Conversations on Vietnam Development
HANOI – Vietnam has begun dredging work on a disputed reef in the South China Sea, Reuters news service reported Thursday, a move that will likely anger China, which claims virtually the entire sea.
A commercial satellite image taken on Nov. 30 shows activity on Vietnam-controlled Ladd Reef on the southwestern fringe of the Spratly group of islands, according to the report. Tiếp tục đọc “Vietnam dredging at disputed Spratly reef in South China Sea: Reuters”
YOU HEAR A MURDER SCENE before you see it: The desperate cries of a new widow. The piercing sirens of approaching police cars. The thud, thud, thud of the rain drumming on the pavement of a Manila alleyway — and on the back of Romeo Torres Fontanilla.
Mongolia says China has closed a key border crossing, creating huge congestion, nearly a week after the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, visited the country.
Hundreds of truck drivers for the mining conglomerate Rio Tinto are stuck at the Gants Mod crossing in southeastern Mongolia in freezing temperatures. Tiếp tục đọc “China ‘blocks’ Mongolia border after Dalai Lama visit”
![Workers assemble mobile phones on a product line at a factory in Sichuan Province, China [Getty]](https://i0.wp.com/www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2016/12/11/1ee213531fd04a5eb37a90502181dd06_18.jpg "China: The vanguard of globalisation")
Richard Javad Heydarian is a specialist in Asian geopolitical/economic affairs.
“Everything under heaven is in utter chaos; the situation is excellent,” Chairman Mao Zedong wrote in a letter to his wife on July 8, 1966. This was the height of the Cold War, as Moscow and Washington vied for global supremacy, and massive protests swept across the West, from Europe to the United States.
The Chinese leader thought that one should embrace a crisis not avoid it, since it is chaos (not stability) that carries in its bosom the seed of radical transformation. This was Marxist dialectical thinking in its finest and most dangerous form. Tiếp tục đọc “China: The vanguard of globalisation”
For over a year, a global mystery has been growing: Why are so many governments around the world collapsing amid corruption scandals?
Attention is now focused on South Korea, where the Parliament voted Friday to impeach President Park Geun-hye. The allegations against Ms. Park are unique in their colorful details — a mysterious adviser, Choi Soon-sil, is suspected of having secretly influenced Ms. Park’s public speeches and decision-making while also extorting millions from major corporations.
But beneath the salacious specifics, the story is familiar: a corruption scandal rocks a nation, reaching the highest levels of government and provoking a political crisis.
Tiếp tục đọc “How ‘Islands of Honesty’ Can Crush a System of Corruption”
This nine-year-old girl is one of them.
She lives in Dhaka, Bangladesh – one of 114 countries that scores below 50 out of 100 in our 2015 Corruption Perceptions Index, indicating serious levels of public sector corruption.
Instead of going to school, she spends her days sorting bottles at a recycling factory. Officially child labour is illegal in Bangladesh. Unofficially a bribe paid to the right official can mean exceptions are made.
Like all exploitation, child labour remains a sad reality in environments where citizens are trapped in poverty and corrupt officials can be paid off.
Roman Catholic churches in Manila have read a prayer against Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s plans to re-impose the death penalty on heinous crimes, including drug-related offences. Tiếp tục đọc “Manila Catholic churches pray executions not reinstated”
Tiếp tục đọc “Russian Transport Strategy Prioritizes Cooperation With Asia Pacific Region”
![Rolando Espinosa was mayor of Albuera town in the eastern province of Leyte [File: Mark R Cristiano/EPA]](https://i0.wp.com/www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2016/12/6/f9d102363db543b185e33350e087bfa7_18.jpg "Investigators: Philippine police killed jailed mayor")
Philippine police killed a town mayor linked to illegal drugs while he was helpless in a prison cell, justice department investigators alleged.
The National Bureau of Investigation said on Tuesday that it filed murder complaints against two dozen police officers and personnel last week after a probe showed they shot dead Mayor Rolando Espinosa and his cellmate Raul Yap in the central province of Leyte in November. Tiếp tục đọc “Investigators: Philippine police killed jailed mayor”
Thứ tư, 30/11/2016 13:40
Công an tỉnh Vĩnh Long trong lúc tuần tra đã phát hiện sà lan có tải trọng khoảng 600 tấn hút cát trái phép trên sông Tiền.
