FUKUOKA, Japan — When the Chinese smog arrives, the medical masks come in fashion.

Every few months, this city of 1.5 million people in southern Japan, not far from mainland China, gets a dose of lung clogging courtesy of its neighbor.

Coal factories in the cities of Tianjin and Beijing, combined with the growing numbers of automobiles, pump out toxins that drift westward across the East China Sea. They hit Japan and, to a lesser extent, South Korea.

How China chokes its neighbors

Photo by AFP/Getty Images

Two years after the tsunami…

Rikuzentakata, Japan.

“People will build homes, and other buildings will appear…

so in that sense the city will come back…

but people’s hearts won’t recover.

The scars won’t heal.”

“We used to have a sort of harmony with these bosses,” he laments. “They were enforcers, protectors who asked for our money to smooth out permits and deals, but who kept the battles to themselves. Now they’re out of control.”

Facing a shrinking pot of spoils, five mafia syndicates are waging an unusually vicious gang war in the coastal prefecture of Fukuoka. It’s a rustbelt region on the southernmost island of Japan proper — known as Kyushu — which has the largest number of organized crime groups in the country, according to the government.

Japan’s yakuza gang wars

Photo by AFP/Getty Images

NEED TO KNOW

Ready, aim, don’t fire. North Korea has moved two mid-range missiles away from its eastern seaboard, signalling that it’s not planning on firing them at South Korean or US targets any time soon.

North Korea’s military moved the weapons there last month, at the height of the neighborly dispute. Since then, Pyongyang has toned down the war talk in favor of non-military threats, including imprisoning a US national and pulling its workers out of a joint North-South industrial complex. Just enough to ensure that South Korean President Park Geun Hye and President Barack Obama still have plenty to complain about at their summit in Washington later today.

WANT TO KNOW

The longest decade. Three young women have been found imprisoned in a house in Cleveland, ten years after each separately went missing. Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michele Knight finally managed to escape yesterday, after attracting the attention of a neighbor. Police say the women, all in their 20s, are now in hospital and as well as can be expected.

Three brothers have been arrested, including the home owner. They have 10 years’ worth of questions to answer.

Where’s the world’s worst place to be a mother? According to UK charity Save the Children, it’s the Democratic Republic of Congo. A woman or girl in the DRC has a one-in-30 chance of dying from maternal causes, compared to a one-in-12,200 risk in the world’s safest spot, Finland.

That difference is part of a much larger pattern: 10 countries in sub-Saharan Africa score lowest for maternal health, child mortality, education and levels of women’s income and political status, while all the top three are Nordic countries. (The USA, by the way, is 30th.) Save the Children is calling for dedicated investment to end what it calls the “startling” disparity.  

Gangsters? Grenades? Turf wars? It’s not 1920s Chicago, it’s current-day Japan. Faced with a shrinking pot of spoils, five mafia syndicates are waging an unusually vicious gang battle in the coastal prefecture of Fukuoka, home to the largest number of organized crime groups in the country. Authorities’ attempts at a crackdown have been met with increasingly audacious fighting that’s sucking in police and, at times, innocents.

GlobalPost reports on Japan’s yakuza wars.

STRANGE BUT TRUE

Arachnophobia: it’s the only reasonable response. So the “black widow spiders eat the males after sex” thing is a myth, they say. They’re not as cannibal-ly like everyone thinks, they say. No – because they’re even cannibal-ier.

Researchers have discovered that it’s not just female spiders that kill and eat their mates, it’s the males too. And they do it before they’ve even got anywhere, simply because they don’t consider them an attractive mate. It’s almost enough to make tarantulas seem positively cute. Almost… except, y’know, not.

Cities around Japan hosted a festival today dedicated to making babies cry.

Each year at the annual Nakizumo (“crying baby sumo”) festival, parents hand over their kimono-clad toddlers to student sumo wrestlers who hold them in a small arena and attempt to make them cry.

