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Quang Ngai People's Committee today signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Doosan Heavy Industry Viet Nam and Doosan Heavy Industry & Construction to receive desalination evaporators and generators worth over US$900,000 for municipal islanders.
The non-refundable deal includes two desalination evaporators with a total capacity of 200m3 per day, two electric generators with total capacity of 250kw per hour, and some other auxiliary equipment and support facilities.
The equipment will be installed on Be Island (Ly Son District), where about 502 inhabitants, or 112 households, rely on rainwater and alternative energy for lighting, according to the municipal people's committee.
Fuel costs to operate the equipment will be managed by the municipal people's committee and other Vietnamese agencies.
Doosan Vina will provide the technical guidance and supervision of civil works for the installation of the desalination evaporators and generators which will include digging a beach well for sea water intake and basic training on equipment operation. These tasks are scheduled to launch by next June.
The desalination evaporators were manufactured at Doosan Vina industrial complex in Dung Quat Economic Zone.
Man missing in Ho Chi Minh City river landslide
One man is missing after a landslide occurred along a bank of the Rach Doi River in Ho Chi Minh City’s Nha Be District on Sunday, dragging five houses into the river, local authorities reported.
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| Photo:VNN |
Seventeen people managed to get out of their houses in time but a 50-year-old man, Tu Bac, was missing, she said.
Rescuers searched for the man for several hours but could not find him, the HCMC Firefighting Police Department’s rescue and search team said.
Two years ago a similar landslide occurred in the area, destroying five houses. But on that occasion all 22 people, including several children, in the houses managed to escape.
Bus catches fire, 45 passengers escape alive
Forty-five people escaped unhurt when their bus caught fire while travelling on National Highway 1 yesterday afternoon.
According to passengers, the rear end of the bus was engulfed in a sudden blaze while passing through Mo Duc District in Quang Ngai Province.
The driver stopped the bus immediately and all the passengers managed to escape through the vehicle's doors and windows.
It took firefighters 20 minutes to put out the inferno which grew quickly and destroyed the entire bus.
All passenger property was destroyed and the incident caused an hours-long traffic jam.
Police are investigating the cause of the accident.
19-year-old man arrested in gold shop murders
The Bac Giang Province Police yesterday arrested a local, Truong Thanh Hong, 19, for failing to report to them about a suspect in the killing of three people and robbery at a local jewelry shop last week.
On August 24, the day of the multiple murders, the local health center informed the police that a young man had been brought by another for stitching up wounds on his hands.
The police later identified the injured man as Le Van Luyen, 18, of Thanh Lam Commune, Luc Nam District, and his companion as Hong.
The police then decided to search Luyen’s house, but he had fled by then, Lieutenant General Tran Dai Quang, Minister of Public Security, confirmed yesterday.
They found a sword and a lot of gold jewels hidden underground behind a pigsty in the house and suspected the weapon had been used in the murders.
They questioned Le Van Mien, 42, and Truong Thi Thom, 38, Luyen’s parents, and said they were verifying if Mien and Thom had helped their son hide.
Luyen had dropped out of school and gotten a job, locals told the police.
But many could not believe he was suspected of murder and robbery since he was a good-natured boy.
Early in the morning on August 24, Trinh Van Ngoc, the 37-year-old owner of the jewelry shop, his wife Dinh Thi Chin, 35, and daughter Trinh Phuong Thao, 19, were found killed at Ngoc Bich Jewelry Shop at 45 San Street, Phuong Son Commune, Luc Nam District.
Another daughter, nine-year-old Trinh Ngoc Bich, had her right arm chopped off by the attackers.
On the way to Viet Duc Hospital in Hanoi for emergency treatment, Bich said two young men with hair dyed red and blue were the culprits, but she had been unable to see their faces clearly.
The police said all the gold and money from a safe on the second floor had been stolen but some jewelry displayed in the shop on the first floor had been left behind.
An estimated 50-70 taels (1 tael = 1.2 ounce) of gold worth US$96,700-135,500 had been robbed, they said.
The Ministry of Public Security has been backing the local police in the investigation.
Heroin trafficker caught in Hai Phong
Nguyen Van Trung, a 36-year-old man from Hai Phong City, was caught red-handed in Tu Son Commune in northern Bac Ninh Province while transporting two packets of heroin weighting 530.7 grams on Saturday night.
Policed fired a warning shot as the smuggler and his accomplices are said to have struggled fiercely.
According to the police, Trung was part of a larger drug trafficking ring smuggling from Laos to Viet Nam. Investigations are proceeding.
Boy, 14, sets fire to 6 schoolgirls
Two 14-year-old schoolgirls were seriously injured while four others sustained slight burn injuries after a classmate threw a petrol bomb at them Monday afternoon at the Trung An Junior High School in Ho Chi Minh City’s rural Cu Chi District.
The police said 14-year-old Tran Ngoc Sang admitted to committing the act on fire over a personal conflict.
Yen Nhi sustained burn injuries on the back and Thuy Tien on her back and hands, and are in Nhi Dong 1 Hospital for emergency treatment.
Doctors said they had to undergo many surgeries.
Landslide kills three in Lao Cai
Three people have been killed after a landslide swept through Son Thuy commune, Van Ban district, in Lao Cai province on the morning of August 29.
The three victims, Nguyen Thi Huong from Thanh Hoa, Tran Thi Hue from Hai Duong, and Phan Van Dung from Lao Cai, were all workers at the Hoang Lan Company, Ltd, in Lao Cai province.
