Warning: graphic image
The Lod Airport massacre in 1972 caught Israeli authorities by surprise. Because they were focused on preventing a Palestinian attack, members of the Japanese Red Army were able to get through security undetected.
You can learn more about the attack and the Red Army at the link.
Obama’s historic Asia visit, in photos
President Barack Obama is the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima after his travels there last week. But first on his itinerary was a stop in Vietnam, followed by his attendance at the G-7 Summit in Shima, Japan. On his 10th trip to Asia, Obama is expected to highlight America’s commitment to increase diplomatic, economic and security engagement with Asian nations and their people. POLITICO takes a look inside his historic trip. More photos here
Obama visits Hiroshima
Excerpts from President Barack Obama’s Hiroshima visit on Friday.
Americans have not always relished scrutiny of the atomic blast that decimated Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945. No sitting president has ever visited the city, and in 1996, the United States and China rejected a Japanese proposal that Hiroshima become a World Heritage site. But on Friday, Barack Obama’s motorcade will pull up to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, and the world will pause for a few moments to contemplate what happened here.
It’s one of the most dramatic stages a president could speak from, and obviously compelling to a president who relishes a challenge. Obama has made many thrusts at the history book in his final year, but this one presents unique traps. No president wants to apologize for the decision to drop the bomb—a decision that likely hastened the end of the war. Yet the sickening story of what actually happened here, the 100,000 civilians killed, doesn’t fit the roseate glow of American history, and demands a kind of reckoning. And this year it comes with its own domestic challenge: an America First faction, awakened by Donald Trump, that must be almost salivating at the prospect that a Democratic president would become the first to express a form of apology for a decisive American act.
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President Barack Obama’s trip to Asia next week will be anchored by a stop in Hiroshima, where he will focus on its dark nuclear past.
But Obama’s visit comes at a moment when U.S. and Asian officials fear the region is entering a newly dangerous atomic future, threatening Obama’s vow to roll back the spread of nuclear arms and possibly touching off an Asian nuclear arms race.
North Korea is expanding its nuclear arsenal and upgrading its ballistic missiles. China is growing and modernizing its stockpile. Most strikingly, Pentagon planners worry that Japan and South Korea might explore developing nuclear arms of their own for the first time—promoted in part by the recent conclusion by U.S. and South Korean intelligence agencies that North Korea’s bizarre regime can now mount a small nuclear warhead on missiles capable of striking Japan and South Korea.
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What Obama Will See When He Goes to Hiroshima
Today, the White House announced that later this month, Barack Obama will be the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima, Japan. Coming nearly 71 years after U.S. forces detonated an atomic bomb over the city in the closing weeks of World War II, Obama’s trip is part of an ambitious final-year international agenda for the president. The White House has debated a visit to the rebuilt, bustling Japanese city for months, as the president has struggled to balance his aspirations for a nuclear-free world with ambivalence about apologizing for America’s use of the bomb, which is estimated to have killed more than 100,000 Japanese civilians. Here’s some of what Obama will likely see when he visits the historic city. More photos here
Henriette bùi Quang Chiêu (1906-2012)
Art by Marie Lou Duret (tumblr, instagram, facebook)
Henriette bùi Quang Chiêu was the fist female physician in Vietnam. Born into a prominent Vietnamese family, Henriette moved to Paris with her politician father as a teenager. She enrolled in medical school at the University of Paris in 1927. She graduated in 1934 and returned to Vietnam a year later. In Vietnam, she worked as a physician at a maternity hospital. Henriette faced massive discrimination as both a female physician and as a non-white physician, but she was eventually appointed head of her department.
In 1957, Henriette moved to Japan to study acupuncture. She returned to Vietnam for a year to share what she had learned before setting up a private practice in Paris. Henriette returned to Vietnam to serve as a doctor during the war, but spent the last forty years of her life in Paris. She died at the age of 105.
Instagram Snaps of Japan’s Brief Cherry Blossom Season
Cherry blossoms are expected to bloom at the end of March and the beginning of April, which marks the true start of the Japanese year.
In the State Department, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) is tasked with ensuring that the Department is functioning efficiently and maintaining its integrity at each post.
In practice, the OIG works to root out crime and abuse conducted by LSEs, or people from the host country that work at each posting, and FSOs.
You can read on at the link to learn more about the OIG and the work they do.
