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William Beecher, who as a reporter for The New York Times revealed President Richard M. Nixon’s secret bombing campaign over Cambodia during the Vietnam War, and who later won a Pulitzer Prize at The Boston Globe, died on Feb. 9 at his home in Wilmington, N.C. He was 90. His daughter, Lori Beecher, and son-in-law, Marc Burstein, confirmed the death. President Nixon ordered the bombings, code-named Operation Menu, in March 1969 in response to stepped-up attacks by the North Vietnamese Army and South Vietnamese guerrillas based in Cambodia, a neutral country. The campaign was so secret that even William P....

Forty-five years ago last Sunday, Vietnamese troops seized Phnom Penh and ended Cambodia's 45-month reign of terror known as the "killing fields." Under the leadership of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge government implemented policies—forced labor, resettlements, torture, starvation—that led to the death of 1.7-to-3 million people, or at least 20 percent of the nation's population. The regime destroyed the country, caused untold suffering, and left permanent scars. Painful as it is, we should not let these grim anniversaries go unremembered. For context, imagine a "political experiment" that obliterated our society and left a quarter of our 331-million population dead. It's...

Minnesota comedian Tou Ger Xiong posted pictures with his Colombian girlfriends, including a sexy redhead, before police say he was lured by a femme fatale, kidnapped and murdered this week. Xiong, a well-known activist in the Twin Cities Hmong community, was seen smiling with an unnamed redhead while dining at a Korean restaurant located in Medellin on Oct. 20. “This is Korean food, with my girl,” the 50-year-old said in a video posted on his Facebook, showing his bowl of beef soup before panning to the smiling redhead with a distinctive tattoo reading ‘Never Give Up’ on her neck sitting...

Henry Kissinger, the toweringly influential former secretary of state who earned a reputation as a sagacious diplomat but drew international condemnation and accusations of war crimes for his key role in widening the American presence in Vietnam and the U.S. bombing of Cambodia, died Wednesday. He was 100. Kissinger, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, reached the pinnacle of the American political establishment and in turn became an unlikely household name. He was secretary of state and national security adviser under two Republican presidents, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, and advised powerful leaders in both American political parties for decades.

Authorities in Vietnam said Friday they will prosecute 84 people accused of being involved in deadly attacks on two commune offices in central Dak Lak province and ordered them held in pre-trial detention. It isn’t clear who was behind the June 11 attacks, which left nine people dead, or what motivated them. On Friday, the Ministry of Public Security said it had confirmed that “organizations and individuals from overseas” had been involved, without getting more specific. “Materials and evidence collected by security forces show that the incident took place with the support and guidance of several organizations and individuals from...

Historical ignorance isn’t bliss; it’s suicide. A forgetful society lives on the precipice of history’s abyss. Lloyd Billingsley reminded us of this when he warned, “as ever, the struggle against genocide is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” Billingsley was referencing the Communist Khmer Rouge’s democidal frenzy of 1975-1979 that killed over 2,000,000 people, specifically “Cambodian children were clubbed to death and babies smashed against trees.” He provided a link to an historical, contemporaneous 1977 account of the communist regime and its bloodthirsty Angka Loeu (“organization on high”) leadership’s initial crimes against the Cambodian people and humanity: Murder of a...

A farmer, 72, fell into a crocodile enclosure in the Cambodian city of Siem Reap Luan Nam was pulled in when one of the reptiles pulled on the stick he was using A 72-year-old farmer was killed by 'about 40 crocodiles' this morning after falling into their enclosure on the family's reptile farm. Luan Nam was trying to move a crocodile out of its cage in Cambodia where it had laid eggs when it grabbed the stick he was using as a goad and pulled him in. A group of reptiles swarmed him, tearing his body to pieces and leaving...

A bird flu strain that claimed the life of a schoolgirl in Cambodia has evolved to better infect human cells, in a worrying sign. Scientists on the ground who made the discovery said the finding 'needs to be treated with the utmost concern'. They added that there were 'some indications' the virus had already 'gone through' a human and picked up the new mutations before infecting the girl. The 11-year-old girl, from Prey Veng province, last week became the first victim of H5N1 in 2023. Her father has also tested positive for the virus but has not developed symptoms.

Peru's Supreme Court upholding the decision to hold former President Pedro Castillo... The air raid warnings early Thursday morning in Kiev and other parts of Ukraine... The US military talking about an incident involving a Chinese warplane and a US reconnaissance aircraft last week... A group of Jewish settlers evicted tonight in Israel in a move that seems totally inconsistent with the new government's character... In Arizona some final vote numbers put out today including the very close contest for Attorney General... Authorities in Australia and Canada are not following the United States lead in imposing COVID testing on people...

Another day, another embarrassing display by a very old President. It's obvious someone had written down for Biden who he was supposed to call on from the Press Corps during a presser he did after attending the ASEAN Conference in Cambodia and ahead of attending the G20 Summit in Bali, Indonesia. To have this kind of display on the world stage . . .

