In things that are awesome:

Kurdish men dress in drag to support gender equality

Photos from Facebook page “Kurd men for Equality”

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.”

NEED TO KNOW

Syria will be “purged.” So promises President Bashar al-Assad, who says he will wipe out the Muslim extremists he blames for yesterday’s suicide bombing in Damascus. Around 50 people were reported killed in the explosion, including a prominent Sunni preacher who happened to be a big fan of Assad’s rule.

In a statement today, the president said that Sheikh Mohammad Said Ramadan al-Buti’s death would not be in vain, since the government would continue his mission to clear “the forces of darkness” out of Syria.

Emergency in Myanmar. The government has declared a state of emergency in the central town of Meiktila, where fighting between Buddhists and Muslims has killed at least 20 people in the past three days. Witnesses report seeing charred bodies strewn by the roadside.

The government says the emergency measures will allow the military to go in and begin restoring order.

Cyber confusion. South Korean investigators now say the series of cyber attacks on its internet servers this week may not have come, as they claimed, from China. The IP address used in the incident was originally identified as Chinese, but in fact appears to have been an internal address at one of the banks affected by the attack.

Investigators say from now on they will make statements “only if our evidence is certain.” Which still hasn’t stopped anyone pointing the finger at North Korea.

WANT TO KNOW

Semper Fi? Three US Marines are dead after a late-night shooting at the Quantico military base in Virginia. Reports say the suspect, a male marine, shot one fellow service member then barricaded himself inside a barracks, where he and another marine were later found dead. It’s believed the shooter killed himself.

None of the dead have been named, nor any possible motive revealed. The Marine Corps says the investigation remains in “the very early stages.”

What is it with marines? The two Italian marines accused of killing two Indian fishermen are on their way to Delhi to face trial. The surprise move comes after India assured the Italian government that, if found guilty, the pair would not face the death penalty.

The marines themselves apparently agreed to the return, which the Italian government said was in their best interest. Not to mention the, er, Italian government’s: the case had the source of an unprecedented diplomatic spat between Italy and India, with Delhi’s supreme court even placing a travel ban on Rome’s ambassador.

Welcome to Chollywood. China is now the world’s second-biggest movie market after the US, according to the latest box office receipts. The country’s movie theatres took a record $2.7 billion last year.

That’s not just good news for Chinese filmmakers: China’s appetite for movies extends to American-made fare, which is why cash-trapped US filmmakers are increasingly looking east – even if that means playing by China’s rules.

STRANGE BUT TRUE

That could have been awkward. According to a new book, the US Secret Service nearly accidentally killed Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on a visit to the United Nations in 2006.

The authors, citing intelligence briefs, a Secret Service agent, “in an apparent accident,” discharged his shotgun as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was loading his motorcade outside a New York hotel. Ahmadinejad apparently turned and looked at the agent and got in his car without saying anything. Um, phew?

LIMA, Peru — Nearly two decades after the bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, Latin America’s deadliest terrorist atrocity is roiling Argentina once again.

Eighty-five people were killed and hundreds injured in the 1994 attack, when a van loaded with 600 pounds of fertilizer detonated in front of the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Society (AMIA by its Spanish initials).

Prosecutors long ago blamed Iran. At 200,000, Argentina’s Jewish community is the largest in Latin America and the region’s most obvious target for anti-Jewish terrorism.

Yet Tehran denies any involvement and refuses to allow investigators to interrogate suspected members of its security services — including Ahmad Vahidi, currently Iran’s defense minister.

Now, despite the impasse, the latest effort by Argentina President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner to get to the bottom of the mass murder mystery has triggered widespread outrage.

Argentina’s bedeviled pact with Iran

Photo by AFP/Getty Images

NEED TO KNOW

That was Benedict’s big fat papal speech. Ratzinger the Retiring has just finished giving his final general audience at the Vatican before he slips off the red slippers for good, tomorrow evening. The pope said he was aware of the “gravity and novelty” of his decision to quit, but that “to love the church means also to have the courage to take difficult, painful decisions, always keeping the good of the church in mind, not oneself.”

His words were met with cheers and applause from the tens of thousands of people gathered in St. Peter’s Square – among them, many of the cardinals who will elect his successor. Once the speeches are over, the palazzo doors locked and the Swiss Guards off duty, what legacy will Pope Benedict XVI leave behind him?

