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Lawyers get first professional code
The first code of professional ethics for Vietnamese lawyers was announced by the Viet Nam Bar Federation in Ha Noi yesterday, Aug 11.
"The code will play a significant role in showing domestic lawyers how to behave professionally as well as orient their obligations and responsibilities to the people and society," federation vice chairman Do Ngoc Thinh said.
The code, with six chapters and 27 rules, came out nearly two years after the federation was established, Thinh said.
It is expected to be supplemented in order to perfect the development of a career as a lawyer.
Through the code, it would be easy to supervise the behaviour of lawyers, he said. The code combined traditional ethics, national culture and international common practices.
The federation planned to set up classes to explain the code, the federation's Lawyer Cultivation Centre deputy director Dao Ngoc Chuyen said.
Each class would have 70 lawyers. The first would be held in HCM City between September 15-20 and in Ha Noi between September 25-30, Chuyen said.
Class participants would receive certificates, he said.
It was estimated that Viet Nam had over 6,000 lawyers.
Federation vice chairman Nguyen Van Thao said a compilation of the regulations to deal with violations by lawyers was in progress.
The highest punishment now was removal from the federation's lawyer list, Thao said.
The federation planned to organise a conference in Can Tho City to review and discuss the management and discipline of lawyers in Viet Nam.
Ministry eyes hike in minimum wage
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If approved by the Government, the new rates will take effect in all four wage zones starting October 10, the ministry said.
The minimum wage for Zone 1 will become VND2 million while for Zones 2, 3, and 4, it will be VND1.78 million, VND1.55 million, and VND1.4 million.
Zone 1 comprises the cities of Hanoi, Da Nang, HCM City, and Vung Tau and the provinces of Binh Duong, Quang Ninh, and Dong Nai.
Zone 2 consists of Can Tho and Hai Phong cities and Vinh Phuc, Thai Nguyen, Khanh Hoa, Binh Phuoc, Tay Ninh, Long An, An Giang, and Ca Mau.
Zone 3 comprises Hue and 18 provinces while Zone 4 includes the rest of the country.
Currently, the minimum wages are different for domestic and foreign companies, ranging between VND830,000 and VND1.35 million for the former depending on the zone, and VND1.1-1.55 million for the latter.
Ha Noi police crack down on illegal parking
Ha Noi's traffic police have begun a blitz to crack down on illegally parked cars.
Head of the municipal Police Office Nguyen Duy Ngoc said as many as 100 police teams have been established to patrol and fine illegal parked vehicles in the five main districts of the inner city, including Hoan Kiem, Ba Dinh, Hai Ba Trung, Dong Da and Tay Ho.
Illegally parked vehicles would be fined between VND600,000 (US$30) and VND1.4 million ($67) depending on the scale of their violations, he said.
Driving licences are expected to be temporarily seized for around 30 days, Ngoc added, saying that the parking blitz, which kicked off yesterday, was aimed at lessening traffic jams on popular streets and improving driver awareness regarding parking rights.
After one-day blitz, around 90 drivers were fined VND72 million ($3,456), five of which had their vehicles temporarily seized and 85 of which had their driving licences revoked.
As part of their efforts, city police have re-examined the parking lot system throughout the inner city.
Around 58 cases of violation have occurred since early this month, mostly based on operating without business licences, overcharging customers and encroaching on pavements.
Yesterday, four parking lots on Hoa Lu, Le Dai Hanh and Tran Khat Chan were found in violation of city regulations.
Da Lat official assaults, threatens people
The local party committee has asked for a report from a commune chief in Da Lat about accusations he had indulged in thuggish and highhanded behavior.
Tran Anh Quoc, 33, chairman of Xuan Truong Commune, allegedly thrashed a man while under the influence of alcohol, banned another man from picking scrap, and threatened to burn down a gas station.
Ha Phuoc Ta, the secretary of the Xuan Truong party committee, said the committee had received several complaints about Quoc, and its Inspection Commission was contacting people involved to get more information.
