Follow the latest events around the Pacific Rim after an 8.9-magnitude earthquake off Japan's coast triggered a devastating tsunami.
(All times are local in Japan GMT+9)
Al Jazeera's Harry Fawcett, reporting from the town of Rikuzentakata, says that at least 18,000 people are currently unaccounted for in the area.
Nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has set up a Facebook page, and is updating information on all nuclear plants and reactors in Japan.
Al Jazeera's graphics team highlights the reactors of concern at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
Al Jazeera's Florence Looi reports on the heightened fears of a nuclear disaster after the devastation caused by the tsunami.
The Tokyo Eelctric company announces it expects to be short of one million kilowatts of power on Monday.
Al Jazeera's Teymoor Nabili, reporting from the town of Shobutahama, said that local residents are most concerned about getting back to a sense of normality.
"Everything is destroyed, and one man said he is atill looking for his car, which was washed up," he said.
You can follow Teymoor on the micro-blogging site Twitter - @teymoornabiliFor further information on Japan's twin disasters, and the subsequent fallout, read the latest news update.
Rescue workers from more than a dozen countries search ravaged northeastern coastal cities for survivors. as an international effort to help Japan cope with its multiple disasters gathered pace.
Some 70 countries have offered assistance, with help coming not only from allies like the United States but also countries with more strained relations like China, and even from the Afghan city of Kandahar.AFP - A tsunami alert has been lifted, according to an official in the Fukushima prefecture, after reports of an approaching large wave and retreating seawater - a phenomenon that occurs before tsunamis - had
sparked alarm and local evacuation orders.
"There is no more fear of a tsunami at this moment, but we will continue to ask our residents to remain vigilant to future advisories," the official said.Japanese media reporting that at least 2,000 bodies have been found in the Miyagi prefecture.
About 1,000 bodies were found coming ashore on hardest-hit Miyagi's Ojika Peninsula and another 1,000 were spotted in the town of Minamisanriku where the prefectural government has been unable to contact about 10,000 people, or over half the local population.The second hydrogen explosion in three days rocks a nuclear plant in Fukushima on Monday, sending a massive column of smoke into the air and wounding 11 people.
It isnot immediately clear how much - if any - radiation had been released.The explosion at the plant's Unit 3, which authorities have been frantically trying to cool following a system failure in the wake of a massive earthquake and tsunami, triggered an order for hundreds of people to stay indoors, said Yukio Edano, the chief cabinet secretary.
The New York Times has reported that experts say radioactive releases could last months.
As the scale of Japan’s nuclear crisis begins to come to light, experts in Japan and the United States say the country is now facing a cascade of accumulating problems that suggest that radioactive releases of steam from the crippled plants could go on for weeks or even months.
Japan has issued a fresh tsunami warning for stricken coast.
An explosion has taken place in one of Japan nuclear power plant
Radioactive levels at the Onagawa nuclear facility - at least "at the site boundary" - are now back to normal levels, Japanese authorities have told the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Al Jazeera's Steve Chao, reporting from Natori - a once scenic coastal community - tells us hundreds of members of search and rescue teams have arrived at the city, two days after it was devastated by the tsunami. One woman tells him:
All I've got left is myself.
- As officials and technicians in Japan battle to prevent reactor meltdowns, the debate over nuclear power has been reopened. Jan Beranek of Greenpeace tells Al Jazeera those who depend on nuclear power "are sitting on a ticking time bomb".
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It was reported earlier that "favourable winds" would blow any nuclear pollution westwards, over the Pacific Ocean.
Now US officials have said citizens of the country will not experience "any harmful levels" of radiation from
Japan's earthquake-hit nuclear power reactors. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission says:All the available information indicates weather conditions have taken the small releases from the Fukushima reactors out to sea away from the population.
Given the thousands of miles between the two countries, Hawaii, Alaska, the US Territories and the US West Coast are not expected to experience any harmful levels of radioactivity.
Russia is sending two groups of rescuers to join the Japanese recovery effort.
A cargo aircraft carrying a 50-strong team has left Moscow, while 25 have embarked on a helicopter from Khaborovsk in Russia's far east.
More than 1million people in Japan remain without water or power, and whole towns have been swept away.
As if the people of Japan didn't have enough to deal with.
A volcano on the southern island of Kyushu has begun to spew ash and rock, the country's weather agency has announced.
Shonmoedake mountain is more than 1,500km from the epicentre of Friday's earthquake, and it's not yet clear if the eruption is linked to the earlier seismic activity.
The catastrophe in Japan is so far known to have claimed 1,400 lives.
Minami Sanriku appears to be one of the worst hit coastal towns. It now lies buried under a sea of mud, with 10,000 of its residents unaccounted for.
Al Jazeera's Wayne Hay has more.Insurance claims following Japan's offshore earthquake could hit US$35billion, according to initial estimates.
