I'm from Hanoi, Viet Nam.
I hold a PhD on Sustainable Energy Systems from University of Lisbon and Aalto University.
I graduated from Hanoi University of Technology on Environmental Engineering. I obtained a Master degree of the same major from Stanford University and Nanyang Technological University.
I'm an author of Dot Chuoi Non (dotchuoinon.com/author/hangbelu/), a blog on Positive thinking, founded by Dr. Tran Dinh Hoanh, an attorney in Washington DC.
I'm a co-founder of Conversations on Vietnam Development - cvdvn.net, a virtual think tank; a co-founder of POTATO - potato.edu.vn, working on outdoor education programs for kids in Vietnam. My English blog: hangbelu.wordpress/.
I'm studying the Buddha's teaching and the teaching of Jesus. I practice mindful living including meditation.
I play table tennis as a hobby.
Hai cha con người Trung Quốc đến từ thành phố Vũ Hán, Trung Quốc, nhiễm virus corona gây bệnh viêm phổi cấp, đang được cách ly tại Bệnh viện Chợ Rẫy, TP.HCM.
The oldest Confucius Institute in the United States is closing. In a letter to students and faculty and staff members at the University of Maryland at College Park, President Wallace D. Loh said the 15-year-old Chinese language and cultural center would shut down because of 2018 legislation that made colleges with the institutes, which are supported by the Chinese government, ineligible for certain Defense Department funding. Maryland is among nearly two dozen American colleges to close their Confucius Institutes in the last two years. And it’s the second in little more than a week —– the University of Missouri also will shutter its center. Colleges have faced pressure over Confucius Institutes from lawmakers who say the agreements lack transparency and amount to Chinese-government propaganda on American campuses. In his letter, Loh said Maryland remained committed to education and scholarship in Chinese language and culture.
While often seen as an engine of the global economy, in terms of political integrity and governance, the region performs only marginally better than the global average. Many countries see economic openness as a way forward, however, governments across the region, from China to Cambodia to Vietnam, continue to restrict participation in public affairs, silence dissenting voices and keep decision-making out of public scrutini
A regional average of 45, after many consecutive years of an average score of 44, illustrates general stagnation across the Asia Pacific. Despite the presence of high performers like New Zealand (87), Singapore (85), Australia (77), Hong Kong (76) and Japan (73), the Asia Pacific region hasn’t witnessed substantial progress in anti-corruption efforts or results. In addition, low performers like Afghanistan (16), North Korea (17) and Cambodia (20) continue to highlight serious challenges in the region.
Chiều 17-1-2020, Thủ tướng Nguyễn Xuân Phúc có cuộc gặp mặt đại diện các tổ chức chính trị – xã hội và hội quần chúng.
Thủ tướng Nguyễn Xuân Phúc hoan nghênh các đại biểu tới dự buổi gặp mặt. Ảnh: Thống Nhất/TTXVN
Cùng dự có Ủy viên Bộ Chính trị, Bí thư Trung ương Đảng, Trưởng ban Dân vận Trung ương Trương Thị Mai; Bí thư Trung ương Đảng, Chủ tịch Ủy ban Trung ương Mặt trận Tổ quốc Việt Nam Trần Thanh Mẫn; cùng các thành viên Chính phủ, đại diện các bộ, ngành.
The gloomy aftermath of a fatal clash between police and civilians in a Hanoi village is casting a pall over locals’ Tet preparations.
Ten days after resentment over a land dispute erupted into a deadly clash that left three policemen and a civilian dead in Dong Tam Commune, My Duc District, villagers are wearily and warily returning to life as usual.
Offices in Vietnam are closed on weekends, but the committee’s office as well as the commune’s police station were open Sunday.
On Friday, barriers that had cordoned off and restricted entry to the commune were taken down, but the pall of gloom over locals is evident.
The deadly clash between protesters and law enforcement officers took place a week after some units of the Ministry of National Defense, in collaboration with local authorities, began building a fence for the Mieu Mon Military Airport at Hoanh Village in Dong Tam.
The encounter was the first time in decades that violence over a land dispute had claimed the lives of both law enforcers and civilians.
The incident disrupted normal life and preparations for the Lunar New Year, Tet, as they have begun much later than usual.
The country will enjoy a seven-day holiday for the Tet festival this year, staring January 23.