The incident occurred while the victims were having lunch in their workmate’s kitchen.
A rescue team was sent to the scene of the accident immediately, but all three victims had died under the huge amount of earth.
Local authorities, in coordination with the company, have contacted the victims’ families and are providing them with initial assistance.
“Sex” cafés flourish, flaunt law
Nguoi Lao Dong reporters have found that many cafes in Ho Chi Minh City are still offering sex services despite police warnings.
At 8:00pm on August 28 at Thy Thy Café on Minh Phung Street in District 11, dozens of waitresses were busy giving their customers manual sex.
“Come on, don’t be shy,” a waitress told the reporters.
She said the shop had been busy since the beginning of this year and the police had occasionally come and issued a warning but didn’t give any fine.
Not far away from Thy Thy is Thuy Tu Café where waitress were naked or dressed scantily to serve customers.
Several new cafés of this kind have also popped up on Truong Phuoc Phan Street in Binh Tri Dong Ward, Binh Tan District where 4 to 5 scantily clad waitress sat on the sidewalk to invite customers in even though they had been warned by the police.
These shops simply closed their doors when the police arrived and reopened them afterwards.
$3.5m for high-tech agriculture zone
A new high-tech agricultural zone will be constructed on 45ha in southern Can Tho city's Thoi Lai District this year, according to the City's Department of Agriculture and Rural Development.
The project has received total funds of about US$3.5 million.
The new zone will be used for agricultural production as well as experimental application of new technologies.
Woman fined for superstitious activities
A 42-year-old woman in Tay Ninh Province who claimed to be a disciple of Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva was fined and warned in public on Sunday for conducting superstitious activities.
Cau Khoi Commune’s People’s Committee and Duong Minh Chau District’s police on Saturday held a public meeting to give Nguyen Kim Ha a warning for taking advantage of religion to conduct superstitious activities, including treating diseases with incantations and water.
Ha, a Caodaist, was also fined VND1.5 million (US$72) and ordered to write and read her promise to stop her activities in front of local officials and residents.
Earlier on August 23, the police raided Ha’s house in Khoi Trung Hamlet in Cau Khoi Commune and found her and five disciples, aged 55 to 69, preaching Caodaism to a group of people.
The police then arrested Ha and her followers, who later pleaded guilty to conducting illegal religious activities.
According to the police, Ha had claimed to be a disciple of Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva and had the ability to save the world. She and her followers had attempted to found “Đại Đạo Tứ Kỳ Phổ Độ,” or the Great Religion of the Fourth Period of Revelation and Salvation.
Ha did not charge her “patients” but accepted their offerings in return for her services. She asked her patients to hold offering ceremonies on the 8th, 18th and 28th every month at her house until they recovered from their diseases.
In 2009, Ha felt into debts and later developed signs of paranoia which the doctors said might have been caused by the stress of coping with her creditors.
Math prodigy rejects $3 mln villa gift
Fields Medal winner Prof Ngo Bao Chau has declined the gift of a US$3 million villa in Quang Ninh Province by a local entrepreneur who will now gift it to a mathematics institute Chau heads.
Dao Hong Tuyen, president of tourism firm Tuan Chau Group, said he had wanted to gift a unit in the Paradise Villa area to express his admiration and respect for the talent of the young Vietnamese mathematician, who was awarded the 2010 Fields Medal.
Chau,39, won the medal, which is considered to be the Nobel Prize in math, for his proof of the Fundamental Lemma.
But after he turned down the offer, Tuyen decided to gift it to the Vietnam Institute of Advanced Studies in Mathematics.
Tuyen, who is also a member of the Central committee of the Vietnam Fatherland Front, said he hoped the deluxe villa would be a convenient venue for international mathematic experts to gather for conferences and seminars.
Chau, 39, scientific director of the institute, would travel to Tuan Chau beach in Quang Ninh tomorrow to receive the gift on behalf of the institute.
The founding of the institute by the government last March is the first step of a project costing VND650 billion (US$31 million) to transform Vietnam into a math powerhouse by 2020.
Police crackdown on illegal sand mining
Nearly 900 business people have been fined for operating 8,000 separate sand mining operations by Waterway Police during a two-month crack-down.
The total fines collected by the department came to VND11.6 billion (US$563,000).
The businessmen have pledged not to repeat the violations.
267,000 rural labourers given vocational training
Vocational training in rural areas has met many difficulties that need to be overcome in order to develop the economy, particularly in rural areas, said Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Thien Nhan.
Deputy PM Nhan emphasized this at an online conference, which was held in Hanoi between the Government and local authorities on August 29 to review the first six months of implementing the Prime Minister’s decision on vocational training for labourers in rural areas, and to set tasks for the rest of 2011.
This work requires comprehensive coordination between all ministries, departments and localities, Mr. Nhan stressed.
In the first six months of this year, 267,000 labourers in rural areas were given vocational training, achieving 53 percent of the year’s set target. 500 vocational training courses were completed in 49 cities and provinces, and 70 percent of the trainees have found jobs.
Many women suffer from obesity
About 20 per cent of women in their menopause are obese and have heart problems, according to a new survey shown at the Internal Medicine Association's national science conference.
Professor Nguyen Hai Thuy, deputy chairwoman of Viet Nam Association for Endocrine and Diabetes, said the lack of the hormone oestrogen raised the risk of catching heart diseases by up to four times.
VNN/VOV/VNS/Tuoi Tre
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