With the obituaries written the analysis can start. The perfect spy and self-effacing journalist Pham Xuan An stood among the most controversial media figures of the 20th century for his dual roles played out during the tumultuous years of the Vietnam War. An was a highly decorated journalist for some of the most prominent American news magazines. But in secret, he was also a senior officer and espionage agent for the Vietnamese Communists and his undercover work was vital to their war strategy. He died Sept. 20 after a long battle with emphysema in the former Saigon at the age [...]
BANGKOK, Thailand — The curiously named Caravan of the Poor, former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s own version of Nazi brownshirts who intimidated anti-government demonstrators on the streets of Bangkok earlier this year, has evaporated in the week following Thailand’s coup. Instead, smiling mothers photograph their plastic gun-toting sons who pester to be lifted onto tanks parked in the capital’s streets. Newly married couples choose a backdrop of the flower-festooned armored vehicles instead of the royal palace or a historic temple to commemorate their special day on film. But the calm and the lack of combatants comes at too high [...]
NEW DELHI — The recent seizure here of massive shipments of illegal Ephedrine and the highly addictive sedative Mandrax, as well as the June capture in Mumbai of a container packed with some $100 million worth of cocaine, spotlights the rise of illicit drug abuse and the burgeoning drug trade in South Asia — especially in India. Over the past year and a half alone, authorities say an estimated 216 kilograms of cocaine, more than 600 kilos of Ephedrine, 247 kilos of heroin and 4,400 kilos of Mandrax have been seized in India, the major portion captured in New Delhi [...]
