Vietnam, RoK exchange education experience

Two hundred Vietnamese officials and teachers from 12 cities and provinces and their colleagues from the Republic of Korea (RoK) discussed the education of disabled children at a seminar in Da Lat city in the Central Highlands province of Lam Dong from July 12-14.

The event was jointly held by the Lam Dong Department of Education and Training and the RoK Association of Special Education.

Participants compared notes on the special education in the RoK for disabled kids, vocational training for disabled children and the aims of special education.

RoK experts also introduced methods and skills in communication and vocational pathways and training, to help disabled children rehabilitate and integrate with mainstream society.

Hanoi’s “golden” site cleared for construction

After much haggling with residents, New Times T&T Joint Stock Company was finally able to clear the site of Hanoi’s “golden land” at 22-24 Hang Bai Street in Hoan Kiem District for construction of an office and housing complex.

The five households living in this area moved this morning and will receive a total compensation of VND47 billion (US$2.3 million) from New Times T&T.

According to the company’s vice chairman Tran Hong Son, depending on its particular location, each household will be paid VND500 million ($24,300), VND300 million or VND200 million per square meter.

New Times T&T had its project approved by the Hanoi authorities in 2004 but wasn’t able to clear the site as the families asked for exorbitant compensation rates of up to VND1 billion ($48,700) per square meter.

Several days ago, the Hanoi government said it would carry out a forced removal after the households said they would not leave the area if they weren’t compensated fairly.

The families backed down and started moving out this morning, which was the deadline the Hanoi government set for their removal.

Wounded turtle sent back to Sword Lake

After three months of treatment for wounds caused by bacterial infection, Sword Lake’s turtle was released yesterday afternoon, July 12.

Le Xuan Rao, Director of Hanoi’s Department of Technology and Science, said the open wounds on the turtle’s legs and shell have healed completely.

“The water environment in the lake is now safe for the turtle to live in,” Rao said.

Rao said thousands of fish such as mud carps and tilapias had also been released into the lake to ensure food sources for the turtle. Hanoi has also dredged sediments at the lake’s bottom to clean up the waters, he said.

The female turtle, which is over 100 years old and weighs 169 kg, is believed to belong to a new turtle species totally different from the well-known giant soft-shell turtles living in Shanghai, China.

The treatment of the wounded turtle has attracted a great deal of attention from the public as Hanoians hold Sword Lake turtles in reverence.

Vietnam Rubber Group helps Cambodian workers

The Vietnam Rubber Group’s (VRG) investment projects in Cambodia have helped improve living condition for local people, said Nguon Nhel, First Vice-President of the Cambodian National Assembly (NA).

Mr. Nhel said this while receiving VRG General Director Tran Ngoc Thuan on July 12. He emphasized that Cambodia will create favourable conditions for the Vietnamese group to implement its projects in the country in the spirit of friendship and for the benefit of both peoples.

General Director Thuan said VRG will help Cambodia to build two pagodas and asked authorities to decide on their models and locations.

Since starting its investment in Cambodia, VRG has opened 11 branches in the country. It has been granted more than 95,000 ha of land 26,000 ha of which has been planted with rubber trees. The group will plant 50,000 more ha of rubber trees in 2011 and complete a project to plant 100,000 ha by 2012.

VRG has generated jobs for 7,000 people paying an average of more than US$100 per month. It has also built 1,500 houses for workers, as well as medical clinics and schools for labourers and their children.

Placentas as widely available as vegetables

Although their medical value has not yet been established, placentas, often used to cure sexual disorders such as erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation, are widely available in the form of dried products in the pharmaceutical market, also known as the oriental medicine quarter, in Ho Chi Minh City’s District 5.

According to Sai Gon Tiep Thi, almost every household in the area, covered by Hai Thuong Lan Ong, Trieu Quang Phuc, Luong Nhu Hoc, Phung Hung and Nguyen Trai streets, sells dried placentas as if they were selling a necessity item on our daily diet.

Thi Hoai Le, 33, who was buying dried placentas at a shop on Hai Thuong Lan Ong Street, said her husband’s sperm counts were low and her eggs were inadequate, so they could hardly get a child of their own.

Recommended by a traditional herbalist, she and her husband have been using placentas for many months. Le said the product is easy to cook and is nutritious.

At first she bought it from the physician for VND250,000 (US$11.9) a packet. But when she discovered its price on the market is only VND110,000, she came here to buy it.

