Wednesday’s magnitude 7.3 earthquake off Alaska’s Aleutian Islands chain struck in a region that has experienced a handful of powerful quakes within the last five years.

Communities along a 700-mile stretch of Alaska’s southern coast ordered their residents to higher ground after a powerful earthquake, but officials quickly downgraded and then canceled a tsunami warning in the area.

A federal judge in Vermont has granted a Russian-born scientist and Harvard University researcher release from immigration custody as she deals with a criminal charge of smuggling frog embryos into the U.S. Colleagues and academics testified Wednesday on Kseniia Petrova’s behalf, saying she is doing valuable research in pursuing cures for cancer.

A man who has served nearly three decades on death row in Louisiana has had his conviction overturned by a judge.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – A powerful earthquake off Alaska’s southern coast shook sparsely populated coastal communities late Tuesday and prompted some residents to briefly flee to higher ground because of tsunami fears. There were no immediate reports of damage in the Alaska Peninsula and the tsunami warning was canceled after the magnitude 7.8 quake offshore created a wave of a less than a foot (30 centimeters). The tsunami warning prompted coastal residents to evacuate to higher ground, with social media posts showing long lines of people fleeing towns like Homer and Kodiak as tsunami sirens wailed. Tuesday’s quake was more powerful than the magnitude 7.1 earthquake that caused damage in the Anchorage area in November 2018. More than a dozen aftershocks of magnitude 4.0 or higher were reported immediately after the earthquake, he said from the Alaska Earthquake Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.