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Buried for more than 40 years inside the plane they were flying when they were shot down over Laos in 1969, Major James Sizemore and his navigator Major Howard Andre made their final journey home Monday to Arlington National Cemetery, where they were laid to rest just the way they flew: side by side. A single bugler played TAPS as the families of the airmen gathered and two horse drawn caissons made their way through the cemetery. Overhead, eight civilian pilots performed a tribute flyover at their own expense after the Air Force said it couldn’t perform a traditional flyover...

China doesn’t have the same record of killing foreign enemies overseas that Russia does. But it has a large enough overseas network and piles of cash that it could get the job done if it needed to. Just ask Naw Kham what happened after the Mekong River Massacre. The bodies of the Chinese, the crew of two cargo boats, were found badly mutilated on the Thai side of the river in early October 2011. The killings, the worst slaughter of Chinese citizens abroad in recent memory, angered the Chinese public. Chinese investigators insist that Mr. Naw Kham was the mastermind...

Special Forces Green Beret Master Sgt. John Hartley Robertson had forgotten how to speak English over the 44 years since he was left behind in the Vietnam War. But he never forgot that he was a father, husband and an American soldier, born in Alabama, shot down over Laos in a 1968 classified mission.

FRESNO, Calif. (AP) — Last fall, narcotics agents confiscated thousands of marijuana plants, many 10 feet tall, from a 140-acre farm just on the edge of Fresno — one of the biggest pot busts in the county's history. The pot grew hidden among rows of rotting peppers, tomatoes and bitter melons, tended by a dozen immigrant farming families. Deputies detained 50 people, all of whom were lowland Laotians, a refugee population from southeast Asia that has made its home in California's Central Valley over the past three decades. Investigators say that some of these traditional vegetable growers have become increasingly...

memory hole reminder The first documentary evidence that Vietnamese communists were directly steering John Kerry’s group Vietnam Veterans Against the War has been discovered in a U.S. archive, according to a researcher who spoke with WorldNetDaily. Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2004/10/27207/#615wufvA5oZXKuWK.99

An ancient skull recovered from a cave in the Annamite Mountains in northern Laos is the oldest modern human fossil found in Southeast Asia, researchers report. The discovery pushes back the clock on modern human migration through the region by as much as 20,000 years and indicates that ancient wanderers out of Africa left the coast and inhabited diverse habitats much earlier than previously appreciated. The team described its finding in a paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The scientists, who found the skull in 2009, were likely the first to dig for ancient bones in Laos...

You are my children of light , you are my children of light , you are my children of light , and in this season of lights , let MY Light shine through you , for MY SEASON NEVER ENDS ! Truly this is a season of lights , but we are to be lights for Christ Jesus in an open season and heaven for him ! Isaiah 60 The Gentiles Bless Zion 1 Arise, shine; For your light has come! And the glory of the LORD is risen upon you. 2 For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth,...

LISTEN TO "MY" SPIRIT ROAR FOR YOU \o/\o/\o/ ! ! ! Listen to "MY" spirit roar for you my children to do and to walk in MY fullness and not your own for it is in MY righteousness you are saved and walk even now . So go in MY all for you and Listen to the whisper of "MY" spirit for soon it shall become a roar as it did for Daniel in the lions den and I shall quench all the firery darts of the enemy for you as well , for you are MY CHOSEN called and...

I Am going to move My sphere of authority into place now upon My Foundation and "TRUTH" shall be its Robe ! Zechariah 4:9 9The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundations of this house; his hands shall also finish it. Then you shall know (recognize and understand) that the Lord of hosts has sent me [His messenger] to you. The unction of My Spirit is something to be followed not ignored ! My blessings flow through My Spirit and Guiding counselor of My very Heart ! So understand this ; To reject My Spirit is to deny Me ,...

Does being on the left mean never having to say that you are sorry?—If you are talking about the Vietnam War and who won it 35 years later, that very well may be the case. Regarding the real truth of the Vietnam War after the fall of Saigon, Laos and Cambodia, Senator Fulbright, D-AK, who was also the chair of the Foreign Relations Committee summed up the sentiment of the 94th Congress, “I am no more distressed than if Arkansas had lost the football game to Texas.” “That started the Southeast Asian genocide. You’re talking about one quarter of the...

VIENTIANE - The Chinese People's Liberation Army is willing to strengthen cooperation with the Lao People's Army (LPA) in the fields of national defense and military construction, military attache of the Chinese Embassy to Laos Tan Zhaosheng said here on Monday. Tan Zhaosheng made the remark at a reception hosted by the Chinese Embassy in Laos' capital of Vientiane to celebrate the 84th founding anniversary of the Chinese People's Liberation Army."As Laos and China are friendly neighbors and close partners, the Chinese People's Liberation Army is willing to deepen friendly exchanges and pragmatic cooperation with the LPA in the fields...

