Corrupt banker given life imprisonment

The HCM City People's Court yesterday, Sep 26, sentenced a former Agribank official to life imprisonment for corruption and serious violations of credit regulations while another got eight years.

Nguyen Thi Thu Ha, 50, former head of the credit department at the bank's District 8 branch received a life term for corrupting of VND8 billion (US$383,000) in a case of making loans to traders in Binh Tay Market in 1999.

Her boss, Hoang Trong Chi, 65, former director of the branch, was found to be "irresponsible" and to have seriously violated credit regulations.

The court also sentenced Ha's subordinates Dao Thi Thu Hien, Nguyen Huynh Thy Thao, and Tu Kien Nam to five to seven years for corruption.

Fire destroys supermarket in northern province

A fire in the largest supermarket in the northern Yen Bai Province at dawn today, Sep 27, destroyed all the goods there but there were no reports of human casualties, police said.

The area II of the Hoan My supermarket was burnt down from a fire on September 27. (Photo: Tuoi Tre)

Nearly two hours later 70 firefighters arrived in six trucks.

But according to eyewitnesses, the supermarket guards did not open the door for them to enter. But with the blaze becoming bigger, the firefighters were forced to break down the door to prevent the fire from spreading to nearby houses.

Nguyen Van Toan, the supermarket’s owner, said the fire had probably broken out from the warehouse.

The place opened last April and was selling clothes, electronic products, and household appliances.

The extent of damage is not known yet.

PM calls for greater road safety measures

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has asked transport agencies and local authorities to take drastic measures to improve traffic safety during the rest of the year, a time when the death toll on the road usually increases.

He urged traffic authorities to catch and fine more motorists and car drivers who committed traffic violations such as drink driving. Recalcitrant drivers who refused to have their blood alcohol level tested would be subject to the highest level of fines.

In an interview with Vietnam News on Sept. 23, chief of the secretariat of the National Traffic Safety Committee Than Van Thanh said that about 40 percent of road traffic accidents in Vietnam were alcohol-related and 10 percent of motor vehicle deaths were associated with alcohol use.

He said that a campaign carried out last month by traffic police and inspectors across the nation demonstrated Vietnam 's commitment to addressing the issue of drink driving.

"The campaign against drink driving will not be confined to only one month as we are considering making it the umbrella theme for our campaigns next year," Thanh said.

He said one obstacle traffic police faced was the shortage of breathalysers, particularly the modern type that is capable of detecting the alcohol content in a suspected driver's blood through the simplest of breath tests.

The Prime Minister also called for tight inspection and punitive actions against transport enterprises whose drivers violated traffic safety laws, including speeding, illegal overtaking, travelling in the wrong lanes or overloading vehicles with passengers.

Thanh said that to get to the root of the problem, transport enterprises should be liable for their drivers' traffic violations as bus drivers were partly driven by the pressure of making as much profit as possible, with managers pushing some drivers to take short cuts when it comes to traffic safety.

According to National Traffic Safety Committee statistics, there were 43 more deaths on the nation's roads during the first eight months of this year compared with the death toll for the same period last year.

In total, there were 7,550 deaths on the road during the first eight months of the year, with an average of 30 people being killed each day.

Dung also required Hanoi and HCM City to boost work on easing chronic traffic jams.

In the meantime, local authorities should come up with a sound mechanism to design separate multiple lanes on roadways for different types of vehicles. This work has already started with some major roads such as Ba Trieu and Pho Hue in Hanoi being divided.

He said pavements and roads should not be leased out and used as parking space for motorbikes. Establishments breaking violations on keeping pavements clear would have their business licences revoked if it was shown that they were worsening traffic flow.

7 face charges for sword attack on whistleblower

Prosecutors in Binh Duong Province said Monday they would file charges against a bunch of seven thieves for allegedly attacking and injuring a whistleblower who tipped off the police about them last June.

Vu Duc Tuan or Tuan ‘dog’, 34, Dinh Cong Thin, 24, Le Van Phong, 31, Nguyen Van Ly, 20, Vo Van Dong, 27, Pham Van Hoanh, 33, and Nguyen Van Nam, allegedly members of a bike-stealing gang, would be charged with “intentionally causing injury” to Nguyen Tang Tien, a motorbike taxi driver.

According to the indictment, on June 24 Tien, who often patrols residential areas and helps the police catch thieves, caught Le Thi Lien, 28, a member of the gang, trying to sell a motorbike without papers.

Tuan ‘dog’ turned up to meet Tien and ask him not to blow the whistle on her but he refused.

Tuan planned his revenge and three days later, early on June 27, went with Nam and Hoanh to attack Tien.

They went with swords to a bakery in An Binh Ward, Di An District, where Tien lives.

pon finding him there, Hoanh slashed him once on the right thigh and several times on both hands. After the attack, Hoanh escaped by jumping on a motorbike driven by Nam who was waiting outside.

Doctors said Tien’s injuries were severe.

Hoanh gave the swords back to Tuan and sped away while the latter discarded the weapons in a quiet spot on Kha Van Can street in Thu Duc District.

Student develops desalination kit

Nguyen Ngoc Anh and his associate Pham Duy Linh from Can Tho University have invented a system that uses sunlight to desalinate water, and successfully tested it in a house in the Mekong Delta province of Ben Tre.

Residents in drought-hit areas and those with brackish water struggle to find fresh water for daily use and need a household-sized water treatment system, the students said.

Anh uses a softwood tank covered with glass on top of which water evaporates and condenses before being collected through a pipe.

One square metre of the tank can produce 5.25 litres of fresh water a day that is good enough for cooking and coliform levels meeting Ministry of Health standards.

The system operates efficiently from 9am to 3pm during the dry season.

The inventors use simple and recycled materials like glass, soft wooden panels, plastic, recycled aluminium pipe, and coconut husk to keep the cost down to around VND400,000 per square metre.

The system won for the duo this year's Holcim Prize worth VND50 million in an annual competition held at Can Tho University, and VND150 million from Holcim Vietnam for installing the system in houses in Kien Giang province. They defeated nine other contestant teams to win the prize.

The competition, organised by the Swiss cement maker and five universities – the HCM City University of Architecture, HCM University of Polytechnic, HCM City University of Social Science and Humanity, Can Tho University, and Hanoi University of Architecture – since 2009, is meant for research into the environment, economic development, and social welfare.

Survivor in jewelry shop murder discharged

Nine-year-old Trinh Ngoc Bich, the only survivor of the jewelry shop carnage in which her parents and daughter were killed in Bac Giang, will be discharged after more than a month’s treatment at Hanoi’s Viet Duc Hospital.

Doctors succeeded in attaching her severed right arm but said it would take her a few months to write again though she can move it now.

She needed outpatient care and other rehabilitation treatment, they added.

According to a source, a relative living in another province will adopt Bich.

On August 24 Bich’s parents Trinh Duy Ngoc and Dinh Thi Chin and 18-month-old sister Trinh Phuong Thao were found dead in their house.

Bich was found alive and trembling under a wardrobe with her right arm chopped off and left one badly knifed.

Le Van Luyen, an 18-year-old, awaits trial for the murders.

Clip of grown men breastfed by girls obscene?

Debates erupted over a video clip that shows a group of male students trying to competitively suck milk from feeding bottles protruded from under their female partners’ armpits amid deafening applause from the audience.

In the one-minute-and-a-half clip posted on YouTube and other sites, two girls held the baby-feeding bottles while two young men rushed towards to suck the milk.

It appears that this is a game where the men, probably volunteers for the youth movement, were not allowed to use their hands to hold the bottles.

The ‘sucking’ men are wearing blue garments, a uniform of Youth Union volunteers who are mostly college students volunteering to engage in certain social activities.

Many netizens said the acts have marred the image of Vietnamese volunteers.

When asked about the controversial clip, Tran Thanh Lam, Head of the Ho Chi Minh City Youth Union Central Committee’s Department of Propaganda and Training, said the clip was about a fun game spontaneously thought up by a group of student volunteers.