Work on the fence for the Mieu Mon Military Airport has been completed. The steel wire fence carries no trespassing signs in Vietnamese and English.
As life returns to normal, strangers to the commune are still eyed with some suspicion by the locals.
The last decade was pivotal for the world’s forests. The 2010s saw the rise of unprecedented new commitments — from governments and the private sector alike — to bring deforestation to heel. The UN REDD+ framework, the New York Declaration on Forests and the Sustainable Development Goals set out ambitious targets to conserve and restore millions of hectares of forests.
But as this decade ends and a new one begins, it is also clear the world has fallen short on achieving its forest goals. While the impacts of climate change are being felt around the world, forests — an invaluable climate mitigation tool — are still being lost at high rates. Leaders in key countries are back-tracking on forest protection. Tiếp tục đọc “10 Big Changes for Forests Over the Last Decade”→
Aftermath of January 2020 wildfires in Rosedale, Victoria, about 184 kilometers east of Melbourne, Australia. Image courtesy Alan Meredith
“We are unleashing hell on Australia.”
Those were the words that David Karoly of the University of Melbourne used to portray the wildfires ravaging the lands down-under more than a decade ago. Yes, you read that right: this professor of climate change and climate variability had described an Australia of increased heat, drought, and catastrophic fire way back in 2009—not long after a round of wildfires had previously ravaged the landscape.
It turns out that while Australia’s 2019-20 summer wildfires may well be harbingers of death on a hotter planet for at least the rest of this century, they did not come without advance warning. The question now is: What are we going to do about it?
But first, let’s go back to those warnings, and how we got to this position.
Karoly’s research had, in part, focused on what is known here as Black Saturday—February 7, 2009—when devastating fires killed 173 people. (And another 374 extreme-heat-related deaths were attributed to the record-breaking heatwave across southern Australia that had set the stage for the flames.) Firefighters faced unprecedented conditions: high winds, very low humidity, a land dried by 10 years of drought, and a fire index reaching 170 on a 0-to-100 scale. The temperature hit a record 115.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the city of Melbourne and 119.8 degrees Fahrenheit in Victoria as a whole—the Australian state in which Melbourne sits. The amount of energy released by the fires was estimated to be the equivalent of around 1,500 Hiroshima atomic bombs. Tiếp tục đọc “On a hotter planet, we are all Australians”→
Position of the European Parliament…recommending that the European Parliament only consent to the agreements if Vietnam releases its political prisoners and takes further steps to improve the human rights situation.
Background and state of play
The EU hopes that its free trade agreement (FTA) and investment protection agreement (IPA) with Vietnam will boost trade and investment; the agreements are also an important stepping stone to the EU’s longer-term goal of a region-to-region EU-Southeast Asia trade deal. Vietnam, a fast-growing and competitive economy whose bilateral trade with the EU has quintupled over the past ten years, is equally keen on the deal, which could potentially bring €15 billion a year of additional exports to the EU by 2035. Tiếp tục đọc “EU-VIETNAM FREE TRADE AGREEMENT (EVFTA)”→
Vietnam has a population of 96 million, with more than 60 million people having their presence on the social media platform Facebook [File: Luong Thai Linh/EPA]
reuters.com
BANGKOK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – A deadly land dispute in Vietnam has led to a crackdown on social media posts, a sign of growing heavy-handedness by authorities as rising demand for land spurs more conflicts across the country, analysts and human rights activists said.
Four people were killed and dozens arrested last week in the northern village of Dong Tam near the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi, as a long-running land dispute flared after a dawn raid by police.
Authorities said villagers attacked the troops with hand grenades, petrol bombs and knives, and were responsible for the deaths of the three policemen and a village leader.
Noise pollution is rampant in Vietnam, yet no one makes an effort to stop it.
Jesse Peterson
It was in the middle of the night when I was woken by a noise that kept thumping into my ears. Someone was playing music somewhere down the street, and it was understandably annoying. Everyone in the neighborhood started calling each other to find out who did it. As for me, there went my peaceful slumber.
Eventually, it was discovered that a café down the street was responsible for the noise. The music continued for about 20 minutes before dying out.
The next morning I asked the café owner why he played loud music when everyone was asleep. “It’s the World Cup!” he said, as if that explained everything. He thought that way he could attract more customers to watch the game.
