Vietnam Needs to Combat Industrial Pollutions says World Bank

June 30, 2008 — Industrialization is taking its toll on Vietnam’s environment and more funds should be dedicated to fighting pollution, the World Bank said in a study published on June 27. Between 1990 and 2005 Vietnam achieved an average annual growth rate of 7.5% in gross domestic product, driven largely by the industrial sector, [...]

PCI ‘bribed’ Vietnamese official

A manager of a Vietnamese organization that oversaw a multibillion yen highway construction project in Ho Chi Minh City received bribes allegedly paid by Pacific Consultants International to secure the contract for the project, which was funded with Japanese official development assistance, a PCI source said.
It also has been learned that [...]

Speaking Up for Vietnam

A Buddhist monk missing since authorities evicted him from his pagoda. A Montagnard Christian beaten to death in police custody. A lawyer involuntarily committed to a mental hospital after she championed the rights of farmers kicked off their land. Journalists jailed for exposing corruption. A young man sentenced to prison after chatting online about democracy [...]

Why Vietnam Needs Freedom Now

PROTESTS will surely sur round Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung’s meeting today with President Bush. But Dung will no doubt still find it a relief to be out of his own country: Back home, the economy is in turmoil, with popular discontent rising.
Yet the crisis presents Dung with a huge opportunity: the chance [...]

VIETNAM: Ban on street vendors threatens livelihoods

Photo: Martha Ann Overland/IRIN

A bicycle vendor carries dozens of baskets for sale through the streets of Hanoi

HANOI, 23 June 2008 (IRIN) – For the past decade, Nguyen Thi Lan has risen at 3am to boil up a pot of sticky rice. Before the sun comes up, she packs it [...]

Human rights in Vietnam on agenda

President Bush will meet with Vietnam’s prime minister this week in Washington, and it is being reported that the White House is committed to bringing up the subjects of human rights and religious persecution.
Vietnam has a history of persecuting Christians involved in the underground movement. Todd Nettleton, spokesman for Voice of the Martyrs, says although the [...]

Vietnam motor-cyclo drivers protest vehicle ban

HANOI (AFP) — More than 100 drivers of three-wheeled motor cyclos, many of them invalid veterans of the ‘American war,’ Monday protested against a looming ban of their vehicles in communist Vietnam’s cities.
The men in Hanoi said a government prohibition from July 1 of the modified motorcycles — which are now commonly hired to transport [...]

Food poisoning hospitalises hundreds in Vietnam

Hundreds of workers from a footwear factory in Vietnam have been hospitalised after showing symptoms of food poisoning, an employee of the firm and state media said.
A staff member from the Taiwanese-owned VMC Hoang Gia factory in southern Vietnam said “several hundred” had been hospitalised, but the state-run Tuoi Tre newspaper said the number was [...]

Vietnamese student dies after selling kidney in China

Hanoi – A student has died at his home in central Vietnam after selling one of his kidneys in China to earn money to marry his girlfriend, officials said Monday.
To Cong Luan, a 22-year-old student at the Industrial Technical College in Ho Chi Minh City, died Sunday at his home in a town in the [...]

Inflation juggernaut bears down on Vietnam bourse

It has to be one of the worst ever stock market runs. Ho Chi Minh City fell every trading day in May and early June amid gloom over skyrocketing inflation and an economy seemingly going off the rails.
By the time the market had finished its 25-day slide last week, the index was down 60 per [...]