Quoc was yet to submit a report but had admitted to assaulting a scrap trader named Nguyen Phong on suspicion he bought stolen things, he said.
Violence
Nguyen Phong, 41, of Tram Hanh, another commune in the city, told Thanh Nien newspaper that Quoc had beaten him so brutally on August 3 that he had to be hospitalized.
“At about 10.30 pm on August 3, Le Hai Chau, head of the [local] police, came to my house and told me to go to the Xuan Truong People’s Committee office to meet Quoc for some urgent matter.”
As soon as he stepped into the office he smelt alcohol, and Quoc asked him in a drunken voice: “Do you buy stolen goods?”
When Phong denied it, Quoc slapped him on the face.
Phong protested but Quoc turned off the light saying “I will hit you until morning,” and continued to thrash him.
He asked Phong if he had papers for his motorbike, and when he replied that he was not carrying the papers with him, Quoc turned on the light and asked him to make a report about it. But Phong said he could not since he was illiterate.
Quoc turned off the light again, pushed Phong on the floor, and began to kick him.
It was only when the deputy head of the commune police, Hien, came and turned on the light that Quoc stopped the assault.
Phong had to call his wife and ask her to bring their house and motorbike papers to show Quoc before he was allowed to go.
Nguyen Lam, a security guard at Xuan Truong Preschool, told Thanh Nien: “On August 3 I was going through a dump to look for something salable when a car came close to me and stopped. Quoc got off the car and escorted me to the commune police office.
“He asked me to whom I sell stuff I pick up and I replied that I usually sell them to Phong.”
Quoc then called someone and told that person to summon Phong. He also told Lam he could no longer pick scrap, saying it caused pollution and poisoned students in his school.
If Lam continued to dig at the dump, he would be arrested, Quoc warned.
Threat to burn gas station
Two days later Quoc and another official went to Xuan Son hamlet by car and stopped at a café where they found several people playing cards, Thanh Nien reports.
Quoc stepped in, let out a string of oaths, and shouted at the card-players: “This café is a gambling hell.”
He kicked a table and said to a man drinking coffee, “If you dare come out to the street, I will break all your teeth.”
Since people knew he was a commune chief, nobody dared to respond.
He then called Xuan Kim Petrol Station and asked to talk to the owner, Khue.
When Khue’s wife said he was sleeping, Quoc threatened to burn down the place if Khue did not get up and meet him.
He then left the café and drove to Khue’s place where he drove right into the fence and yelled abuse for a while before leaving.
Container truck overturns on Cat Lai Overpass
A container truck carrying chemicals overturned on the Cat Lai Overpass in HCM City's District 2 yesterday afternoon.
Only the truck driver was injured in the accident with some broken barrels having spilt some of their chemical contents.
According to the overpass management board, the speeding driver caused the top-heavy truck to lose balance and overturn to the right.
Only the overpass barriers stopped the truck from descending into lower lanes of traffic.
The truck was removed two hours after crashing while city fire fighters dealt with the leaked chemicals.
A similar accident involving a container truck transporting grain occurred on the same spot late last month.
Fire hits cell-phone factory in northern province
A huge fire yesterday, Aug 11, razed the DK Uil Vietnam Company, a cell-phone factory in Quang Ninh, causing hundreds of workers to chaotically rush outside.
The fire broke out at 3:30pm and took dozens of fire trucks several hours to put it down.
It reportedly burnt down an area of 200 sq.m. housing numerous mobile spare parts, police said.
There were no reports of human casualties and the cause of the fire still remains unknown.
The fire-hit company, which is located at the Que Vo industrial zone in Phuong Lieu Commune in Que Vo District, has engaged in the manufacture and sale of keypads used in mobile communication equipment.
Luxurious car left at Noi Bai airport
An unregistered car branded BMW 128i of 2010 has been left at Hanoi’s Noi Bai International Airport since late July despite overnight parking is not allowed there.
