The week at a glance...International

Sochi, Russia

U.S. evacuation plan: The U.S. military has a plan in place to airlift Americans out of Sochi in the event of a terrorist attack during the Olympics. Warships with helicopters are to be stationed in the Black Sea, while C-17 transport planes will be on standby in Germany, a two-hour flight away, unnamed officials told CNN this week, stressing that U.S. forces would act only with Russia’s approval. A video surfaced this week of the two suicide bombers who killed 32 people in Volgograd, Russia, last month, in which they threatened more bloodshed at the Games. The city was already on high alert as police searched for three potential suicide bombers believed to be “Black Widows” of Islamist militants carrying on their late husbands’ fight.

Pyongyang, North Korea

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American begs for help: U.S. missionary Kenneth Bae, detained in North Korea for more than a year, was brought before cameras this week to appeal to the U.S. government for his release. “I believe that my problem can be solved by close cooperation and agreement between the American government and the government of this country,” he said in Korean, adding that recent comments from the U.S. had complicated the case. That may be an allusion to a statement by Vice President Joe Biden that Bae had committed no crime, and it could mean that, if the U.S. were to admit Bae’s guilt, he would be pardoned and released.

Taiji Cove, Japan

Dolphin slaughter: An annual slaughter of dolphins in Japan’s Taiji Cove drew international protest this week, including from the U.S. and U.K. ambassadors. The Japanese hunt dolphins every year from September to March, killing some 20,000 a year for meat. But the Taiji Cove slaughter—in which scores of dolphins are corralled, tied up, and then stabbed to bleed out—draws special protest thanks to a 2009 documentary about the slaughter, The Cove. U.S. Ambassador Caroline Kennedy tweeted that she was “deeply concerned by inhumaneness of drive hunt dolphin killing,” while the British ambassador tweeted that the hunts “cause terrible suffering.”

Rawalpindi, Pakistan

Attack on Taliban: The Pakistani military bombed tribal areas this week for the first time in years in retaliation for a suicide bombing near the army headquarters in Rawalpindi. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for that attack, which killed 13, as well as for another at an army garrison that killed 26. Local tribal elders said dozens of militants were killed in the bombings, the first since a 2007 cease-fire with the Taliban. “This time, the army gunships and jet fighters are accurately targeting the militants,” one elder told The Washington Post. Meanwhile, former President Pervez Musharraf, on trial in Islamabad for treason, has asked to be transferred to the U.S. for medical care by his personal cardiologist, Arjumand Hashmi, who is also the mayor of Paris, Texas.

Baghdad

Al Qaida resurgence: Bombings killed at least 26 people in Baghdad this week, further testing the government as its forces failed to take back the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi from al Qaida–linked rebels. As government troops continued to battle militants in Ramadi, talks over a truce that would allow local tribal elders and police to return to Fallujah collapsed after militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria briefly kidnapped several sheiks and an imam who were negotiating for the city. “The battle will be long and will continue,” said Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. “If we keep silent, it means the creation of evil statelets that would wreak havoc with security in the region and the world.”

Damascus, Syria

Widespread torture: Three former war crimes prosecutors said this week they had seen a massive trove of photos from a Syrian military police photographer of some 11,000 detainees who had been tortured and killed, allegedly by security agents of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. The bodies “showed signs of starvation, brutal beatings, strangulation, and other forms of torture and killing,” they wrote in a report commissioned by the government of Qatar, a longtime enemy of Assad. “In some cases the bodies had no eyes.” Desmond de Silva, former chief prosecutor of a war crimes tribunal for Sierra Leone, said the bodies were from only one area of Syria, and that the photos may show only “the tip of the iceberg.” It looks like “industrial-scale killing,” he said.