Japan’s largest yakuza crime syndicate has pledged to end its longstanding war with a rival faction and refrain from causing “trouble,” authorities said, as the mafia-like groups contend with falling membership and increased police crackdowns.

The Yamaguchi-gumi, one of the world’s largest and wealthiest crime gangs, has been embroiled in a bloody feud with splinter groups since 2015, when more than a dozen factions broke away to form the Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi.

Since then, intensifying violence between the two warring crime organizations has seen rival gangsters gunned down or stabbed in dozens of incidents, according to police.

The armed conflict, often erupting on public streets in cities across central and western Japan, has put pressure on authorities to toughen restrictions on the gangs.

“Yakuza” is a blanket term for Japan’s organized crime groups, which sit in a gray area in the country. Though they are not outlawed, the groups are regulated and monitored by authorities.

In 2020, police formally designated the Yamaguchi-gumi and its splinter group as gangs at war – giving officers the ability to increase surveillance, restrict their activities, including prohibiting the use of their offices and ability to raise funds.

“Their conflicts have become serious and unpredictable,” the National Police Agency said in 2021. In the past five years, police have also put several other gangs under close surveillance.

It is unclear whether the rival splinter group, Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi, has responded to the ceasefire pledge. Police said they would be “closely monitoring the movements of both groups” as the declaration to end the turf war may be one-sided.

Membership to yakuza groups across Japan has been in decline over recent decades. In 2024, the number of members of organized crime syndicates stood at 18,800, hitting a record low and falling below 20,000 for the first time, according to police data.

Those official figures show the number of active members of the Yamaguchi-gumi gang have almost halved since 2014 – falling from 6,000 then to just 3,300 at the end of last year. The Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi had around 120 members last year.

As yakuza membership falls, however, Japanese authorities are contending with a new criminal phenomenon: the “tokuryu.”

These anonymous gangs are not affiliated with a yakuza family, operating individually or in ad hoc groups. About 10,000 members of tokuryu gangs were investigated last year, with police linking them to violent robberies in Tokyo, and fraud schemes involving romance scams and investments on social media.

A major Australian IVF clinic has apologized for giving the wrong embryo to a woman who then gave birth to another couple’s baby, blaming the mix-up on “human error.”

Monash IVF, which operates more than 100 clinics across Australia, said in a statement staff were “devastated” by the mistake, believed to be the first of its kind in Australia.

It’s not clear whether either of the couples suspected a mix-up before the clinic discovered the error in February.

“On behalf of Monash IVF, I want to say how truly sorry I am for what has happened,” said CEO Michael Knaap in the statement.

“We will continue to support the patients through this extremely distressing time,” he added.

Monash IVF has not named the couples involved, nor has it responded to questions about when the baby was born, or who has custody of the child, out of respect for the couples’ privacy.

The error occurred at Monash IVF’s Brisbane clinic, in the state of Queensland, where the law recognizes the birth mother and her partner as the child’s legal parents.

Alex Polyakov, a clinical associate professor at the University of Melbourne and a fertility consultant at Melbourne’s Royal Women’s Hospital, said it was the first incident of its kind in four decades of IVF in Australia.

“Australia’s regulatory framework for assisted reproductive technology is internationally recognized for its stringency and thoroughness,” he said in written comments.

“The probability of such an event occurring is so low that it defies statistical quantification.”

How did it happen?

The mistake was discovered in February after the birth parents requested to transfer their remaining embryos to another IVF provider.

After an extra embryo was found in their storage compartment, an internal inquiry discovered they’d received the wrong embryo.

It’s not clear how the error was made but according to the Monash IVF statement, another patient’s embryo was “incorrectly thawed and transferred to the birth parents.”

Knaap, the company’s CEO, said he was confident it was “an isolated incident.”

“We are reinforcing all our safeguards across our clinics – we also commissioned an independent investigation and are committed to implementing its recommendations in full,” he added.

The Fertility Society of Australia and New Zealand (FSANZ) said in a statement that it was “aware of the serious incident” and its immediate thoughts were with the families affected.

It said such incidents are rare and require “the highest standards of transparency.”

Similar errors have been made in the United States, including a recent case where a White woman discovered she’d been given the wrong embryo after giving birth to a Black infant.

This is not the first time Monash IVF has been accused of wrongdoing.

Last year, the company agreed to pay 56 million Australian dollars ($35 million) to settle a class action suit brought by 700 former patients.

The patients alleged the company didn’t disclose the risk of false positives in genetic testing on embryos, which led them to discard potentially viable embryos.

Taiwan prosecutors on Friday for the first time charged a Chinese ship captain with intentionally damaging undersea cables off the island in February, after a rise in sea cable malfunctions alarmed Taiwan officials amid tensions with China.

Prosecutors say the man was captain of the Chinese-crewed Hong Tai 58, registered in Togo, which Taiwanese authorities detained after suspecting the ship had dropped anchor near an undersea cable off southwestern Taiwan, damaging it.

The prosecutors’ office in the southern Taiwanese city of Tainan said they had charged the ship’s Chinese captain, whom they identified only by his family name, Wang, with being responsible for damaging the cable.

Wang has said he is innocent, but refused to provide details of the ship’s owner and “had a bad attitude”, the prosecutors said in a statement.

Seven other Chinese nationals detained at the same time will not be charged and will be transported to China, prosecutors said, adding that the case was the island’s first prosecution over damaging sea cables.

Reuters was not able to determine the ship’s ownership or immediately locate a lawyer representing the captain.

China’s Taiwan Affairs Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. China has previously accused Taiwan of “manipulating” possible Chinese involvement in the case, saying it was casting aspersions before the facts were clear.

Taiwan has reported five cases of sea cable malfunctions this year, compared with three each in 2024 and 2023, according to its digital ministry.

Taiwan’s coast guard has in recent months stepped up efforts to protect its sea cables, including monitoring a “blacklist” of close to 100 China-linked ships registered to a country other than that of its owner near Taiwan, officials familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Taiwan said in January it suspected a China-linked ship of damaging an undersea cable off its northern coast; the ship owner denied the accusations.

Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory, has repeatedly complained about “grey zone” Chinese activities around the island, designed to pressure it without direct confrontation, such as balloon overflights and sand dredging.

Taipei was alarmed after another Chinese-linked ship was suspected of damaging a different cable this year, prompting the navy and other agencies to step up efforts to protect the undersea communication links, which are vital to the island’s connections to the rest of the world.

Taiwan, whose government rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims, has pointed to similarities between what it has experienced and damage to undersea cables in the Baltic Sea following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.