China’s omnivorous energy requirements have been attracting increasing attention as of late, as Beijing attempts to secure any and all sources of power for its growing industrial base. Nowhere is this more noticeable than Beijing’s policies in the South China Sea, where Chinese assertions of sovereignty are unsettling the Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei, all of whom have counter claims on the various shoals and islets. China’s landward neighbors are also feeling the hot breath of Beijing’s mandarins, however, most notably its economic rival India, with whom China fought a brief war in 1962 in the Himalayas over...

The US Army has rejected a request for ethnic Hmong leader Vang Pao to be buried with full military honours in Arlington National Cemetery. Gen Pao led a 15-year CIA-sponsored secret war in Laos during the Vietnam War and, when it was lost, led tens of thousands of his people into exile. He died last month. The army's decision came as mourners attended the first day of a six-day funeral in California. Gen Pao's friends said they would appeal to the White House. "Obviously to everyone who is here today to honour Gen Vang Pao, this is very disappointing," said...

Some U.S. lawmakers want an Arlington National Cemetery burial for the controversial Laotian Hmong ex-general of a secret CIA-backed army that fought communism during the Vietnam War. Vang Pao, who died in California last week at age 81, commanded thousands of Hmong fighters in a covert U.S.-backed war against North Vietnamese and Laotian communists during the 1960s and '70s. His legendary skills at guerrilla warfare led some followers to see him as a minor deity.

HANOI (AFP) – One of the world's rarest animals, the secretive and mysterious twin-horned saola, has been seen for the first time in a decade, conservationists say. Villagers in Laos captured a saola in August and took it to their remote community, but it died after a few days in captivity, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said in a statement. The animal was photographed before its death, the first confirmed record since 1999 when pictures of wild saola were taken by automatic cameras in Laos, said IUCN, a Swiss-based network of scientists and environmental organisations. No biologist...

» 03/26/2010 16:49 LAOS - UNITED STATES Washington looks to Laos to contain China’s expansion The small Asian nation central to the interests of the two superpowers. The United States intends to strengthen development programs in environmental, humanitarian, commercial and military sectors. Chinese dams on the Mekong threaten the ecosystem of the entire South-East Asia. Vientiane (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The United States intends to strengthen cooperation with Laos to balance the expansion of China in South-East Asia. After decades of suspicions and misunderstandings a hangover from the war in Vietnam, Washington has started a bilateral program of economic development...

In a nod to the growing Hmong populations in Minnesota and Wisconsin, the states’ four U.S. senators teamed up in a joint statement Tuesday opposing the Thai government’s plans to forcibly repatriate more than 4,000 Hmong refugees back to Laos. The four Democrats, Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken of Minnesota and Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl of Wisconsin, say they “strongly condemn” the Thais’ decision, which they say ignores the objections of the United Nations, the U.S. Government, and international human rights groups. The statement reads in part: “We share the concern of many of our Hmong-American constituents whose loved...

The Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) yesterday announced its withdrawal from the Hmong camp in Huay Nam Khao, Phetchabun province, after operating there for nearly four years. The reason, they say, is the Thai military's restrictions and coercive tactics. The withdrawal is a further embarrassment for the Abhisit adminstration, which recently suffered a bruised image due to the Navy's inhumane push-back of the Rohingya boat people. Gilles Isard, MSF's head of mission in Thailand, said the Thai military's scare tactics to pressure ethnic Lao Hmong to accept a forced return to Laos and its intensifying restrictions on MSF's activities, such as...

PHETCHABUN, Thailand – Thailand sent army troops with shields and batons to evict some 4,000 ethnic Hmong asylum seekers Monday and send them back to Laos despite strong objections from the U.S. and rights groups who fear they will face persecution. Under tight security, more than 1,000 of the Hmong were loaded onto covered military trucks and driven out of the camp toward buses waiting near the Lao border, Thai authorities said. Journalists kept at a distance from the camp could see many children inside the trucks. With the eviction under way, the United States called for it to stop....

Thailand has begun deporting a group of about 4,000 ethnic Hmong back to communist Laos, despite international concerns for their safety. Thai officials said unarmed soldiers began closing a camp for Hmong refugees in northern Phetchabun province. Thailand describes them as economic migrants. The Hmong say they face persecution in Laos because they sided with US forces during the Vietnam war. The UN had urged the Thais to call off plans to deport them.