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Vietnamese cueist advances to PBA World Championship quarter-finals

March 3, 2021 by e.vnexpress.net

After topping group H in the elimination round, the 46-year-old did not have to face any strong contenders in round-16. As a result, he faced Oh, who had finished second in group D.

The Vietnamese cueist, ranked 9th by Professional Billiards Association (PBA), defeated his South Korean rival (4th) with a score of 3-1 (15/6, 15/3, 13/15 and 15/7) in the knockout round Wednesday.

A screenshot of the live-stream match between Ma Minh Cam and Oh Seong Uk. Photo courtesy of Billiard Vietnam.

Cam will take on the winner of the match between David Zapata (28th) and Han Dong Won (32th) in the next round.

He is the only Vietnamese competing in the championship, which will run until March 6. Cam has been in Korea since last July, playing in a series of events.

The tournament in South Korea boasts the biggest prize money ever offered in the history of pool, with the winner walking home 300 million won (over $267,000) out of the prize pool of 400 million won.

Teenager Quang moves towards SEA Games glory, one step at a time

March 3, 2021 by vietnamnews.vn

Phùng Kim Quang competes in the National Athletics Championship in 2020. The teenager expects to win a medal at the SEA Games later this year. Photo courtesy of Phùng Kim Quang

Athletics

Thanh Hà

HÀ NỘI — Việt Nam have never won a gold medal in the men’s walking event at the regional Southeast Asian (SEA) Games despite having previously qualified for the Olympics in the sport.

Phùng Kim Quang is on a mission to change that.

Walking was little more than a blip on the Vietnamese sporting radar until siblings Nguyễn Thị Thanh Phúc and Nguyễn Thành Ngưng pocketed gold and bronze in the women’s and men’s races at the 25th Games in 2011.

Since then, with better support, Việt Nam have dominated the women’s discipline with four titles. However, the men’s crown is still out of the reach despite three silver medals.

Teenager Quang is the big Vietnamese hope in the sport after recording some outstanding performances at recent domestic competitions.

He is the record holder of the junior tournament and in the top three of the national championship.

Fate

Quang was born in Ba Vì District, in the outskirts of Hà Nội, in 2003.

The naughty little boy loved and played well in all sports such as badminton, shuttlecock, football and track-and-field. After dominating school competitions he became a member of the district athletics team.

Two years later, Quang was among several boys introduced to the walking event, a new sport in the city in 2015. His coach Nguyễn Văn Toản did not pick him at first but when the team did not have enough athletes, Quang was recruited after a second trial.

But Toản, who coached Phạm Thị Thu Trang to the SEA Games women’s title in 2019, gradually found the thin boy was suitable for the sport in which posture is of prime importance while arm, shoulder and leg actions must be well controlled to ensure balance.

After four years in the sport, Quang grabbed his first gold at the National Youth Athletics Championship and a bronze in the National Athletics Championship in 2019.

A year later, the 17-year-old defended his title at the junior 5,000m event and set a new record of 23min 14.21sec, 11 seconds than the old record of 23:14.32 by Dương Hữu Tín of Nghệ An Province in 2013.

“It is a record but I was not very happy. I expected to walk under 22 minutes but the result was more than 23 minutes. I considered it a failure because I could not do it again as I am overage next year,” Quang told Việt Nam News .

Phùng Kim Quang (right) poses for photos after winning a bronze medal together with the champion Nguyễn Thành Ngưng (centre) and silver holder Võ Văn Vĩnh at the 2020 National Athletics Championship in Hà Nội. Photo webthethao.vn

A month later he finished third with a time of 1:37:03 at the National Athletics Championship’s 20km walk.

Despite his strong effort, Quang who suffered a leg injury, could not surpass senior athletes Nguyễn Thành Ngưng and Võ Xuân Vĩnh at the finish line.

“I was really nervous when competing against such experienced rivals although it was my second time. Ngưng and Vĩnh are my seniors and idols. They have won national and international medals,” said Quang.

“However, I have learnt many things from them. From what they knew, they told me how to get better. Ngưng used to tell me ‘effort does not make success immediately, but if you try hard you will make it’. I have pinned it in my mind and will work harder to get better. I will find success by the end of the road,” he said.

Despite the third-place finish, Quang has been tipped for a big future.

“We will invest in Quang with an expectation that he will bring home regional and continental victories and even further he could reach world level if possible,” said Lại Phúc Lộc, deputy director of the Hà Nội Sports and Training Centre.

“We have set plans to send athletes including Quang to compete in open events in Thailand and Singapore (when the COVID-19 pandemic is controlled). Our goal is that Quang will secure a berth in the national team and have a high result in the coming SEA Games,” he added.

It is a huge job for Quang to vie for the national team slot against tough opponents. Ngưng has won the national title for 11 years in a row along with a SEA Games bronze and became the first and only Southeast Asian walker to win an Olympic berth in 2016. The Đà Nẵng-based athlete has vowed not to retire until he wins a SEA Games gold.

