’s first effort to introduce a foreign agents registration law — which critics say was modeled on Russian legislation used to criminalize Western-leaning politicians, activists and academics — in 2023.
The government pushed the legislation through again in 2024 despite renewed and intense demonstrations.
Opponents credit GD founder, former prime minister and Georgia’s richest man — Bidzina Ivanishvili — as the mastermind behind what they say is the government’s authoritarian and pro-Moscow pivot, though the billionaire does not hold an official position.
Saakashvili said Ivanishvili — who made his fortune in Russia after the Soviet collapse — and the GD party “will go as far as it takes” to retain power this weekend, “but the question will be once they lose the elections if the government structures follow the orders from the oligarch,” he added, referring to Ivanishvili.
Ivanishvili and his party are framing the vote as a choice between war and peace. A new Western-led government, they say, will put Tbilisi back on the path to conflict with Russia, reviving the bloodshed of the 2008 war that saw Moscow cement its occupation of 20% of Georgian territory.
“It is straight from the Russian playbook,” Saakashvili said of the GD warnings. “Blaming victims for aggression against them. As far as we are concerned, real security and peace is associated with being part of Euro-Atlantic structures, and European Union membership is within reach.” Georgia received EU candidate status in 2023.
The latest polls suggest that GD will emerge as the largest party, but will fall significantly short of a parliamentary majority. A grand alliance of pro-EU and pro-NATO opposition parties, though, could get past the 50% threshold to form a new governing coalition.
“Polls are a very treacherous thing in authoritarian systems,” Saakashvili said. “Moldova’s recent example shows that polls get compromised by mass vote buying, and surely that will be the case in Georgia.”
“On the other hand, those that say to pollsters that they are voting for the government very often don’t say the truth,” he added.
Saakashvili’s 2021 imprisonment marked the nadir of a 20-year political rollercoaster. Saakashvili went from the much-loved leader of Georgia’s pro-Western Rose Revolution in 2003 to being vanquished by President Vladimir Putin’s Russian military machine by 2008.
By 2011, Saakashvili’s government was itself accused of violently suppressing protests, with the president soon also embroiled in human rights and corruption scandals.
Constitutionally barred from serving three consecutive terms, Saakashvili left Georgia after the 2013 presidential election and in 2018 was convicted in absentia on abuse of power and other charges.
A Ukrainian citizen — his citizenship was revoked by President Petro Poroshenko in 2017 before being restored by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in 2019 — Saakashvili went on to serve as governor of the Odessa region from 2015 to 2016. Zelenskyy appointed Saakashvili as the head of the executive committee of the National Council of Reforms in 2020.
Saakashvili returned to Georgia in October 2021 as the country prepared for local elections. He was arrested and detained by police.
His domestic and international allies have repeatedly condemned his imprisonment, raising concerns of his ill treatment and subsequent ill health. U.S. and European Union officials have also urged Tbilisi to do more to ensure Saakashvili’s fair treatment.
He has been hospitalized while in prison — once due to a hunger strike — and his gaunt appearance during a 2023 video conference court hearing prompted Zelenskyy to summon the Georgian ambassador in Kyiv to complain.
Saakashvili broadly blames Putin for his current situation. But he believes Moscow is not necessarily in a position to prevent a pro-Western pivot in Tbilisi.
“In 2008, the war happened after the West had sent a clear sign of weakness by refusing the NATO accession for Georgia and Ukraine,” Saakashvili said.
“If there is no hesitation this time, Russia is so stuck in Ukraine that it has no motivation to create a new hot war elsewhere.”
“We have no other choice,” he responded, when asked about the risks of perturbing the Kremlin. “The only other alternative is going back,” he said, “living in the Russian sphere of influence.”
As to his own plans if indeed he is freed, Saakashvili described himself as “a regional rather than purely Georgian leader.”
“I will help any next non-oligarch government with transition by advice,” he added, but said he will not seek any official position of power.
“And of course, I am a Ukrainian national and it is my duty to stand by Ukraine.”
(SEOUL) — A 33-year-old flight attendant, one of just two survivors of the Jeju Air plane crash in South Korea that killed 179 people, is awake and talking to medical staff, according to a hospital official.
The survivor, who was only identified by his surname Lee, told doctors he had “already been rescued” when he regained consciousness following Sunday’s fiery crash at the Muan International Airport, Ju Woong, director of the Ewha Womans University Seoul Hospital, said during a news conference on Monday.
Lee and another flight attendant on Jeju Air Flight 7C2216, who was identified by her surname Koo, were the only ones aboard the aircraft to live through what authorities said was South Korea’s deadliest plane crash in decades and one of the worst in aviation history.