By far the owner of the car has yet to be identified and he or she will face a fine of dozens of millions of dong for parking in the wrong place, VnExpress quoted an airport official as saying.
“For the last 12 days, the car owner has yet to contact us to take back the vehicle so we have to lock it and wait for him,” he said.
The BMW 128i is at an after-tax price of VND2 billion (US$100,000, according to some local car businesses.
Banned herbal slimming medicine remains on sale
Despite the Drug Administration of Viet Nam (DAV) banning medicine containing sibutramine in April because it creates breathing difficulties, a herbal medicine called Lishou containing the substance, can still to be found at some drugstores.
The fat reducing drug, made from herbal ingredients, carries the Good Manufacturing Practices logo, a Ministry of Public Security stamp preventing counterfeit goods, and an import stamp from the Phu Hai Medical Equipment JSC in Ha Noi.
According to its wrapper, the Ministry of Health's Viet Nam Food Administration (VFA) also issued the drug with quality certification.
However, Director of the Phu Hai Medical Equipment JSC Vu Tan Cuong confirmed that Lishou slimming capsules were indeed fake.
"Lishou, which we have imported and distributed, was indeed found to be counterfeit despite its letters, images, logos and stamps," he said.
Lishou was certified not to contain sibutramine by the National Institute for Food Safety and Hygiene Tests, Cuong added.
Last month a pharmacist from a HCM City drugstore told a Tuoi tre (Youth) newspaper reporter that some customers had complained of suffering from breathing difficulties and quickened heartbeats, upon which a product sample was sent off to the HCM City Institute for Drug Testing.
Results revealed that each Lishou capsule contained 24.6mg of the banned substance.
"The amount of banned substance present in each capsule was 240 per cent that of the regulated amount," the pharmacist said.
Associate professor Nguyen Huu Duc, from the HCM City University of Medicine and Pharmacy, said that sibutramine hydroclorid could affect the central nervous system, decreasing appetite and influencing the cardiovascular system.
According to the Viet Nam Pharmacy Dictionary 2007, the substance was previously used in weight loss treatment at dosages of 10-15mg per day. The substance is said to cause increased blood pressure, insomnia, headaches, vertigo and taste disorders. Because of its dangerous effects, the DAV banned all medicine containing the substance from circulation on April 15.
Director of the VFA Nguyen Cong Khan said that the administration had already suspended a number of substandard medicines from circulation and that it would continue its investigations into potentially harmful products.
Toyota helps village become eco-centric
Almost all the residents of Tien Chuong Village in the central province of Ha Tinh are aware of proper environmental procedures, such as collecting waste, recycling, and using safe water in their daily routines, said Vu Thanh Binh, head of the village.
Binh was speaking on August 11 at a review of a project, co-sponsored by Toyota Vietnam (TMV) and the Vietnam Environment Protection Agency (VEPA), that the project was designed to make Tien Chuong into an eco-village – an environmentally responsible community that preserved natural resources for sustainable development.
The US$40,000 project, funded by TMV, organised training courses on environmental hygiene and taught locals about water hygiene standards to improve community health.
"Local people will also be trained to improve infertile soil and develop eco-systems along and around their fields, as well as new cultivation methods and how to use suitable fertilisers and pesticides," said Dang Phan Thu Huong, Deputy General Director of TMV.
She said the project had supplied locals with extensive written material, which explained how to deal with waste around their homes and how protect water resources, villagers were also provided 800 saplings, three trucks to transport waste and 60 plastic waste bins placed around in the area.
Huong said the project is expected to run through the end of next year to ensure that it successfully improves people's living standards.
Nguyen The Dong, Deputy General Director of VEPA, said the project has turned the village into a much cleaner place, where the majority of citizens dispose of their rubbish responsibly.
"We hope that the project's initial success will be applied to many other villages in the country," said Dong.
