Laos

For conservation biologists like Robbert Timmins, an early-morning walk through a Laotian fresh-food market is a quick way to survey the wildlife in the surrounding forest. "The Lao eat pretty much anything they find," he said. In February 1996, he spotted what appeared to be two dead squirrels amid the vegetables. "I picked them up and realized they were something pretty special," he said. Struck by their short, hairy tails, stubby legs, long faces and dark, mane-like neck fur, he bought them for a few cents.

I call them ghost hunters, people searching for a long-lost someone - a parent who gave them up for adoption, an uncle who disappeared over the Himalayas, a son declared MIA near the Xe Pon River in Laos. A few times each year, I get a phone call or a letter asking for help in settling a mystery or making a connection. One time, it was the mayor of a French village seeking the Baltimore relatives of an American soldier who had been killed in its liberation in 1944. Sometimes, there's a crime involved, real or suspected - a daughter believed to have been abducted, or a son stabbed to death on his way home from a barroom, his killer still at large.

VIENTIANE, Laos - The communist government of this hapless, landlocked country set a lofty goal for the year 2000: attract 1 million visitors with its "Visit Laos Year" initiative. But 2000 turned into a disaster on every level, and even optimists believe Laos will need far more than a year to undo a generation of mismanagement. With the government gridlocked and riven by political squabbles, the situation grew so serious this year that President Khamtai Siphandon warned senior officials in August that the country could disintegrate unless rival factions resolved their differences.

I'm planning a trip to Italy to visit Venice and Florence with my daughter. She is a glass blower and would like to take a factory tour and a class or workshop. Can you help us with ideas? You and your daughter will enjoy Venice and the island of Murano, famous for its glass-blowing artisans. Neither we nor the Italian Tourist Office were able to find classes for your daughter, but she'll get to watch craftsmen at work on Murano. Many factories are connected to glassware shops and are open to the public.

WASHINGTON -- Two former secretaries of defense under Richard M. Nixon testified yesterday that the U.S. government believed in 1973 that many U.S. airmen remained in enemy hands in Laos and were not returned with other prisoners at the end of the Vietnam War, despite Mr. Nixon's public assurances to the contrary."

VIENTIANE, Laos - A brutal clash is brewing between Laos' Communist rulers and ethnic Hmong insurgents over government plans to force people from mountain villages to other areas of the country. The Hmong fighters - remnants of a guerrilla army trained by the CIA during the Vietnam War - have been battling the government since the Communists took over in 1975 and the CIA pulled out of Laos. But the guerrillas have intensified their campaign lately as Laos' secretive regime, dominated by ethnic Lao, has tightened control of the country, partly through its unpopular transmigration policy.

HONOLULU - Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean, expressing gratitude for the conclusion of a sorrowful personal saga, observed the return yesterday of remains believed to be those of his younger brother, who vanished 29 years ago in Southeast Asia. Dean's brother Charles perished after being captured by Pathet Lao forces while traveling in Laos in 1974. In a brief statement to reporters at Hickam Air Force Base, a somber Dean called his brother "a person of deep principle who lived his life the way he believed it ought to be lived."

HOUSTON - Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean confirmed yesterday that a joint U.S.-Laotian task force has likely discovered the remains of his younger brother Charles, who was kidnapped and slain while traveling through Laos 29 years ago. Dean, who journeyed to Southeast Asia last year to visit the site where it was believed his brother was killed, received the news several days ago. He and his two other brothers told their mother Monday night....

MUANG XAI, Laos - This crossroads town has long been a place where people come from the hills to sell tree bark and bamboo shoots and whatever else they can gather from the jungles of this rugged region. Now it is also a place where young hill tribe girls come to sell sex. As daylight fades, tractor-trailer trucks line up along the main strip. Inside a karaoke club at one of the town's several Chinese hotels, a pretty 14-year- old known only as Noy braces for another night of work. Like everyone else in her Kamu village, Noy had never heard of HIV or AIDS before she arrived in town just 10 days earlier.

WASHINGTON -- A Senate committee investigating the fate of Americans still unaccounted for from the Vietnam War has turned its attention to reports that satellite photography may have picked up messages from prisoners as late as 1988.The panel, the Senate Select Committee on POW-MIA Affairs, plans to hold hearings on this issue Oct. 15 and 16 but has not decided how much will be open to the public, Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., the committee chairman, said yesterday.The committee has been holding closed intelligence briefings on the issue, and many once-classified government documents have been made public.

