Inspectors uncover cache of illegal DVDs

HCM CITY — Inspectors of the HCM City Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism and city police last Friday discovered a warehouse containing 300,000 illegally printed CDs, VCDs and DVDs in Binh Tan District.

Warehouse keeper Vo Thi Ngoc Lan told the officials that the discs were printed at other places and brought to the warehouse for distribution to various parts of the city

Man fined for mobile phone harassment

HCM CITY— Chung Huu Phuoc, 34, of HCM City's District 6 was fined VND7.6 million (US$400) for using his mobile phone to annoy someone at the office of the Party Central Committee in the south.

The police's investigation showed that between April and June this year, Phuoc used seven telephone numbers and made calls to the office.

However, he said, he intended to disturb a person, not the office.

Enterprises still owe social insurance

HUE — As many as 300 companies in central Thua Thien-Hue Province owed social insurance payment worth VND13 billion (US$690,000) since the beginning of this year.

About 4,500 employers and workers were uninsured.

Province Social Insurance vice director Nguyen Truc Phuong said the problem was due to low fine – VND30 million ($1,500) – applied to violators.

Private clinics join Bluestar network

HCM CITY — Marie Stopes International Viet Nam, a non-profit organisation, on September10 enrolled 17 private healthcare providers in HCM City in its Bluestar social franchising network, raising the network's membership in the city to 48.

The organisation together with the Viet Nam Centre for Reproductive Health pioneered the use of social franchising to provide people greater access to quality reproductive healthcare at a reasonable cost through existing private providers, To Thi Kim Hoa, deputy director of the city Department of Health said.

The four-year initiative had also helped the private health sector improve its quality by helping to develop infrastructure and providing traing in clinical skills, sounselling and marketing, she added.

The network, set up in 2007, has 171 members in Ha Noi, Hai Phong and HCM City and the provinces of Khanh Hoa, Binh Duong, Dong Nai and An Giang. — VNS

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2 Vietnam turtles crawl to brink of extinction

Vietnam’s Red River giant softshell turtle, one of the world's most endangered turtles

Photo: Asian Turtle Program

Two turtles found in Vietnam are listed among 10 of the world's most threatened freshwater species by Conservation International.

The Red River giant softshell turtle and the Annam pond turtle are included in the list compiled by Dr Peter Paul van Dijk, director of CI's Tortoise and Freshwater Turtle Conservation Program.

A new study undertaken for World Water Week says more than 40 percent of the world’s estimated 280 freshwater turtle species are facing extinction, making them among the most threatened groups of animals on the planet.

CI blamed it on habitat loss, hunting for food, and a lucrative pet trade.

With only four individuals remaining alive anywhere in the world, the Red River giant softshell turtle (Rafetus swinhoei) may be the most threatened of all turtles.

Two animals held in captivity for a long time in China were brought together three years ago to produce eggs, but they failed to hatch.

One lone reptile in Hoan Kiem lake in downtown Hanoi is revered as a symbol of Vietnam's independence.

The last animal remaining in the wild – also in Vietnam – escaped death when the reservoir where it lives burst in November 2008, washing it downriver. The turtle was caught by a fisherman who only released him after protracted negotiations with conservationists.

The Annam pond turtle (Mauremys annamensis), a species restricted to the marshy wetlands of central Vietnam, was hunted down in the 1990s to supply the Chinese food trade, and only a handful are now left in the wild.

There are good populations in captivity. They breed well and their repatriation to Vietnam as a first step towards reintroduction has already begun.

Other eight other most threatened turtles are the red-crowned river turtle, Myanmar river turtle, Roti snake-necked turtle, Southeast Asian giant softshell turtle, Yunnan box turtle, Central American river turtle, bog turtle, and Coahuila box turtle.

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Dead rhino found in Vietnam park was shot: WWF

John E. Cooper of the WWF with the skull of the Javan rhino at a meeting Thursday at Cat Tien National Park

Photo: Tuoi Tre

A Javan rhino that was found dead in the Cat Tien National Park in April may have been shot in the leg, World Wildlife Fund experts told a meeting last Thursday.

