Japanese authorities issued a tsunami alert for the northeast of the country on Sunday after a magnitude 6.7 earthquake was recorded in the Pacific Ocean, close to the country.

A 6.8 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Japan's Iwate Prefecture at 5:03 p.m. local time on Sunday.

Northeastern Japan is prone to earthquakes, including a triple disaster of a quake, tsunami and a nuclear meltdown in Fukushima, just south of Iwate, in March 2011, that killed nearly 20,000 people, ...