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OneShot

Napalm Girl, 50 Years Ago: This Happened, June 8

It's been exactly 50 years since the photograph was taken that many say is the most powerful image of innocent war victims ever. "Napalm Girl," which was captured at the height of the Vietnam War in 1972, is also the story of that girl at the center of the image.

Taken exactly 50 years ago, “Napalm Girl” has become a timeless symbol of the horrors of war as Vietnamese civilians flee their village after it had been hit by airstrikes.

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Photo Of The Week: This Happened In Bucha

We have chosen a single image to tell the story of what happened in Bucha, Ukraine, though there are many others worth looking at. We bear witness to face the present reality, and help document for posterity and war crimes trials that the world now demands.

Once Russian troops retreated from Bucha, reports arrived this weekend that the suburban town north of Kyiv had been the scene of possible war crimes: civilians killed, raped and deprived of food and water.

Stay up-to-date with the latest on the Russia-Ukraine war, with our exclusive international coverage.

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Among the first journalists to arrive was a crew from Agence France-Presse, including award-winning Venezuelan-born photographer Ronaldo Schemidt.

His images and those of other photographers — along with testimony gathered by multiple independent reporters from survivors and witnesses — would confirm many of the world's worst fears about bloodletting by Russian forces: bodies strewn on the street of people in ordinary clothes, shot down alongside their bicycles, outside their homes; others buried in hastily dug mass graves.

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The Tulsa Race Massacre, 100 Years Later — This Happened, May 31

May 31 marks the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, believed to be the single worst incident of racial violence in American history.

On May 30, 1921, a young Black man named Dick Rowland was arrested for an alleged assault on a White woman in the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma. The next morning, in retaliation, a mob of white residents attacked the Greenwood district, known as "Black Wall Street" at that time for its prosperity and thriving businesses. The shootings, looting and lynchings only ceased 24 hours later: dozens of city blocks were destroyed and an estimated 300 people were killed. In the wake of this violence, thousands of Black residents were displaced.

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Photo Of The Week: This Happened In New Delhi

This past week India has seen more new COVID-19 cases than any other country since the crisis began, as hospitals struggle to deal with a massive influx of patients and shortages of oxygen. Meanwhile, the country has surpassed the grim milestone of 200,000 death, with crematoriums overwhelmed. The facilities are running out of space and time, forcing workers to organize mass round-the-clock cremations and build makeshift pyres, an important part of the Hindu funeral ritual. Cremation is believed to be quickest way to release the soul and help with reincarnation.

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Geopolitics
Anne Sophie Goninet

Photo Of The Week: This Happened In Minneapolis

A local murder case that set off a worldwide movement arrived this week at its verdict, after three weeks of witness and expert testimonies: A Minneapolis jury found former police officer Derek Chauvin guilty of murder and manslaughter in the death of George Floyd.

A bystander's video had captured Chauvin kneeling on the neck of a 46-year-old black man named George Floyd — for more than nine minutes. Floyd's death last May 25 sparked a global outcry against racial injustice and police brutality, with a clear message: Black Lives Matter.

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Sources
Anne Sophie Goninet

Photo Of The Week: This Happened In Brazil

One year into the coronavirus pandemic, Brazil registered its deadliest month in March. In the 31 days that have just passed, 66,573 people were killed by COVID-19, more than double the previous monthly high. The explosion of cases is largely blamed on the local virus variant, believed to be more contagious, having now pushed Brazil over the 300,000 mark in total coronavirus deaths, second only to the United States with 553,000. Currently, however the U.S. is down to under 1,000 daily deaths while Brazil is more than 3,000.

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Japan

Fukushima Disaster A Decade Later: This Happened, March 11

One of the most striking photographs of the destruction caused by the tsunami that struck Japan and set off the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.

Today marks 10 years since an earthquake and subsequent tsunami devastated Fukushima in Japan, killing 18,000 people, destroying towns and triggering the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

At 2:46 pm, the strongest Japanese earthquake ever recorded struck off the northern coast and created monstrous waves up to 16 meters high. On detecting the earthquake, the active reactors automatically shut down, which sparked the meltdown of three nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, at the time one of the largest nuclear power plants in the world. The explosions of the reactors released large quantities of radiation that contaminated a vast area of northern Japan.

