Conversations on Vietnam Development
Urgent action is needed to breath new life into Cửa Vạn and Vung Viêng fishing villages.
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| A view of conservation area of Vung Viêng fishing village in Hạ Long Bay. VNA/VNS Photo |
QUẢNG NINH – Cửa Vạn and Vung Viêng, two renowned fishing villages located in Hạ Long Bay in northern Quảng Ninh Province, are facing severe deterioration, with some structures slowly sinking into the sea.
Tiếp tục đọc “Quảng Ninh makes effort to preserve old fishing villages in Hạ Long Bay”By Jennifer Rigby October 6, 2023
LONDON, Oct 6 (Reuters) – Dengue fever will become a major threat in the southern United States, southern Europe and new parts of Africa this decade, the WHO’s chief scientist said, as warmer temperatures create the conditions for the mosquitoes carrying the infection to spread.
The illness has long been a scourge in much of Asia and Latin America, causing an estimated 20,000 deaths each year. Rates of the disease have already risen eight-fold globally since 2000, driven largely by climate change as well as the increased movement of people and urbanization.
Many cases go unrecorded, but in 2022 4.2 million cases were reported worldwide and public health officials have warned that near-record levels of transmission are expected this year. Bangladesh is currently experiencing its worst-ever outbreak, with more than 1,000 deaths.
Tiếp tục đọc “Dengue will ‘take off’ in southern Europe, US, Africa this decade, WHO scientist says”
The world is very warm right now. We’re not only seeing record temperatures, but the records are being broken by record-wide margins.
Take the preliminary September global-average temperature anomaly of 1.7°C above pre-industrial levels, for example. It’s an incredible 0.5°C above the previous record.
So why is the world so incredibly hot right now? And what does it mean for keeping our Paris Agreement targets?
Here are six contributing factors – with climate change the main reason temperatures are so high.
One reason for the exceptional heat is we are in a significant El Niño that is still strengthening. During El Niño we see warming of the surface ocean over much of the tropical Pacific. This warming, and the effects of El Niño in other parts of the world, raises global average temperatures by about 0.1 to 0.2°C.
Tiếp tục đọc “6 reasons why global temperatures are spiking right now”
There will be only one winner in the war that has broken out between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. And it is neither Israel nor Hamas.
In an operation coined “the Al-Aqsa Storm,” Hamas, whose formal name is the Islamic Resistance Movement, fired thousands of rockets into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters infiltrated Israel by land, sea and air. Hundreds of Israelis have been killed, more than 2,000 injured, and many taken hostage.
Tiếp tục đọc “The Israel-Hamas war: No matter who loses, Iran wins”economist.com Oct 8th 2023
It is hard to see past the shock of Hamas’s bloodthirsty assault on Israel. That is because it involved thousands of rockets, and fighters attacking the south of the country by land, sea and air. And because it was completely unforeseen despite its scale, inflicting a humiliating blow against Israel’s vaunted intelligence services. But most of all because of the killing of hundreds of innocent people and the taking of scores of hostages by Hamas. As the Israel Defence Forces (idf) ponder how to respond, the world’s attention will be caught up in their desperate plight.
An 87-year-old man came to the Bình Thạnh District Police in HCM City last Monday morning to report a fraud related to bonds allegedly committed by one of Việt Nam’s largest property developers.
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| Trần Bữu Nữu, an officer belonging to the Bình Thạnh District police in HCM City, helps a victim make a complaint against Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) where she had bought the bonds. VNS Photo Bồ Xuân Hiệp |
mongabay.com
PHNOM PENH — Mother Nature Cambodia, one of the country’s most prominent environmental activism groups, was named one of Right Livelihood’s 2023 laureates on Sept. 28, making it the first group of Cambodians recognized in the award’s 43-year history.
Born out of a refusal from the Nobel Foundation to issue awards recognizing changemakers who champion environmental and social justice issues, Stockholm-headquartered Right Livelihood rewards groups and individuals committed to advancing causes around the world. The award offers recipients “a megaphone and a shield” with what Right Livelihood calls “lifelong support” to activists striving to preserve the environment and protect those who depend on it.
“Mother Nature Cambodia is a group of fearless young activists fighting for environmental rights and democracy in the face of repression by the Cambodian regime,” Ole von Uexkull, Right Livelihood’s executive director, said in a statement. “Through innovative and often humorous protests, their activism defends nature and livelihoods, while upholding communities’ voices against corrupt and damaging projects. Despite arrests, legal harassment and surveillance, they continue to fight relentlessly for Cambodians’ environmental and civic rights.”