That's more than the entire global catastrophe loss for the insurance industry in 2010.
What's more - risk modelling company AIR, who came up with the figures, said that amount doesn't include the effects of the tsunami that followed the quake, or any potential losses from nuclear damage.
Panic over at Tokai.
The cooling pump failed at the plant - just 120km from Tokyo - but an additional pump is now working and cooling the reactor, a plant spokesman says. Masao Nakano said:
Our seawater pump, powered by a diesel generator, stopped because of the tsunami and we then manually stopped one of our cooling systems.
But the other cooling systems and other pumps are working well, and temperatures of the reactor have continued to fall smoothly.
Tokai No. 2 is one of a string of nuclear power plants located along Japan's coast, which was hit by a 10-metre (33 foot) tsunami triggered by a powerful Pacific Ocean seabed earthquake on Friday.At the worst-hit facility, the Fukushima No1 plant, crews have struggled desperately to keep cooling two reactors by pouring seawater into them, after an explosion yesterday blew off the roof and walls of No1 reactor's outer building.
Is this the nightmare scenario of nuclear meltdown becoming real? And what can be done to contain the nuclear threat while at the same time dealing with the widespread destruction caused by Japan's largest recorded earthquake?
Al Jazeera's Inside Story examines. Indepth anylsis and amazing footage below.
The New York Times has an amazing, yet horrifying, "before and after" photo gallery. Not that we want you to leave our site, of course. But you won't want to miss this. Click here. But be sure to come right back!
Yet more worrying trouble for Japan's nuclear power systems. Following "partial meltdowns" at Fukushima nuclear plant, and a state of emergency being declared at Onagawa after a radiation leak, now "Tokai No.2" plant is in jeopardy.
The cooling system pump at the nuclear plant, 120km north of Tokyo, has stopped.
It is also a boiling water reactor, and suffered a nuclear accident in 1999.
We'll keep you updated...
Afghan president Hamid Karzai has spoken of his sorrow, as he signed a book of condolence at the Japanese embassy in Kabul. He said:
The people of Afghanistan find themselves together in the pain and the difficulties of the people of Japan.
His words come after officials in the southern Afghanistan city of Kandahar announced it was donating US$50,000 to help with relief efforts in Japan.
Japan, the world's third-largest economy, has pledged some US$5billion in aid to war-ravaged Afghanistan over the next five years.
The United States Geological Service says the huge earthquake off the coast of Japan actually moved the island some 2.4m west.
The Pacific plate reportedly pushes under a far western wedge of the North American plate at the rate of about 83mm (3.3 inches) a year - but a colossal earthquake can provide enough of a jolt to dramatically move the plates. USGS seismologist Paul Earle said:
With an earthquake this large, you can get these huge ground shifts. On the actual fault, you can get 20metres of relative movement, on the two sides of the fault.
We mentioned yesterday that liquefaction - the process by which sand and water trapped metres underground bubbles to the surface - was causing some problems at Tokyo Disneyland.
Now, we understand the theme park was drenched with water-logged segments.
There were 69,000 people at the Disneyland and the adjacent Tokyo Disney Sea, built on a landfill in Tokyo Bay, when the quake occurred, a spokesman at the local Urawa police station said.
There were no injuries reported.- With more states of emergency being declared at nuclear facilities in Japan, nuclear scientist Imad Khadduri says the risk of damage from meltdown is less than in disasters such as Chernoyl and Three Mile Island.
He talks to Al Jazeera's Kamahl Santamaria and outlines the likely outcomes. More on the situation at the Onagawa nuclear facility.
The "lowest level of a state of emergency" was declared "as a consequence of radioactivity readings exceeding allowed levels in the area surrounding the plant", said the International Atomic Energy Agency.
But, according to Japanese authorities, the three reactor units at the Onagawa nuclear power plant "are under control".The IAEA, the UN's nuclear watchdog, said that venting of the damaged Onagawa reactor unit had started
at 9:20am in Japan "through a controlled release of vapour."The operation was intended to lower pressure inside the reactor containment. Following the failure of the high pressure injection system and other attempts of cooling the plant, the authorities had first injected water and
then sea water into the unit.The authorities have informed the IAEA that accumulation of hydrogen is possible ... The IAEA is continuing to liaise with the Japanese authorities and is monitoring the situation as it evolves.
Japanese safety officials say the cooling system at the quake-damaged Onagawa nuclear plant has not been damaged, and the rise in reported radiation levels is due to a radiation leak at another plant nearby.
Welcome to our live blog for up-to-the-minute reports as events unfold, following the huge earthquake off Japan's coast, which triggered a 10m tsunami. Here, we'll bring you everything that happens on March 14 - but if you feel you've missed out, you can catch up with yesterday's liveblog by clicking here.
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