A Newton-based organization that promotes global learning and health programs has received a helping hand from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for an innovative book fair program in the Philippines.

During her visit to the Philippines on Thursday, Clinton cut the ribbon at a book fair organized by Education Development Center's Philippines branch. The event was at Malanday National High School in Marikina City, near the capital, Manila. The school was heavily damaged during recent flooding, and Clinton pledged additional US support for the recovery effort.

The EDC project, called Education Quality and Access to Learning and Livelihood Skills Project, has organized book fairs around the country. The events "let teachers use pre-paid vouchers to choose the books they and their students need most, increasing the likelihood of high-impact, creative teaching and learning in the classroom."

Clinton joined 66 teachers and 2,000 students who used their vouchers to select from the 50,000 English, science, and math books that were made available during the marketplace event and take them back to their school classrooms. The books come from Brothers' Brother Foundation, a Pittsburgh--based group that has collected and distributed more than 80 million books since 1958.

The EDC and Brothers' Brother Foundation both have major operations in the Philippines. A current EDC initiative is distributing nearly 50,000 free copies of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary to more than 700 elementary schools in Mindanao, a war-torn Muslim island in the south of the archipelago.

Yvette Tan, an EDC staffer in the Philippines, says teachers identified dictionaries as critical tools to get students more interested in reading and preparing them to grapple with subjects taught in English, including science and math. The US Agency for International Development is funding the dictionary project, which is cosponsored by the National Bookstore Foundation.

The Japan Society of Boston continues its celebration of the 50th anniversary of Boston's sister-city relationship with Kyoto -- by sharing the secrets of the fabulously ornate women's hair styles made famous in woodblock prints from the 17th and 18th centuries.

Peter Grilli, president of the Boston society, advises that Keiichi Hanada, Kyoto's most celebrated contemporary hair stylist, will give a free talk and demonstration of the classic coiffures at 6:30 this evening at the society's center at the Showa Boston Institute, 420 Pond St., Boston.

Hanada also will offer the demonstration at Symphony Hall after the Boston Symphony Orchestra performance on Friday evening.

For more details on this and other anniversary events, visit the Japan Society of Boston web site.

British soprano Charlotte de Rothschild has a passion for classical Japanese songs. She has recorded a CD titled "A Japanese Journey: Nihon no Tabiji," and recently created and performed in a 90-minute television documentary by the Japanese NHK network called "Rothschild Passions."

De Rothschild will offer a free concert of her favorite Japanese songs in Boston on Monday evening. She will perform at 6:30 p.m. at the Rainbow Hall, Showa Boston Institute, at 420 Pond St., the home of the Japan Society of Boston.

The society says de Rothschild, a celebrated oratorio singer and recitalist, will sing a selection of her favorite songs by renowned Japanese composers Kohsaku Yamada, Hidemaro Konoe, and others.

The society notes: "Another of her recordings is Family Connections, presenting English, French and German music associated with her distinguished family over the last three centuries. She will be accompanied in this recital by Danielle Perrett, a virtuoso harpist who has played all over the world."

De Rothschild, a member of the famed British banking family, is a global performer but has a special following in Japan. She studied at the Mozart University in Salzburg, Austria, and at the Royal College of Music in London.

Few modern leaders know as much about nation-building -- and even fewer have paid such a high personal price in the process -- as East Timor's president, Jose Ramos-Horta.

Horta will speak at a free public lecture on Tuesday afternoon at MIT about the challenges of nation-building. The talk is being hosted by MIT's Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship in advance of its second annual conference on Friday. The talk is being held at Building 10, Room 250 at 2:30 p.m., with seating to start at 2:15 p.m.

Ramos-Horta agitated as a student for East Timor's independence from Portugal, the colonial power. Just days before Indonesia invaded East Timor and annexed it in 1975, he went into exile as a 25-year-old cabinet minister for East Timor to argue its case at the United Nations Security Council. For years he pleaded East Timor's cause, and in 1996 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work, along with Bishop Ximenes Belo.

After East Timor finally won independence from Indonesia in 2002 following decades of bloodshed and negotiations Ramos-Horta served as foreign minister in the newly elected government as foreign minister, which continued to weather unrest. He was elected president in April 2007, and was badly wounded in an assassination attempt in February 2008.

At the age of 59, Ramos-Horta will carry a lifetime of democratic activism to the MIT forum, even as his country continues its struggle for political stability and economic development from the ranks of the poorest nations in Asia.

For Boston, it's the mother of all sister-city relationships. Boston and Kyoto this week are celebrating the 50th anniversary of Boston's first formal partnership with a foreign city.

A week-long flurry of public events included tonight's "Japan Night" at Fenway Park, honoring the four Japanese players now on the Red Sox roster, among them Kyoto native Hideki Okajima. Kyoto Mayor Daisaku Kadokawa threw out the first ball. With him were a dozen boys from the Boston area who have just completed a baseball-focused exchange tour of Japan, a year after 12 young Japanese ballplayers visited Boston in a similar exchange.

But most of the anniversary events are designed to celebrate the rich cultural and academic traditions that distinguish both cities, and the many ties they have established since Kyoto became Boston's first sister city in 1959.

Kadokawa joined Boston officials this evening in a reception at the Children's Museum, to celebrate the establishment there in 1979 of the Kyoto House, a replica of a traditional Japanese dwelling given by the people of Kyoto in 1979 on the 20th anniversary of the sister-city relationship.

