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Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Thien Nhan on July 24 attended a ceremony to commemorate the 44th death anniversary of 10 young female volunteers who sacrificed their lives levelling bomb craters in Dong Loc intersection, Ha Tinh province.
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When trying to level bomb craters to keep the junction open to traffic, the young volunteers were killed by a bomb exploded right in front of their shelter where they were hiding.
The Deputy PM offered incense at the tombs of the 10 young girls and the Dong Loc War Martyrs Monument.
Later the same day, Nhan attended a ceremony to hand over 10 statues of the fallen combatants to Ha Tinh province. He highlighted the great contributions by the 10 girls who laid down their lives in Dong Loc intersection for the nation and people.
Also on July 24, Deputy PM Nhan presented gifts to fallen combatants’ relatives in Duc Tho district, Ha Tinh province.
Deputy PM pays homage to martyrs’ cemetery
On July 25, Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Thien Nhan and a government delegation burnt incense and offered flowers at the Truong Son Martyrs’ Cemetery and the National Martyrs' Cemetery on Road No 9 in the central province of Quang Tri.
The government delegation’s visit to Quang Tri is part of activities to celebrate the 65th anniversary of Invalids and Martyrs Day.
During the visit, Deputy PM Nhan presented gifts to outstanding heroic mothers in the province and talked with local people and cadres.
Mr Nhan affirmed that the Party and State always praise and acknowledge the great contributions by fallen combatants, heroic mothers as well as families credited with serving the revolution.
He also asked the people of Quang Tri to continue their dedication to “paying debts of gratitude” movements that honour courageous soldiers who laid down their lives for national independence.
VND300m in counterfeit money found
Police officers in Ha Noi have detained two men from the northern province of Lang Son for transporting counterfeit money.
Hoang Van Cuong, 31, and Bui Van Dung, 32, were caught at the Ha Noi Train Station on Tuesday afternoon carrying a bag of fake Vietnamese notes in VND200,000 and VND500,000 denominations, worth a total of VND300 million (US$14,000).
The two men claimed they had received the fake bank notes from a Chinese man before smuggling it across the Viet Nam-China border. They said they had stored the smuggled notes in Lang Son before bringing them to other provinces.
Police said they were expanding the scope of the investigation into the case.
Japan helps Vietnam develop human resources
The Japanese Government will provide Vietnam with an aid worth 343 million JPY to help the country develop its human resources in the 2012-2013 period.
The project was signed in Hanoi on July 25 by Vietnamese Minister of Education and Training Pham Vu Luan and Charge D’affaires of the Japanese Embassy in Vietnam Hideo Suzuki.
The project will provide scholarships for Vietnamese students to study in Japan in law, public policy, business administration, economics, industry, IT and international relations.
Speaking at the ceremony, Luan said the Vietnamese Government highly valued the cooperation in human resources training between the two countries, adding that the signing showed the increasing cooperation in the field between the two countries.
Suzuki expressed his hope that Vietnam and Japan will continue to achieve successes in the similar cooperation programs in the future.
Since 2000, as many as 333 Vietnamese students have benefited from those projects to study in Japan, with a total scholarship of 4.22 billion JPY.
US backs Vietnam’s hospital modernization
The Hanoi-based Bach Mai Hospital on July 24 attained the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) accreditation for its microbiology laboratory with financial and technical assistance from the US Government.
The microbiology laboratory of the hospital is one of medical facilities assisted by the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the non-governmental organisation Family Health International (FHI 360) under a programme to build laboratory quality management system in the country.
Through the programme, a number of laboratories in hospitals and research institutes have been helped to attain ISO 15189:2007 certification.
ISO accreditation creates an environment that allows laboratories to operate at internationally recognised levels, improve efficiency, ensure more reliable test results, and enhance overall health care for patients.
Accreditation of laboratories to an international standard has played an important role in improving national health care systems worldwide.
Women trafficking ring gets over 33 years in jail
The southern Tay Ninh Province People’s Court yesterday, July 25, opened a hearing for four people who had sold 16 Vietnamese women to China as future wives for Chinese men.
Tran Thi Lan, 47; Tran Kim Xuan, 44; Phan Hong Dong, 54; and Nguyen Thi Dinh, 55 were charged with “human trafficking”, the court said.
Lan got 14 years imprisonment while Dong, Dinh and Xuan received 10 years, 7 years, 2 years, and six months in prison, respectively.
Lan and Xuan are sisters who are Tay Ninh residents while Dong and Dinh are from Ho Chi Minh City.
The ring members had lied to many young women that the ring was able to provide good jobs to any woman who agreed to go to China under their arrangement. But in fact, they sold their victims to Chinese men for money.
After months of investigation from a tip-off, police from Tay Ninh and HCMC seized Lan and Dong as they were carrying out procedures for two young women to leave Vietnam for China at Tan Son Nhat Airport in HCMC on February 22, 2012.
