Detained fishermen leave Brunei for VN

Nine Vietnamese fishermen who were arrested by Brunei authorities last month while fishing in the East Sea began their journey from Muara port in Brunei back to Viet Nam yesterday, Feb 10, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs cited information provided by the Vietnamese Embassy in Brunei.

Earlier, the fishermen were released by Sultan of Brunei Haji Hassanal Bolkiah at the request of Vietnamese Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh during his official visit to this country last Tuesday.

On January 20, the fishing boat BD 96092TS with nine crew members on board was seized by Brunei marine police.

On this occasion, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung sent a letter to thank Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah for the humanitarian release.

People with disabilities benefit from EU-funded project

Photo: VOV

This information was announced at a recent seminar held in Dong Nai province to assess disabled people’s living conditions and their demand for work.

Accordingly, the project will be carried out in 12 communes in Trang Bom, Long Thanh and Xuan Loc districts from 2012-2013 by the Dong Nai provincial Department for Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs in co-ordination with Handicap International, with financial assistance of more than US$213,000 funded by the European Union (EU).

Under the project, the disabled will have a chance to attend vocational training courses, enjoy social welfare and gradually integrate into the community.

A recent survey showed that Dong Nai currently has about 350 disabled people, 39.7 percent them are women at the age of 25-45. About 56 percent of the disabled are unemployed though they are able to work. Almost 70 percent of them receive social benefit policies, while 84 percent are provided with healthcare insurance.

3 men survive after high-speed bike hits car

Three bareheaded men on a high speed motorcycle have amazingly survived when their bike crashed into a wedding car at a crossroad in Vinh city in the central province of Nghe An.

When a group of cars and motorcycles were on way to escort a bride to her bridegroom’s house, a Nouvou motorcycle with three young men on board suddenly lost control and slammed into one of the car.

A footage from the weeding party showed the three men were thrown into the air and fell down after getting hit. However, they narrowly escaped death as the car driver timely swerved on the left.

4 arrested for smuggling people to Australia

The police in Ba Ria-Vung Tau province have arrested four men who belonged to a ring that smuggled Vietnamese people to Australia.

The men are 47-year-old Hoang Van The, 38-year-old Do Van Vang, 43-year-old Tran Van Khanh, and 36-year-old Dau Van Hung.

The and Vang come from Long Dien District in Ba Ria-Vung Tau, while Khanh is from Dak Nong Province’s Dak Min District and Hung is from Ho Chi Minh City’s Thu Duc District.

Last November, the police arrested three other members of the same ring, Nguyen Dinh Chien and Nguyen Van Son from Nghe An Province and Nguyen Van Toan from Ba Ria-Vung Tau.

All of them are charged with “organizing illegal immigration of people abroad,” the police said.

According to initial investigation results, the ring has smuggled more than 120 people in three trips to Australia.

The ring promised to find well-paid jobs for their victims in Australia for VND100-150 million (US$4,800-7,100) each. Half of the amount was paid in advance in Vietnam and the rest would be paid after they arrived in Australia.

When the victims arrived in Australia, however, they were detained by Australian authorities for illegal immigration and 20 of them have been deported back to Vietnam while the rest remain in detention camps awaiting expulsion.

Chien, the ring’s leader, confessed to the police that he had visited Australia many times, learned about the conditions in some Vietnamese communities there, and gone home to persuade his victims that they would get secure jobs and a stable life there.

He said his ring he had smuggled people into Australia in 13-17 days aboard fishing boats he had bought for VND500-700 million each.

The police are continuing their investigation.

A public organization receives ASEAN award

The Da Nang Department of Information and Communications has been awarded “Public Sector Organization of the Year 2011- ASEAN”.

This is the first time a Vietnamese public organization has received the notable award from FutureGov magazine in the framework of the FutureGov Summit recently held in Malaysia with the aim of honouring public organizations in ASEAN.

The department was credited as having applied information and communications technology (ICT) in management to develop “green offices” and improve the working conditions for labourers. The department has adopted standard procedures for open recruitment of employees.

The department staff includes one holding a PhD degree, 20 MA degrees and more than 100 university or college degrees.

FutureGov Award is the only prize in the world to glorify most prominent organizations, projects, and programs in 22 fields of administration and public services in the Asia-Pacific region.

Binh Thuan police probe gold robbery

Police officers of Duc Linh District yesterday, Feb 10, started criminal investigations into the robbery of about 235 gold taels (one tael equals 37.59 grams) from the home of a local resident last Tuesday.

The gold belonged to Bui Ngoc Quan, chairman of the board of the Binh Thuan Rubbery One Member Limited Company. Currently, the exact number of stolen gold taels has not been identified.

This is considered the biggest robbery case in the province, according to police.

Ride motorbikes and lose a year, Da Nang schools warn students

High school students in the central city of Da Nang will be expelled from school for up to one year if they repeatedly breach regulations on underage driving, the local Department of Education and Training warns.

Students who commit less severe violations will be dimissed from school for one month or a week, with their conduct record downgraded, it adds.

Many high school students have been ignoring the legislation after the Da Nang People’s Council had demanded that heavy fines be imposed on high school students riding over-50 cc motorbikes to school, and that the vehicles be seized for 60 days.

The department will thus closely cooperate with local police to enforce the rules, says Nguyen Minh Hung, vice director of the education department.

