Refugees

FORT WAYNE, Ind. - Eight thousand miles separate southeast Asia from the American Midwest, but when Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi visits an Indiana city on Tuesday, it will be a kind of homecoming. Fort Wayne, home to one of the United States' largest Burmese populations, has become an unlikely base for opposition to the country's former military regime. Here, Suu Kyi's followers meet regularly, criticizing what's happening in their homeland through Voice of America broadcasts and YouTube videos, lobbying Congress for continued economic sanctions, and raising money for the opposition in Myanmar, also known as Burma.

ISTANBUL, Turkey - About 58 people drowned when a fishing boat carrying migrants whom smugglers had promised refuge in Europe sank after hitting rocks off the coast of western Turkey, officials said Thursday. Nine children were among the dead, according to Turkey's Dogan News Agency. Several dozen survivors, mostly from Iraq and Syria, were able to swim through the Aegean waters to shore, only 160 feet away. Survivors had told authorities that some people were trapped below the deck of the submerged vessel, and divers launched an operation to try to find them.

Three astronauts back from station ALMATY, Kazakhstan - A Soyuz space capsule carrying two Russians and an American touched down safely Friday on the sweeping steppes of central Kazakhstan, ending the men's 163-day stay on the International Space Station. Anton Shkaplerov, Anatoly Ivanishin, and NASA's Daniel Burbank returned to Earth as the Russian-made module landed on schedule at a remote site north of Arkalyk. - AP Denmark nabs 3; terror plot alleged COPENHAGEN, Denmark - Three men have been arrested in Copenhagen on suspicion of plotting a terror attack after police found them with automatic weapons and ammunition, Denmark's intelligence service said Friday.

The Asylum Co. was formed in April 1794 by U.S. Sen. Robert Morris and John Nicholson, Pennsylvania's comptroller general, to develop and sell lands in northeastern Pennsylvania. They recognized an opportunity to benefit from the emigration of the French fleeing the threat of the guillotine during the revolution there. About 1,600 acres on the north branch of the Susquehanna River, near present Towanda in Bradford County, were acquired for Azilum or Asylum. This area, known to the Indians as Missicum, the "Meadows," became a haven for the French émigrés.

On a recent morning, a small group of refugees from Bhutan proudly pointed to a laptop screen displaying photos they had taken of Philadelphia, their new home. Karna Karki had taken pictures of a Hindu priest, seated on the floor with an array of bowls and a flame that symbolized life before him, part of a naming ceremony for a new baby. He also snapped a solemn group in the midst of 13 days of mourning. The dominant Buddhist culture in Bhutan had tried to extinguish such rituals, Karki, 41, said with the help of a fuzzy interpreter on a cellphone speaker.

AREN, A TRANSGENDER refugee from Iran, was in a library in Northeast Philly last year when something surprising caught his eye: The Philadelphia Gay News . "I've never seen a newspaper that's gay," he recalled the other day. "I think, 'Wow! They are so free [in the U.S.].' " Aren, 24, who did not want his last name published, is one of the first four refugees classified as lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender (LGBT) who have been resettled in Philadelphia by the Nationalities Service Center, the city's largest refugee-resettlement agency.

Rescuing refugees fleeing homelands rent by war, natural disaster, and repression is a lofty American tradition - one that since 1980 has given more than 3 million of the world's most vulnerable immigrants passage to a new life. Delivered from teeming camps, they land in the United States with few possessions, meager job skills, and problems with English. They also arrive with the little-known obligation to repay Washington for their airfare. In the land of the free, they are instant debtors.

It is just past 8 a.m., and the refugees are lining up on a narrow street in South Philadelphia. Within the hour, almost 100 arrive. Men in woolen earflap beanies, lumberjack shirts, and hoodies. Women in shawls, sari pants, and sandals. Toddlers on tiptoes clutching their mothers' hands. All the faces, Asian. Suddenly, a pickup laden with 800 pounds of fresh fruit rounds the corner, quieting the bustle. For a moment, the only sound is the rustle of white plastic bags waiting to be filled.

WADI KHALID, Lebanon - On the Lebanon-Syria border, Syrian refugees scoffed Sunday at the idea of a referendum on a new constitution proposed by President Bashar al-Assad. "Homs is completely destroyed," said Firas, 25, who left Syria five months ago. "Who is voting? [Assad] is telling lies to himself. Everyone around the world knows it's a big lie. " Firas asked that his last name be withheld because he still has family in Homs, Syria's third largest city. Homs has become the center of the year-old rebellion against Assad's government.

Wallingford's lush hills are a world apart from the arid Horn of Africa. But a trim stone Tudor in the Delaware County suburb is a humming hub of help for refugees from one of the world's most repressive regimes. Since the birth of Eritrea as a nation in 1993, more than 200,000 of its people have fled the dictatorship of President Isaias Afewerki. Under his government, Human Rights Watch monitors say, "arbitrary arrests, torture, and forced labor are rampant. " Something had to be done to make this stop, John Stauffer resolved.