The 25-year-old Koo is reportedly in stable condition at a different hospital than the one where Lee is being treated. Koo suffered injuries to her ankle and head, medical staff at the hospital told the Yonhap News Agency. The medical staff treating her declined to answer further questions about her condition.
Ju said Lee is being treated in the intensive care unit for multiple fractures.
He said Lee is “fully able to communicate.”
“There’s no indication yet of memory loss or such,” Ju said.
The hospital director said Lee is under special care due to the possibility of total paralysis.
Ju said he did not question Lee about the details of the crash, saying he didn’t believe it would be helpful with the patient’s recovery.
Lee was initially taken to a hospital in Mokpo before being transferred to the Ewha Womans University Seoul Hospital.
The crash unfolded just before 9 a.m. local time on Sunday at the Muan International Airport after the air traffic control tower gave the flight crew permission to land on a south-to-north runway, according to an official timeline by the Korean Ministry of Land Infrastructure and Transport.
Three minutes later, the flight control tower issued a warning of a possible bird strike, the transport ministry said. About two minutes after that warning, a pilot sent a distress signal, saying, “Mayday, mayday, mayday, bird strike, bird strike, going around,” the ministry said.
The plane ascended and made a 180-degree turn before descending from the north side, crash-landing and slamming into a wall at 9:03 a.m., the ministry said.
The aircraft, a Boeing 737-800, skidded along a runway, crashed into a wall and burst into flames, officials said. A total of 181 people were onboard.
The flight had originated before dawn Sunday at the Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airport in Thailand, according to Flightradar24, a flight tracker.
An official cause of the crash is under investigation by South Korea’s Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board.
(MOSCOW) — An American citizen, Evgeny “Eugene” Spector, was sentenced to 15 years in a high-security prison by the Moscow City Court on espionage charges on Dec. 24, reported Interfax, a Russian news agency.
The Russian Security Service, or FSB, said Spector collected information from Russia “in the interests of the Pentagon to create a system for genetic screening of the Russian population,” Interfax reported on Friday.
“We are aware of reports of the sentencing of a U.S. citizen in Russia. We are monitoring the situation but have no further comment at this time,” a State Department official told ABC News. “The Department of State has no higher priority than the safety and security of our U.S. citizens overseas. We will continue to press for fair and transparent treatment for all U.S. citizen detainees in Russia and around the world.”
The Pentagon declined to comment, instead directing all inquiries to the State Department.
“The American, acting in the interests of the Pentagon and a commercial organization affiliated with it, collected and transferred to a foreign party various information on biotechnological and biomedical topics, including information constituting a state secret, for the subsequent creation by the United States of a high-speed genetic screening system for the Russian population,” the FSB said Friday, according to Interfax.
The sentence has not entered into force and can be appealed, Interfax reported. The court did not report how Spector pleaded to the charges. It was a closed-door trial “due to the secrecy of the case materials,” Russian state media said.
Before espionage charges were brought against Spector in August 2023, he was arrested in a case involving bribes to the former assistant to Arkady Dvorkovich, the former deputy prime minister of the Russian Federation, according to Interfax.
Spector was sentenced 3 1/2 years in a maximum-security penal colony for acting as an intermediary in giving a bribe to Dvorkovich’s aide.
The sentence of espionage charges was handed down in conjunction with the previous sentence Spector had already received for the bribery charges, Russian state media said. Spector was handed a 13-year sentence for espionage charges, which added to his existing bribery sentence, converting the overall sentence into a new 15-year sentence, Russian state media reported.
The presiding judge had decided Spector should now serve an overall 15-year sentence in a maximum-security penal colony as punishment for both cases on Tuesday, reported TASS, a Russian state news agency.
Prior to his arrest, Spector was the chairman of the board of directors of the Medpolymerprom Group, a company specializing in cancer-curing drugs. Spector was born in Russia and then moved to the US.
On Friday, the U.S. State Department confirmed to ABC News another American serving a prison sentence in Russia was determined to be “wrongfully detained” by Secretary of State Antony Blinken earlier this year.
Marc Fogel, an American teacher who was arrested in Russia on drug charges in 2021, is currently serving a 14-year sentence.
A State Department spokesperson said the U.S. has been trying to secure Fogel’s release and tried to include him in the large Aug. 1 prisoner exchange that freed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, among others.
Blinken determined Fogel as being wrongfully detained in October, the spokesperson said, adding that there was a variety of reasons why the department may not have made the designation public.