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Geopolitics
Anne Sophie Goninet

Photo of the Week: This Happened In Myanmar

On February 1, Myanmar's military seized power and declared a year-long state of emergency, with commander in chief Min Aung Hlaing taking charge. The coup d'etat follows the national election victory of the party of leader Aung San Suu Kyi, which the armed forces refused to recognize.

Suu Kyi and her party allies have been placed under house arrest and charged with possessing illegally imported walkie-talkies.Since then tens of thousands of Myanmar citizens have taken to the streets to protest against the coup, facing police forces armed with water cannons and rubber bullets.

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Geopolitics

Photo Of The Week: This Happened In Washington D.C.

The United States has been driving news photo agency feeds around the world since last week's unprecedented scenes of a of pro-Trump mob storming the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C.

This time, photographer Rod Lamkey captures a more peaceful moment: National Guard troops asleep in the central rotunda. Behind this photograph of the resting guardians, watched over by statues of Dwight Eisenhower and Martin Luther King, history was in the making as the House of Representatives voted to impeach Donald Trump a second time.

Geopolitics

Photo Of The Week: This Happened In Kent

News broke last weekend of a new, extra contagious strain of the coronavirus rapidly spreading in the UK, prompting several countries to suspend travel from the country. After France deciding to shut its UK border for 48 hours, thousands of trucks were unable to pass through from the Port of Dover via the Eurotunnel, and ended up stuck along the route in Kent County, in southeastern England.

A mass testing program is underway to allow drivers to cross the border, but the gridlock could continue for days that may reduce deliveries and leave drivers unable to return home in time for Christmas.

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Geopolitics

Photo Of The Week: This Happened In Warsaw

Poland is a nation divided. On October, its constitutional tribunal ruled that terminating pregnancy due to fetal defects was unconstitutional, making abortion almost completely illegal in a country with strong influence of the Catholic Church and among Europe's most restrictive laws on this and other social issues.

The abortion ruling sparked massive protests across the country, led by a young generation of Polish citizens. What is most notable, perhaps, is that the demonstrations continue, including Dec. 13 when a general strike was organized to coincide with the 39th anniversary of the introduction of martial law in Poland during the Communist era.

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Italy

COVID-19, Address To The Nations: Faces Of A World Under Attack

Charles de Gaulle was the first world leader to truly understand the power of television, using regular presidential broadcasts as a way to circumvent French legislators, labor unions and other levers of democratic influence.

Since then, prime ministers and presidents, benevolent monarchs and ruthless dictators have used the televised "address to the nation" as an essential tool of modern leadership — to comfort or intimidate, confront crises, unveil policies, announce coups, launch wars. While each may have a different script, the broadcasts share a familiar choreography and iconography: from my desk to your living room, I will lead you through this collective moment in our nation's history.

The Italian photographer Tommaso Bonaventura, shut off from his field work, was watching the COVID-19 drama unfold on his computer and television screens. With people dying each day by the dozens then hundreds in his native country, he joined with others waiting anxiously for the relatively anonymous and inexperienced Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte to appear on the screen before the gathered nation.

It was only the beginning: over the next three weeks, at least 70 national leaders have similarly addressed their respective populaces with messages that mix practical information with some semblance of national unity. But the words were not the point.

Bonaventura understood that the very fact of these televised appointments, taken together, could depict an unprecedented moment for the world — a world under attack. He has joined them in a common visual work, freezing the first moment (within 1 second) that each leader appears before his or her nation.

Address To The Nations becomes a singular document of this chapter of human history, appearing to us like a solemn roll call of geopolitical leadership morphing into a cutaway scene from an alien invasion movie.

This is, of course, not a movie. Our enemy is as real as it is invisible, exposing everyone on the planet to the most basic threat to lives and ways of life that we have all long taken for granted. We will instinctively continue to turn to our leaders, even if there's really nothing they can say to change what is happening. Their faces, captured in time, are a sign of how vulnerable we've become.

—Jeff Israely


Address To The Nations © Tommaso Bonaventura / OneShot / Worldcrunch

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