US President Barack Obama lifted a decades-old arms export embargo for Vietnam during his first visit to the communist country today, looking to bolster a government seen as a crucial, though flawed partner even as he pushes for better human rights from the one-party state.

 

Underlying public outrage is fuelled by the fact only some, can put their money beyond reach, writes Gerard Howlin

Ryle Dwyer looks at the legacy of destruction and chaos left behind by former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger and the lessons it has for us today 

The photo of a dead 3-year-old Syrian boy on a Turkish beach captures everything we don’t want to see when we tap our phones or open our newspapers: a vicious civil war, a surge of refugees, the death of an innocent. 

Ricki and the Flash (12A) opens with rock ‘n’ roll singer Ricki (Meryl Streep) addressing her adoring audience from the stage, 

He stands in the northbound lane of Vietnam’s Highway 1, traffic swirling around him, horns honking.

Fruity-coloured glass is a great foil for neutral spaces. 

Today is the last day to get health insurance before the Lifetime Community Rating system kicks in at midnight, a passenger has been fined after a plane was forced to dump 20 tonnes of fuel to make an emergency landing and Roddy Doyle has his say on the upcoming Marriage Equality Referendum. These are some of the latest and most read news on irishexaminer.com this lunchtime.

Robert Higgins reflects on the fall of Saigon 40 years ago today to communist North Vietnam. While views are divided, for most in Vietnam, reunification of the country has been a good thing

Everyone knows James Bond drives an Aston Martin. But the cars in the next Bond film are going to make the Bond villains as cool as 007 himself.

Gourmet tours are cropping up all over the globe, tying food and travel more closely together than ever. It’s time to tuck in, says Pól Ó Conghaile.

IT’S not easy to find a turkey dinner in Hanoi, but a handful of Americans and their Vietnamese friends gathered on Thanksgiving over an imported bird cooked for them at a fancy restaurant in the capital’s old quarter, and they gave thanks.

Vo Nguyen Giap, the brilliant and ruthless self-taught general who drove the French out of Vietnam to free it from colonial rule and later forced the Americans to abandon their effort to save the country from communism, has died.

THE YEAR 1963 was a momentous one.

Based on Tony Briggs’s 2004 stage play, ‘The Sapphires’ is a crowd-pleasing, feel-good comedy about four sisters who discovered their voices while entertaining troops in Vietnam.

It wasn’t quite the last chopper out of Saigon but there was a strange feeling of sombreness as I left the media centre at Ireland’s training base in Gdynia, alone, and for the last time.

It was a chilling photograph that came to symbolise the horrors of the Vietnam War and ultimately helped end it.

In the picture, the girl will always be nine years old and wailing “Too hot! Too hot!” as she runs down the road away from her burning Vietnamese village.

In the picture, the girl will always be nine years old and wailing “Too hot! Too hot!” as she runs down the road away from her burning Vietnamese village.

UPGRADE DEALS ON HOLIDAYS TO TURKEY

James Toller has booked Johnny Murtagh to ride his star performer Saigon in the Emaar Middle Park Stakes at Newmarket on Saturday.

ALAN McCabe is confident his star juvenile Caspar Netscher remains at the peak of his powers ahead of the Dubai Duty Free Mill Reef Stakes at Newbury today.

RICE BOAT TRIP TO KERALA FROM €800

LYON’S airport is called after one of that city’s most famous sons.

A treat for all senses awaits customers at the Everglades Hotel in Derry with the Sizzle, Sip and Stay Package. There is a package available from £55 up to August 31.

After nearly five decades of singing about a war that continues to haunt a generation of Americans, legendary performer Bob Dylan is finally getting his chance to see Vietnam at peace.

WHEN I was 15-years-old or so I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to go on a school trip to Barcelona.

American Vietnam war veterans have helped locate the mass grave of 81 North Vietnamese troops killed in battle more than 40 years ago.

Richard Holbrooke, a long-time US diplomat who was the architect of the 1995 Bosnia peace plan and served as President Barack Obama's special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, has died at the age of 69, an administration official said.

TURKEY attracted more than 90,000 visitors from Ireland this year, and Sunworld Holidays has just launched the most extensive holiday programme ever from Ireland.

A mass grave was found containing the remains of 47 communist commandos killed during the Vietnam War, an official said today.

AS the media were reporting here on the finding of the Saville Inquiry into the events in Derry on Bloody Sunday in January 1972, I was in the American Military Cemetery in Luxembourg, where 5,075 American soldiers and one American nurse were buried. All were victims of the Second World War.

A joint US-Vietnamese action plan today put a $300m (€244m) price tag on the most contentious legacy still tainting relations between the two countries – Agent Orange.

YESTERDAY’s alcohol ban in central Bari, only lifted after last night’s match in the San Nicola Stadium, was about as futile and comical an exercise as one high-profile but uncapped League of Ireland player’s announcement of his retirement from international football a couple of seasons ago.

That the ordination of three priests in Dublin would make news would seem to be news in itself.

The Olympic torch was paraded through the streets of Vietnam’s largest city to cheers from thousands of onlookers today, marking the final leg of an international tour that has been dogged by protests against China.

Senior Russian defense ministry official Vladimir Shamanov said today that more US troops in Iraq “won’t be able to radically change the situation with ensuring peace and security".

Vietnam is expected to release more than 10,000 prisoners under a presidential amnesty to mark the country’s Independence Day, an official said today.

IT’S considered bad form to speak ill of the dead, but I must make an exception regarding US Army General William Westmoreland, who passed away at the age of 91 on July 18.