Although the clip looks a little offensive, it’s aimed to entertain the audience, Lam explained, adding the Youth Union Central Committee will learn from this and try to avoid similar incidents.

Vietnam joins in Switzerland autumn fair

Vietnam are participating in the Zuespa Autumn Exhibition 2011 in Zurich, Switzerland, from Sept. 23 to Oct. 2 as an honour guest on the 40 th anniversary of Vietnam – Switzerland diplomatic ties.

The organisers said this year’s fair-exhibition is accommodating about 580 pavilions of countries around the world, and expected to attract hundreds of thousands of visitors.

Vietnamese Ambassador to Switzerland, Hoang Van Nha, said Vietnam’s presence in the fair-exhibition helps further enhance mutual understanding, friendship and traditional cooperation between the two countries.

Visitors would have a chance to get an insight into the land and people of Vietnam through woodblock paintings, rickshaws and handicrafts made by Vietnamese artisans and traditional specialties like spring rolls, noodle soup (pho) and rice vermicelli.

Newborn baby found dead on house roof

The police in Tan Binh District, Ho Chi Minh City, are investigating a case in which a newborn boy baby was found dead on the roof of a house on Nguyen Thi Nho Street last Saturday.

On the afternoon of September 24, local residents in the district’s Ward 9 found the dead newborn and reported to local police, who rushed to the scene to take to baby’s body, who weighs about 3 kilograms, to their office.

The police have launched a search for the baby’ mother among the local women who have recently got pregnant but they have yet to find her.

They are investigating to identify the ill-fated baby.

A similar case occurred four months ago in southern Binh Duong Province, police said.

On May 8, a woman found a dead female newborn weighing about 3.5 kg in a bag put on top of a dustbin next to a cemetery in An Phu Ward, Thuan An District.

Another case was recorded in northern Yen Bai Province on March 9 2011, when local residents found a dead body of a newborn baby wrapped in a bag that was left in front of a house in Nguyen Hong Ha Ward.

HCM City gives priority to land-erosion work

HCM City plans to give urgent priority to prevent riverbank erosion, according to deputy chairman of the city People's Committee Le Minh Tri.

The People's Committee will work with government agencies to devise appropriate erosion-prevention projects, Tri said.

Tri and other city officials on September 24 inspected landslide-prone areas at the Thanh Da Canal in Binh Thanh district, Rach Doi River in Nha Be district and Xom Cui Canal in Binh Chanh district.

He also asked the Department of Transport to work with agencies to set up a project to build embankments along Xom Cui Canal in Binh Hung Commune's Hamlet 4 in Binh Chanh District.

On July 1, bank erosion occurred at Xom Cui Canal in Binh Hung Commune's Hamlet 4, causing seven houses to fall into the river. Ten houses were severely damaged.

The city has 50 riverbank areas facing a high risk of landslides, with a total length of more than 30km in Districts 2, 9, Binh Thanh, Thu Duc, Nha Be and Binh Chanh.

However, the city's People Committee has allocated capital to three of eight urgent projects to prevent riverbank erosions, according to the city's Department of Transport.

The project to build embankments to prevent riverbank erosion at the Thanh Da Canal, which begun in 2007, has been implemented slowly because of slow land clearance and lack of capital, according to the Binh Thanh People's Committee.

Only one of the Thanh Da project's four embankment sections has been finished. One section is under construction and is expected to be completed in November.

Land clearance has not been completed for the remaining two embankment sections, and capital for construction has not been allocated.

Phan Cong Bang, head of the city Department of Transport's Waterway Management Division, the investor of the Thanh Da embankment project, said if the city allocates capital for two embankment sections and if Binh Thanh completes land clearance, his division will immediately carry out bidding for the construction of the remaining two sections.

The construction period will be about nine months, Bang said. Similarly, a project to prevent landslides at Rach Doi River was supposed to begin in 2009, but capital has not been allocated.

VNN/VOV/VNS/Tuoi Tre