Word: mekong
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...sense, he stayed something of a child himself. The frequent bassi (festivals) of his capital and the boat races on the Mekong River were always irresistible, and fishermen rowing by the palace often stopped to listen to the music from the King's khen pipes. But five years ago sickness fell-first rheumatism and then a malignant tumor on the neck. Last August King Sisavang Vong finally turned his duties over to his eldest son, Crown Prince Savang Vatthana, 52. Last week 21 can non volleys thundered over Luangprabang, and the fires in the temples burned all night...
...population can only be guessed at; estimates range from 1,000,-ooo to 4,000,000. Though it possesses two capital cities-Luangprabang for the royal family. Vientiane for the civil government-Laos has no railroad. Except for jungle paths, navigable rivers like the 1,200-mile Mekong, and barely 500 miles of all-weather road, all travel is by plane from rutted airstrips surrounded by tree-clad hills and swamps...
...northern areas, occupied by the Communists until 1957, that the insurgents seemed most determined to conquer. Often, villages were occupied without a fight. In some, families packed hastily and paddled away in dugout canoes, leaving their villages half empty as the terrorists approached. Last week the banks of the Mekong at the royal capital of Luangpra-bang were dotted with bamboo huts built by newly arrived refugees from threatened areas; at week's end Communist bands were stirring up incidents in the vicinity of the royal capital itself...
...also developed in testimony that McNamara and another former ICA official, William E. Kirby, accepted substantial favors in 1957 from a Hong Kong transportation firm that got a $275,000 contract to supply ferryboats for a transport system across the Mekong River, between Thailand and Laos. Kirby later quit ICA and took a job with the company. Until Congress took notice, ICA headquarters in Washington seemed almost indifferent to the shenanigans in Laos, and slow to investigate thoroughly. Representative Porter Hardy Jr. of Virginia, chairman of the subcommittee, last week indignantly suggested abolition of ICA altogether, and a fresh start...
...would believe you can run a newspaper this way," muses Expatriate Berrigan. "But it's the most satisfying work I've ever done." Last week, as he patched up staff quarrels over slugs of mekong (raw, locally made liquor), Berrigan could take consolation from the fact that the World was at least regularly in the black, would soon move into new quarters equipped with two secondhand typesetting Monotype machines...