Hanoi

France may not be winning the race for the business and labor of Vietnam, but the U.S. is losing it. French President Francois Mitterrand's visit to Hanoi, the first by a Western leader since unification of the country in 1975, gives French businessmen he brought along a big advantage.France has recognized Vietnam since 1989. Mr. Mitterrand lectured his Communist hosts on civil liberties and democracy, but promised to work to end the U.S. embargo, which translates as a boycott by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Remember last week on "The Amazing Race," when John had a few extended moments of crazy and got eliminated? That's still funny. But now it is time for the teams to leave Bali and head to Vietnam. "Word on the street," tweets Phil, "is that Hotel California by the Eagles is the #1 karaoke song in Vietnam. "   What happens at the travel agency stays at the travel agency Father and Son Dave and Connor are planning to leave the Race. Dave's surgeon at home has recommended surgery within seven days, so they plan to fly to Hanoi and be eliminated.

Americans can rejoice that President Bush is "convinced that we can begin writing the last chapter of the Vietnam war."This is likely to lead to closing the book on Americans missing in action from the Indochinese war. It can also lead to increased American trade with Vietnam, both to hasten its liberation from communism and to give American firms a fair shot at the market. And, finally, it opens the way to diplomatic relations, which should help the Cambodian settlement bring peace at last to Southeast Asia.

Ducklings huddle in complete cuteness at an incubating farm outside Hanoi.

The unofficial report that Assistant Secretary of State Winston Lord is about to make that recommends ending trade sanctions on Vietnam looks like a trial balloon. Veterans groups and families of MIAs are gearing to fight it. The largest U.S. search party ever, 84 American specialists in four teams, is spending 23 days in Vietnam searching for evidence of MIAs. This, following Mr. Lord's satisfaction with Hanoi's cooperation last year, looks like the preparation of American opinion for ending the boycott and even resuming diplomatic relations.

WASHINGTON -- Three U.S. senators, back from a 10-day trip to Southeast Asia, formally called on the Bush administration to "reward" Vietnam for its unprecedented collaboration in the U.S. search for servicemen missing during the Vietnam War.Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.; Sen. Hank Brown, R-Colo.; and Sen. Robert C. Smith, R-N.H., stopped short of calling for full normalization of relations. But they warned yesterday that failure to provide incentives, such as easing a 17-year-old U.S. embargo, might "set back" the current trend of cooperation by Vietnamese authorities.

EA International Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Baltimore-based EA Engineering, Science and Technology Inc., said yesterday that it has established a strategic alliance with Hai Duong Co. Ltd., of Hanoi, Vietnam.Hai Duong provides a full range of environmental services, including irrigation, environmental design and solid-waste management.Officials at EA Engineering said the companies will function as partners in Vietnam, providing each other with support on several projects and widening the spectrum for the multinational clients of both firms.

WASHINGTON -- It was Lyndon B. Johnson's war, though the initial commitments were made by John F. Kennedy. The peace, such as it was, was the handiwork of Richard M. Nixon, but that was tainted by the stench of defeat.Now, irony of ironies, fate has chosen Bill Clinton to lead the nation in consigning the whole sad, ugly ordeal to the dim recesses of memory -- the same Bill Clinton who, like Dan Quayle and many other privileged members of his generation, managed to avoid service in the rice paddies of the Mekong Delta or the jungles of the Central Highlands, on the carriers in the Gulf of Tonkin or the choppers of the 1st Cavalry Division.

HANOI -- Vietnam's year of the tourist may soon be upon us.With progress being made on the emotional issue of Americans missing in action, we may soon see a lifting of the economic embargo that the United States imposed after the Vietnam War, and, within the next 12 months, the opening of an American embassy in this beautiful capital of tree-lined avenues and temples rising from limpid lakes.And with a Cambodian peace settlement in the making, the wars that have racked Indochina for the past half-century may be finally coming to a close.

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is preparing to move toward normal U.S. relations with Vietnam before Inauguration Day in January, according to Washington-based diplomats and Indochina specialists."

TED SAMPLEY, 62 Vietnam veteran, activist for POWs Ted Sampley, a Vietnam War veteran and former member of the Green Berets who was a persistent activist for American prisoners of war and missing servicemen, and who later led smear campaigns against presidential candidates, died Tuesday at the VA Medical Center in Durham, N.C., of complications from heart surgery. Mr. Sampley was a founder of Rolling Thunder, the annual motorcycle caravan that raises money for POW/MIA causes. In 1994, he presented evidence that the Vietnam-era remains in the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery were not anonymous after all. By painstakingly analyzing service records and maps, he concluded that the remains were those of a missing pilot, Air Force Lt. Michael Blassie, who was shot down in 1972.

