An earthquake with a magnitude of 8.0 struck in the Samoan Islands region Tuesday, the U.S. Geological Survey said. The temblor generated three separate tsunami waves that are spreading, the largest of which measures 5.1 feet from sea level height, said Vindell Hsu, a geophysicist with the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Ewa Beach, Hawaii. Preliminary data had originally reported a larger tsunami. A tsunami warning was in effect for American Samoa, Samoa, Cook Islands, Tonga and Fiji, ...

(CNN) -- Is Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin running for vice president of the United States or vice president of the student council Listening to some political strategists, pundits and radio and TV blowhards, you would think that all she has to do is show up, sign her name on the roll, and she's done enough to satisfy the requirement for president. Do people really and truly understand that she will be sitting a heartbeat away from the presidency, backing ...

A group of hunters aboard a small boat out of the tiny Alaska village of Wainwright were the first to spot what would eventually be called "the blob." It was a dark, floating mass stretching for miles through the Chukchi Sea, a frigid and relatively shallow expanse of Arctic Ocean water between Alaska's northwest coast and the Russian Far East. The goo was fibrous, hairy. When it touched floating ice, it looked almost black. But what was it An ...

"Everything changed on August 29 in politics in Alaska," Sarah Palin told NBC's Andrea Mitchell this week. The reference was to the day last year when John McCain announced that Palin, a 44-year-old mother of five who became Alaska's governor only in December 2006, would be his presidential running mate. (CNN) -- "Everything changed on August 29 in politics in Alaska," Sarah Palin told NBC's Andrea Mitchell this week. The reference was to the day last year when John McCain ...

When Alaska Governor Sarah Palin announced her intention to resign on July 3, many assumed there must be a looming scandal. Why else make the surprise announcement late in the afternoon before the July 4 holiday — the equivalent of a news black hole — in tones that varied from angry to anxious? Palin even hauled her husband back from a commercial fishing trip to be by her side. In the days since, however, it has become ...

The FBI, in a rare response to rampant rumors on the Internet, said it is not investigating Alaska Gov. Sara Palin on public corruption charges. "Normally, we don't confirm or deny those kind of allegations out there. But, by not doing so, it just casts her in a very bad light," said FBI Special Agent Eric Gonzalez, who confirmed for CNN the statement he made to the Anchorage Daily News. "There is just no truth to those rumors ...

Alaskan Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell, who will succeed Gov. Sarah Palin after she leaves office later this month, called Palin Alaska's greatest gift to the United States on Saturday. "I was very surprised at first," he said of Palin's decision to resign, which he said she told him Wednesday. "But then as she began to explain why she was doing it, I began to see it was Sarah Palin, once again, moving to put Alaska's interest first," Parnell told CNN. ...

Has Sarah Palin started running for president? In the last week alone, the Alaska governor appeared at a Republican fundraiser in Washington D.C., attended a baseball game in New York and even led a small-town parade on the U.S. east coast, 5,000 kilometers from her small town on the western side of the continent. It looks so much like a campaign for the White House, you could almost forget that Barack Obama has just settled into the presidency and will ...

Mount Redoubt volcano in southern Alaska has erupted again, shooting ash as high as 45,000 feet in the air on Saturday, experts said. The eruption occurred at about 1:30 p.m. (5:30 p.m. ET), the U.S. Geological Survey told CNN. Some of the ash fell around Anchorage, resulting in the airport to close, the Federal Aviation Administration said. The volcano erupted three times Friday, at times shooting ash as high as 51,000 feet. The eruptions are the latest in a series ...

Mount Redoubt volcano in southern Alaska erupted three times on Friday, shooting ash as high as 51,000 feet, scientists said. The latest eruption took place at 7:25 p.m. (11:25 p.m. ET), the National Weather Service said. That eruption followed one earlier at 5:35 p.m. (9:35 p.m. ET) that produced an ash cloud that rose 40,000 feet above sea level, the National Weather Service said. Another eruption occured at around 8:40 a.m. (12:40 p.m. ET). The eruptions are the latest in ...