PHOTOS: Japan: Nakizumo festival celebrates crying babies

Photos by AFP/Getty Images

NEED TO KNOW

Crossing the finish line, into terror. Investigators are hunting for clues as to what – and who – caused the two explosions at the Boston Marathon yesterday that left three people dead and at least 140 injured.

While President Barack Obama was careful not to call the blasts an act of terrorism, the FBI has taken over the investigation as a “potential terrorist inquiry.” Early this morning officers searched an apartment in a northern Boston suburb, where they were seen removing several bags and other items for closer examination.

We’ll know more when the FBI gives a press conference later this morning. We already have enough details to sense the scale of the horror: the limbs lost. The Newtown parents watching another tragedy unfold. The 8-year-old boy killed just after he’d watched his dad complete the race. No one has yet claimed responsibility for these things, but when they do, Obama promised, they will feel “the full weight of justice.”

WANT TO KNOW

Another Iranian earthquake. Seismologists are reporting a 7.8-magnitude earthquake in Iran, less than a week after the 6.3-magnitude quake that killed 37 people and injured more than 850 near the southwest city of Bushehr.

Today’s tremor occurred near the border with Pakistan and was felt all over the Middle East, even as far away as the Indian capital, Delhi. The damage, when it’s counted, is expected to be great.

Chopper down near North Korea. A US Marine helicopter has crashed near South Korea’s border with the North, for reasons that remain unclear. The cargo aircraft was taking part in joint military drills with South Korean forces when it made what US officials described as a “hard landing” around 55 miles north of Seoul.

All 21 people on board survived, though five remain in hospital. The military says it’s investigating and will release more information when it has it. Meanwhile the joint exercises – the same that have drawn so much of North Korea’s ire – as far as we know, continue.

Like we say, things are less than pacific in the Pacific. And China says all these war games are only making things worse. In a white paper published today, the Chinese Defense Ministry claims that efforts by “some countries” to boost their military presence in the Asia Pacific is obstructing regional peace and stability. Psst: they’re talking about you, America.

The so-called “pivot to Asia,” which has seen the US send in extra troops, ships and planes to show how it looks after its allies, has “frequently made the situation tenser,” according to China. Beijing has long suspected that the US policy was not about friendship, but keeping the growing Chinese military in check. China’s forces, naturally, would “never seek hegemony,” the Defense Ministry said; though they will defend China’s sovereignty and territory “resolutely.”

STRANGE BUT TRUE

You (don’t) autocomplete me. A court in Japan has ordered Google to switch off its autocomplete function after a man successfully ordered that the search engine’s automatically generated suggestions were harming his chances of getting a job. Why? Because he happens to share his name with a criminal, whose less than illustrious resumé comes up even before you’ve hit “Search.”

Google maintains that it’s not invasion of privacy if the thing doing the invading is a non-thinking searchbot, and has ignored previous court orders to de-link the defamatory terms. As for this latest request, the gatekeeper to the internet says it’s “studying the ruling.”

TAMURA, FUKUSHIMA, Japan — One bamboo branch and spade of soil at a time, workers are slowly purging Fukushima of its nuclear legacy.

On a chilly, overcast afternoon in Tamura, which lies along the 20-kilometer (12 mile) evacuation zone around the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, crews continue the painstaking task of decontaminating neighborhoods irradiated by the March 2011 triple meltdown.

Some tear down bamboo groves near homes belonging to evacuated families. Others drill into layers of winter-hardened earth, and shovel it into black hazardous waste sacks.

When radiation levels fall to their target level, they will add a new layer of clean topsoil sourced from elsewhere.

On Location Video: The dirty work of cleaning up Fukushima

Photo by AFP/Getty Images

TOKYO, Japan — People across Japan fell silent on Monday as the country marked two years to the day since its northeast coast was struck by one of the most powerful earthquakes in recorded history, setting off a tsunami that killed almost 16,000 and left more than 2,600 others missing.