Park rangers found the endangered animal in an almost completely decomposed state and without its horn.

John E. Cooper, a veterinary endoscopy expert, said tests showed a trace of a bullet injury at the leg but it is not known if the animal died on the spot.

It may have died of an infection or some other cause to find out which requires more research, he said.

The animal’s sex is not known yet but from its tooth and bones it is thought to have been 20 years old.

Another WWF expert, Ed Newcomer, said the rhino could have been shot five or six months before it died.

The rhino may have been shot by one poacher and had its horn taken by another later, he said.

“We did not find blood at the place the horn would have been. So it can be said the rhino was dead long before.”

Sara Brook, a WWF official based in Vietnam, said the shooting of the rhino is a warning for Vietnam about its lax management of wildlife resources.

Rhino horns are highly valued in the illegal wildlife trade, while the skin and feces are used for medicinal purposes.

Vietnam’s Javan or lesser one-horned rhino (Rhinoceros sondaicus annamiticus) population is one of only two left on the planet. Official estimates say there are fewer than 60 Javan rhinos in the world.

The larger population, of 40-60, is found in Ujung Kulon National Park, Java, Indonesia. There are no Javan rhino in captivity anywhere.

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Youths host activities towards Hanoi’s anniversary

More than 5,000 volunteers and young people of Hanoi participated in social activities on Sept. 11 in the lead up to the city’s 1,000th founding anniversary.

Over 100 young doctors from 25 hospitals provided free medical check-ups and treatment for more than 1,000 beneficiaries of social policy, who are former volunteer youths, war invalids, family members of fallen combatants and poor children.

A large number of students and young people donated more than 1,000 units of blood to the National Institute of Hematology and Blood Transfusion.

Others collected waste, rode bicycles around the Hanoi Old Quarters to disseminate information about the protection of the environment or removed illegal advertisements on streets in Hoang Mai and Cau Giay districts.

Meanwhile, 1,000 students of the Nhat Nam Vietnam martial art sect gave a public performance and 1,000 young people showed dancing and singing talents.

On this occasion, the Hanoi Union of Young People presented 1,000 national flags to officers and soldiers on the Truong Sa islands and the city’s Young Entrepreneurs’ Association granted scholarships worth totally 500 million VND to 1,000 poor students./.

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Vietnam joins L’Humanite newspaper festival

The Nhan Dan (People’s) newspaper - the official voice of the Communist Party of Vietnam - opened a pavilion at the 80th L’Humanite Newspaper Festival in Paris on Sept. 10.

While addressing the opening ceremony, Vietnamese Ambassador to France Le Kinh Tai said since its inception in 1930, the festival has become an important political event of the Communist Party of France (CPF) and the L’Humanite newspaper.

The event is a festival of people and a friendship meeting of representatives from social organisations, politicians and activists for social progress, peace, solidarity and development, he said.

The ambassador stressed that cooperation between the Nhan Dan and L’Humanite newspapers has contributed greatly to strengthening and developing friendly and cooperative relations between Vietnam and France .

Jacques Fath, member of the Executive Board and Head of the CPF Central Committee’s Commission for International Relations, underlined the Nhan Dan newspaper’s presence at the festival, saying it reflects Vietnam ’s increasingly important role in the world.

The CPF always pays attention to the development of Vietnam as well as its renewal process and reform policies, the official said.

For his part, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the Nhan Dan newspaper Dinh Van Luyen expressed his belief that the time-honoured relationship between the two parties would further develop in the future./.

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VUSTA deems Hanoi Master Plan impractical

The Vietnam Union of Science and Technology Associations has expressed its disagreement with the construction of a highway linking West Lake and Ba Vi district as called for in the "Hanoi Master Plan by 2030 With a Vision to 2050".

VUSTA proposed the Office of the Party Central Committee to deny the project's approval because it was impractical and unrealistic.

