comfort woman

A deal between Japan and South Korea to settle a dispute over wartime sexual slavery helps create a path for the countries to work more closely on regional security, but a backlash in Korea threatens to complicate progress. On Monday, Tokyo and Seoul said they had “finally and irreversibly” resolved a decadeslong spat over reparations for Korean women used as forced sex workers by the Japanese military in the 1930s and 1940s. Under the deal, Tokyo agreed to pay around $8 million in support funds for the surviving women and extended an apology from Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. U.S. officials heralded the agreement as a breakthrough that improves coordination between its allies in Northeast Asia against the military threat from North Korea and China’s increasing assertiveness. A senior U.S. official said it was as strategically important for Washington as the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. One potential step to increase bilateral cooperation is for Seoul to sign an agreement with Tokyo on sharing military intelligence, such as on North Korea’s nuclear missile program. South Korea has declined to complete the pact since 2012 because of domestic political pressure against closer links with Japan. Instead, the U.S. acts as a go-between to pass on information between the Asian nations. In October, South Korea’s defense minister told his Japanese counterpart that historical grievances, such as the issue of sexual slavery of Korean women, needed to be addressed before a deal can be forged on direct exchanges of intelligence. The so-called “comfort women” dispute is the core issue of several legacies of Japan’s 35-year colonization of the Korean peninsula from 1910 to the end of World War II that continue to irritate bilateral ties.

week 2 Nepel earthquke

The April 2015 Nepal earthquake (Nepali: विसं २०७२ को महाभूकम्प) (also known as the Gorkha earthquake)[6][9] killed over 9,000 people and injured more than 23,000. It occurred at 11:56 Nepal Standard Time on 25 April, with a magnitude of 7.8Mw or 8.1Ms and a maximum Mercalli Intensity of IX (Violent). Its epicenter was east of the district of Lamjung, and its hypocenter was at a depth of approximately 8.2 km (5.1 mi). It was the worst natural disaster to strike Nepal since the 1934 Nepal–Bihar earthquake. The earthquake triggered an avalanche on Mount Everest, killing at least 19,[13] making April 25, 2015 the deadliest day on the mountain in history. The earthquake triggered another huge avalanche in the Langtang valley, where 250 people were reported missing. Hundreds of thousands of people were made homeless with entire villages flattened, across many districts of the country. Centuries-old buildings were destroyed at UNESCO World Heritage sites in the Kathmandu Valley, including some at the Kathmandu Durbar Square, the Patan Durbar Square, the Bhaktapur Durbar Square, the Changu Narayan Temple and the Swayambhunath Stupa. Geophysicists and other experts had warned for decades that Nepal was vulnerable to a deadly earthquake, particularly because of its geology, urbanization, and architecture. Continued aftershocks occurred throughout Nepal at the intervals of 15–20 minutes, with one shock reaching a magnitude of 6.7 on 26 April at 12:54:08 NST.[5] The country also had a continued risk of landslides. A major aftershock occurred on 12 May 2015 at 12:51 NST with a moment magnitude (Mw) of 7.3.The epicenter was near the Chinese border between the capital of Kathmandu and Mt. Everest. More than 200 people were killed and more than 2,500 were injured by this aftershock

Week 4 長江船難

MV Dong Fang Zhi Xing (Chinese: 东方之星; pinyin: Dōngfāng zhī Xīng; translated as Oriental Star or Eastern Star) was a river cruise ship that operated in the Three Gorges region of inland China. On 1 June 2015, the ship was traveling on the Yangtze River in Jianli, Hubei Province with 454 people on board when it capsized in severe weather and was believed to have been struck by an EF1 tornado.

On June 13, 442 deaths were confirmed with 12 rescued.^[3] It is the deadliest peacetime maritime disaster in China's history, and the worst since the Taiping sank in 1949 killing over 1,500

Week 1 Malala

Malala Yousafzai S.St (Malālah Yūsafzay: Urdu, Pashto: ملاله یوسفزۍ‎ ;born 12 July 1997) is a Pakistani activist for female education and the youngest-ever Nobel Prize laureate.^[ She is known mainly for human rights advocacy for education and for women in her native Swat Valley in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of northwest Pakistan, where the local Taliban had at times banned girls from attending school. Yousafzai's advocacy has since grown into an international movement.

Her family runs a chain of schools in the region. In early 2009, when she was 11–12, Yousafzai wrote a blog under a pseudonym for the BBC detailing her life under Taliban occupation, their attempts to take control of the valley, and her views on promoting education for girls in the Swat Valley. The following summer, journalist Adam B. Ellick made a New York Times documentary^[3] about her life as the Pakistani military intervened in the region. Yousafzai rose in prominence, giving interviews in print and on television, and she was nominated for the International Children's Peace Prize by South African activist Desmond Tutu.

On the afternoon of October 9, 2012, Yousafzai boarded her school bus in the northwest Pakistani district of Swat. A gunman asked for her by name, then pointed a pistol at her and fired three shots. One bullet hit the left side of Yousafzai's forehead, travelled under her skin through the length of her face, and then went into her shoulder. In the days immediately following the attack, she remained unconscious and in critical condition, but later her condition improved enough for her to be sent to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, England, for intensive rehabilitation. On 12 October, a group of 50 Islamic clerics in Pakistan issued a fatwā against those who tried to kill her, but the Taliban reiterated their intent to kill Yousafzai and her father, Ziauddin Yousafzai. The assassination attempt sparked a national and international outpouring of support for Yousafzai. Deutsche Welle wrote in January 2013 that Yousafzai may have become "the most famous teenager in the world."^[6] United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education Gordon Brown launched a UN petition in Yousafzai's name, demanding that all children worldwide be in school by the end of 2015; it helped lead to the ratification of Pakistan's first Right to Education Bill.

The 2013, 2014 and 2015 issues of Time magazine featured Yousafzai as one of "The 100 Most Influential People in the World". She was the winner of Pakistan's first National Youth Peace Prize, and the recipient of the 2013 Sakharov Prize. In July that year, she spoke at the headquarters of the United Nations to call for worldwide access to education, and in October the Government of Canada announced its intention that its parliament confer Honorary Canadian citizenship upon Yousafzai.^[8] In February 2014, she was nominated for the World Children's Prize in Sweden.^[9] Even though she was fighting for women's rights as well as children's rights, she did not describe herself as feminist when asked on Forbes Under 30 Summit in 2014.^[10][11] However, in 2015 Yousafzai told Emma Watson she decided to call herself a feminist after hearing Watson's speech at the UN launching the HeForShe campaign.^[12] In May 2014, Yousafzai was granted an honorary doctorate by the University of King's College in Halifax.^[13] Later in 2014, Yousafzai was announced as the co-recipient of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, along with Kailash Satyarthi, for her struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education. Aged 17 at the time, Yousafzai became the youngest-ever Nobel Prize laureate.^[14][15][16] She was the subject of Oscar-shortlisted 2015 documentary He Named Me Malala