Henry Kissinger dead at 100

The news: US diplomat and former secretary of state Henry Kissinger has died at the age of 100, his consulting firm Kissinger Associates has confirmed. Kissinger died at his home in Connecticut, but the cause of death has not been disclosed.

The context: Kissinger was a teenager when he and his family fled Nazi Germany to the United States in 1938. He served in the army before becoming an academic in foreign relations at Harvard University, and later was appointed national security adviser to US president Richard Nixon in 1969. He subsequently worked as secretary of state under Nixon and president Gerald Ford.

Kissinger's political career has been a divisive one, with supporters crediting him with reopening US-China diplomatic relations and negotiating the end of the Vietnam war. Meanwhile, detractors accused Kissinger of war crimes after hundreds of thousands of Cambodians were killed by US airstrikes he approved in the neutral country towards the end of the conflict. Kissinger won a Nobel prize for his work in negotiating the Vietnam ceasefire, which led to the resignation of two members of the prize's committee.