Commercial aircraft landed in Sendai on Wednesday for the first time since the city's busy airport was crippled by the powerful tsunami that smashed into Japan last month.

The opening will provide a

A strong aftershock ripped through northeastern Japan, killing two people, knocking out power to vast areas Friday and piling misery on a region still buried under the rubble of last month's devastati

Japan said on Tuesday the government is on 'maximum alert' over a crippled nuclear plant where highly radioactive water has halted repair work and plutonium has been found in the soil.

The earthquake