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Visiting Chief of Staff of the Japan Air Self-Defense Force General Harukazu Saito and his Vietnamese host have agreed to intensify air defense cooperation between their two countries. The agreement was made between General Saito and Senior Lieutenant General Do Ba Ty, Chief of the General Staff of the Vietnam People’s Army, at their talks in Hanoi on May 25, according to the Vietnam News Agency. The Vietnamese official told his guest that the bilateral cooperation can be strengthened through sharing experience in aviation safety, disaster response, and rescue, as well as thorough exchanges of delegations at all levels. He...

The Vietnam People's Navy will soon get their hands on two new Gepard-class 3.9 frigates, the third and fourth of their kind which Russia has built for the Southeast Asian country, as the shipbuilder has just completed them, government website chinhphu.vn reported, quoting Russian media. >> An audio version of the story is available hereRussia has finished the construction of the two frigates for the Vietnamese navy, Russian news website Sputnik quoted Rafi Fatychow, spokesman for the Zelenodolsk shipyard, as saying last week. Weapons will be installed on the two warships soon, Fatychow said at a forum on the maritime...

Now, with Beijing set to enforce what is effectively a no-fly zone over its new sovereign ‘territory’ we bring you the following graphic from WSJ which shows that when it comes to sheer size, China’s air force and Navy are beyond compare. China’s promise to beef up its naval capabilities to prevent further “meddling” and “provocative actions” by rivals in the South China Sea is a daunting prospect for most of its neighbors, which already view Beijing’s fast-improving armed forces with trepidation... As a recent Pentagon review of China’s military modernization drive noted, “China is investing in capabilities designed to...

Nothing speaks more to the blatant ignorance of liberalism than to hear radical leftists belittle our country and military on a national day of mourning and remembrance. Believe it or not, most conservatives despise war – view its necessity as an absolute last resort – for we too have fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters. By that same token, right-minded Americans simply refuse to bury their heads in the sand and pretend evil does not exist in order to magically appease our innate desire for global harmony. Whether a Christian is beheaded in Syria or your neighbor...

This Memorial Day is special to those of us who served in the 173rd Airborne Brigade (Sep.) in Vietnam because this month marks the 50th anniversary of the Sky Soldiers deployment to Vietnam. The deployment marked the beginning of the American takeover of the Vietnam ground war.

"Thanks to all of you for giving me the honor of speaking to you. I have got to tell you that looking out across this assemblage I must confess: I haven't seen this many bad boys collected in one location since the last time I visited Leavenworth Prison. When I first learned that I would be doing this gig I asked an aviator buddy of mine what else I needed to know......and he said, well, most of you would be bringing your wives along.......that half of you were so deaf that you couldn't hear a word of what I was...

President Barack Obama is negotiating a multilateral trade agreement with the governments of 11 nations. These include Malaysia and Vietnam -- as well as Japan, Brunei, Australia, Singapore, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, Chile and Peru. This so-called Trans-Pacific Partnership would govern most of the commercial relations between the nations that sign it. "With over 20 chapters under negotiation," explains a Congressional Research Service report published in March, "the TPP partners envision the agreement to be 'comprehensive and high-standard,' in that they seek to eliminate tariffs and nontariff barriers to trade in goods, services, and agriculture, and to establish or expand...

The Trans-Pacific Partnership that President Barack Obama is negotiating with 11 other nations seeks to eliminate both tariff and nontariff trade barriers with these countries, according to the Congressional Research Service. One of those countries is Vietnam, which the State Department says maintains a Communist regime. In 2014, the U.S. ran a $24,858,700,000 trade deficit with Vietnam, according to U.S. government trade data published by the Census Bureau. U.S. producers sold $5,724,900,000 in goods to purchasers in Vietnam. At the same time, producers in Vietnam sold $30,583,600,000 in goods to purchasers in the United States. Documents related to the TPP...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States vowed on Thursday to keep up air and sea patrols in international waters after the Chinese navy repeatedly warned a U.S. surveillance plane to leave the airspace over artificial islands China is creating in the disputed South China Sea. The Chinese navy issued eight warnings to the crew of a U.S. P8-A Poseidon, the U.S. military's most advanced surveillance aircraft, when it conducted the overflights on Wednesday, according to CNN, which was aboard the U.S. aircraft. When the American pilots responded by saying the plane was flying through international airspace, a Chinese radio operator...

The U.S. is considering deploying aircraft and ships to contest Chinese claims to disputed islands in the South China Sea, U.S. officials said Wednesday. Options are on the table to fly surveillance aircraft and sail Navy ships nearby in a move that puts the U.S. directly into a contentious territorial contest in East Asia, in which, until now, the U.S. has avoided overtly taking sides. The South China Sea is the subject of numerous rival -- often messy -- territorial claims, with China, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam disputing sovereignty of several island chains and nearby waters. China...