At the corner of Hai Thuong Lan Ong and Trieu Quang Phuc streets, a man of about 40 stopped his motorbike in front of a shop and asked for five packets of placentas.

Inquired by the shop owner of his reason for buying it, he explained he had not been feeling well and was advised to take the placentas to recover his health.

The woman handed him five packets of dried placentas, yellow threads similar to the wheat noodles, and charged him VND500,000 (US$24).

Before he left, she told him that the food was very nutritious and that both he and his wife could cook it as a soup, or sauté it with vegetables, or steam it.

Talking to a shop owner in the area who speaks with a northern accent, we were told that the dried placentas originate from China and are sold at VND100,000 a packet.

The product’s quality is good and it is simple to cook, He assured us.

Asked if the product is free from hepatitis and HIV viruses, he confidently asserted that no virus can survive the drying process that is applied to the product.

The placenta sold at most pharmaceutical shops here is packaged in a nylon bag and come in two different types. The packet with five Chinese words is priced at VND75,000-85,000 and the one carrying 10 Chinese words costs VND110,000-135,000. No information is given about its place of production, nor is there any Vietnamese sub-label to accompany it.

Placentas sold at traditional medical clinics cost VND200,000-250,000 a packet. At Chinese traditional medical clinics, a packet containing seven different kinds of herbal medicines, including the placenta, prescribed to cure infertility, costs VND300,000-500,000.

When asked about the medical properties of placenta, many traditional physicians say they use it to cure sexual disorders and respiratory diseases. In particular, they often prescribe it for infertile couples. Some physicians also buy fresh placentas to soak them in rice wine or make them into pills to sell to patients.

Dinh Cong Bay, general secretary of Ho Chi Minh City Pharmaceuticals Association and a traditional physician himself, advised against using placentas of unclear origin or taking it without consulting certified physicians first.

Many physicians from the Ho Chi Minh City Traditional Medicine Association say since placentas are widely prescribed by physicians, the government should set up enterprises to produce quality placenta products to meet the public demand and ensure consumer safety.

Another shark caught in Quy Nhon

Scientists from the Nha Trang Institute of Oceanography and four fishermen caught the second white shark in Quy Nhon City in Binh Dinh Province earlier today after the first one on Monday.

The 6.5 kg and 0.89 m-long shark, which will be sent to the Institute for research, was caught at 3 in the morning in the area between Hon Ngang and Hoan Kho islands, which is 4 nautical miles away from Quy Nhon Beach.

Nguyen Huu Loi, a fishermen taking part in the catch said the team used 130 fish-hooks with baits like salmon and other types of fish in order to lure the shark.

In recent months, scientists from the institute have tried to catch the white sharks believed to have attacked tourists on Quy Nhon Beach from July 2009 to May 2010 many times but haven’t always succeeded.

Binh Dinh authorities and fishermen have managed to catch six sharks so far, and one of them weighs half a ton.

Government websites’ hacker faces Party expulsion

Phan Ngoc Quan, an IT officer at the Tra Vinh Province Department of Information and Communications may be ousted from the Communist Party for hacking and posting porn on local government websites.

The Department’s Party Committee has proposed expulsion for Quan after an investigation of the Ministry of Public Security showed that Quan had broken into many websites listed on the Tra Vinh Portal at www.travinh.gov.vn.

The deparment said the proposal was sent to the provincial Party’s Committee yesterday for approval.

After the provincial Party’s Committee announced its decision, the department said it would also impose an administrative punishment on Quan.

Among the websites hacked by Quan were those of the Interior Department, the Science and Technology Department, the Business Association, the Office of the provincial People’s Committee, and the Finance Department.

Quan made changes to these websites’ contents and added pornographic information and images on some of them.

All of the hacked websites have been recovered and the editorial board of the Tra Vinh Portal has set up new regulations for agencies whose websites are operating on the Portal.

Quang admitted he had hacked the websites but was yet to reveal his motive.

The police are still investigating, suspecting that Quan had accomplices.

Expressway to connect Dong Nai, Binh Thuan approved

The Ministry of Transportation has approved a plan to build an expressway to connect the Dau Giay T-junction in Dong Nai Province to the coastal city of Phan Thiet in Binh Thuan Province.

The expressway, which is estimated to cost US$1,14 billion, will be funded by the World Bank, the Vietnamese government, and other domestic and international investors.

Bitexco Group, which owns the 68-storage Lotus skyscraper in Ho Chi Minh City, has been selected as the domestic investor.