At 2:46 p.m., the time the quake struck, survivors bowed and remembered relatives and friends who perished in locations that will forever be synonymous with the destructive force of the ocean: Kesennuma, Otsuchi, Ishinomaki and Fukushima, where the waves sparked a nuclear meltdown and rendered entire communities uninhabitable.

In Tokyo, emperor Akihito, who made a rare appearance at the height of the crisis to encourage a traumatized nation, returned to his theme of hope in a short address to 1,200 people packed into the capital’s National Theater.

With the empress, Michiko, by his side, he said: “We feel, with renewed resolve, that it is important for all of us to continue to watch over people and to share in their grief.

“I pray that the peaceful lives of those affected can resume as soon as possible.”

Japan tsunami: 2 years later

PHOTOS: Japan honors victims of 2011 tsunami

Photos by AFP/Getty Images

NEED TO KNOW

India remains on high alert, after yesterday’s serial bombings in Hyderabad that killed 16 people and wounded more than 100. No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attacks, but police revealed today that they had received warnings that Islamist militants the Indian Mujahideen were preparing to strike in Hyderabad and other cities.

Whoever the guilty are, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh says, they “will not go unpunished.”

Home, but not dry. Venezuela’s government says President Hugo Chavez still requires hospital care after returning from his cancer treatment in Cuba. The surgery he had there was followed by a respiratory infection that left him with trouble breathing, an official statement said, “and the tendency has not been favourable, so it is still being treated.”

It’s the first news Caracas has given of the president’s health since he made his surprise return on Monday. In this case, no news isn’t good news and a little news is worse. Is El Comandante still fit to command? And what happens if he’s not? Here are our best guesses.

WANT TO KNOW

To bail or not to bail? That’s what a South African magistrate will decide today in the tangled case of the state versus Oscar Pistorius. It’s been a long four days of hearings, each one more sensational than the last, but the prosecution and defense have finally finished making their cases for why the sprinter should, or shouldn’t, be freed to await trial.

The judge’s decision is due at 2.30pm Pretoria time.

Konnichiwa, Obama-san. The US president will today host Japan’s new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, for their first one-on-one meeting since Abe came to power. The talks are expected to focus on regional security and threats to it; namely, Japan’s territorial beef with China, and North Korea’s nuclear beef with, well, everyone.

Abe will no doubt seek to show his neighbors that Japan has the United States’ full support – and if necessary, muscle. But Obama will be careful about picking sides: China has already hit out at some of Abe’s less-than-diplomatic comments ahead of today’s meet.

Immunity or impunity? The United Nations has announced that it won’t pay compensation to cholera victims in Haiti, despite evidence that leaky pipes at a UN peacekeeper base spread the devastating disease. The UN maintains that it is immune from compensation claims under its founding convention.

Lawyers representing the victims, meanwhile, say they’ll continue to pursue the case in a national court.

STRANGE BUT TRUE

How many nuns does it take to break the law? Approximately 51. That’s how many were found at an illegal after-hours lock-in at a pub in Ireland, whose owner was fined €700 for the unholy congregation. We should clarify that the “nuns” weren’t actually nuns, but people wearing habits for an attempt to break the world record for “most people dressed as nuns.” (Who knew?)

Event organizer Christy Walsh did indeed break the record – and raised thousands of euros for charity – but was subsequently prosecuted for allowing the nun-alikes to drink in his bar well into the wee hours. His lawyer contemplated pleading that no good Catholic could turn away a thirsty sister but, probably wisely, decided to accept the fine.

TOKYO, Japan — Japan’s declining appetite for whale meat is nothing new; but is the country also losing patience with its whaling industry?

The answer is yes, according to a new report that highlights the huge cost to the Japanese taxpayer of sustaining its whaling fleet. Without government subsidies, the industry would collapse, it said.

“Whaling is an unprofitable business that can survive only with substantial subsidies and one that caters to an increasingly shrinking and aging market,” according to the report, released earlier this month by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW).

Japanese turn against whaling

Photo by AFP/Getty Images