Marine police receives three modern patrol ships

Three more well-equipped ships were handed over to the Vietnam Marine Police to increase their patrol capacity in the country’s territorial waters.

They are able to resist bad weather at sea and transfer data and images to the Vietnam Marine Police’s Information Centre for processing through satellite systems.

The ships will be used for sea patrols to safeguard national sovereignty, protect natural resources, prevent environmental pollution, and deal with violations against sea laws.

They will be used for joint international patrols to strengthen cooperation and maintain safety, order, peace and stability at sea.

At the hand-over ceremony, Deputy Minister of Defence Sen. Lieut. Gen. Nguyen Thanh Cung asked the Vietnam Marine Police to master modern equipment and technology to accomplish assigned tasks.

Canada-invested hospital to take shape in Hai Duong

Canada’s Triple Eye Infrastructure Corporation expects to get the nod in September to build Dai An Vietnam-Canadia International Hospital in the northern province of Hai Duong.

It is waiting for the approval from Canada’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Vietnamese Embassy in Ottawa.

According to the group, the 200-bed hospital will be built in the Dai An Industrial Park at an estimated cost of US$265 million.

Marc Kealey, general director of Triple Eye Infrastructure Corporation, said that the group is negotiating with a Canadian University to provide distance training for hospital staff. It is also planning to bring qualified Canadians doctors to Vietnam.

Foreign medical firms have recently viewed Vietnam as a potential market for long-term investment. In June 2013, Chandler Corporation, a Singapore-based business group that invests in existing companies and builds new ones throughout the world, purchased 80% of Hoan My Hospital’s shares.

Its managing director Martin Robinson said the corporation is seeking new investment opportunities in the country.

Young volunteers experience local mountain life

Twenty Vietnamese and Canadian young people have arrived at Nam Mau commune in the northern mountainous province of Bac Kan, to live and work with local ethnic families.

The home-stay programme, which will last from August 2-November 2, is the result of the cooperation between the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union and the International Organisation for Adolescents.

The young people will assist the local youth union to organise such activities as cleaning up roads and public places, planting trees and helping poor families.

They will also teach English to local children and talk with local people on issues of gender equality, domestic violence and HIV/AIDS.

The programme aims to improve the capacity of volunteers and diversify voluntary activities while bringing the two countries’ young people closer.

24,000 tablets of ecstasy seized in Son La

Customs officers and border guards in the northern border province of Son La caught red handed two strange people transporting 24,000 tablets of ecstasy to Vietnam.

The inspection team stopped two suspect people riding a motorbike from Kim Chung Hamlet to Con Huot Hamlet in Phien Khoai village, to investigate.

Taking advantage of the dark, the two suspects ran away, leaving behind a motorbike, two bike registration plates, and a sport bag with 24,000 tables of ecstasy hidden inside.

This is the biggest Methamphetamine trafficking case found in Son La and the case is still under investigation.

Hanoi honours achievements of home grown students

As many as 123 outstanding students from Hanoi-based universities and academies who achieved the best results in the 2012-2013 academic year were honoured on August 24.

Among the best graduates were many underprivileged students who overcame hardship and difficulties to excel in their study and win prizes at international academic competitions. They were offered a chance to write their names in the Temple of Literature's traditional golden book.

Speaking at the ceremony held at the Temple of Literature, the first university in Vietnam, Secretary of the Hanoi Youth Union Nguyen Thi Nga said the event, the 11th of its kind in the capital city, aimed to encourage local students to enrich their knowledge and make further contributions to national development.

Over the past decade, more than 1,200 outstanding graduates have been presented with certificates of merits by the Hanoi People’s Committee. Many of them have been employed by State organizations and companies in Hanoi, recording excellent achievements in their work.

Pham Thị Thu Hien, one of the honoured students from the Hanoi-based National University, said this is her initial success and she aims to achieve better outcomes for the future.

Hien revealed a plan to pursue further study in Seoul, the Republic of Korea, following a scholarship programme. “I want to study at the new energy faculty of the RoK University of Science and Technology. After three years studying in the RoK, I wish to come back to Vietnam to work and make a practical contribution to my homeland,” she confided.

Vietnam attends ASEAN festival in Canada

Embassies of all ASEAN member countries attended a meeting in Ottawa, Canada, on August 24 to mark the 46th ASEAN founding anniversary.

They took part in friendly volleyball matches, tug of war, and various other sport games, and sampled traditional dishes of every member country, such as Vietnam’s spring rolls, and Indonesia’s gado-gado.

The ASEAN festival, which is held annually from April to August, provides a good opportunity for the member countries to build relations with each other.

Embassies host one sporting event annually on a rotating basis and this year Vietnam organized a traditional game of tug-of-war…

There are seven representative offices of ASEAN member countries in Ottawa, namely Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, the Philippines and Brunei.

Maths institute forges special academic environment

The Vietnam Institute for Advanced Study in Mathematics (VIASM) has successfully created a special academic environment where scientists and university lecturers conceive new ideas and train rising talent, according to its executive director.

Prof. Le Tuan Hoa made the claim at a ceremony in Hanoi on August 24 to review its two-year performance.

Addressing the event, Minister of Science and Technology Nguyen Quan assured that along with the National Key Programme on Maths Development, VIASM is contributing towards a better future for Vietnamese maths.

He said his ministry will prioritise the development of five science-technology fields, including maths research.

Over the past two years, VIASM has drawn 137 researchers, including 40 foreign and overseas Vietnamese mathematicians. It has also published 21 pieces of research in prestigious foreign maths magazines and held 17 short-term training courses.

The institute organised eight conferences and workshops, notably the France-Vietnam maths conference in the central city of Hue and the eighth National Mathematical Congress in the central city of Nha Trang, with some 700 delegates taking part.

A number of scholarships have been awarded to excellent maths students and scientists.

Vietnamese students win Odon Vallet scholarships

As many as 2,188 Odon Vallet scholarships have been granted to Vietnamese students and researchers excelling in their studies.

The August 24 presentation ceremony in Hanoi was attended by Professor Odon Vallet himself, Rencontres Du Vietnam Scientific and Educational Organsation Chairman Professor Tran Thanh Van, and the two Nobel Prize-winning scientists S. Glashow and D. Gross.

The scholarships are worth VND.7.5 million per student and VND12 million per researcher, totalling VND18.8 billion in value.

They have been awarded biannually for the past 13 years with the aim of encouraging young Vietnamese students to overcome any challenges and achieve scholastic success.

Odon Vallet, who inherited 100 million Euros from his late father, is a lecturer at France’s famous Sorbonne University. He is also a renowned philosophical writer, commenting on religious conflicts in the Middle East and South Asia for prestigious Paris newspapers and appearing as an expert on French Television.

Remains of volunteer soldiers repatriated from Cambodia

The Central Highland province of Kon Tum on August 24 reburied 23 sets of remains of volunteer Vietnamese soldiers and specialists who died in Cambodia during wartime.

The remains were gathered by a provincial Military Command mission in Ta Ven district of Cambodia’s Ratanakiri province with assistance from local residents. They were buried in a hillside of a village in the district.

The martyrs were said to be working for a medical military centre based in the Central Highlands during the Vietnam War against American aggression. None of them were unaccounted for.

Volunteer Vietnamese soldiers and specialists were sent to carry out lofty international missions in Cambodia and Laos during the past war, and many of them laid down their lives on the battlefields there.

With assistance from Cambodia and Laos, thousands of the remains were repatriated and reinterred in their home cemeteries.

 Asia-Europe Youth delegation meets Hanoi youngsters

The Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union of Hanoi on August 23 held an exchange with the 33-member Asian-European Youth delegation from Lithuania, Germany, Spain, China and Vietnam.

Participants discussed ways to boost economic growth in parallel with sustainable environmental protection, which is an obvious problem faced by the Southeast Asian nation.

They also talked about support policies for volunteers to encourage their participation in diverse activities to protect the environment.

Earlier on August 21, the delegation made a fact-finding tour of northern Quang Ninh province, where they joined in building wastewater tanks with local farmers, harvesting crops, and guiding farmers to make full use of recycled products.

Mother, daughter die in Da Nang collision

A mother and her 11-year-old daughter were killed, and her three-year-old child wounded in an accident at Hue junction in central Da Nang City yesterday.

The mother, who was travelling with her children on a motorbike, was struck by a concrete mixer truck while travelling on a highway.

The mother, Tran Thi My Le, and her daughter were killed immediately, while the wounded child was taken to hospital. The accident occurred in the morning, causing traffic jams at the junction in the city. Police are still investigating the accident.

Technicians repair underwater gas leak

Technicians yesterday succeeded in attending to a leaking underwater gas pipeline operated by the Nam Con Son Gas Pipeline Company, approximately 300km away from central Vung Tau City's coast.

The company first discovered the leak on Friday afternoon and later dispatched technical staff while co-operating with relevant agencies to inform nearby boats.

The technician reached the offshore area on Saturday evening. The pipeline is now operating normally.

Yen The chicken one of ASEAN's best

"Ga doi Yen The" – chicken from northern Bac Giang Province's Yen The District has been named as one of ASEAN's best foods to be honoured at an event in Singapore next month.

The event aims to recognise entrepreneurs in the ASEAN region contributing to environmental sustainability. Giang Son Trade and Service Joint Stock Company is based in the province and supplies chicken to domestic and international markets.

Last year, "Ga doi Yen The" was honoured as a "trusted product" in a survey by the National Office of Intellectual Property and Intellectual Magazine; in addition to being recognised as a "Capital's Trusted Trademark" by the Ha Noi Association for Science and Technology and the Viet Nam Association for Customer Protection.

Localities dust off books to usher in new academic year

Localities nationwide are ready to welcome pupils and students to the new academic year of 2013-2014 which will kick off September 5.

At a working session with authorities from central Nghe An Province last Friday, Minister of Education and Training Pham Vu Luan urged the province to pay more attention to improving education quality and developing human resources, particularly by providing pre-school universalisation for five-year-old children, raising education quality for mountainous areas and private education and training establishments.

The 2013-14 academic year should focus on enhancing education management efficiency, ensuring enough classes for pupils, renovating education and training; and testing and assessment methods, he said.

Nghe An and other localities should also work to deal with issues such as the increasing rate of children attending schools, building national-standard schools and improving education quality and efficiency.

In the past, Nghe An has succeeded in establishing a network of schools by building at least one nursery school and one primary school for each commune, ward and town.

The province has also worked to renew training methods and apply information technology in education and training.

In HCM City, the municipal Education and Training Department has instructed schools to publicise all fees to prevent over-fee collection.

At a workshop in preparedness for the new school year, department director Pham Ngoc Thanh said the city's policy was aimed to not let any pupils drop from schools because of a financial shortage.

Education promotion associations at schools would work with the municipal Fatherland Front Committee to support disadvantaged pupils, he said.

The department has co-operated with relevant agencies to address urgent issues such as overcrowding at a number of schools, school shortages in some areas and a lack of teachers. The city currently lacks 300 teachers for pre-school education, 500 teachers for primary education and 400 teachers for secondary education.

The city will see around 1.5 million new students attend this academic year at over 1,800 schools.

Central Highlands provinces have actively mobilised and prioritised their resources to build new and upgraded school facilities in rural areas to improve learning conditions for ethnic minority children in the new academic year.

As a result, the total number of general schools and nurseries in the region have increased to 3,132.

The provinces have also paid special attention to consolidating temporary schools and classrooms, spending over VND1.5 trillion (US$71.4 million) since 2008 to upgrade 52,851 classrooms, leaving only 17,179 temporary classrooms in the region.

Dak Lak province is leading the region in the construction of school facilities for children, with an average of 967 new classrooms built every year.

Research laboratories to be opened for audience once a year

The Ministry of Science and Technology has announced that research laboratories throughout the country will be opened to the public for the first time on May 18th next year, Viet Nam's Day of Science and Technology.

The event will mark the 55th anniversary of the ministry's establishment and special science and technology seminars will be organised to celebrate.

There are currently 600 State-owned scientific and technological institutes and about 900 non-State ones. Of these, 300 institutes have laboratories.

The Ministry of Science and Technology said it was going to submit a proposal for the construction of several science-themed amusement parks to make science more attractive to young people.

Minister of Science and Technology Nguyen Quan said the annual Day of Science and Technology would provide a special opportunity for museums to attract more visitors and promote the country's many scientific achievements.