Right Livelihood’s jury said Mother Nature Cambodia was receiving the award “for their fearless and engaging activism to preserve Cambodia’s natural environment in the context of a highly restricted democratic space.”
The banning of the Chinese blockbuster “No More Bets” warns that Beijing’s patience is wearing thin over Cambodia’s apparent inability to control cyber crime within its borders. A dramatic drop in tourism numbers may be one symptom.
All bets are off with regard to the impact in Cambodia of “No More Bets”, a hit Chinese movie based upon Southeast Asia’s cyber-scam industry.
Cambodia’s Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts last week requested the Chinese Embassy to stop screening the action thriller, banning it in Cambodia and calling for censorship in China.
International observers say the movie already is testing the limits of the two nations’ “ironclad” friendship, as well as impacting the already-collapsing Chinese tourism market in Cambodia. Indeed, the outrage generated by “No More Bets” is amplifying awareness of possible further political and economic consequences of this “scamdemic”.
Tiếp tục đọc “Cyber-scam hits the big screen, and Cambodia isn’t happy”
Sometimes, in wars and revolutions, fundamental change arrives with a bang. More often, it creeps up on you. That is the way with what we are calling “homeland economics”, a protectionist, high-subsidy, intervention-heavy ideology administered by an ambitious state. Fragile supply chains, growing threats to national security, the energy transition and the cost-of-living crisis have each demanded action by governments—and for good reason. But when you lump them all together, it becomes clear just how systematically the presumption of open markets and limited government has been left in the dust.
For this newspaper, this is an alarming trend. We were founded in 1843 to campaign for, among other things, free trade and a modest role for government. Today these classical liberal values are not only unpopular, they are increasingly absent from political debate. Less than eight years ago President Barack Obama was trying to sign America up to a giant Pacific trade pact. Today if you argue for free trade in Washington, you will be scoffed at as hopelessly naive. In the emerging world, you will be painted as a neocolonial relic from the era when the West knew best.
Tiếp tục đọc “Are free markets history?”VNE – By Minh Minh October 7, 2023 | 07:00 am GMT+7
Two children are on a bus with the elderly as they are evacuated from storm Noru in Vietnam’s central province of Quang Nam in September 2022. Photo by VnExpress/Dac Thanh
Around 930,000 children in Vietnam were displaced due to hazards such as floods, storms and drought between 2016 and 2021, among the 10 highest numbers of 44 countries surveyed by UNICEF.
Tiếp tục đọc “Vietnam among countries recording most child displacements due to natural disasters”VNN – October 06, 2023 – 11:12
For the 2023-2024 academic year, the central Đà Nẵng City also set out VNĐ408 billion ($16.72 million) for tuition exemptions for kindergarten, general and continuing education.
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| Primary students entered the new school year at Đức Trí School in Đà Nẵng City on September 5. — VNA/VNS Photo Văn Dũng |
HÀ NỘI — Several localities across the country are leading the initiative to fully cover tuition fees for general education, aiming to alleviate the burdens on families and reduce the number of students dropping out of school.
In the 2023-2024 school year, northern Hải Phòng City plans to spend more than VNĐ400 billion (US$16.4 million) from the local budget for a tuition waiver programme applicable to every student in the city.
Tiếp tục đọc “Localities pioneer, spending billions of đồng in tuition waiver initiative”antv.gov.vn Thứ tư, 30/08/2023
The Three Gorges Dam is a hydroelectric gravity dam that spans the Yangtze River, in Central China. It is the world’s largest hydroelectric power station, but all that power comes with great responsibility. According to NASA, the dam delays the rotation of the Earth by 0.06 microseconds. This happens when the dam raises trillions of pounds of water 574 feet (175 m) above sea level increasing the Earth’s moment of inertia and thus slowing its rotation. Will the dam cause major consequences in our future or will the very minor delay not be noticeable for thousands of years?
As China seeks to meet its targets of becoming carbon neutral by 2060, it is turning its sights to some of the wildest reaches of the Tibetan Plateau where it plans to build a hydropower plant so ambitious that it could produce three times as much power as Three Gorges.
Experts believe it could be the riskiest mega structure ever built. Not only is the location prone to massive landslides and some of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded, it’s also precariously close to the disputed border between India and China. Meaning any major project could further escalate discontent in a tense territorial dispute between the world’s two most populous countries.
CVD 