Joe Biden has been overseas at the COP 27 Summit in Egypt on Friday and then the ASEAN Summit in Cambodia on Saturday.With Biden being Biden, you knew that it was going to be embarrassing for our country and you’d be right on target.In the grand tradition of Barack Obama, Biden apologized for our pulling out of the Paris Agreement and claimed transitioning away from fossil fuels can help the world avoid “climate hell.”‘The climate crisis is about human security, economic security, environmental security, national security, and the very life of the planet,’ Biden said at the COP 27 meeting...

President Joe Biden committed the first gaffe of his trip to Asia Saturday within the first seconds of his opening remarks, when he mistakenly referred to his Cambodian host as the head of Colombia. Biden spoke seconds after Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has ruled the country for 37 years and is using the ASEAN summit as a showcase for his nation. 'I want to thank the prime minister of Colombia for his leadership as ASEAN chair,' Biden said at the top of his remarks, stumbling over the word and moving on without correcting it.

The cult group’s believers peel vegetables at the farmhouse.Scores of parents in Cambodia have urged the government to help bring back their children camping at a farmhouse owned by a politician-turned-doomsday prophet amid concerns they had been indoctrinated. Khem Veasna, head of the League for Democracy Party (LDP), claimed a devastating flood could wipe out humanity on Aug 30, and called on his supporters to take refuge at his mountainside plantation in Siem Reap province. More than 20,000 followers, including teenagers and Cambodians working in Thailand and Japan, returned to Cambodia and flocked to the estate to escape the impending...

According to The Washington Post report, citing Western officials, China is constructing a naval base for its military in Cambodia, with both Beijing and Phnom Penh going to great lengths to conceal the operation. According to a Western official speaking on condition of anonymity, the facility, which will occupy a portion of Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base on the Gulf of Thailand, will be only China’s second foreign outpost after the opening of a base in the East African nation of Djibouti in 2017. The base is said to be located west of the South China Sea, where Beijing has territorial...

Electricity is an essential part of modern life that powers homes, business, and industry. It is critical to the function of major sectors of the economy, including hospitals, schools, public transportation systems, and the defense industrial base. Even isolated interruptions in electric service can have catastrophic health and economic consequences. A robust and reliable electric power system is therefore not only a basic human necessity, but is also critical to national security and national defense. Multiple factors are threatening the ability of the United States to provide sufficient electricity generation to serve expected customer demand. These factors include disruptions to...

For months, Cambodia’s PM has attempted to quash protests against the NagaWorld casino in Phnom Penh. But his tactics are failing due to workers’ opposition and international pressure.It’s noon and Phnom Penh looks like an escape room. At the central intersection between Suramarit and Sothearos boulevards, a swarm of police cars and uniformed and plainclothes officers protect NagaWorld, the capital’s only licensed casino-hotel complex. Suddenly, a walkie-talkie command arrives and the game of cat and mouse begins. The police hunt down a dozen strikers and lock them inside a public bus, which serves as a mobile cell. They go on...

Cambodia's landmine-sniffing rat Magawa, who found more than 100 landmines and explosives during a five-year career, has died at the age of 8, leaving a lasting legacy of saved lives in the Southeast Asian nation. Magawa, who died over the weekend, was the most successful "HeroRAT" deployed by international charity APOPO, which uses African giant pouched rats to detect landmines and tuberculosis. "Magawa was in good health and spent most of last week playing with his usual enthusiasm, but towards the weekend he started to slow down, napping more and showing less interest in food in his last days," the...

Magawa, the famous mine-clearing rat who was awarded a gold medal for his heroism, has died at the age of eight. In a five-year career, the rodent sniffed out over 100 landmines and other explosives in Cambodia. Magawa was the most successful rat trained by the Belgian charity Apopo to alert human handlers about the mines so they can be safely removed. The charity said the African giant pouch rat "passed away peacefully" at the weekend. It said Magawa was in good health and "spent most of last week playing with his usual enthusiasm". But by the weekend "he started...

BATA, Equatorial Guinea—Classified American intelligence reports suggest China intends to establish its first permanent military presence on the Atlantic Ocean in the tiny Central African country of Equatorial Guinea, according to U.S. officials. The officials declined to describe details of the secret intelligence findings. But they said the reports raise the prospect that Chinese warships would be able to rearm and refit opposite the East Coast of the U.S.—a threat that is setting off alarm bells at the White House and Pentagon. Principal deputy U.S. national security adviser Jon Finer visited Equatorial Guinea in October on a mission to persuade...

Dong Jingwei, who has been rumored to be a high-ranking defector to the United States, attended a meeting in Beijing on June 23, according to the Chinese Ministry of Public Security (MPS). The MPS announced on its website that Dong participated in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) security meeting in Beijing on Wednesday, as a member of the China team which was led by Zhao Kezhi, China’s public security minister. In the announcement, the ministry released a photo, in which Dong was sitting at the right end of the table. This is the first time that the Chinese regime has...