At the birthplace of the atomic bomb, outside the national labs that feed today's nuclear arsenal, and in the US' capital, survivors of the deadly blasts that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki 60 years ago joined hundreds of activists in support of a global ban on nuclear weapons.
"No more Hiroshimas. No more Nagasakis," bombing survivor Koji Ueda wrote in a statement distributed on Saturday at a rally in the Los Alamos park that had held research laboratories when the Manhattan Project developed the world's first atomic bomb.
"We send this message to our friends all over the world, along with a fresh determination of the `hibakusha' [atomic bomb survivors] to continue to tell about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, aiming at a planet set free of wars of nuclear weapons," Ueda said.
In Oak Ridge, Tennessee, 15 protesters from a group of more than 1,000 were arrested on Saturday for blocking a road outside the heavily guarded weapons factory that helped fuel the bomb during World War II.
At the Nevada Test Site, peace activists discussed ways to eliminate nuclear weapons. While in California, hundreds of activists marched to the gates of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, some holding sunflowers and others hoisting a 12m inflatable "missile."
Ueda, who was 3 when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, was joined at Los Alamos by Masako Hashida, who was 15 and working in a factory about 1.5km from where the second bomb fell three days later on Nagasaki.
In the Los Alamos park where research laboratories stood during the Manhattan Project, placards carried anti-war slogans including "No more war for oil and empire" and "We're sorry about Hiroshima and Nagasaki."
A group of veterans offered an opposing message across the park from the more than 500 activists. One sign read: "If there hadn't been a Pearl Harbor, there wouldn't have been a Hiroshima."
Steve Stoddard, 80, of Los Alamos, said the group was trying to counter the "demonizing of the bomb."
"We feel the bomb saved our lives," said Stoddard, a World War II veteran who fought in Europe. He believes he would have been sent to fight in Japan had the bombs not ended the war when they did.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS