Spain gives grants for projects

The Spanish Agency for International Development Co-operation (AECID) has approved three grants worth a combined US$3.6 million to assist Viet Nam to to implement projects to address gender inequality, support victims of human trafficking, and improve enforcement of forest conservation laws.

The $2.4 million grant to the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs, to be disbursed through 2014, will fund technical assistance to review and update the Labour Code of Viet Nam to address gender equality challenges in terms of access to employment and income parity.

A $941,600 grant to the Women's Union's Centre for Women's Development will provide technical and financial support over the next two years to ensure the sustainability of the Peace House Shelter, a centre to support women and children who have been victims of human trafficking and their reintegration into the community. The shelter has been a joint initiative of the centre and AECID since 2007.

Finally, a $293,400 grant will assist the forestry department of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development with an innovative project to improve enforcement of forestry protection laws and regulations. The project will also review current legislation and provide recommendations for its improvement.

Over the past five years, the government of Spain has committed funding in excess of $163.8 million to support poverty reduction and socio-economic development programmes in Viet Nam.

Judge caught in hotel with driver’s wife

A judge in Ca Mau Province has been caught red-handed in a hotel room with a xe om’s wife, the chief judge of the provincial People’s Court Truong Van Binh confirmed with VnExpress Newswire on Tuesday.

In a report to the court’s senior officials, Nguyen Thanh Mong, vice manager of the court, admitted that he and Thu (the xe-om’s wife) rented a room at Tan Hai Hotel on the morning of October 7.

They were then caught by the xe-om’s relatives and local residents inside Room no. 3.

The provincial People’s Court has ordered Mong to hand over cases he is in charge of to another, Binh said, adding that the court is handling Mong’s own case.

According to Thu’s mother-in-law, that morning, she saw Thu happily talking to someone over phone.

Thu then wore a tank-top shirt and went out with a bicycle. Being suspicious about her unusual act, the mother and some family members decided to follow her.

When Thu went pass the Ca Mau People’s Court, she stopped and received one more phone call.

A moment later, Nguyen Thanh Mong went out with his motorbike and the duo headed to Tan Hai Hotel, which is about 1 km away from the court.

Thu’s relatives raided the hotel and caught Mong and Thu walk out of their room.

PM inspects flood control in Mekong Delta

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung on October 12 inspected flood prevention and control in the Mekong Delta provinces of An Giang and Dong Thap.

Subsequent floods have so far breached the river embankment system in Tan Chau town and Tan An and Phu Loc communes of An Giang province, threatening local people’s lives and production.

According to provincial authorities, 10 people have been confirmed dead. Nearly 11,000 households have been badly affected and are in dire need of food support. More than 500 households need to be evacuated from the flooded areas.

PM Dung also made a fact-finding tour of Dong Thap’s Hong Ngu district which has been stricken hard by the floods.

He is scheduled to work on measures to overcome the consequences of the natural disaster with local authorities of Mekong Delta provinces in the afternoon.

Inflated air bags caused deadly crash: driver

Tran Anh Huy, the car driver who caused a crash on Ho Chi Minh City’s Ly Thai To Street that killed two people and injured several others last Friday, has told the police that he lost control after the vehicle’s two air bags inflated.

But on October 7 he had not stopped but driven away at speed.

“When I went outside, I heard people scream and saw my husband’s car causing an accident,” she said.

The Toyota Altis hit a Nouvo motorbike parked on the sidewalk, crashed into a seven-seat taxi on the road, and collided with two cars coming in the opposite direction.

But it did not stop and crashed into several motorbikes waiting at a traffic signal on the busy junction of Ly Thai To and Su Van Hanh Streets in District 10.

“When I saw the car not stopping and continuing to speed, I threw away everything including my shoes to run after it and shouted for help,” Chi said sobbing.

“But the car went at high speed and careened into the motorbikes.”

Huy’s colleagues at Nhi Dong 1 Hospital said he had worked normally before the accident and left at 4 pm.

Hung, a colleague, said: “After the accident, Huy phoned me in a state of panic saying ‘I caused an accident that probably killed many people. Look after my children for me [if I am imprisoned].’”

After his vehicle had collided with the three cars, the air bags had inflated, causing him to lose control, Hung quoted him as saying.

The police did find the air bags inflated in Huy’s car.

Local authorities plan to set up a technical committee to analyze the car to identify the cause of the accident.

In the accident, two people were killed and 15 injured after Huy crashed into 12 motorbikes at the red light. Two of the bikes caught fire and 10 others were badly damaged.

After that, the car ran around a stretch of 200m before being stopped at Ly Thai To roundabout. Huy fled the scene and gave himself up to local police soon later.

A source told Tuoi Tre that the two killed had been identified as Nguyen Thi Lien Chau, 37, and Ngo Thi Le Quyen, 43, both local residents.

Chi tried to conceal news about the accident from their two children, but they have come to know through the media that their father is in custody.

Chi told Tuoi Tre that she had sent people to take care of some of the victims who were treated at 115 Hospital, and helped them pay the hospital fees.

Upland girls quit school for early marriage

Many secondary school students in mountainous areas in Quang Ngai and Quang Nam Provinces quit school to get married while authorities admit they are unable to root out this old practice.

Tien Phong newspaper reported that Dinh Thi Th., a 12-year-old seventh-grader in Quang Ngai’s Son Tay District, suddenly dropped out of school to become a housewife at the beginning of this school year last month.

It turned out that she had married T., an 11th grade student in the same district, a few months earlier.

“At first we both went to school, but Th. now has to stay at home to do the housework,” T., the underage husband, says.

