Vietnam

WASHINGTON - They returned home to a politically traumatized nation that treated them with indifference and scorn. Now, veterans' advocates fear the country will again miss an opportunity to recognize the toil and torment of the 3 million service members sent to fight the Vietnam War. The Pentagon's plans to celebrate the veterans - five years in the making - are sputtering. This Memorial Day is supposed to be the curtain-raiser for a series of gatherings to mark the 50th anniversary of the beginning of US involvement in the decade-plus war and to honor those who served.

An official says a court in central Vietnam has sentenced three political activists to up to three and a half years in prison for distributing anti-government leaflets. Presiding Judge Vi Van Chat said that the three were convicted of "spreading propaganda against the state" at Thursday's half-day trial in Nghe An province. He says they were also ordered to serve up to 18 months under house arrest, adding that the fourth defendant was given a two-year suspended sentence.

WASHINGTON - Donn A. Starry, a four-star general, Vietnam veteran, and erudite military historian who crafted a war-fighting doctrine for the Army in the years after the conflict in Southeast Asia, died Aug. 26 at his home in Canton, Ohio. He was 86. He had complications from a rare form of cancer, said his wife, Karen "Cookie" Starry. General Starry was one of the "intellectual giants" who "turned the Army around after Vietnam," said Conrad Crane, director of the US Army Military History Institute.

Do Quoc Tai is an unlikely pain in the side of Vietnam's ruling Communist Party. Although the construction foreman earns just $150 per month, he and his neighbors have strong-armed the government, blocking a major ring road that's a symbol of the country's push to modernize. Nearly four decades after Vietnam emerged from war, it now faces a make-or-break choice: build roads and subways in its sprawling cities or remain stuck in the past, allowing fear of social unrest to highjack its development.

WASHINGTON -- A leading Republican senator and prospective presidential candidate said yesterday that the war in Iraq has destabilized the Middle East and is looking more like the Vietnam conflict from a generation ago. Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, who received two Purple Hearts and other military honors for his service in Vietnam, reiterated his position that the United States needs to develop a strategy to leave Iraq....

Black Virgin Mountain: A Return to Vietnam By Larry Heinemann Doubleday, 243 pp., illustrated, $22.95 Larry Heinemann, whose war novel "Paco's Story" won a National Book Award in 1987, spent his combat tour in Vietnam mounted on an armored personnel carrier behind a .50-caliber machine gun. His 25th Infantry Division operated over terrain that concealed a vast and largely undetected Viet Cong tunnel complex near Cu Chi, today one...

There's a fine line between staginess and theatricality, and it shifts with changing times and tastes. What struck an earlier audience as stark and powerful drama may leave us shaking our heads at its stereotypes and melodrama - just as, no doubt, some acclaimed works of our own time will come to seem like risible cliches. It's painful to report that these thoughts are provoked by the Huntington Theatre Company's staging of David Rabe's "Streamers," one of the play's few major revivals since its 1976 Broadway success.

Railway officials have discovered snakes on a train in Vietnam — highly venomous king cobras in bags under a seat. Railroad official Pham Quynh says passengers were terrified when four cloth bags containing the writhing cobras were spotted Friday. The snakes were alive but had their mouths stitched shut. Quynh says the exact number of snakes was unclear but the bags weighed 100 pounds (45 kilograms). Security staff removed the cobras, which were likely destined for restaurants in Hanoi.

Vietnam has released the results of elections for the National Assembly, and more than 90 percent of the 500 lawmakers elected are from the ruling Communist Party. Secretary General of the Elections Commission Pham Minh Tuyen told reporters Friday that only four of 15 candidates who nominated themselves were picked, and 42 with no party affiliation were selected. More than 99 percent of more than 62 million voters went to the polls for the May 22 elections. Voting is mandatory in Vietnam, but it’s common for one relative cast ballots for the whole family.