So the Iranian nuclear talks resulted in… more talks. At the close of their latest summit in Kazahstan, Iran and six world powers have agreed to another two meetings in as many months: one between technical experts in March and another between government negotiators in April.

Tehran’s chief envoy described the session as “positive.” He said the West was finally taking a “more realistic” approach to Iran’s disputed nuclear program, which presumably means proposing to scrap certain sanctions in exchange for Iranian concessions. The offers are on the table; let the bargaining commence.

WANT TO KNOW

“Several” people are reported dead in a shooting at a factory in Switzerland. Details are still unclear, but reports say shots were fired in the canteen of a wood-processing plant near the city of Lucerne. There are believed to be multiple deaths and injuries; emergency services are working at the scene.

Drugged, then shot to death – and all by their supposed comrades. That was the sorry fate of 17 Afghan policemen, who were killed early this morning at their post in Ghazni province, south of Kabul. The Taliban claims its infiltrators carried out the attack. Two suspects have been arrested.

There have been many, many other insider attacks, but observers say this could just about be the single worst.

There’s a whole wide world of weed out there. It’s not just the odd stoner state: from Egypt to Pakistan to Cambodia, countries are abandoning the US-backed battle against cannabis in favor of a more liberal approach.

In a new series, GlobalPost investigates drug wars, drug laws and drug scores the world over.

STRANGE BUT TRUE

The first rule of Yeti hunting: don’t shoot the Yeti. Actually, that’s the second rule – at least according to the US government’s guidance to abominable-snowman fanatics in Nepal. A handy checklist, first issued in 1959 and recently unearthed among the archives, gives Americans three simple rules for what to do in case of a close encounter with one of the reclusive – and perhaps more pertinently, not real – creatures.

Find the full list here.

NEED TO KNOW

When no one wins, no one wins. Italy’s nail-biter of a parliamentary election has ended in deadlock, with Pier Luigi Bersani’s center-left bloc just fractionally ahead of Silvio Berlusconi’s center-right alliance. A(nother) joker, comedian Beppe Grillo and his anti-austerity protest movement, isn’t far behind.

Bersani has enough votes for a majority in the lower house, but not so in the senate – and any coalition would have to be so disparate that the chances of its survival aren’t high. Stocks across Europe are tumbling before the prospect of yet more instability. Mamma mia, etc.

Tourist tragedy in Egypt, where a hot air balloon loaded with sightseers caught fire and crashed during an early-morning flight over the ancient temples of Luxor. At least 19 passengers were killed, including people from Hong Kong, Japan, France, Britain and Egypt.

The tour operator says a gas canister exploded onboard, causing the balloon to plummet almost 1,000 feet to the ground below.

Again with the rockets. A rocket was fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel this morning, the first such attack since the cease-fire in November that ended eight days of war.

Fatah’s armed wing, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, has claimed responsibility. The militants say the strike was revenge for the death, in an Israeli jail and under disputed circumstances, of Palestinian prisoner Arafat Jaradat. And if this rocket was, as the group claims, a “preliminary response,” there’s more where that came from.

WANT TO KNOW

Talk it out, Iran, talk it out. Tehran’s finest negotiators are gathered in Almaty, Kazakhstan, for their latest session with the six world powers attempting to rein in Iran’s nuclear program. Western diplomats have hinted that they’ll offer to ease sanctions if Iran agrees to halt its potentially troublesome enrichment of uranium.

Iran, however, is famously unmoved by either carrot or stick. And with Iranian politicians taking even harder lines than usual ahead of upcoming elections, only die-hard Pollyannas are expecting a breakthrough from this week’s talks.

What’s funny about Hugo Chavez’s cancer? We don’t know – but then, no one knows much about the Venezuelan president’s health. The government maintains a wall of silence on the not-so-strongman’s illness, allowing only the occasional photo or tweet to pass.

Faced with an information vacuum, some Venezuelans are using humor to fill it. GlobalPost rounds up some of the best gags about a reality that’s stranger than satire.