Last month marked the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, a moment vividly encapsulated by the frenzied scene of South Vietnamese desperately trying to reach the last helicopter on the roof of the American embassy. April was also the 150th anniversary of the surrender at Appomattox, when Robert E. Lee capitulated to Ulysses S. Grant, bringing the bloodiest fighting of the Civil War to an end.The two episodes seemingly have little to do with each other. But each, in its way, illustrates one of the bleakly recurring themes of US military history: When America's armed forces prematurely abandon the...

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy will take a trip to a San Francisco nail salon Wednesday—a visit intended to shine a spotlight on health risks posed by the industry. [Snip] Nail polish and other products found in salons contain an array of chemicals that may pose a threat to public health and the environment. Without proper handling, exposure to chemicals such as formaldehyde can lead to difficulty breathing, skin irritation and other health problems. EPA already has put together a federal working group and doled out grants to organizations tackling the industry's public health and environmental impact created by...

When actress Tippi Hedren visited a Vietnamese refugee camp in California 40 years ago, the Hollywood star's long, polished fingernails dazzled the women there. Hedren flew in her personal manicurist to teach a group of 20 refugees the art of manicures. Those 20 women - mainly the wives of high-ranking military officers and at least one woman who worked in military intelligence - went on to transform the industry, which is now worth about $8bn (£5.2bn) and is dominated by Vietnamese Americans. "We were trying to find vocations for them," says Hedren, who is perhaps best known for starring in...

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo ordered emergency measures on Sunday to combat the wage theft and health hazards faced by the thousands of people who work in New York State’s nail salon industry. Effective immediately, he said in a statement, a new, multiagency task force will conduct salon-by-salon investigations, institute new rules that salons must follow to protect manicurists from the potentially dangerous chemicals found in nail products, and begin a six-language education campaign to inform them of their rights. Nail salons that do not comply with orders to pay workers back wages, or are unlicensed, will be shut down. The...

This week marks the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon and the final hours of America’s long conflict in southeast Asia. Here’s a look back at images from those last chaotic days.

The GOP’s destructive Vietnam mythology: How the right’s self-glorifying delusions led to decades of avoidable war It only took about five years from the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, for the American right to succeed in burying the moment under mounds of revisionist horse shit. Ronald Reagan, speaking at a campaign appearance in the summer of 1980, said, It is time that we recognized that [the American War in Vietnam] was, in truth, a noble cause… We dishonor the memory of 50 thousand young Americans who died in that cause when we give way to feelings of guilt...

When Corporal Charles McMahon was killed in a rocket attack by North Vietnamese troops, his home town of Woburn, Massachusetts felt the aftershocks. He was 21-years-old, had been deployed for less than two weeks, and was killed just one day before the Fall of Saigon ended the Vietnam war. Massachusetts had already lost 1,330 service members to the war, including the first killed-in-action casualty, Air Force TSgt. Richard Fitzgibbon Jr. of Stoneham. His son, Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Richard Fitzgibbon III, was killed in action nine years later, making them the sole father and son service member casualties in Vietnam....

I read through the New York Times this morning and since today is the 40th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon, they had several opinion pieces discussing the fallacy of America’s involvement in Vietnam, the terrible lessons of the misuse of American power, the atrocities “committed routinely” by us, etc.,etc.. May I throw the BS flag onto the field? We had an ally in trouble, we had the entire Communist Bloc supplying the Vietcong insurgents, we had the North Vietnamese Army in the south and whole world was watching to see what we’d do. If you peruse a map of...

Hanoi is the first Southeast Asian nation arming its submarines with land attack cruise missiles. Vietnam is in the process of acquiring 50 anti-ship and land attack 3M-14E Klub supersonic cruise missiles for its burgeoning fleet of SSK Kilo-class diesel-electric submarines, Der Spiegel Online reports. According to the article, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) recently updated data on its website, based on information obtained from the United Nations’ register of conventional arms, indicating that Russia has already delivered 28 missiles over the last two years to Hanoi, although the precise number remains unknown. The Klub is a Russian-made...

HONG KONG: Vietnam is arming its expanding submarine fleet with land attack missiles that could be capable of reaching Chinese coastal cities, a choice of weapon likely to be seen as provocative by China in the ongoing South China Sea dispute. The independent Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) recently updated data on its website to show Vietnam's acquisition of the Russian-made land attack variant of the Klub missile for its state-of-the-art Kilo attack submarines. SIPRI arms researcher Siemon Wezeman said the entry was based on an earlier but little-noticed filing Vietnam made last year to the United Nations' register...