Tuesday, April 24, 2012

SOCIETY IN BRIEF 24/4

24/04/2012

Last missing body found
The last missing body in a landslide at Phan Me landfill site in Thai Nguyen Province which killed six people was found this morning after a nine-day search.
Four other bodies were found yesterday, April 23, and one body was retrieved on April 15, the day of the accident. One other person was injured.
Officials said the bodies had broken into pieces. Rescue workers were still searching for missing body parts.
A funeral ceremony will be held this afternoon, April 24.
Two victims found dead after coal mine landslide
Two of five missing people who were buried under a landslide in northern Thai Nguyen Province's Dai Tu District were found yesterday, April 23, after a nine-day search.
Photo: VNN
The victims could not be identified because their bodies had disintegrated, according to local authorities.

The accident happened at Phan Me working coal mine on April 15. The search is ongoing.
Two days ago, another worker died during a landslide at a different coal mine in the same province.
UK singer seeks missing relative in Vietnam
A UK-based musician, Mark Villarosa, is seeking assistance in the search for a relative who has been missing in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, since April 20.
The London singer has launched a public appeal urging people to help share information to discover leads, attract media attention, and gain support from authorities in the search for his uncle, 47-year-old Edwin de la Cruz, also known as “Bong”, according to ABS-CBN.
Talking with TuoiTreNews over the phone, Thanh, another relative of Bong’s, said the missing man has remained unfound and the family has yet to receive any clue about him.
According to ABS-CBN, De la Cruz went missing when he was travelling with his mother and sister to visit a sibling in Cambodia that borders Vietnam. They were passing through HCMC to catch a flight back to Manila when Bong decided to have a walk and never returned.
Bong was last seen near a bus stop outside Hoang Hai Long 2 Hotel, District 1, HCMC, Vietnam, at 4 a.m. on Friday, April 20. He was wearing a blue “I Love Cambodia” T-shirt with blue shorts and sandals, ABS-CBN reported.
Bong is based in Makati, Philippines, where he lives with his wife, Emiliana, and their three children.
“Our family would like the support of our government, embassy and the media to assist us in working with local Vietnamese authorities in finding Edwin,” ABS-CBN quoted Villarosa as saying.
Villarosa also spread the appeal on a Facebook page in the hope of finding the missing man.
Tonnes of rotten buffalo and beef incinerated
More than eight tonnes of rotten buffalo meat and beef had been seized and incinerated in the southern province of Binh Duong's Thuan An Commune, according to Vo Van Hong, deputy head of the commune's police station.
Hong said the investigation showed a total of 17 tonnes of rotten meat had been transported in container trucks on Sunday from Ha Noi to southern provinces. They were all sealed with approval stamps from the city's Animal Health Department.
The rest of the meat had been sold in central Khanh Hoa Province before the trucks were seized by police.
Institute to provide training to State finance company
An agreement for advisory and training services for capacity enhancement of the State-owned company HCM City Finance and Investment Co, (HFIC) was signed last week.
The project, financed by the French Development Agency, will be carried out by the Asian Institute of Technology.
This agreement is one of three parts of a technical assistance programme for capacity enhancement of HFIC by the French development agency (AFD) through a 1.5 million euro (US$1.97 million) non-refundable aid to the Viet Nam government.
Three siblings die in Gia Lai wood house fire
A large fire, which might be caused by a short circuit, broke out at a wooden house in Gia Lai Province’s Pleiku City at midnight Sunday, killing three siblings.

The victims are Le Thi Kim Chi, 23, Le Huu Nhan, 21, and Le Thi Ai Nguyen, 20, three of the five siblings in their family.

The incident occurred at 0:15 am Sunday at 39 Phu Dong Street, Phu Dong Ward, when the victims were sleeping on the first floor of the house, which was totally made of wood.

The three siblings’ mother, Luong Thi Mong Dung, and her friend, both sleeping on the ground floor, managed to escape and shouted for help.

Le Thi Giang, the eldest child of the family, was staying at a neighbor’s house nearby at the time. Giang said she heard some explosions from her home before she saw a flame burst out.

Giang and her neighbors called the local fire brigade and tried to save the victims but they failed to enter the house due to it being locked from the inside.

Firefighters came 30 minutes later when the fire covered the entire house and began to spread to two others.

It took firefighters 4 hours to put out the fire, which caused a total material loss of hundreds of millions of dong (VND100 million = US$4,800).

Dung - the mother - told authorities that when she and her friend were sleeping, she heard a big explosion inside the house and then she found the flame spreading rapidly.

The father of the victims, Le Viet Hung, 57, who was doing business far away, returned home immediately after receiving the bad news.

Besides Giang and the three perished children, Hung and his wife have one son who was in Ho Chi Minh City at the time of the fire.