The other week I and my friends were hanging out at Saigon’s Le Van Tam Park at around 7 p.m. It was quiet, away from the urban cacophony and the traffic. We were having fun until we heard music being blasted at maximum volume from the center of the park. A man was carrying a huge loudspeaker and cranked it all the way up, much to the dismay of passersby. I asked him to turn it down, and he said no. We had to move to another place in the park, as far away from the source of the noise as possible, but it kept ringing in our ears so much we couldn’t hold a proper conversation.
Ironically, we were discussing how a society where people cooperate with each other in public is healthier than one whose citizens keep dragging each other down through distractions. Having lived in Saigon for many years, I realized two problems that its administration kept ignoring: waste and noise pollution.
A loudspeaker is placed in front of a shop in District 1, HCMC. Photo by VnExpress/Son Hoa.
According to the broken windows theory by social scientists James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling, visible signs of crime, anti-social behavior and civil disorder create an urban environment that encourages further crime and disorder, and vice versa.
One thing I noticed about Vietnam is how people have so little respect for each other’s ears. They don’t stop to consider if their playing music and singing loudly affects others, and the concept of noise pollution is simply lost to some. Every night I could hear the sound of people singing karaoke and eating and screaming during their nights out until 2 or 3 a.m. It’s almost lawless. Mind you, there’s an entire neighborhood here. Everyone’s trying to get some downtime after a long day at work or school. So please keep it down. I insist.
Written by Michael Tatarski. Illustration by Hannah Hoang.
For a few months earlier this year, it seemed like there was no stopping the wave of renewable energy projects coming online in Vietnam.
In March, the Srepok 1-Quang Minh solar power plant, Vietnam’s largest at the time, opened in Dak Lak Province. In September, it was surpassed by the Dau Tieng Solar Power Complex in Tay Ninh Province, which is Southeast Asia’s largest solar farm. The following month, the Asia Development Bank agreed to help fund the country’s first floating solar power facility on a reservoir in Binh Thuan Province. If built, it will be the region’s largest such facility. And in October, Vietnam Electricity (EVN) announced that 12,765 rooftop solar systems are selling power to the grid nationwide.
Wind power is expected to grow dramatically as well, with installed capacity forecast to more than triple by 2021, launching Vietnam toward the top of Southeast Asia in this sector. These projects were far from the only ones to come online recently. In the second quarter of this year, 81 new solar facilities were added to Vietnam’s power grid, compared to just five in the first quarter of 2019.
The Dau Tieng Solar Power Complex in Tay Ninh. Photo via VnExpress/Quynh Tran.
This growth in renewable power generation is vital, as in July, the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT) admitted that the country is likely to face severe power shortages starting in 2021. Power generation capacity will need to increase from the current 48.6 gigawatts (GW) to 60 GW in 2020 and 130 GW by 2030. This is due to rapidly rising electricity demand as Vietnam continues its impressive economic growth, and delays on major thermal- and gas-fired power stations. Such an expansion of capacity is expected to cost nearly US$7 billion a year.
The explosion of solar projects in particular was spurred by a feed-in tariff (FiT) introduced by the Vietnamese government in 2017. A FiT is the rate paid by a power utility, in this case the government-owned Vietnam Electricity (EVN), to the company which operates a solar plant. The 9.35 US cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) tariff established by MOIT was very generous, and developers flooded in. A wind energy FiT was initiated in September 2018 as well, though growth hasn’t been quite as robust as solar.
Too much of a good thing?
The sheer numbers behind this solar surge are incredible, and Vietnam has become the darling of investment in the region, easily eclipsing its neighbors. The 86 new projects completed in the first half of this year added 4.5 gigawatts (GW) of capacity to the national grid, equaling about 10% of Vietnam’s total power capacity. EVN reportedly set up special teams working three shifts a day just to connect new plants.
Aftermath of January 2020 wildfires in Rosedale, Victoria, about 184 kilometers east of Melbourne, Australia. Image courtesy Alan Meredith![Vietnam has a population of 96 million, with more than 60 million people having their presence on the social media platform Facebook [File: Luong Thai Linh/EPA]](https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2020/1/17/767c48a89b4547eebf8375c9104d523f_18.jpg "Vietnam's battalions of 'cyber-armies' silencing online dissent")