Last year, a similar project was launched in An San Village of the northern province of Lao Cai's Bat Xat District, benefiting some hundreds of local people on how to improve their living standards.
The projects are a part of the major Go Green Programme, jointly launched by the TMV, VEPA and the Ministry of Education and Training in 2008.
Nutritional supplement contains banned chemical
An imported nutritional supplement has been found to contain a prohibited anorexic element but its importer claims that the pills are fake.
Last month, a pharmacist in Ho Chi Minh City told Tuoi Tre that some customers had reported having difficulty breathing and unusual fast heartbeats after they used weight-loss supplement Lishou, which is imported by Hanoi-based Phu Hai Medicine Equipment Company.
Suspecting that this supplement contains anorexic sibutramine which has been banned by the Drug Administration of Vietnam since April, the pharmacist sent its samples to the HCMC Institute of Drug Testing.
On July 15, the test result was released, showing that each Lishou pill contained 24.62mg of sibutramine hydroclorid.
On August 1, Tuoi Tre also took samples from a box of Lishou bought from a pharmacy in District 3 for testing and was shown similar results.
Associate Professor and Doctor Nguyen Huu Duc from the drug department of the HCMC Medicine and Pharmacy University said sibutramine hydroclorid could cause loss of appetite, food consumption and weight loss.
But Duc said the substance also causes side effects such as faster heartbeats, high blood pressure and taste disorder.
For its part, Phu Hai Company said the pills that contain the banned chemical are fake products.
Dam Quang Thang, its director, told Tuoi Tre that fake Lishou products are sold widely in the market.
“Some pharmacies know that the products are fake but they still sell them to earn big profits,” he said.
Thang listed a number of differences to tell the fake products from the real ones and showed Tuoi Tre the test result signed by the head of the National Institute for Testing Food Safety and Hygiene on July 4 that said sibutramine was not detected in the Lishou samples which were taken from the company on June 16.
Judge warned for double verdict
Judge Le Van Lam from the southern Long An Province People’s Court has been given a warning for issuing two verdicts for one case last year.
The warning was announced yesterday by Le Quang Hung, vice chief of the court.
Hung said Lam issued the second verdict after finding out his first one was a mistake but later forgot to revoke the wrong verdict.
The first verdict, which was written in nine pages, and the second verdict in ten pages, were thus both issued for the case of Dang Thi Hoang Yen, from District 5 in Ho Chi Minh City.
Last September, Yen filed for a divorce with her husband, Vietnamese American Jimmy Tran.
One month later, Lam opened a hearing for the divorce and then issued a verdict that approved Yen’s petition.
After the verdict was issued, Lam discovered that it did not contain the court’s comments about the case so he gave another verdict.
As a result, the valid verdict was issued 20 days behind schedule, Hung said.
Lam’s mistake was later discovered by the court, Hung added.
‘Tiger’ footprints cause panic in central commune
People in a commune in the central Quang Nam Province claim that footprints seen around a local river belong to a tiger though forest rangers based in the area say they cannot confirm this in the absence of evidence.
But residents in Tra Leng Commune, South Tra My District, mostly from the Ca Dong and M’Nong ethnic groups, swear the animal is a female tiger.
Some fishermen even claim to have seen the beast and switched to fishing at night to avoid its attacks.
Some of the villagers have gone hunting in the forest for the animal, locals said.
In 2008 a human corpse buried in a forest was unearthed by a tiger which ate everything except the head.
Japan finances building of primary schools
The Japanese Embassy in Vietnam will donate US$250,000 to fund the construction and upgrading primary schools in poor rural areas of the country.
Under the terms of contracts signed on August 11, the sum will be used to build the Gia Phu 5 Primary School in Bao Thang district and upgrade the Trinh Tuong 2 Primary School in Bat Xat district of the northern mountainous province of Lao Cai.
The other project will construct a primary school in Hiep Cuong commune, Kim Dong district of the Red River Delta province of Hung Yen.
VNN/VOV/VNS/Tuoi Tre
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