Dinh Thi U., who was in the eighth grade at the same school as Th., dropped out after tying the knot with another school student six months ago.

The number of dropouts at the school had already reached 20 this year, many in just the seventh and eighth grades, principal Nguyen Van Anh said.

Le Hoai Thanh, head of the Son Tay education board, said around 100 middle-school students in the district had stopped schooling this year because of marriage, taking the number in recent years to 300.

In Quang Nam Province’s Dong Giang District, Au Co High School has seen dozens of students drop out to get married this year. Two of them are going to give birth soon.

A local education official said some married when still in the sixth or seventh grade.

The Quang Ngai Department of Education and Training said child marriage was a common practice in all of the province’s six mountainous districts.

More than 500 students had dropped out of school as a result in the last three years, it said.

Tran Thi Cam Tu of the Quang Ngai Department of Justice admitted that authorities had almost thrown in the towel on child marriage.

Dinh Nam Oang, chairman of the Ba To Commune people’s committee in Quang Ngai, also admitted authorities had failed to eradicate the custom.

Another woman filmed slapping policemen

A 43-second clip on YouTube showing a woman slapping two police officers has caused fury and heated debates among the pubic.

The clip is said to be filmed by a young couple who witnessed the scene on October 10.

In the clip, the woman verbally abused two mobile policemen and then slapped them on their face.

She even threatened to sack those who attacked her.

However, the identity of the woman, policemen and the location are not known.

Recently, there have been many reports about such cop-beating cases in Vietnam.

Two days before Phuc’s attack, 49-year-old Huynh Thanh Thang, the deputy head of the judicial section in Hau Giang Mekong Delta province, insulted and caused minor injuries to a traffic policeman on duty in Can Tho City after being caught speeding.

90 policemen have been killed and more than 1,000 others injured in the line of duty since 1998, Thanh Nien newspaper cited a source from the Ministry of Public Security.

A total of 254 cases of policemen being assaulted between 2007 and June 2011, including 125 involving traffic policemen have been reported, the newspaper cited statistics from Hanoi police.

2 arrested in Tay Ninh for killing man for car

The Tay Ninh Province police yesterday arrested two men who allegedly killed a man in Dong Nai Province to steal his car after one of them brazenly went to a traffic police station to ask for the car’s papers.

Hoang Van Linh, 22, of Hoa Binh Province and Duong Van Hau, also 22, of Thai Nguyen Province would be charged with the murder of Cao Thanh Tam of Ben Cau District and robbery, they said.

The body of the 31-year-old victim was found in a sewer in a rubber plantation in Trang Bom District where they had allegedly dumped it.

After an autopsy, the police handed Tam’s body to his family for burial yesterday.

Tam’s family had earlier reported to the police that he did not return home after being hired by two men to drive them to Ho Chi Minh City on October 7.

On October 10 Linh turned up at the Tay Ninh traffic police department and pretended to be a relative of the dead man’s to get back his car papers that had been seized for a traffic offense.

The traffic police, who had been apprised by the Ben Cau police, arrested him.

From his confession, they arrested Hau in Tay Ninh and recovered Tam’s car, Phap Luat Online reported.

The duo told the police that they had hired Tam to drive them from the Moc Bai border in Tay Ninh to HCMC to get more money before returning to a casino in Cambodia to gamble.

Tam drove the men to a house on Ly Thuong Kiet Street in District 10, HCMC, Sunday evening and took them back to Moc Bai the next morning.

When the car arrived in Moc Bai, they asked Tam to stop and then strangled him to death.

They then drove the car to Dong Nai and threw Tam’s body into the sewer. Earlier, they had searched Tam’s clothes and found the traffic ticket issued by the Tay Ninh police.

Professional gold shop robbers arrested

The Ministry of Public Security police have arrested 4 members of an armed robbery gang that has committed 8 robberies at gold shops in Ho Chi Minh City and elsewhere.

A team from the ministry’s Social Crime Investigation Police Department last Saturday arrested Huynh Van Tiem, 52, from Tay Ninh Province, and Le Anh Kiet, 47, from Long An Province, whom they had identified as the leaders of an armed robbery gang.

The police arrested the men and seized their K54 handgun at a café on Le Van Luong Street in HCMC’s Go Vap District. Following their confession, the police later captured 2 other members of the gang, Nguyen Van Tuong and Nguyen Van Nhan, 54, aka “Cho lua” (Fire Dog).

All of them are now charged with murder and robbery, the police said.

The gang began operating 10 years ago with 7 members, two of whom died because of drug abuse, according to VietNamNet.

The arrested robbers have confessed to the police that they have carried out 8 robberies since 2002 in HCMC and southern provinces as Long An, Tay Ninh, Dong Nai and Vinh Long, taking away hundreds of taels of gold (1 tael = 1.2 ounces).

They said they would observe daily activities of the shops and follow the shops’ owners who carried their assets home.

They would then rob these people on deserted streets and would shoot anyone who resisted them.

The most striking instance of their robberies occurred in 2004 when they shot dead the owner of a gold shop in District 8.

On the evening of October 2 that year, Doan My and his wife Nguyen Thi Cam Thanh carried 50 taels of gold, US$11,000 and VND150 million ($7,200) from their Kim Thanh gold shop in Pham The Hien Market back home on a motorbike.

When they were on their way, the robbers approached them and one of them hit Thanh with the stock of a gun on the head. My speeded up the motorbike to escape but the robbers ran after them and fired two shots, one of which killed My on the spot.

The police are tracking down the other members of the gang.

VNN/VOV/VNS/Tuoi Tre