Peter Grilli, who is president of the Japan Society of Boston, spoke to me today of how the bond between the cities remains vital and growing, honoring the past but also focused on contemporary concerns, through events such as a symposium today by urban planners on preserving historic sites.

"Boston and Kyoto are both ancient cities with fantastic histories that we cherish. But we’re also not weighted down by history," said Grilli, a specialist on Japanese film and culture. "Boston and Kyoto both look forward, and have significant high-tech sectors. But we're also both involved in preserving their monuments."

Boston's Japan Society is the oldest in the United States, and celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2004.

With its 2,000 Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines, Kyoto is a UNESCO world heritage site. It also is home to 37 universities, rivaling Boston's role as a national center of education excellence for Japan. Kyoto's university association this week signed an agreement with the Fenway-area group of six Boston colleges to increase exchanges between them.

The Museum of Fine Arts also has exhibitions on at the moment to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the sisterhood.

Kadokawa, elected in 2008, was previously the head of the city's education department, and also is president of the League of Historical Cities, a global group that works to build ties among cities with strong historical roots.

The cities formally became sister-cities three years after the Eisenhower Administration created the sister-city program to encourage global partnerships and exchanges between US cities and like-minded cities abroad. Boston now has eight formal sister-city relationships. The others, in the order they were established, are Strasbourg, France; Barcelona, Spain; Hangzhou, China; Padua, Italy; Melbourne, Australia; Taipei, Taiwan; and Sekondi-Takoradi, Ghana. (There are several other substantial but unofficial partnerships with cities including Haifa in Israel).

The sister-city ties are supported primarily by the expatriate communities here, and Boston's substantial Japanese Community is organized through the very active Japan Society, based at the Showa Boston Institute in Jamaica Plain.

Kyoto, a city of about 1.5 million, has been discerning in its choice of sister cities. Its web site lists nine, including Paris, Prague, Florence and Guadalajara.

Two Boston-area physicians who have traveled extensively in the Sichuan region of China since it was devastated by an earthquake a year ago have provided a thoughtful and moving assessment of the aftermath on the first anniversary of the quake.

Writing on abcnews.com, Doctors Kendall Krause and Charlotte Wu describe some of the successes of the Chinese recovery effort, but also some of the failings, told through the eyes of survivors and those who lost family members and are still awaiting new homes. Both doctors are graduates of the Yale School of Medicine. Wu is now a resident at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, and Krause is now a medical writer. They both traveled to Sichuan last August to provide medical help to victims, and returned recently to assess the progress.

They write vividly of people's losses, their continuing need for help and the tentative rebuilding in the region. The capture the concern about whether the Chinese government this time will avoid the construction and design mistakes of the past in an area notorious for frequent and destructive quakes. Almost 80,000 were confirmed dead, and more than 370,000 were injured, with millions of lives disrupted by the earthquake on May 12, 2008.

The Japan Society of Boston today is honoring a revered Tokyo physician who has made a major contribution to preserving the legacy of Japanese-American relations in New England.

The free event, including a concert of Japanese and American music, is being held at the society's Showa Hall in Jamaica Plain at 5:30 p.m. The occasion honors Dr. Shigeaki Hinohara for his leading role in raising funds in Japan to restore the historic Whitfield-Manjiro Friendship House in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, which opened on Thursday to honor John Manjiro, the first Japanese to live in America.

The society explains his significance: "John Manjiro, also known as Manjiro Nakahama, was rescued at sea by Captain William Whitfield and, at age 16, came to Whitfield’s Fairhaven house, where he lived from 1843 to 1849. Returning to Japan, he was appointed a samurai and indirectly influenced the negotiations with Commodore Matthew Perry which ended 250 years of Japanese isolation."

The society calls Dr. Hinojara, who is now 97 years old, "one of Japan's greatest physicians and humanists." He was chairman of St. Luke's International Hospital in Tokyo, and has authored many books. He has been personal physician to the empress of Japan.

Later this month, the Japan Society will mark the 50th anniversary of the Kyoto-Boston sister-city relationship with a dinner on May 26 at the Charles Hotel in Cambridge. (The Museum of Fine Arts has an exhibition at the moment on art depicting Kyoto). The dinner will also celebrate the 105th anniversary of the Japan Society of Boston -- the oldest of the more than 45 Japan-America societies around the United States.

The speaker will be Congressman Barney Frank, the Newton Democrat who worked hard for the 1988 law that granted reparations to Japanese-Americans who had been interned by the US government during World War II.

Two of the four senior foreign policy appointees named today by President Obama have New England roots, and attended elite private high schools here. Both men have played central roles in developing US policy toward North Korea at a time of growing tension over its nuclear weapons program.

And one has played the drums in impromptu gigs in Moscow.

Obama named Christopher R. Hill as ambassador to Baghdad. Hill, who had been the US envoy to the six-party talks on North Korea since 2005, spent part of his childhood in Little Compton, Rhode Island. He attended the Moses Brown School in Providence before going on to do his undergraduate work at Bowdoin College in Maine.

Obama also appointed Alexander Vershbow as assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs. "Sandy" Vershbow was born in Brookline, grew up in Newton and went to Buckingham Browne & Nichols School in Cambridge, and then on to Yale for his undergraduate degree. He has been US ambassador to the Russian federation as well as ambassador to NATO before becoming the US envoy to South Korea.

See Globe staffer and former Moscow bureau chief David Filipov's profile of Vershbow, including his work as an amateur drummer.