Miss universe guyana

Sao Vang Rubber Factory in Thanh Xuan District. Photo nhandan.com.vn

However, the relocation process has been delayed for many years, leaving central Hanoi exposed to the downfalls of rapid urbanisation.

Transport infrastructure has not been developed synchronously and planning of public works, green spaces and the school system has been below par.

In March, Hanoi’s People’s Committee approved six urban planning for the four core inner-city districts of Hoan Kiem, Ba Dinh, Hai Ba Trung and Dong Da.

The planning projects on 2,700ha aims to reduce the population to 672,000 people from 1.2 million people in the four districts and improve the social and technical infrastructure of the city.

Hanoians have long been waiting for concrete measures from the municipal government to bring planning to life, especially the relocation of universities, hospitals and polluted production facilities to overcome environmental pollution, traffic jams ad save land for public spaces.

“This was a very good policy. I, like many people, expected the project to be realised soon,” said Vo Thi Hue, a resident in Hai Ba Trung District’s Vinh Tuy Ward.

“The fact that industrial production plants were located in densely populated residential areas in central districts was completely inappropriate, it was necessary to quickly find solutions to bring them out of the inner city,” said Hue.

In Vinh Tuy Ward, Dong Xuan Knitting Company still maintains some production units which cause smoke and dust pollution for residential areas nearby.

Local people have petitioned authorities many times but the company was not relocated even after it built a new factory in Hung Yen Province and put it into operation.

Vu Ngoc Quy, a resident in Dong Da District’s Kim Lien Ward, said to reduce traffic pressure in the four central districts with a very large population, moving universities and hospitals to the outskirts is a sound policy.

A policy to relocate the headquarters of ministries, branches and central agencies out of Hanoi’s inner city was approved in a Government resolution in 2008.

In January 2015, then-Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung issued Decision No 130/QD-TTg on measures, the relocation schedule and the use of land in central districts after the relocation of industrial production facilities, hospitals and higher education and vocational training establishments.

However, out of nine ministries, branches and central agencies that have completed construction investment and moved to work at new headquarters, only one handed over its old headquarters.

As for universities and colleges, there are 26 establishments in the four central districts, but so far, only the University of Community Health in Ba Dinh District has relocated.

As for polluting establishments, in 2016, the Capital Law determined the roadmap for relocating 117 establishments in 12 districts out of the inner city by 2020.

However, the relocation work has been virtually stagnant.

A representative of the Hanoi Department of Natural Resources and Environment said the department has been reviewing and adjusting facilities that have to be relocated after the approval of the six residential planning projects.

Recently, the Ministry of Construction acknowledged relocation was very necessary. However, the organisation and implementation of relocation were still slow.

According to the ministry, there were many reasons leading to this situation such as changes in guidelines, policies and laws affecting the progress of planning and relocation projects.

The implementation process encountered many difficulties in mobilising resources and arranging capital while relocation requires huge budgets.

In addition, the initiative, co-ordination and implementation work from agencies was not sufficient.

Dr Dao Ngoc Nghiem, vice president of Vietnam Urban Development Planning Association, said one of the reasons ministries and branches were slow to move to the suburban areas and hand over the land to Hanoi authorities was because they were entangled in the Land Law.

“Because this law regulates that headquarters of ministries, branches, industrial establishments, universities, etc., are allocated land for a definite time and within the allocated time limit, they have full rights to use and exploit the land,” said Nghiem.

“Therefore, many units have kept the old headquarters despite being allocated land to build new ones because they are still within the time limit for land allocation,” he said.

“Thus, Hanoi needed a specific mechanism to revoke the land soon after the units relocate. At that time, the urban areas would have more favourable factors to solve problems such as population expansion and additional land for infrastructure development,” he said.

To hasten the relocation of industrial production facilities, the Hanoi People’s Committee has established a steering committee for relocation, built a list of works that need to be relocated and proposed criteria and roadmaps for relocation in 12 inner-city districts, according to the Ministry of Construction.

For the relocation of medical, education and training facilities, the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education are implementing separate planning programmes on their relocation.

According to Nguyen Duc Hung, vice director of Hanoi Planning and Construction Institute, one of the most important goals of the zoning plan of the historic inner city districts was to relocate the headquarters of ministries, branches and universities.

“At that time, it would create a land fund of about 176ha to build public works and green spaces that is now very lacking, and moving about 100,000 people out of the areas,” Hung said.

“However, the actual implementation is not simple. Along with Hanoi’s responsibility, the drastic participation of all levels, branches, the whole political system is needed with high determination to soon achieve the goals,” he added.

Source: Vietnam News

Advertising their services in broad daylight, forgery service accounts on social media are promising fake degree certificates with identical design and stamps from those issued by top universities of Vietnam — for the cost of just a few million Vietnamese dong. (VND1 million = US$44).

To investigate these clandestine operations, a Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper reporter went undercover and telephoned a man who claimed to provide certificate forgery services on social media.

