Thursday, September 26th, 2013

In Myanmar Outpost, a Fading Orwellian Link

KATHA, Myanmar — George Orwell created his first novel, “Burmese Days,” a scathing portrait of the imperious attitudes of the British, from this former colonial outpost on the banks of the mighty Irrawaddy River. His brutish characters swilled too much whiskey at a whites-only club, and wilted in the vaporous heat. A train that crawled through the jungle from Mandalay… [Read Full Article]

Monday, September 23th, 2013

Do you know what happened to the girl in this iconic Pulitzer prize winning photo from the Vietnam War?

8 June 1972, a plane bombed the village of Trang Bang, near Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) in South Vietnam after the South Vietnamese pilot mistook a group of civilians leaving the temple for enemy troops.The bombs contained napalm, a highly flammable fuel, which killed and badly burned the people on the ground.The iconic black-and-white image taken of children… [Read Full Article]

Saturday, September 21th, 2013

Vietnam Legacy: Finding G.I. Fathers, and Children Left Behind

SALTILLO, Miss. — Soon after he departed Vietnam in 1970, Specialist James Copeland received a letter from his Vietnamese girlfriend. She was pregnant, she wrote, and he was the father.He re-enlisted, hoping to be sent back. But the Army was drawing down and kept him stateside. By the time Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese in 1975, he had lost… [Read Full Article]

Thursday, September 12th, 2013

13 moments of culture shock for the first-time American traveler

MY FIRST TIME ABROAD, I knew things were going to be different the moment I saw my European host dad strip down to a speedo tighter than my bikini bottoms and dive into the Baltic Sea. Cultural differences will surprise you, but you have to learn to live with them to enjoy traveling.When you realize you’re not as smart as… [Read Full Article]

Monday, September 09th, 2013

California Students Document the Aftermath of the U.S. “Secret War” in Laos

Bomb craters create stagnant ponds, often harboringwater-born diseases, in Laotian farming villages.In spring of 2013, a group of 13 aspiring video journalists from Harvard-Westlake School in Studio City, California, spent ten adventurous days in Laos immersing themselves in the culture, volunteering at preschools, and interviewing cluster bomb victims. Forty years earlier, the U.S. military ceased its air war in Southeast Asia, but… [Read Full Article]