Anti-corruption laws fall short

New laws and regulations aimed at curbing corruption in the public sector have not been effective, heard a conference held in HCM City yesterday.

The conference, organised by the Government Inspectorate, discussed draft strategies on ensuring oversight over the incomes of senior public officials and other regulations aimed at curbing corruption.

Speaking at the conference, Le Tien Hao, deputy head of the Inspectorate, said anti-corruption regulations such as the Personal Income Tax Law and regulations on non-cash payments and gifts in cash given to public officials were difficult to implement.

In particular, the regulation requesting declaration of incomes among public officials was left mostly unimplemented, as there was no mechanism for ensuring accountability or for the inspection of the declared properties, and no specific punitive policies for fraud, said Hao.

Regulations on giving and receiving gifts, in addition, were not practical and lacked specific punitive measures, according to participants at the conference.

Nguyen Quoc Hiep, head of the Inspection Research Institute, stressed the importance of adopting key measures such as limits on cash payments.

The draft strategy on control over the incomes of senior public officials, therefore, proposed a specific regulation stating that payments of VND200 million (US$9,600) or more must be made through bank transactions.

Do Van Duong, member of the Judiciary Committee, said this regulation can be implemented immediately without posing any difficulties.

As requested by the Prime Minister, the Government Inspectorate is working towards the completion of the strategy on oversight over the incomes of senior public officials.

The inspectorate was urged to issue a legal regulation requesting more accountability from those who fail to make genuine declarations of their incomes and to explain the sources of their incomes, plus specifying punishment for false declarations.

Participants at the two-day conference, which closed yesterday, said non-salary incomes of public officials were often collected from different sources, and if not revealed might hide corrupt activities.

Petrol stations shut down for violations

A total of 13 petrol stations are currently suspended from operating in HCM City.

The decision came after an inspection co-coordinated between the municipal police of fire fighting and prevention, the department of trade and industry, Viet Nam Electricity and other authorities.

The investigation recorded 192 violations from a survey of 497 petrol stations. The most common violations included unsound electrical systems and failure to meet current regulations.

More than 6,000 pills seized in Lai Chau

A drug trafficker was caught red-handed on Thursday illegally transporting over 6,000 methamphetamine pills into the northern mountainous province of Lai Chau.

According to police, Mua A Ky, 29, a resident of northern mountainous Son La Province, was arrested at the Khoen On Commune in Lai Chau's Than Uyen District. Ky told police the haul was bought from a Laotian.-

Disadvantaged youths trained for hotel work

Over 30 young people from underprivileged backgrounds began free-of-charge six-month on-site training at five-star hotels in Ha Noi yesterday.

The Youth Career Initiative, financed by REACH centre and participating hotels including InterContinental West Lake and Hanoi Opera, will see the young group aged 18-25 work under senior hotel staff.

The trainees are selected by REACH on the basis of a strong motivation for self-development but with limited or no means to find legitimate employment or to continue their education, either due to poverty or social exclusion.-

Approval given for broadcasting centre

Ha Noi People's Committee chairman Nguyen The Thao has approved a plan to develop a radio and television broadcasting centre on 8.32 hectares of land in suburban Me Tri.

The 11-storey centre will have a 22,000-sq.m monitoring and programme producing area, 8,000-sq.m film studio, 7,000-sq.m theatre, and 5,000-sq.m outdoor stage.

The city's Department for Architecture and Planning will soon publish detailed plans.

At present, Ha Noi Radio–Television Broadcasting has its headquarter in Huynh Thuc Khang Street in inner Dong Da District.

Japanese promote pedal power for poor

The Japan-Viet Nam Friendship Association in Japan's Kawasaki City presented 200 bicycles to poor students in Da Nang's Hoa Vang district yesterday.

This marked the tenth anniversary of the bicycle donation programme begun by association's chairman, Miyahara Haruo in 2003.

It is also the fortieth anniversary of Viet Nam-Japan diplomatic ties.

To date, the association has donated more than 10,000 bicycles, which cost a total of more than VND20 billion (US$950,000).

Poor students from Hoa Vang district alone have received 1,200 bicycles from the programme.

Haruo said Kawasaki City would continue its charity programme in coming years.

VNA/VOV