The person quoted VND4 million (US$174) for a bachelor’s diploma, while a master’s degree could cost VND10 million ($436). Payment is only required when the final products arrive at the customer’s location.

As if to clear the unspoken doubt in the buyer’s mind, the enigmatic trafficker ascertained that his forged diploma would come with ten notarized copies, plus an academic transcript.

“Don’t worry, they can’t be detected with the naked eye,” he affirmed.

According to the dealer, his products are made out of blank diplomas issued by higher education institutions.

“This particular school admits 5,000 students per academic year, so they have to prepare 5,000 blank diplomas,” he claimed.

“However, there’s no way all of these students are going to graduate, as they will quit along the way, leaving some diplomas unfilled.”

The man added that he was able to source these blanks and then use the ‘latest technology’ to produce identical replicas that even university officials cannot detect.

“Had my products been iffy, I would have been busted by now,” he doubled down.

Once the customer is convinced, the dealer would collect several personal details, including birth date, sex, and the university of choice that customer wants their name written next to on the diploma.

The man refused to give any preview of the product before sending it off, saying some customers have dodged payment after realizing photos of their forged certificates are enough to apply for jobs.

“I will get the certificates delivered to you in three days,” he vowed.

“You can inspect it before paying.”

Another forgery service provider on Facebook also promised counterfeit diplomas of mint quality, with wet signatures and a fail-proof guarantee against all notary services in Vietnam, for the price of VND8 million ($349).

According to the seller, his products, made from school-issued blanks, can be used to apply for jobs or promotions since employers barely ever cross-check the legitimacy of certificates with universities.

However, they cannot be used in applying for master’s programs, for the information on them would not match any records in the academia system.

A forged diploma, as advertised by a forgery service provider on social media in Vietnam

Universities’ perspective

According to Nguyen Trung Nhan, head of academic affairs at the Industrial University of Ho Chi Minh City, it is almost impossible for certificate blanks to be leaked from the school.

The school used to purchase certificate blanks from the Ministry of Education and Training, with the quantity strictly matching the number of confirmed graduates for the year.

Currently, the university is now manufacturing blanks in-house.

These blanks are stored in a room with three layers of lock, the keys to which are managed separately by three departments of the university.

After the list of graduates is confirmed, it requires the presence of all three departments to open the vault and obtain the correct number of blanks for certificate issuance.

Even if the blanks do get sneaked outside, universities can still easily expose forged certificates via cross-examination.

“We receive dozens of certificate cross-checking requests every week,” he said.

“There were times when we found 20 percent of scrutinized diplomas to be fake.

“The public can cross-check any certificate issued by us on the university’s official website.”

Bui Hoang Thang, head of academic affairs at the Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology, also thinks that a leak of certificate blanks is highly improbable.

“Many recruiters are reaching out to us to cross-check the academic degrees of their candidates,” Thang said.

“We weed out a lot of fakes from them.”

Diploma blanks are issued by Vietnam’s official money-printing agency and are equipped with anti-counterfeiting details that can only be detected by a few people in charge, said Pham Ngoc Minh, former head of academic affairs at the Banking University of Ho Chi Minh City.

With a strict manufacturing protocol, the smuggling of blanks is basically implausible.

“Modern printing technology can generate identical-looking copies of blanks, but I can spot a fake with just my eyes,” Minh claimed.

“On top of that, most headhunters are cross-checking candidates’ diplomas directly with the universities or through their websites, which leaves no windows for fake diplomas to pass.”

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!

Lockdowns have saved more than three million lives from coronavirus in Europe, a study estimates.

The team at Imperial College London said the “death toll would have been huge” without lockdown.

But they warned that only a small proportion of people had been infected and we were still only “at the beginning of the pandemic”.

Another study argued global lockdowns had “saved more lives, in a shorter period of time, than ever before”.

The Imperial study assessed the impact of restrictions in 11 European countries – Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK – up to the beginning of May.

By that time, around 130,000 people had died from coronavirus in those countries.

The researchers used disease modelling to predict how many deaths there would have been if lockdown had not happened. And the work comes from the same group that guided the UK’s decision to go into lockdown.

They estimated 3.2 million people would have died by 4 May if not for measures such as closing businesses and telling people to stay at home.

That meant lockdown saved around 3.1 million lives, including 470,000 in the UK, 690,000 in France and 630,000 in Italy, the report in the journal Nature shows.

“Lockdown averted millions of deaths, those deaths would have been a tragedy,” said Dr Seth Flaxman, from Imperial.

Their equations made several assumptions, which will affect the figures.

They assume nobody would have changed their behaviour in response to the Covid threat without a lockdown – and that hospitals would not be overwhelmed resulting in a surge in deaths, which nearly happened in some countries.

The study also does not take into account the health consequences of lockdowns that may take years to fully uncover.

Only the beginning?

The model also predicted that the outbreak would be nearly over by now without lockdown, as so many people would have been infected.

More than seven in 10 people in the UK would have had Covid, leading to herd immunity and the virus no longer spreading.

