I am an attorney in the Washington DC area, with a Doctor of Law in the US, attended the master program at the National School of Administration of Việt Nam, and graduated from Sài Gòn University Law School. I aso studied philosophy at the School of Letters in Sài Gòn.
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I have worked as an anti-trust attorney for Federal Trade Commission and a litigator for a fortune-100 telecom company in Washington DC.
I have taught law courses for legal professionals in Việt Nam and still counsel VN government agencies on legal matters.
I have founded and managed businesses for me and my family, both law and non-law.
I have published many articles on national newspapers and radio stations in Việt Nam.
In 1989 I was one of the founding members of US-VN Trade Council, working to re-establish US-VN relationship.
Since the early 90's, I have established and managed VNFORUM and VNBIZ forum on VN-related matters; these forums are the subject of a PhD thesis by Dr. Caroline Valverde at UC-Berkeley and her book Transnationalizing Viet Nam.
I translate poetry and my translation of "A Request at Đồng Lộc Cemetery" is now engraved on a stone memorial at Đồng Lộc National Shrine in VN.
I study and teach the Bible and Buddhism. In 2009 I founded and still manage dotchuoinon.com on positive thinking and two other blogs on Buddhism.
In 2015 a group of friends and I founded website CVD - Conversations on Vietnam Development (cvdvn.net).
I study the art of leadership with many friends who are religious, business and government leaders from many countries.
I have written these books, published by Phu Nu Publishing House in Hanoi:
"Positive Thinking to Change Your Life", in Vietnamese (TƯ DUY TÍCH CỰC Thay Đổi Cuộc Sống) (Oct. 2011)
"10 Core Values for Success" (10 Giá trị cốt lõi của thành công) (Dec. 2013)
"Live a Life Worth Living" (Sống Một Cuộc Đời Đáng Sống) (Oct. 2023)
I practice Jiu Jitsu and Tai Chi for health, and play guitar as a hobby, usually accompanying my wife Trần Lê Túy Phượng, aka singer Linh Phượng.
PHNOM PENH, 13 November 2022 – The Leaders of ASEAN and China welcomed the official launch of negotiations for the upgrade of the ASEAN-China Free Trade Area (ACFTA). The upgrade negotiations are meant to ensure that ACFTA contributes to the further deepening and broadening of ASEAN-China economic relations and to both region’s post-pandemic economic recovery. The announcement on the upgrade of the ACFTA was made at the 25th ASEAN-China Summit.
The ACFTA is ASEAN’s oldest FTA among its Dialogue Partners. Upgrading the ACFTA sends a signal to the private sector and all stakeholders that both ASEAN and China are committed to make the ACFTA more relevant to businesses, future-ready, and responsive to global challenges.
Vietnam has been removed from the Monitoring List, having only met one of the three criteria over the four quarters through June 2022 as it had in the June 2022 Report for the four quarters through December 2021. Vietnam had previously exceeded the thresholds for all three criteria as noted in the December 2021, April 2021, and December 2020 Reports, in each of which Treasury conducted enhanced analysis of Vietnam. In early 2021, Treasury commenced enhanced bilateral engagement with Vietnam in accordance with the 2015 Act. As a result of discussions through the enhanced engagement process, Treasury and the State Bank of Vietnam- (SBV) reached agreement in July 2021 to address Treasury’s concerns about Vietnam’s currency practices.5 Treasury continues to engage closely with the SBV to monitor Vietnam’s progress in addressing Treasury’s concerns and remains satisfied with the progress made by Vietnam.
Treasury Analysis under the 1988 and 2015 Legislation
This Report assesses developments in international economic and exchange rate policies over the four quarters through June 2022. The analysis in this Report is guided by Sections 3001-3006 of the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988 (1988 Act) (codified at 22 U.S.C. §§ 5301-5306) and Sections 701 and 702 of the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015 (2015 Act) (codified at 19 U.S.C. §§ 4421-4422), as discussed in Section 2 of this Report.
Under the 2015 Act, Treasury is required to assess the macroeconomic and exchange rate policies of major trading partners of the United States for three specific criteria. Treasury sets the benchmark and threshold for determining which countries are major trading partners, as well as the thresholds for the three specific criteria in the 2015 Act. In this Report, Treasury has reviewed the 20 largest U.S. trading partners3 against the thresholds Treasury has established for the three criteria in the 2015 Act:
(1) A significant bilateral trade surplus with the United States is a goods and services trade surplus that is at least $15 billion.
(2) A material current account surplus is one that is at least 3% of GDP, or a surplus for which Treasury estimates there is a material current account “gap” using Treasury’s Global Exchange Rate Assessment Framework (GERAF).