VUSTA experts said the proposal to construct the West Lake-Ba Vi Highway lacked a scientific basis, especially considering that engineers in the capital were currently focused on building the Thang Long Highway, Western Thang Long Road, Lang-Hoa Lac Railway and upgrading Road No 32.

"The projection that the population of Hoa Lac Satellite City in Son Tay district will reach nearly 1 million by 2030 is groundless," said to the document signed by VUSTA's standing deputy chairman Ho Uy Liem.

"Therefore, the West Lake-Ba Vi Highway has no reason to exist. It would be a waste of land and not suitable to traffic needs and the urban landscape."
The Master Plan should focus on measures to prevent traffic jams, such as building flyovers or tunnels, said VUSTA experts.

VUSTA said the confirmation to locate the national administrative and political centre, along with some ministry and sector offices, in Ba Dinh district and the city centre under the revised Master Plan was reasonable.

However, the proposal to reserve land in Ba Vi district was unreasonable because the location for official offices from now to 2020 was fixed and management of e-government would definitely improve.

"Ba Vi is a great ecological zone and a valuable lung for Hanoi . It is home to a number of historical relics and famous landscapes, so it needs to be preserved. We should not use the land there for construction. Expanded Hanoi has a lot of area, so we can reserve land somewhere else," the VUSTA document said.

Master Plan's proposal to keep the city's administrative centre in its present location was unreasonable. The buildings housing the municipal Party Committee, People's Committee and People's Council were downgraded and too narrow, so they were not worthy of being the capital's nerve centre, it further said.

Those offices should be upgraded or rebuilt somewhere near Hoan Kiem Lake .

VUSTA said the Master Plan was large in scale, covered a number of fields and was developed too quickly by international consultants, making it inadequate and impractical./.

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Teacher and funding shortages halt English learning

An ambitious programme to teach English in primary schools has been postponed due to teacher shortages and a dearth of funds.

The programme was designed to give pupils an early grounding in the language. The Ministry of Education and Training wanted at least 20 percent of primary school pupils to be taught English in the 2010-11 academic year.

Under the programme, English will be a compulsory subject for third-grade to the fifth-grade students who will have four lessons per week.

However, a shortage of teachers has forced the ministry to withdraw the plan.
Le Tien Thanh, director of the Ministry of Education and Training's Primary Education Department, said the programme had been successfully implemented in a few schools.

The programme was launched in 2003. However, the results have been disappointing.

Hoang Thi Dieu, principal of Bac Phu Primary School in Hanoi 's Soc Son District, said students were only taught English twice a week.

She said the school had only two qualified English teachers and that it did not have the funds required to buy tapes, projectors and equipment to properly teach the subject.

An official at Soc Son Education and Training Bureau said some primary schools had already piloted teaching English but teacher shortages had meant they'd had to abandon the project.

The Vietnam Education Science Institute said there were more than 4,000 teachers teaching English in primary schools across the country.

Institute deputy director Nguyen Loc said there were sufficient teachers to conduct a pilot programme in the country.

But Loc said about 2,000 more teachers needed to be trained each year. Only by so doing would primary schools be able to meet the ministry's requirements, he said.

Thanh said teacher quality was a major concern.

"It depends on the actual capability of the teaching staff whose English language proficiency must meet international standards," said Thanh. "University degrees are meaningless by themselves."

About 15 cities and provinces will be selected to pilot the English teaching programme in the 2010-11 school year. In each area, between five and ten primary schools will take part in the scheme.

Loc said students from these schools would start learning English four times a week. The number of students taking part in the programme would increase in years to come, until the programme matures in 2020, he said.
HCM City pioneered the programme in primary schools.

Le Ngoc Diep, head of the city's Education and Training Department, said the programme was implemented 12 years ago and that more than 47,000 primary school students had been taught English compulsorily.

He said the department would teach English to first-grade students from the second semester of this school year. Students of remaining grades had already studied English from the beginning of this school year, Diep said.

Under the programme, students must be able to listen to, identify, speak and write simple English words and phrases. They are also expected to answer simple questions about themselves and other people./.

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