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam - Intel's billion-dollar Vietnam bet along the Hanoi Highway - its biggest semiconductor manufacturing plant ever - is rising from the flatlands of former rice fields. The Santa Clara, Calif., chip giant jolted the tech world two years ago when it announced it would build a huge assembly factory in this Southeast Asian country known more for making shoes and growing crops than assembling key PC components. Intel Corp. picked Vietnam, a nation of 85 million that lacks a single world-class university, over India, whose army of engineers has reordered the global software industry.

HANOI, Vietnam -- White House officials from President Bush on down bristle at the idea that the Vietnam War, which ended with the United States' evacuation of its embassy in 1975, bears any parallels with the war in Iraq. But as Bush and Vietnamese officials have focused on the future during the president's weekend visit here, that bitter past continues to intrude. Arriving in Hanoi on Friday, the president and first lady Laura Bush were driven by Truc Bach, the lake where in 1967 a young Navy pilot named John McCain was rescued by residents after he bailed out of his A-4 Skyhawk attack aircraft on a bombing run over Hanoi.

HANOI -- Amid powerful reminders of an unpopular war that bedeviled some of his predecessors, President Bush landed in Vietnam yesterday, embracing the former U.S. enemy as a symbol of progress and insisting that its experience holds an important lesson for the unpopular war in Iraq. On a day when he greeted Communist leaders beneath a bronze bust of wartime leader Ho Chi Minh and passed the spot where fellow Republican John McCain was pulled from a lake after his warplane was shot down, Bush said it was "amazing" to be in a country that so tormented the U.S. decades ago. Asked what lessons the war in Vietnam offered for the war in Iraq, Bush's response suggested the need for patience and determination - a nod toward the U.S. decision to abandon Vietnam after a protracted and unsuccessful war there.

HANOI, Vietnam -- Four decades after first visiting as a young congressman at the height of a divisive war, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld toured Vietnam yesterday amid increasingly warming relations between the one-time enemies and made unexpected progress toward improving military relations. U.S. officials had been cautious to lower expectations ahead of Rumsfeld's visit here, particularly given Vietnam's occasionally tense relations with its northern neighbor China. But after meetings with Defense Ministry officials and Prime Minister Phan Van Khai, Pentagon officials emerged upbeat, saying Hanoi appeared eager to deepen defense cooperation, despite the possibility of antagonizing Beijing.

I'd just finished lunch at a dockside cafe in Vietnam's Mekong Delta, south of Saigon, where nothing on the menu - grilled fish, crispy spring rolls or litchi nuts for dessert - prepared me for a startling suggestion of an after-dinner drink. Would I care for some snake liqueur? The smiling waitress, undeterred by what must have been my look of dismay, brought forth a glass jug of rice wine, at the bottom of which was coiled a dead cobra. Hmmm. Was I a man or a mouse? When she assured me this elixir strengthens one's vitality, I meekly sipped a liquid that was viscous, peppery and almost disappointingly sweet.

HANOI, Vietnam -- After opening the first U.S. Embassy on Vietnamese soil in 20 years, Secretary of State Warren Christopher delivered a gentle warning to Vietnam, saying the communist country would only be prosperous when it allowed greater freedom to its citizens and reformed its centralized economy."

HANOI, Vietnam -- The re-establishment of diplomatic relations with Vietnam stands as a watershed in American history. Yet the decision will have little immediate effect on the two countries or on people with business or personal links."

Thirty-one years to the day after Maj. Richard W. Cooper Jr.'s B-52 went down in flames over Hanoi and four of his crew mates were captured, his remains -- finally identified -- were buried yesterday in Arlington National Cemetery. "I still love him, and I miss him," Cooper's sister, Connie Saxton, 63, of Salisbury, said last night. "I think of him very often, but it's particularly sad at this time of the year. He was only two years younger than me, and we were very close." For years, the Salisbury man and one of his crew were listed among the thousands of soldiers missing in Vietnam, leaving friends and family to wonder what had happened after the men's bomber was downed by a surface-to-air missile.