(3) Persistent, one-sided intervention occurs when net purchases of foreign currency are conducted repeatedly, in at least 8 out of 12 months, and these net purchases total at least 2% of an economy’s GDP over a 12-month period.4
CNN — Four years ago, Morris J. Alexie had to move out of the house his father built in Alaska in 1969 because it was sinking into the ground and water was beginning to seep into his home.
“The bogs are showing up in between houses, all over our community. There are currently seven houses that are occupied but very slanted and sinking into the ground as we speak,” Alexie said by phone from Nunapitchuk, a village of around 600 people. “Everywhere is bogging up.”
What was once grassy tundra is now riddled with water, he said. Their land is crisscrossed by 8-foot-wide boardwalks the community uses to get from place to place. And even some of the boardwalks have begun to sink.
“It’s like little polka dots of tundra land. We used to have regular grass all over our community. Now it’s changed into constant water marsh.”
Sam Bankman-Fried speaks onstage at a charity event on June 23 in New York City.
NOVEMBER 11, 2022, 1:22 PM
Cryptocurrency has a serious problem: The party’s over. Fresh dollars from naive retail buyers aren’t coming in anymore after the crashes in May and June, despite a round of advertising during the Super Bowl in February reaching every consumer in the United States. Without those fresh dollars, the holders can’t cash out.
Crypto trading firms hold large piles of assets whose “market cap”—their alleged mark-to-market value—supposedly adds up to a trillion dollars. But this number is unrealizable nonsense because the actual dollars just aren’t there. Everyone in the system knows it. What to do?
The regulated U.S.-based exchanges are just the cashier’s desk for the wider crypto casino. The real trading action, as well as price discovery, is on the unregulated offshore exchanges. These include Binance, OKX, and Huobi. Until Tuesday, Nov. 8, they also included Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX, which cut off customer withdrawals around 11:37 a.m. UTC on Nov. 8 and then revealed around 4 p.m. UTC that it was suffering a “liquidity crisis.” FTX is just the latest casualty in a series of collapses that began with Terraform Labs’s UST stablecoin; that took out Celsius Network, Voyager Digital, and many other crypto trading firms; and that is now gradually driving the price and trading volume of cryptocurrencies to what they should be: zero.
FTX desperately sought more funding, but to no avail; at press time, FTX had been shut down by its Bahamian regulator and put into liquidation, as well as was filing for bankruptcy in the United States and Bankman-Fried has resigned as CEO. But the fall of FTX has been particularly remarkable in part because its founder was unusually feted.
Leaders of Southeast Asian nations make courtesy call to Cambodia’s king before a summit in Phnom Penh on November 10, 2022.Khem Sovannara/AFP/Getty Images
Editor’s Note: A version of this story appeared in CNN’s Meanwhile in China newsletter, a three-times-a-week update exploring what you need to know about the country’s rise and how it impacts the world. Sign up here.
World leaders are converging in Phnom Penh this weekend for the first in a series of international summits in Southeast Asia over the coming week, where divisions between major powers and conflict threaten to overshadow talks.
The first stop is the Cambodian capital where leaders from across the Indo-Pacific will meet alongside a summit of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) leaders, followed next week by a meeting of the Group of 20 (G20) leaders in Bali and of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Bangkok.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under Creative Commons licence.
As world leaders assemble for the United Nations climate change conference (COP27) in Egypt, it’s hard to be optimistic the talks will generate any radical departure from the inexorable rise in global carbon emissions over the past two centuries.
After all, before last year’s Glasgow talks, experts warned the summit was the world’s last chance to limit global warming to 1.5℃ this century. And yet, a UN report last week found even if all nations meet their climate goals this decade, the planet would still heat by a catastrophic 2.5℃.
Bethany TietjenResearch fellow in climate policy, The Fletcher School, Tufts University
Disclosure statement
Bethany Tietjen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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Tufts University provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation US.
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You may be hearing the phrase “loss and damage” in the coming weeks as government leaders meet in Egypt for the 2022 U.N. Climate Change Conference.
It refers to the costs, both economic and physical, that developing countries are facing from climate change impacts. Many of the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries have done little to cause climate change, yet they are experiencing extreme heat waves, floods and other climate-related disasters. They want wealthier nations – historically the biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions – to pay for the harm.
US State Department on Thursday offered US$5 million for information on Kwek Kee Seng, blaming him for numerous fuel deliveries to North KoreaReward comes as the US urges strict enforcement of UN sanctions on North Korea after it launched a volley of missiles
FBI wanted poster for Kwek Kee Seng. Photo: FBI via AP
A Singaporean businessman wanted by the United States for violating sanctions on North Korea is currently in the city state where he is under investigation, the Singapore police said.