Instead, the researchers estimate that up to 15 million people across Europe had been infected by the beginning of May.

The researchers say at most, 4% of the population in those countries had been infected.

“Claims this is all over can be firmly rejected. We are only at the beginning of this pandemic,” said Dr Flaxman.

And it means that as lockdowns start to lift, there is the risk the virus could start to spread again.

“There is a very real risk if mobility goes back up there could be a second wave coming reasonably soon, in the next month or two,” said Dr Samir Bhatt.

Meanwhile, a separate study by University of California, Berkeley, analysed the impact of lockdowns in China, South Korea, Iran, France and the US.

Their report, also in Nature, says lockdown prevented 530 million infections in those countries.

Just before lockdowns were introduced, they said cases were doubling every two days.

Dr Solomon Hsiang, one of the researchers, said coronavirus had been a “real human tragedy” but the global action to stop the spread of the virus had “saved more lives, in a shorter period of time, than ever before”. BBC

Three sisters in Thanh Hoa Province are in need of financial support for treatment after their parents died.

Hoang Thi Hang (R) and her sister

Lang Thi Sao and Hoang Van Ket had three children together. Kiet’s health deteriorated but because of poverty, he didn’t want to go to the hospital. Kiet was shocked when he was diagnosed with AIDS. He said he didn’t know how he had the disease. He died one month after the diagnosis.

Sao and their youngest daughter, who is only 10 years old, also had AIDS. When Sao died in 2020, the family didn’t have any money so Sao’s cousins, Hoang Van Do, had to borrow money everywhere to hold a funeral for her.

Their eldest daughter, 18-year-old Hoang Thi Hang shoulders everything and looks after her sisters after the deaths of their parents. They are given a monthly allowance of VND450,000 (USD20) for orphaned children but they have to spend VND700,000 a month to buy medicines.

“We are all poor here so we can’t help them much,” Nhat, Hang’s neighbour said. “We often give them vegetables and rice. Hang also works part-time on the fields for some money.”

“Sometimes I felt like I might break down but I still have my sisters,” Hang said. “My youngest sister is struggling against the illness. She often coughs and cries when the weather changes. One of my sisters will learn Judo and I will go to college this year so I’m worried that there will be no one at home to take care of my youngest sister every day.”

Hang said she wanted to go to Hanoi National University of Education but has instead opted for the Primary Education Department at Hong Duc University in Thanh Hoa instead to look after her sister.

Do Viet Phuc, head of Truc Chuan 2 Village, said, “Hang’s family is a difficult case in our area. We also called for help for them but it’s not enough.”

If you can help please donate through:

1. Code 4138: Hoang Thi Hang from Truc Chuan 2 Village, Dong Tien Commune, Trieu Son District, Thanh Hoa Province.
Tel: 0353086871

2. Dantri/DTiNews

No. 2/48 Giang Vo Str., Dong Da Dist., Hanoi

Tel: 024. 3. 7366.491/ Fax: 024. 3. 7366.490
Email: [email protected]

* Vietnam Dong Account information at Vietcombank:

Account holder: Bao Dien tu Dan tri
Account number: 1017378606
With Bank: THE BANK FOR FOREIGN TRADE OF VIETNAM – Thanh Cong Branch

* US Dollar Account information at Vietcombank:

Account holder: Bao Dien tu Dan tri
Account number: 1017780241
SWIFT Code: BFTV VNVX 045
With Bank: THE BANK FOR FOREIGN TRADE OF VIETNAM

* Vietnam Dong Account information at Vietinbank:

Account holder: Bao Dien tu Dan tri
Account number: 126000081304
With Bank: Vietnam Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Industry and Trade – Hoan Kiem Branch

* Vietnam Dong Account information at BIDV
Account holder: Bao Dien tu Dan tri
Account number: 26110002631994
At: Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam, Trang An Branch
Address: No. 11, Cua Bac Street, Ba Dinh District, Hanoi; Tel: 0436869656.

* Vietnam Dong Account information at MB Bank:
Account holder: Bao Dien tu Dan tri
Account number: 0231195149383
With Bank: MILITARY COMMERCIAL JOINT STOCK BANK – Thai Thinh Branch, Hanoi

* Vietnam Dong Account information at Agribank:
– Account holder: Bao Dien tu Dan tri
– Account number: 1400206035022
– At Agribank, Lang Ha Branch, Hanoi

* Vietnam Dong Account information at SHB:
– Account holder: Bao Dien tu Dan tri
– Account number: 1017589681
– At SHB, Hanoi branch

3. Dantri/DTiNews’ representative offices

Da Nang office: 25 Nguyen Tri Phuong, Thanh Khe District, Da Nang City, Tel: 0236. 3653 725
HCM City: No. 294 – 296, Truong Sa Street, Ward 2, Phu Nhuan DIistrict, HCM City; Tel: 028. 3517 6331 (during working hours) or hotline 0974567567
Can Tho office: 53/13 Ly Tu Trong, Ninh Kieu District, Can Tho City, Tel: 0292.3.733.269