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NEWS ROUNDUP January 2014

Jan2014News

01/30/14
MAG clears land for Vietnamese pepper farmers

MAG and Roots of Peace collaborate on a sustainable agriculture project that helps impoverished farmers in Quang Tri province grow pepper as a commercial crop. Read the full story from Reuters here.

01/26/14
Hand grenade kills 6 kids in Pakistan

Six children of displaced families from a tribal region of northwestern Pakistan, near the Afghan border, were killed when they found a hand grenade while playing in a field. Read more in the Washington Post.

 

01/21/14
US Clearance Funding to Laos Reaches All-Time High

The recent spending bill passed by Congress includes $12 million earmarked for bomb clearance, victim assistance and education, according to Legacies of War. Read more here.

 

01/17/14
UXO Found on Solomon Islands

Thirty-two unexploded bombs have been found in the past two months in clearance operations at west Guadalcanal. Via Threat Resolution Limited. Read more here.

 

01/15/14
UXO Blast Kills 3 Lao Teens

Several school boys in Bolikhamxay province were playing near an irrigation ditch when an explosion killed one at the scene. Two others died in the hospital, and three others were injured. Via the Vientiane Times. Read more here.

 

01/09/14
Clearance Workers Destroy Ordnance in Azerbaijan

465 items of UXO and 4 antitank mines were found and destroyed during December clearance operations in Azerbaijan, according to the Azerbaijan National Agency for Mine Action. Via APA. Read more here.

Storms Uncover World War II shells in Brittany

Clearance teams destroyed roughly 100 German shells found on a popular beach, where weather frequently exposes UXO. Via Threat Resolution Limited. For more news on World War II UXO and clearance, read more here.

 

 

 

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Pumpkin Crisps – Rambling Spoon blog

By Karen J. Coates / Photo by Jerry Redfern
Oct. 22, 2007
Rambling Spoon

USA bomb

We sit near the Nam Phu fountain, eating a snack of fresh yogurt and sweet pumpkin chips with sesame. A man named Khampa takes a seat beside us. He begs us for food, then money. He has traveled to Vientiane from Savannakhet, presumably to make some money. I hand him the bag of pumpkin crisps and he clasps it with his upper arms.

Khampa has no lower arms. His right eye is botched, and he has scars on his neck. His right arm is cut clean, but the left is split in two. We ask him what happened, and he raises his shoulders.

“Pow! American,” he says.

Leuk la but?” I ask. Was it a bomb?

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, OK,” he says, then continues his story in a quick, long string of Lao that I cannot fully understand. But it’s clear he is one of the country’s thousands of UXO victims, maimed long after the United States stopped pummeling the Laotian landscape with bombs. READ MORE