Lực lượng chức năng kiểm tra sà lan 600 tấn đang hút cát trái phép
ẢNH DO CÔNG AN CUNG CẤP
Rạng sáng nay, 30-11, lực lượng Cảnh sát môi trường – Công an tỉnh Vĩnh Long phối hợp với Công an xã Đồng Phú (H.Long Hồ, Vĩnh Long) bắt quả tang 1 sà lan sắt, không mang số hiệu, có tải trọng khoảng 600 tấn đang có hành vi “khai thác cát sông không phép”.
Vào thời gian trên, lực lượng Công an tuần tra trên tuyến sông Tiền (thuộc thủy phận ấp Phú Mỹ 1, xã Đồng Phú, huyện Long Hồ), nơi tiếp giáp giữa 2 tỉnh Vĩnh Long và Tiền Giang, thì bắt quả tang một sà lan sắt đang dùng 2 máy bơm có công suất lớn để hút cát sông. Chiếc sà lan trên do Trương Văn Lên (32 tuổi, ngụ xã Hưng Lễ, huyện Giồng Trôm, Bến Tre) điều khiển chở theo 3 người làm thuê. Tiếp tục đọc “Sà lan 600 tấn hút cát lậu ở Vĩnh Long”
TTO – Mấy tuần nay ở thị trấn An Thới, huyện Phú Quốc (Kiên Giang), những chiếc tàu đồ sộ từ nước ngoài đến nhận cát rồi chở đi Singapore, trong khi các dự án tại Phú Quốc phải mua cát từ nơi khác về san lấp mặt bằng. Vì sao vậy?
 Khai thác cát ồ ạt ngoài biển ở Phú Quốc (Kiên Giang) để xuất khẩu –
Ảnh: NGUYỄN TRIỀU |
Đêm 30-11 và sáng 1-12, phóng viên Tuổi Trẻ đã thuê tàu ra tận nơi, xem tận mắt hoạt động bơm hút cát để xuất khẩu đang diễn ra ngoài khơi thị trấn An Thới.
Tiếp tục đọc “Vì sao cát Phú Quốc vẫn chảy sang Singapore?”
It was the sixth straight weekend that massive crowds gathered in the capital, Seoul, to force Park out of office, as the country’s three opposition parties introduced an impeachment bill in parliament.
Protest organisers told Al Jazeera the number of demonstrators swelled to 1.7 million as of 13:00 GMT on Saturday, surpassing last weekend’s 1.5 million people.
Tiếp tục đọc “Park impeachment filed as South Koreans step up protest”
Remember the messy bunches of wiring you’ve got caught up in, possibly more than once, on the streets of Hanoi?
Professional engineers have recently named the city’s wiring among the worst in the world.
Members of the U.K.-based Institution of Engineering and Technology, one of the world’s largest engineering institutions, have named Hanoi as the third most dangerous places for wiring on the planet, after cities in India and the Maldives.
Engineering and Technology, the institution’s award-winning magazine, surveyed 38,000 engineers to compile the worst and most dangerous examples of electrical wiring around the world.
More than 500 examples were submitted and readers were asked to vote for installations that veer the farthest away from safe and sensible standards.
An office block in Madras in eastern India was named the worst installation after receiving more than 50 percent of the votes, while second place went to a hotel in the Maldives.
This picture taken in Hanoi has caught the attention of many professional engineers around the world. Photo courtesy of Engineering and Technology
A street installation in Hanoi took third place. It is a collection of telecom, lighting and possibly mains cables, and according to E&T, it is “impossible” to tell the exact details as all of the cables are black.
“Fingers crossed for customers asking for support with wiring emergencies!” it said.
Nearly 60 percent of all fires and explosions that occurred in the country in the first six months of this year started from electrical problems, said the Ministry of Public Security.
On November 1, a massive fire from a billboard short circuit killed 13 people in Hanoi.
E&T’s readers found that unsafe wiring is not just a problem in Asia. Two of the top 12 examples of dangerous wiring are in France.
In 2013, Bill Gates surprised many around the world when he shared a photo of a utility pole with messy wiring in Vietnam on Facebook.
Related news:
>Hanoi suspends new business licenses for karaoke parlors in wake of deadly blaze
>Deadly sparks: Hanoians put lives in danger by hanging around power substations
BEIJING — China warned President-elect Donald J. Trump on Monday that he was risking a confrontation over Taiwan, even as Mr. Trump broadened the dispute with new messages on Twitter challenging Beijing’s trade policies and military activities in the South China Sea.
Tiếp tục đọc “China Amplifies Warning on Taiwan, and Trump Takes a Tougher Line”
CVD 