A foreign investor will soon be chosen soon through bidding.

The expressway, with over 101 km in length and a speed limit of 120 km per hour, will be completed in 2015.

This is part of Vietnam’s bigger plan to connect southern provinces.

Hospitals prescribe nutritional supplements for money

Defying regulations, many hospitals have been found prescribing exorbitant nutritional supplements of dubious origin and quality for commissions, a recent Ministry of Health inspection reveals.

An official from the ministry said doctors often include nutritional supplements in the “note” section of their prescription and patients usually can’t tell supplement food from other drugs.

Antioxidants and vitamin supplements have been prescribed for all kinds of diseases, he said.

The official said most nutritional supplements are being sold according to the multi-level marketing model in which doctors receive large commissions from distributors for prescribing supplements to their patients.

And to make up for these large commissions, Vietnamese distributors often charge their products a great deal more than what they have paid to buy them.

The wholesale price of a made-in-Vietnam 3-g pack of probiotics for instance is only VND850 but patients have to pay as much as VND10,000 for it.

Similarly, many patients have to pay VND96,000 for a bottle of vitamin B1 supplement syrup advised by doctors, while it only costs the distributors a mere VND8,500 to buy one bottle from the producer.

Though they have to pay a lot, patients don’t usually get their money’s worth.

Some nutritional supplement producers intentionally cheat consumers with false labeling.

According to the Forensic Science Institute of Vietnam, for instance, the supplement Shark Cartilage available on the market contains only 161 mg of glucosamine in each tablet even though its manufacturer claims a 175 mg. A similar dishonesty has also been found in Super Omega tablets.

And though these products are actually produced by Chinese-based Shenzhen Allnature Biotechnology Company, their labels and barcodes show they are made in the U.S

According to the Hanoi market management unit, in the first six months of this year, there have been 10 cases in which Chinese nutritional supplements were found with fake US labels.

Malaysian arrested for using fake credit card

Lim Soon Ling, a 53-year-old man from Malaysia, was arrested for using a fake passport and credit card to withdraw US$10,000 from a bank in Ho Chi Minh City’s District 1 on Monday.

On Monday morning, Ling and a Vietnamese woman went to a bank on Mac Thi Buoi Street to withdraw the money from an account under the name of a Singaporean.

Ling showed the bank staff a passport and a credit card both of which show the name of the Singaporean.

Suspecting these documents, the bank staff called the police who later detained Ling.

The police are still investigating the case.

Mom abandons baby by setting up fake kidnapping

A young mother in the southern province of Bac Lieu has admitted to police that she had set up a fake kidnapping of her 11-day-old boy after she herself left him in a bush near her house on June 30.

22-year-old Le Thi Hong Nuong, from Ward 8 in Bac Lieu City, came to the provincial Social Crime Investigation Police Department yesterday to confess that she had set up her baby’s kidnapping.

Nuong said her family’s living conditions were so difficult that she could no longer bring up the boy and had no other choice than to abandon him by leaving in a bush.

According to Nuong’s kidnapping report, while she was breast feeding her baby at noon on June 30, a masked man broke into the house and muffled her mouth with a piece of cloth and tied her legs.

Right afterwards, the man took the baby away. She later managed to free herself and shouted for help.

Her relatives tried to search for the baby and later found him almost drowned by floodtide in a bush near a canal not far from Nuong’s house.

But Nuong has said she herself had wrapped her son into a piece of cloth and left him in the bush.

The boy was taken to Bac Lieu General Hospital for emergency treatment and has recovered.

Shark caught on Quy Nhon beach for research

A group of scientists from Nha Trang City’s Institute of Oceanography and four fishermen last night successfully caught a 40-kg shark offshore in Quy Nhon City in the central province of Binh Dinh for research. 

The shark, which is 1 m long and has a 16.5 cm wide palate, has been sent back to the institute.

Nguyen Phi Uy Vu from the institute said this was the first time the institute in collaboration with local fishermen had successfully caught a shark ever since sharks first appeared in Quy Nhon in 2009 to attack tourists as part of a research project on shark attacks on Quy Nhon beaches.

From July 2009 to May 2010, three sharks attacked and injured 6 people in Quy Nhon.

Before this successful catch, the institute had made five trips to Binh Dinh to lure sharks into traps but failed.

For their part, Binh Dinh authorities and fishermen have so far captured five sharks in the area, one of which weighs as much as half a ton.

VNN/VOV/VNA/Tuoi Tre