STRANGE BUT TRUE

Ka-POW! Take that, Robin: DC Comics have revealed that Batman’s sidekick will die in a forthcoming issue. Writers say that the trusty Boy Wonder dies a hero’s death, having saved the world and done “his job as Robin.”

That job being, of course, to perish whenever a long-running series needs an adrenalin kick. The sidekick gets it. ‘Twas ever thus.

NEED TO KNOW

Cuba without Castro? That’s like… well, the point is we don’t now what that’s like, since one or other of the brothers Castro has been running the country since the revolution in 1959. Not for much longer, though: President Raul has promised to retire in 2018.

Cuba’s first leader outside the family more than half a century is expected to be Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez, who was yesterday appointed Castro’s first ever vice president and who, at 52, has spent his entire life under a Castro government. Viva la post-revolucion.

Just call Park Geun-hye Madam President. South Korea’s first female head of statewas sworn into office today, two months after beating her liberal opponents in a hotly fought election.

Top of President Park’s agenda, unsurprisingly, is everyone’s least favorite nuclear power: North Korea. In her inauguration address, Park called North Korea’s recent nuclear test “a challenge to the survival and future of the Korean people” and promised zero tolerance for any further threats. Ms Park, welcome (back) to the Blue House.

Italians are still deciding. Today is the second and final day of voting in what could prove one of the most important general elections in years – not just for Italy, but the whole of the euro zone.

Silvio Berlusconi is on the ballot yet again, but the current favorite is an ex-Communist with the center-left Democratic Party, Pier Luigi Bersani. Voting ends late this afternoon; the first exit poll results are due shortly after.

WANT TO KNOW

And the Oscar goes to… a motley crew. Best Picture for a movie that didn’t have a Best Director? Best Director for someone who’s not Steven Spielberg? Best Actor for Daniel Day-Lewis, again? Best Actress for an actress who wasn’t best? (Sorry Jennifer Lawrence, but Emmanuelle Riva rules.) These and other questionable bests, here.

And it wasn’t only us Riva fans who were left disgruntled: Iran has taken objection to the choice of ‘Argo’ for Best Picture, and not just because they thought ‘Lincoln’ was a shoo-in. Iranian state media is busy denouncing the movie as an “advertisement for the CIA” and a Zionist plot to misrepresent a memorable moment in the Islamic Revolution – and the fact that Michelle Obama presented the award live from the White House is only adding fuel to Tehran’s fire.

Nuclear disasters have a long half-life. Quarter of a century after the reactor meltdown at Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine, the surrounding region remains an eerie wasteland, where wolves and wild horses roam the woods and Geiger counters beep off the hook. GlobalPost takes a tour.

STRANGE BUT TRUE

The Harlem Shake isn’t just annoying – in Egypt, it can get you arrested. That’s what happened to four people who made a video of themselves and their friends dancing the Harlem Shake in front of the Pyramids. Egyptian authorities said the pranksters – one of whom was featured riding a camel in nought but his underwear, a bow tie and a gold trilby hat – had violated indecency laws with their “pelvis-thrusting dance.”

Come back, Gangnam Style, all is forgiven.

NEED TO KNOW

Iran won’t talk nuclear to the US. Hopes were raised by recent flirtation between the respective governments, only to be dashed by the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei pronounced today that he remains opposed to any one-on-one conversation while the US continues to impose sanctions on Iran – and what he says, goes.

It’s not clear whether his opposition also extends to the multi-nation nuclear talks that Iran is due to hold with six other countries, including the US, later this month.

Hold on to your hats: it’s EU budget time again. Europe’s most powerful are gathering in Brussels today for the start of a two-day budget summit, this one to decide how – and how much – the EU spends for the next seven years.

Sounds dry? Well, in these times of austerity, debt and Euroskepticism, such meetings can get famously rowdy. As rowdy as a room full of Eurocrats talking fiscal responsibility can get, anyhow.

WANT TO KNOW

Let’s talk drones. John Brennan, noted drone enthusiast and President Barack Obama’s nominee for the next head of the CIA, can’t avoid the topic at his Senate confirmation hearing today. And it’s not just him: after a leaked memo (now to be handed over to Congress) justifying the US government’s death strikes and the exposure of a secret CIA drone base in Saudi Arabia, unmanned aerial vehicles are on everyone’s mind.