Narathi Palua is sewing in the tropical sunshine. His long fingers deftly pull a silver needle through the heavy fabric. He is 13, gangly, all legs and arms and neck, but his feet - easily a size 10 - anchor his frame and portend a growth spurt. He could be riding his bike through the overgrown paths of the surrounding jungle or collecting crabs in the cool waters of the Yom River. Instead, he is making an American quilt likely destined for Lancaster County, Pa. In Narathi's village of Ban Pa Deang, quilts spill from the open doorways of homes, women drive by on motor scooters clutching rolled-up quilts wrapped in clear plastic, and porches have been converted to outdoor sewing rooms where scraps of fabric litter the tiled floors like a calico snowstorm.

A rodent that scientists once branded as an entirely new variety of animal has turned out to be a really old one. Laonastes aenigmamus looked like something new when conservation biologists spotted it in a Laotian open-air food market last year. Laotians like to roast the animal, which looks like a squirrel and measures 16 inches from nose to tail. The researchers sent 15 specimens to the Natural History Museum in London, where experts compared the skulls, teeth, bones and its DNA profile with those of known rodents.

After two rounds of sunset cocktails at a quiet bar outside Chiang Mai, Thailand, my friends and I were eager to explore the placid rural vista we'd been gazing upon all evening: Below us was a rice paddy that led down to a sprawling pond, beyond which lay a stand of tall, red-flowering trees through which we could see the twinkling lights of traditional northern Thai houses. But as we got up and made for the little wooden walkway that led across the water, a waitress deftly blocked us. It might be better if we came back tomorrow, she suggested.

For conservation biologists like Robbert Timmins, an early-morning walk through a Laotian fresh-food market is a quick way to survey the wildlife in the surrounding forest. "The Lao eat pretty much anything they find," he said. In February 1996, he spotted what appeared to be two dead squirrels amid the vegetables. "I picked them up and realized they were something pretty special," he said. Struck by their short, hairy tails, stubby legs, long faces and dark, mane-like neck fur, he bought them for a few cents.

MUANG XAI, Laos - This crossroads town has long been a place where people come from the hills to sell tree bark and bamboo shoots and whatever else they can gather from the jungles of this rugged region. Now it is also a place where young hill tribe girls come to sell sex. As daylight fades, tractor-trailer trucks line up along the main strip. Inside a karaoke club at one of the town's several Chinese hotels, a pretty 14-year- old known only as Noy braces for another night of work. Like everyone else in her Kamu village, Noy had never heard of HIV or AIDS before she arrived in town just 10 days earlier.

HONOLULU - Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean, expressing gratitude for the conclusion of a sorrowful personal saga, observed the return yesterday of remains believed to be those of his younger brother, who vanished 29 years ago in Southeast Asia. Dean's brother Charles perished after being captured by Pathet Lao forces while traveling in Laos in 1974. In a brief statement to reporters at Hickam Air Force Base, a somber Dean called his brother "a person of deep principle who lived his life the way he believed it ought to be lived."

The Keosombath family arrived at BWI airport on a wet winter day in 1980, nothing but sandals on their feet, on the last leg of a perilous five-year journey from war-torn Laos.The weather was identical on Wednesday afternoon when Oudom Keosombath, 52, his wife, Chanh, 50, and a Westminster man, Francis William Meyers, 60, died in a car accident on Route 140 in Westminster.Two of the Keosombaths' daughters were seriously injured and remained in the Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore yesterday.

WAT THAM KRABOK, Thailand -- They have no nation to call home. They live in constant fear the Thai government will deport them to Laos, their former homeland. But they do have one powerful man in their corner.For the 15,000 Hmong illegally squatting on the back 40 acres of Wat Tham Krabok, a Buddhist temple, the powers of the abbot have kept the Thai government at bay -- so far.The abbot has turned his temple into Thailand's major sanctuary for people unable or unwilling to qualify for U.S. political asylum.

HOUSTON - Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean confirmed yesterday that a joint U.S.-Laotian task force has likely discovered the remains of his younger brother Charles, who was kidnapped and slain while traveling through Laos 29 years ago. Dean, who journeyed to Southeast Asia last year to visit the site where it was believed his brother was killed, received the news several days ago. He and his two other brothers told their mother Monday night....

An investigative reporter's attempt to discredit Dr. Thomas Dooley's work in Laos is the subject of Gene Gately's OK, OK, a Baltimore Playwrights Festival production opening tonight at Fell's Point Corner Theatre. A former CIA official who worked for Newsweek in Asia and co-founded The Asia Magazine in Hong Kong earlier in his career, Gately based OK, OK on his own experiences. Kwame J. Kenyatta-Bey directs a cast headed by Rich Thurfield as the reporter and also featuring Froilan Mate, Donald Owens, G. Scott Spence and Samantha Yon. Show times at Fell's Point Corner, 251 S. Ann St., are 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays and 7 p.m. Sundays, through Aug. 18. Tickets are $11 and $12. Call 410-276-7837.