According to the indictment from the provincial prosecutor’s office, in 2009 Lan and Dong, her de facto husband, met a Chinese national whose name in Vietnamese is Ly Chi Trung, who assisted Chinese men in seeking and selecting Vietnamese women as their future wives.
Trung asked the couple to look for Vietnamese women wanting to go to China as an attempt to improve their lives and hand them to him. Trung would then arrange for them to leave Vietnam for China and sell them as wives to Chinese men.
According to their agreement, Trung would pay the couple VND3 million (US$144) for each woman sold successfully.
Lan later lured her younger sisters, Xuan and Dinh, to take part in the women trafficking ring she led.
Lan told them that she would pay them VND2 million for each woman sold.
From 2010 to eary 2012, the ring introduced 33 women to Trung and the man sold 16 of these women to China and paid VND46 million ($2,200) to the couple and VND7 million to Dinh.
Legal official given life in jail for bribery
Pham Thanh Dung, an official at Can Tho City's Department of Justice, was sentenced to life imprisonment for receiving bribes and illegally storing military weapons, according to the municipal People's Court on Tuesday.
Dung was alleged to have received US$900 from Tran Ngoc Trung at a cafe in the city on October 11, 2010.
Investigators said that Dung received a total of more than VND4.1 billion (US$195,500) from May 2009 to October 2010 to conduct marriage registrations involving foreigners.
The court also gave eight others charged with offering bribes 10 to 20 years' imprisonment.
Authorities said that the case involved the biggest bribes recorded in the city.
HCM City unveils scores of Illegal trafficking cases
More than 3,300 cases of smuggling through Tan Son Nhat International Airport and Saigon Port with a total value of nearly VND400 billion have been found since the beginning of this year, said the Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department.
Most recently on July 5, customs officials at the port discovered containers loaded with export restricted timbers instead of the dried coconut which had been declared for transportation to Malaysia.
Earlier, in June, they found a company had filled their containers with printers and photocopiers, not plastic waste as declared.
Customs staff also seized 282kg of ivory, 2kg of pangolin scales and several elephant tails hidden in a soybean container last April.
Vietnam leads drop in child malnutrition
Vietnam has achieved the fastest reduction in child malnutrition in the region with an average annual decline of 1.5 percent, according to the World Health Organisation and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).
Malnutrition rates in children under five (in terms of weight) fell from 44 percent in 1994 to just over 20 percent in 2008, 18 percent in 2009 and 17 percent in 2010.
Luu Thi Hong, deputy director of the Ministry of Health's Department of Maternal and Child Health, said Vietnam fulfilled the national target of reducing malnutrition rates to below 20 percent in 2010, two years ahead of schedule.
The rapid decline in maternal and child mortality rates has also been sustained. The mortality rate of children under 12 months dropped two-thirds from 0.44 percent in 1990 to 0.16 percent in 2008, two years earlier than anticipated by Vietnam’s millennium development goals.
Despite significant achievements, maternal and child healthcare still faces a number of challenges, such as disparity between regions, high infant mortality rates and increasing levels of child obesity. Maternal and child mortality rates recorded in mountain areas, for example, are more than three times higher than those in lowland areas.
Viet Nam supports Russian victims
The Vietnam Red Cross Society will provide financial support of US$50,000 for Russian victims of recent floods.
The Vietnamese community in Russia is also involved in charity activities after the disaster, which hit parts of Russia on July 7.
The Vietnamese Embassy's first secretary in Russia, Nguyen Hung Anh, said the Vietnamese community in Moscow donated 340,000 rubles (US$15,300) to the victims, while commodities worth up to 700,000 rubles ($21,400) were also sent to help them.
He added that the campaign to help the victims was launched in all parts of Russia where overseas Vietnamese were living.
According to Russian authorities, the flood swept through the southern province of Krymsk, home to 57,000 people, killing nearly 200 and injuring another 300 while thousands were also left homeless after the flood. The total damage cost up to 4 billion rubles ($122 million).
ASEAN enhances water resources management
The 12th meeting of the ASEAN Working Group on Water Resources Management opened in Ha Long City in the northern coastal province of Quang Ninh on July 25.
The three-day meeting will focus on reviewing ASEAN cooperation in water resources management over the recent time and mapping out directions for its activities in the time to come.
At the event, ASEAN delegates will discuss the update on the implementation of its strategic plan of action on water resources management with focus on designing a management system of water data, assessing risks and impacts from extreme climatic phenomena in ASEAN countries, and raising public awareness of and the community’s participation in water resources management.
They will also touch upon the region’s water related events including the 2012 Singapore International Water Week, 2012 Clean Environment Summit Singapore, and the 2nd Asia-Pacific Water Summit.
In 2005, ASEAN approved its strategic plan of action on water resources management.
VNN/VOV/VNS/Tuoi Tre
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