It’s time to think about the ethical and legal implications. GlobalPost’s Jean MacKenzie analyzes what it means for the war on terror when the rules don’t apply.

How’d you say Texan in German? If you’d been to south-central Texas a hundred years ago, plenty of people could have told you. More than 100,000 people spoke Texas German, an Anglo-Deutsch dialect sown by German settlers in the Lone Star State.

Now only a few thousand Texans speak it, and all of those are over 60. Linguists are racing to record the dialect before it disappears forever – and with it, an entire culture. Listen to it here on GlobalPost, while you still can.

STRANGE BUT TRUE

There’s a fine line between art and obscenity – and Japan is usually cheerfully straddling it. But now, the country that gave us eel porn and genital cannibalism has turned prudish: residents in the small town of Okuizumo want a local replica of Michelangelo’s nude David to put on some darn underpants.

To be fair, the sculpture is 16-foot high and towers over the town’s playground. Okuizumans say the larger-than-life artwork is “frightening the children and worrying the adults with its nakedness.” Not like, say, this. Oh no.

NEED TO KNOW

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has got a new stamp in his passport. The Iranian president landed in Cairo this morning, where he was welcomed by Egypt’s President Mohamed Morsi. It’s something of a historic visit: no Iranian president has been to Egypt on business since Iran’s Islamic revolution in 1979 and Egypt’s peace accord with Israel shortly after.

It’s no coincidence, then, that Ahmadinejad’s desire to travel comes now that Egypt has a member of the Muslim Brotherhood for president. He and Morsi will attend a summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and plan for closer relations. It’s not quite space, but for regional politics, it could be one giant leap.

Territorial tension between China and Japan is a chronic condition, and it just flared up again. Tokyo says it has lodged a formal complaint after a Chinese vessel locked its missile-guiding radar on a Japanese ship near the East China Sea islands that both countries claim as theirs. Nothing was fired, but according to Japan’s defense minister, the incident, which occurred last week, is “very abnormal.”

We’re still waiting to hear how China answers.

WANT TO KNOW

We know how the story ended – now we might find out how it began. In a Delhi courtroom, the first witnesses will testify today in the trial of five men accused of gang-raping and beating a 23-year-old woman brutally enough to kill her.

The prosecution’s key witness is the young man who boarded the bus with her that grim night, and who was himself so badly battered that he is still in a wheelchair. Behind closed doors, he will tell the fast-track court what he saw of his friend’s ordeal. It’s sure to make for difficult listening.

For 5-year-old Ethan, the worst is over. The little boy held hostage for six days in an Alabama bunker is free, rescued in a police raid after officers decided the risk of allowing the kidnapping to continue any longer was too great. He has since been reunited with his family and is said to be “doing fine.”

His captor, though, is dead. It’s not clear yet how Navy veteran and “survivalist” Jimmy Lee Dykes died – nor if we’ll ever know why he did it.

The latest vanguard in the fight for disability rights? Ecuador. In paraplegic Vice-President Lenin Moreno, the South American country has the world’s highest-ranking government official in a wheelchair – and a powerful new champion for people with mental and physical disabilities.

GlobalPost’s John Otis reports on Ecuador’s wheelchair revolution.

STRANGE BUT TRUE

We’ve had the movie, next we’ll get the amusement park. For where better to spend a family day out than Abbottabad, the city in Pakistan made (in)famous as Osama bin Laden’s hideout? Local authorities have set aside 50 acres on the outskirts of town for a $30-million fun fair, complete with a zoo, mini-golf course, rock climbing, heritage center and man-made waterfalls.

Tourism officials stress that the theme park has “nothing to do with Osama bin Laden.” We suspect it might take more than mini-golf to convince holiday-makers of that.

JERUSALEM — A senior Israeli official has dismissed reports published over the weekend that there was an explosion at an Iranian nuclear facility last week.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the official, who is familiar with discussion within the Israeli government, told GlobalPost that, “the only source for this story is a website that is beneath trashy. They have zero credibility. No other source has had anything to say.”

An Israeli Air Force intelligence official and a prominent military analyst also confirmed for GlobalPost that the story was untrue.

GlobalPost exclusive: Israel dismisses reports of blast at nuclear plant in Iran

Photo by AFP/Getty Images