Local authorities have given the couple an initial support of VND35 million ($1,680).

Local police, who are investigating the fire, said that it might be caused by a short circuit.

Investment bank gets award for long service
The Bank for Investment and Development of Viet Nam (BIDV) received on Sunday the State's first-class Independence Order for the second time on the occasion of its 55th anniversary.
It was also presented with the Lao Independence Order and the Royal Order of Cambodia at the ceremony for its contributions to boosting social welfare in the Indochina region.
Speaking at the ceremony, National Assembly Chairman Nguyen Sinh Hung said the Bank for Investment and Development of Viet Nam was a leader in helping Vietnamese enterprises boost investment promotion in other countries.
The bank has also helped encourage Vietnamese trade in Indochina and ASEAN countries, he said.
Besides, BIDV had been actively participating in community activities and social welfare, he said.
The commercial bank, which has been ranked as the best supporter of development in Viet Nam by the United Nations Development Programme, has connections with 1,551 financial institutions internationally and domestically.
BIDV, one of Viet Nam's four biggest commercial banks, yesterday officially became a joint stock business, with a charter capital of VND23 trillion (US$1.09 billion).
6th grader hangs himself, dies after family rebuke
After getting reprimand by his family for poor school performance, a grade-6 student hanged himself at home in Central Highlands Dak Lak Province.

The heart-breaking incident occurred last Saturday evening when Pham Dinh Tuyen, a student of Trung Vuong Junior High School, was found dead in his room at his house in the province’s Buon Ma Thuot City.

According to his family’s report, a few days earlier Tuyen was scolded by his mother and elder sister for his poor marks in art, one of his subjects at school, and he had been unhappy ever since.

At 18:30 pm on April 21, Tuyen returned home from school and continued getting reprimanded by his mother. He then went to his room and 30 minutes later one of member of his family entered the room and found him hanging.

Tuyen was taken to hospital immediately but he died on the way.

Tuyen was the family’s youngest son and all the adults in the family, especially his father, spoiled him since he had been very obedient, a member of Tuyen’s family said.

His mother and sister reprimanded him only because they wanted him to get better grades, the member said.

In a similar heart-breaking case, a grade-12 schoolgirl, Nguyen Thi K. O., at Dong Hung High School in the northern province of Thai Binh, committed suicide on January 7, 2012 to protest her math teacher’s punishment on a number of students who had got marks of 5 or below 5 on a mathematics test.

The teacher, 30-year-old To Thanh H., ordered those students to write down her answer key for the math test four times.

O, who got 5 marks, jumped from the second floor of the school and died in a hospital later the same day, after H. heavily insulted O. and threw her out of the class since she objected to H’s penalty.

After the incident, the school’s management suspended H. from teaching.

Salvage work completed on Truong Hai Star
The final container from the sunken Truong Hai Star was salvaged on Sunday in the southern coastal area of Ba Ria – Vung Tau Province, said a Sao Mai Marine Company representative.
According to the company which is responsible for salvaging containers from the ship, they finished salvaging 41 containers a day earlier than expected.
The company also reported no major problems or oil spills.
On April 10th, the ship sank off Vung Tau's Front Beach after colliding with the 40,000-tonne Thai vessel Krairatch Dignityon, losing its cargo of 64 automobiles worth hundreds of billions of Vietnamese dong.
Tran Hai Ha, the salvage team leader said his team worked in two groups with two cranes to speed up the recovery and prevent possible risks. The team leader also said they had salvaged what the ship owner reported.
Ha said that the cars in the containers looked rusty after being immersed in sea water for a prolonged period.
Vung Tau Port authorities have instructed the Sao Mai Marine Company to deliver the containers to the ship owner, the Chu Lai Truong Hai Shipping Lines Company Ltd, for restoration work and damage limitation.
Sao Mai Marine Company has also prepared plans to extract oil from the ship before salvaging it yesterday, April 23.
Preventing human trafficking in Mekong Delta
A seminar has been held in An Giang province to review the implementation of a project on preventing human trafficking in the Mekong Delta.
The US State Department provided US$33,300 for the first phase of the project from 2008-2010 and US$31,500 was funded by the Kuwaiti government to complete the second phase from 2011 to the first quarter of 2012.

As part of the project, a shelter has also been built to support 12 victims and generate jobs for 25 others.

The project also helped to raise public awareness of human trafficking apart from re-integrating people back into the community.

According to the Ho Chi Minh City Office of the International Organization of Migration, An Giang which shares a 100-km border with Cambodia, is known to be used by gangs trafficking women and children. However, the province has proved itself to be capable of helping the victims get their lives back to normal and will fight trafficking activities after the project is over.

VNN/VOV/VNS/Tuoi Tre

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