Vietnam

On summer nights in the mid-1960s, while black-and-white television crackled elsewhere in his Staten Island home with news of Southern violence and Vietnam, Bobby Lasnik would stretch out in his bedroom to let the righteous soundtrack of the civil rights movement waft into his impressionable teenage soul. Tuned in to WBAI-FM, coming across the water from Manhattan, he heard baleful laments about injustice that he would carry with him for a lifetime. "Suddenly there was someone speaking a certain kind of truth to you. You'd say, 'Wow!

Southwest Chamber Music's L.A. International New Music Festival is more a Los Angeles interstitial new music festival. Skirting touristy Europe, these Southwesterners are not interested in inclusiveness but in filling gaps that very much need filling. Monday's installment, the third of the festival's four concerts at the Colburn School's Zipper Concert Hall, did feature two admired L.A. composers who do not lack local institutional attention. Anne LeBaron, on the faculty at CalArts, happens to be the local composer of the moment with her breathtaking opera "Crescent City" currently in production and a piece on the Los Angeles Philharmonic's opening Hollywood Bowl concert in July.

To U.S. officials, a new pact announced this week with Vietnam, allowing the government to deport illegal immigrants, was almost routine -- a straightforward matter of treating Vietnam like other nations. But for many among the tens of thousands of immigrants in Orange County, the nation's largest Vietnamese population center, nothing about their homeland is routine.

You can fly to Ho Chi Minh City, the former Saigon, round trip from LAX for $995, including all taxes and fees, on Asiana from late summer into fall. The fare, subject to availability, is for travel any day of the week between Sept. 1 and Nov. 30. Info: Asiana , (800) 227-4262 Source: Airfarewatchdog

"Vietnam in HD" is History's three-night follow-up to "WWII in HD," which ran, also in commemoration of Veterans Day, two years ago. While it goes out of its way to cast these soldiers as the heroic equals, if not betters, of their "Greatest Generation" counterparts, the series does not have the same impact — mainly because these images, though at times awful and upsetting, are also much more familiar. Unlike World War II, Vietnam was documented in living color, first by journalists covering it and then by filmmakers attempting to make sense of it. Never before had a war been so well chronicled by so many, flooding the living rooms of Americans day after day, year after year, with sweaty, grim-faced men fighting their way through the jungle, the barrage of artillery, the fiery vomit of flamethrowers and the endless pitiful streams of refugees.

'Vietnam in HD' Where: History When: 9 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday Rating: TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children)

Overheard: What's the difference between Dan Quayle, Bill Clinton and Jane Fonda? Jane went to Vietnam. PAUL FULLER, Rancho Palos Verdes

Recently, after Afghan militants unleashed sophisticated, synchronized attacks across Afghanistan, including in the capital, Kabul, the Pentagon was quick to emphasize what hadn't happened. "I'm not minimizing the seriousness of this, but this was in no way akin to the Tet offensive," said George Little, the Pentagon's top spokesman. "We are looking at suicide bombers, RPG [rocket-propelled grenade], mortar fire, etc. This was not a large-scale offensive sweeping into Kabul or other parts of the country.

Twenty years ago, Asia Transpacific Journeys started a tour to Vietnam , Laos and Cambodia under the unifying theme Passage to Indochina. The trip has become the company's most popular small-group tour. "We pioneered this combination of activities when these countries were just opening their borders," Marilyn Downing Staff, founder and president of Asia Transpacific, says in a statement. The Passage to Indochina trip takes 17 days to explore the region.

Two Vietnam veterans killed in a motorcycle crash at a veterans' celebration Saturday were traveling 50 mph in opposite directions on the Charlotte Motor Speedway track when they collided, according to a police accident report released Wednesday. One of the veterans may have consumed alcohol prior to the head-on collision, a police spokesman told The Times. "We have some evidence that one of the gentlemen may have been drinking," Concord, N.C., Police Major Allen Overcash said in an interview with The Times.

The weekend celebration at the Charlotte Motor Speedway was intended to honor Vietnam veterans, some of whom arrived on motorcycles. By the time it ended late Saturday, two veterans -- ages 71 and 66 -- were dead. Their motorcycles collided on the racetrack after the Vietnam Veterans Homecoming Celebration had ended. Witnesses told local newspapers that motorcycles were being driven wildly around the track, some in opposite directions, just before the collision.  Two motorcycles collided at one of the steepest banks on the track, killing Thomas Franklin Hollingsworth, 71, of Piedmont, S.C., and Alan Richard Mockus, 66, of Alto, Ga. Mockus' wife, Deborah Lynn Mockus, who was riding on the back of his motorcycle, was badly injured.

The man suspected of killing five people in a San Francisco home Friday was ordered to be deported six years ago, but remained in the United States when his native country of Vietnam refused to cooperate, authorities said Monday. Binh Thai Luc, 35, of San Francisco was arrested Sunday, two days after the bodies of three women and two men were discovered in an Ingleside district home. On Monday, officials revealed that Luc had been taken into U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in August 2006 after he completed an eight-year prison sentence for assault and attempted robbery.

Harry C. McPherson Jr., who served as special counsel and chief speechwriter for President Lyndon Johnson from 1966 to '69 and was a valued advisor to the president on civil rights, the Vietnam War and other policy issues, has died. He was 82. McPherson, who later became a prominent Washington lawyer and lobbyist, died Feb. 16 of complications of cancer at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Md., said Hedrick Smith, a family friend. "Harry McPherson was a 'can do' man with sound judgment and treasured loyalty who could be counted on by generations of Johnsons," Luci Baines Johnson, the president's youngest daughter, said in a statement.

  Brothers Manuel and Valente Valenzuela still don their dress blue military uniforms with the ramrod-straight posture from their Vietnam War days. Manuel, a former Marine, carried out rescue missions. Valente, an Army soldier, was wounded and received a Bronze Star. The brothers, both in their 60s, are now waging a legal battle against an unexpected foe: the U.S. government. They are trying to stop the country they served from deporting them to Mexico. On Saturday, they took their protest to the U.S.-Mexico border, where they marched in a demonstration that mixed solemn defiance with unabashed patriotism.

Richard Threlkeld, a former CBS and ABC correspondent who covered the fall of Saigon and helped establish the CBS "Sunday Morning" show with weekly stories that showcased his prodigious energy and incisive writing, died Friday in a car crash on Long Island, N.Y. He was 74. Threlkeld was driving his 2008 Mini Cooper in Amagansett when he collided with a propane tanker, according to the East Hampton Police Department. He was pronounced dead at Southampton Hospital, not far from his home in East Hampton.