I covered the fall of Saigon when South Vietnam collapsed and North Vietnamese seized the city. I now ask myself: What was the sense of it all? The author standing on the steps of the former Saigon Opera, which had been converted into the South Vietnamese National...
It was 1963 in London. No one knew it, but we were witnessing the makings of a musical legend. And I wrote the first review of the Rolling Stones. The first review of the Rolling Stones, by News-Decoder correspondent Barry May, published on April 13, 1963 This article...
Fifty years ago in May ’68, angry students and workers brought France to a standstill in a bout of civil unrest that had a whiff of revolution. Students and workers demonstrate during a general strike in Paris, 13 May 1968(AP Photo/Eustache Cardenas) Fifty years...
I covered the Vietnam War as a rookie foreign correspondent in 1966 and 1967. There was death and destruction for sure, but it was not all war. Robert Hart, War zone D, Tay Ninh province, South Vietnam, August 1967(photo courtesy of the author) News-Decoder...
The 1960s were a zeitgeist of anti-establishment values and alternative philosophies, an age of counter-culture, hippies and yippies. I was there. Hippies greet the sunrise in San Francisco, California, 6 October 1967 (AP Photo) News-Decoder correspondents have...
I arrived in Saigon six weeks before North Vietnamese troops captured the South Vietnamese capital. Weeks that marked the end of the Vietnam War. Panicked South Vietnamese fight for space on a plane during evacuation to Saigon after the fall of Qui Nhon to North...
Northern Ireland refused to join Ireland when it won independence in 1922. Could recent elections in the North reopen the question of reunification? A man walks past republican posters decrying a “hard border” between Ireland and Northern Ireland following Brexit,...
I’m puzzled when I read of correspondents who enjoyed in Cuba in the 1960s. I found Havana miserable and oppressive before Castro kicked me out. This is the latest in a series of articles by foreign correspondents who covered Cuba during the reign of Fidel Castro. I...
By François Raitberger I had my first glimpse of Fidel Castro on my very first day in Cuba, and I was fascinated and ridiculed. As the Reuters correspondent I was invited to a reception for an African president in the lush gardens of a state villa in Havana. There I...
Michael Arkus, who covered Fidel Castro — winning a memorable interview while swimming with “El Comandante” — reflects on what might have been. Michael Arkus was a Reuters correspondent in Cuba at the start of Fidel Castro’s rule. He has written a...