Vĩnh is also a big challenge he has finished behind Ngưng many times. He has even outperformed Ngưng in the SEA Games with three silvers in 2013, 2015 and 2019.

The only thing that Quang has on his side is his youth. He will be 18 while Ngưng 29 and Vĩnh 30 at the coming Games.

“My current result does not push me to the national senior team. But it will be my target now. I will have to improve my strength and technique. I also have to decrease my time because I want not only to be part of the coming big tournament but also win a medal,” Quang said. VNS

Facebook, Youtube eat up ads revenues in Vietnam, leaving local digital press in trouble

June 23, 2019 by hanoitimes.vn

The Hanoitimes – Vietnam should follow the EU’s steps in applying law to better revenue sharing between social media platforms and all content creators including newspapers and magazines.

Total digital advertising turnover in Vietnam would rise to US$630 million by the end of this year, and that of Facebook and Google would go up parallel, reaching a combined US$450 million, according to estimates by ANTS, an integrated programmatic advertising platform, and other sources.

llustrative photo

The two tech giants have increasingly gained revenue in Vietnam, sending the local press industry struggling. To make the picture clearer, the online advertising revenue in 2010 in Vietnam was only around US$10 million, of which Google’s and Facebook’s just made up a small amount.
Now the combined revenue of those two largest cross-border platforms in 2018 astonishingly surged to US$387 million, swallowing the biggest portion of online advertising of US$550 million.
In the meantime, the rate of press agencies earning revenue from online advertising plummeted to 31% in 2018 and will continue to fall to 29% in 2019 compared to 81% in 2010.
Also according to a 2018 report of the Central Commission for Communication and Education of the Communist Party of Vietnam, the revenue from online and printed press in Vietnam was VND4.9 trillion (US$210 million) in 2018 and that of television was VND10 trillion (US$429 million).
The figures pose the question about ads business of Facebook and Google as those platforms earned millions of dollars by sharing and citing contents, news articles of local content creators and press agencies but aversely shared the revenue with them, who eventually are accountable to the contents, VietNamNet reported.
Unfortunately, the Vietnamese government is still struggling to tax those revenues of Facebook and Google.
At the beginning of this year, policy expert Nguyen Quang Dong from the Institute for Policy Studies and Communication Development IPS raised his view that Vietnam should follow the EU’s steps in applying law to better revenue sharing between social media platforms and all content creators including newspapers and magazines.
The law is considered a move to guarantee the rights of press agencies which play significant role in providing contents for the social media platforms.
The dominace of social media platforms
The US-based Pew Research Institute’s reports showed that 80% of Vietnamese considered social media positive while just a mere 6% thought it is negative. As a result, despite some undeniable negative social consequences it has caused, social media is still regarded as an essential source of information.
Under the Facebook’s algorithm, users mostly see in their news feed stories which are relevant to them as it ranks the contents based on users’ reactions on previous posts. This could lead to the display of a part of the truth, not the whole of it, which negatively affect people and businesses. However, media experts said, this algorithm may become strength of mainstream press.
These press agencies are unable to compete with the social platforms in terms of speed but it is the accuracy and the honesty of the delivered information that guarantee its value and existence, according to Chairman and CEO of Le Group of Companies Le Quoc Vinh.
By 2021, it is forecast that over 3 billion people in the world would be subscribers of social media platforms while Vietnam would see 57.43% of its population using Facebook, 12.81% watching YouTube and the numbers continue to rise.

Facebook must obey Vietnamese law: Spokesperson

April 24, 2020 by hanoitimes.vn

The Hanoitimes – Vietnam will watch how Facebook fulfills its commitment to complying with Vietnamese law.

Facebook must comply with Vietnamese law and should cooperate with the government in creating a secure and healthy environment, a spokeperson has said.

IT companies like Facebook are required to comply with Vietnamese law

As a foreign-invested company operating in Vietnam, Facebook has commited to complying with Vietnamese law and the government of Vietnam will see how its commitments are fulfilled, Deputy Spokesperson of Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Ngo Toan Thang said at a press conference on April 23.

Vietnam has developed digital infrastructure to facilitate the operations of foreign companies and supports them in terms of telecommunications on the condition that they abide by Vietnam’s law and fulfil all tax obligations and social responsibilities, the official noted.

“IT companies should cooperate with the government in creating safe and healthy environment,” Thang said in answering a question by DPA on whether Facebook is required to limit access to contents that are deemed illegal in Vietnam.

On April 21, Reuters reported that Facebook’s local servers in Vietnam were taken offline early this year, slowing local traffic to a crawl until it agreed to significantly increase the censorship of “anti-state” posts for local users.

Vietnam has more than 65 million Facebook users who use this social network as the main platform for both e-commerce and expressions of political dissent, Reuters added.