In a statement issued late on Saturday, the Singapore Police Force (SPF) said they have sought clarification from their US counterparts over the reward as they have kept them informed about the ongoing probe by local authorities.
View of a COP27 sign on the road leading to the conference area in Egypt’s Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh, taken on October 22, as it prepares to host the COP27 summit.Sayed Sheasha/ReutersCNN —
Egypt is facing a barrage of criticism over what rights groups say is a crackdown on protests and activists, as it prepares to host the COP27 climate summit starting Sunday.
Rights groups have accused the Egyptian government of arbitrarily detaining activists after Egyptian dissidents abroad called for protests to be held against President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi on November 11, during the United Nations climate talks.
According to rights groups, security forces have been setting up checkpoints on Cairo streets, stopping people and searching their phones to find any content related to the planned protests.
Prolonged drought across the Horn of Africa over the past four consecutive rainy seasons has left some 18 million people affected by food shortages in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya
The carcass of an adult elephant, which died during the drought, is seen in Namunyak Wildlife Conservancy, Samburu, Kenya on October 12, 2022.Luis Tato/AFP/Getty ImagesCNN —
Hundreds of elephants, wildebeests, and zebras have died across Kenya amid the nation’s longest drought in decades.
“The Kenya Wildlife Service Rangers, Community Scouts, and Research Teams counted the deaths of 205 elephants, 512 wildebeests, 381 common zebras, 51 buffalos, 49 Grevy’s zebras, and 12 giraffes in the past nine months,” a report released Friday by the country’s Ministry of Tourism said.
John Hemmings (john@pacforum.org) is Senior Director of the Indo-Pacific Foreign and Security Policy Program at the Pacific Forum.
The Biden administration released America’s new National Security Strategy (NSS) on Oct. 12. For those who read such documents regularly, there were few surprises. Values were mentioned in the context of the United States’ position in the world and vis-a-vis perceived adversaries, such as Russia, Iran, and the People’s Republic of China, while the administration’s lines of effort were laid out in a typical ends, ways, and means format. There were also sections on each region of the world, where the strategies laid out a bit more context. Tiếp tục đọc “The new [US] National Security Strategy in the context of an unstated “cold war””→
Ethiopian Government Agrees to Truce With Tigrayan Rebels
After two years of fighting, the Ethiopian government and rebel Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) agreed to end hostilities (WaPo), disarm, and restore “law and order,” said Olusegun Obasanjo, the Horn of Africa envoy for the African Union (AU). The AU-mediated truce has raised hopes for an end to a war that has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced millions (Reuters). The AU stepped in to mediate after a cease-fire declared by the government in March fell apart after five months. Obasanjo said the AU will monitor the implementation of the new peace deal, which stipulates that Ethiopia’s government will take control of Mekelle, the capital of the Tigray region, and that the TPLF will once again be recognized as a political party. Eritrea, which sent troops to fight alongside the Ethiopian government’s forces, was not part of the talks.
Analysis
“This is a huge breakthrough that involved major concessions from both sides, even if the parties punted the thorniest details to future peace talks,” the International Crisis Group’s Alan Boswell tells Reuters. “If they do stop fighting, then today will just be the start of what will surely prove a very bumpy, long, and difficult peace process.”
“The African Union-mediated deal in Ethiopia is important for watchers of regional organizations & world order. While too early to celebrate, AU shows the way when European regional institutions are weakening or busy fighting each other,” American University’s Amitav Acharya tweets.
It is a commonplace observation that the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea establishes a framework for the Law of the Sea that is based upontwo different concepts. One is a zonal analysis, which takes the juridicalzones into which the seas are divided and stipulates the basic rules applica- ble to each of them in turn. The other is a topical analysis, taking some of themain activities on the seas, such as fishing, marine research and pollution,and again setting out the basic rules for each.
The framework is, however,incomplete, and a great deal is left open, not only to be worked out in moredetailed treaties but also to be governed by more general principles of inter-national law. In this way the 1982 regime will continue to develop to meet new challenges and changed circumstances.
In this monograph Dr Gavouneli explores these issues and offers an expertinsight into the jurisdictional developments that are clearly discernable aquarter-century after the adoption of the Convention. Her keen analysismoves from fundamental principles governing jurisdiction in internationallaw to shrewd reflections on the significance of current developments suchas the Proliferation Security Initiative and questions of jurisdiction over theinternational seabed area. This thoughtful text will be of real interest to allwho have a concern with the directions in which the contemporary Law of the Sea is growing.
CVD 