Strong measures are to be taken to prevent high school students from recurrently breaking the regulations, he vows.

The department is going to ask local police to crack down on illicit improvised parking services around the city’s schools which are somewhat encouraging students to ride big motorbikes to school, he promises.

Da Nang has clamped down on underage driving among high school students since early January when it issued the regulations allowing police to sequester vehicles 50 days longer than stipulated by the law.

Traffic rules will be tightened around the country as Vietnam chooses 2012 as the year of safe driving.

Vietnam to present LED lamps to Havana

Vietnam will present 60 LED lamps worth US$82,000 to the Cuban capital city of Havana on the occasion of Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong’s visit to the country in the second quarter of this year.

An agreement to this effect was signed in Ho Chi Minh City on February 12 between Mai Ha, Head of International Cooperation Department under the Ministry of Science and Technology and Le Kim Dinh, Director of Fawoo Kidi company. 

At the signing ceremony, Minister of Science and Technology Nguyen Quan and Cuban Consul General in Ho Chi Minh City Gabriel Perez said the event is of significance to strengthening solidarity, friendship and loyalty between Vietnam and Cuba. 

As a joint-venture between Kim Dinh Green Energies Joint Stock Company and Fawoo Corporation of the Republic of Korea, Fawoo Kidi company specialises in manufacturing high-quality LED lamps.

Fire destroys apartment in HCMC

A fire hit a locked flat on the 4th floor of the Dao Duy Tu apartment building in District 10 in Ho Chi Minh City on Saturday afternoon, burning all the furniture inside to ashes.

Luckily, there was no report of human casualties.

Hang, the owner of the flat No. 404, said she had locked the door to go outside.
After being notified by a neighbor, she rushed to home but found the fire had destroyed everything in her house.

Long, a neighbor, said when he was preparing to cook, he smelled something burning. He opened the window and saw many people shouting “fire” but he didn’t know where the fire broke out.

He then opened the main door and became frightened when finding a fire raging through the adjacent flat. He and other neighbors broke the flat’s glass window with a hammer.

They tried to subdue the fire through the broken window with a fire extinguisher and a faucet but failed.

Around 15 minutes later, local firefighters showed up. The blaze was put out soon after.

The police are investigating the cause of the fire.

Body of crewman missing in boat crash found

Rescuers have found the body of a 23-year-old crewman who went missing when three vessels collided in the Saigon River on Feb. 10.

Nguyen Quang Tu, who was one of the 12 crewmembers of the boat Bien Nam 17 which was sunk in the accident, was found in the boat’s engine room.

At 3:30 pm on Friday, Bien Nam 17, which was carrying over 3,000 tons of clinker from Quang Ninh to HCMC, suffered strong waves and then lost control when it reached a section between HCMC’s Nha Be District and Dong Nai Province’s Nhon Trach District.

The boat then crashed into two boats, Maritime 36 and Agnes, which were anchoring in the area.

The collision broke the right side of Bien Nam 17, causing it to sink later.

Of the 12 crew members who fell into the river after the accident, 11 were saved but Tu remained missing.

Most of the 8,000 liters of oil in the boat’s tanks were spilled on the river after it sank.

A local salvage company is using specialized devices to control the oil spill.

Tests show bad gas as major suspect in bike fires

Recent test results show that gasoline blended with methanol or acetone may be the cause of a series of mysterious fires that has destroyed about 50 motorbikes nationwide since last year, experts said at a conference in Hanoi on Friday, Feb 10.

According to the tests performed on old Honda Dream II motorbikes in well-ventilated locations without draughts, when the bikes were fuelled with gasoline containing 15 percent methanol and operated for various periods of time from 10 to 60 minutes, the heat of the engines, the outside surface of the cylinders and the exhaust pipes were higher than when they were fueled with RON92 standard gasoline.

The heat difference was 0.8 to 10 degrees Celsius, the Hanoi Standards, Metrology and Quality Sub-department, which carried out the tests, said.

Vu Huy Thanh, an expert from the Military Academy, said methanol and acetone could also erode the gasoline tubes and thereby cause gas leaks. They can also make the gasoline’s vapor pressure to increase and catch fire, since the combustion thresholds of the two fuels are very low.

According to the test results and related studies, the quality of gasoline is the possible leading cause of the bike fires, said Dr Hoang Manh Hung, deputy head of the Criminal Science Institute under the Ministry of Public Security.

Methanol is produced en mass at cheap cost in China, so fraudulent traders can add it to gasoline to get more profit illegally, Hung said.

Acetone can also be blended with gasoline for the same purpose, he added.

Both methanol and acetone can easily evaporate so when a fire has occurred, investigators will find it difficult to obtain their traces at the fire site, he said.

There has been a suggestion that gasoline tainted with ethanol or methanol in near-empty fuel tanks coupled with the cold weather may cause fires, but the theory was not very convincing.

He suggested the Hanoi Department of Science and Technology to establish a “task force” including scientists to identify the cause of the fire.

Dr Vu Thi Thu Ha, head of the petrochemical refinery laboratory at the Institute of Industrial Chemistry, said that methanol could cause damage to engines, gasoline tubes and then cause a gas leak, which may trigger a fire.

VNN/VOV/VNS/Tuoi Tre