The lasting images are of helicopter evacuations and chaos in the streets of Saigon. But where most Americans' mental picture of the war in Vietnam ends, "Journey From the Fall" begins. And it is a powerful place to start. In the first half of writer-director Ham Tran's wrenching drama, the focus is on an anti-Communist stalwart named Long (Long Nguyen) who endures a series of re-education camps after his homeland's takeover by Communist forces in 1975. Long is a man of few words, especially after he is beaten repeatedly in an effort to break him of treasonous ideology and...

HANOI - A crowded overnight bus plunged off a bridge into a river in central Vietnam, killing 34 people and injuring 21 others in one of the country's deadliest road accidents. The 50-seat coach lost control and ripped through the bridge's guardrails Thursday night, diving about 160 feet and landing on its top, partially submerged in the Serepok River, said local official Tran Bao Que. "When the accident happened, everyone in the bus was sleeping," survivor Nguyen Van Khanh told news website Dan Tri. "I vaguely heard a noise like gunfire and then people were screaming when the bus...

A crowded overnight bus plunged off a bridge into a river in central Vietnam, killing 34 people and injuring 21 others in one of the country's deadliest road accidents. The 50-seat coach lost control and ripped through the bridge's guardrails Thursday night, diving about 18 meters (60 feet) and landing on its top, partially submerged in the Serepok River, said local official Tran Bao Que. "When the accident happened, everyone in the bus was sleeping," survivor Nguyen Van Khanh told news website Dan Tri. "I vaguely heard a noise like gunfire and then people were screaming when...

State media say police have arrested four senior executives at a major state-owned shipping company for alleged mismanagement. Online VnExpress says Duong Chi Dung, former chairman of Vietnam National Shipping Lines, or Vinalines, and three other executives were detained Friday for allegedly causing losses of $80 million from 2009-2010 after purchasing old ships and making poor investments. Dung was promoted in February to head the government's Maritime Department. The arrests come more than a month after nine senior executives of another major...

WASHINGTON - They returned home to a politically traumatized nation that treated them with indifference and scorn. Now, veterans' advocates fear the country will again miss an opportunity to recognize the toil and torment of the 3 million service members sent to fight the Vietnam War. The Pentagon's plans to celebrate the veterans - five years in the making - are sputtering. This Memorial Day is supposed to be the curtain-raiser for a series of gatherings to mark the 50th anniversary of the beginning of US involvement in the decade-plus war and to honor those who served.

Flyweight Marlen Esparza has become the first American female boxer to qualify for the London Olympics. Esparza secured her birth by beating Luu Thi Duyen of Vietnam in the second round of the Women's World Championships in Qinhuangdao, China, on Tuesday. The boxer from Houston took a 28-13 decision in the three-round bout. U.S. lightweight Quanitta Underwood's hopes of qualifying for the Olympics at the tournament ended when she lost 26-25 to Norway's Ingrid Egner in a third-round bout Tuesday.

President Barack Obama is awarding the Medal of Honor to a Pennsylvania Army specialist killed in combat in 1970 while serving as a rifleman in Cambodia during the Vietnam War. The White House says Spec. Leslie H. Sabo Jr. will receive the medal posthumously for heroic action when his platoon was ambushed by North Vietnamese forces in 1970 near the village of Se San in eastern Cambodia. A White House description of the action says Sabo saved the lives of several of his fellow soldiers.

A court in northern Vietnam has sentenced six people to death for heroin trafficking. The State-run Tuoi Tre newspaper said Wednesday the six were convicted of trafficking 73 pounds (33 kilograms) of heroin from 2007-2009. Four other defendants were sentenced to life imprisonment on the same charges at the trial at the People's Court in Hoa Binh province. The court handed down jail terms from one year to 20 years against 11 others for illegal drug trading or failure to report criminals to authorities.

Vietnam is protesting China's fishing ban in parts of the South China Sea that Hanoi claims as its own. Foreign Ministry spokesman Luong Thanh Nghi says in a statement posted on the ministry's website late Tuesday that Vietnam considers China's decision "invalid. " China's seasonal ban begins Wednesday and is meant to curb overfishing in the South China Sea. But parts of the sea also are claimed by Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan. The sea has valuable fishing grounds and shipping lanes, and is believed to be rich in oil and gas. Vietnam and China...