Vietnamese brides flock to South Korea

The Independent

After 30 minutes of discussion it was settled. Le would become his bride. She and three other young Vietnamese women had been presented to two South Korean men by illegal marriage brokers in Ho Chi Minh City.

The men made their choices and three days later Le, then 25, was married. After completing the paperwork, she left behind her poor life on a farm in southern Vietnam to live in South Korea.

Tens of thousands of other Vietnamese women have made the same journey.

"I left because of my family's economic difficulties," Le said.

Her parents earned less than two million dong (108 dollars) a month, and the husband gave the family five times that ahead of the marriage.

Then the money stopped, because Le's South Korean dream was cut short.

"I wasn't beaten but I was locked up all day long," said Le, who only gave her first name.

She spoke at an official Women's Union centre which counsels prospective brides of foreigners and helps those who return after encountering difficulty.

Le said her husband "was shouting all the time." She fled, was arrested, and sent back to Vietnam where she returned to her home in the Mekong Delta province of Vinh Long.

Le was one of about 40,000 Vietnamese women who married South Koreans between 2004 and 2009, according to researchers.

Increasing numbers of Southeast Asian men, particularly in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, are marrying foreigners because fewer women in their homelands are willing to wed and take on a traditional role, a study by Daniele Belanger, of Canada's University of Western Ontario, said in late July.

Official figures in South Korea show there were 7,249 marriages between South Koreans and Vietnamese women last year.

South Korean television shows are popular in Vietnam, exposing the would-be brides to Korean culture - and dreams of a better life.

Many of them are impoverished and poorly-educated residents of the rural Mekong Delta, where they are sought by illegal marriage brokers based in nearby Ho Chi Minh City, the former Saigon.

Tran Giang Linh, a Vietnamese researcher, studied families in the Delta province of Can Tho and found some brides were able to send home more than 3,000 dollars in one year - roughly three times Vietnam's per capita income.

But activists say some foreign brides, coaxed by false promises or deceptive advertising, end up living with spouses who have few assets, are ill, alcoholic or just difficult.

Seoul said it would set up a task force to reform the international matchmaking business following the death in July of Vietnamese bride Thach Thi Hoang Ngoc, 20. She was allegedly beaten and stabbed to death by her 47-year-old husband eight days after she arrived in the southern port city of Busan.

The man told police he heard a "ghost's voice" urging him to kill his bride when they quarrelled. He had been treated 57 times for schizophrenia since July 2005, South Korean police said.

Ngoc and her husband met through a marriage agency, Vietnamese media reported.

Following her death, a Vietnamese government spokeswoman said clamping down on illegal marriage brokers would be difficult because "it is not easy to identify which marriage is unlawfully brokered".

An increasing number of marriages are arranged through networks of relatives, although Belanger said family members often have links to the brokers.

Matchmaking agencies in receiving and sending countries still play a major role but "family networks are taking on a greater importance," she said.

Taiwan used to be the destination of choice for Vietnamese women seeking foreign husbands. Some 100,000 Vietnamese wives have been registered there since the early 1990s, according to data gathered on the island.

The flow shifted to South Korea over the past several years, partly because Taiwan tightened its documentation process, said Hong-zen Wang, director of the Graduate Institute of Sociology at Taiwan's National Sun Yat-sen University.

"Now South Korea is the principle destination," he said.

Last year Taiwan also banned commercial international matchmaking services after a series of high-profile criminal cases, including one in which a man was jailed for enslaving and torturing his Vietnamese wife.

Although the problems which foreign brides can encounter abroad should not be minimised, arranged marriages do not systematically lead to abuse, Belanger said.

And the potential for a better life and the ability to send money home to the family draws five or six women a month to the Women's Union advisory centre in Vinh Long.

For Le, who has remarried to a Vietnamese man, the centre is still a source of support three years after her failed marriage to the Korean.

"It helps me to return to a normal life," she said.

Six jailed for Vietnam baby fraud

BBC News

Six Vietnamese have been sentenced to jail for arranging more than 300 fraudulent adoptions, an official said.

The six were jailed for two to four-and-a-half years for "abuse of power", court official Nguyen Tien Hung said.

Among those convicted were two heads of provincial welfare centres, doctors, nurses and local officials.

They were found to have filed false papers to allow babies from poor families to be adopted, many by parents in France, Italy and the US.

Ten other people received suspended sentences of 15 to 18 months.

They came from the province of Nam Dinh, south of Hanoi.

The falsified papers said the babies had been abandoned, making them eligible for adoption by foreign parents, the prosecutors said.

The group was operating from 2005 to July 2008, when the two key suspects were arrested.

The case came to light last year after the US embassy in Hanoi accused Vietnam of failing to police its adoption system, allowing corruption, fraud and baby-selling to flourish.

The US report led Vietnam to end a bilateral adoption agreement.

Vietnam seeks funds for Agent Orange victims

HANOI, Aug 10 (Reuters) - Vietnam launched an "Orange Day" campaign on Monday to raise funds for people it says suffered through the spraying of Agent Orange herbicide by American forces during the war, for long an irritant in relations.

Vietnam and the United States disagree over the impact of the dioxin-laced herbicides, millions of gallons of which was sprayed on Vietnamese jungles by U.S. forces from the early 1960s until the early 1970s in an attempt to deny Communist troops cover.

On Sunday, more than 10,000 people, some in wheelchairs, paraded through downtown Ho Chi Minh City in support of Agent Orange victims and "poor people with disabilities", newspaper Saigon Giai Phong reported.

Vietnam's English state-TV channel VTV4 planned to broadcast Agent Orange-related programmes all day, and the campaign's organisers hoped to raise $3.4 million for shelters, scholarships and vocational training through a range of activities.

The launch date, Aug. 10, marked the day Agent Orange was first used 48 years ago, state media reported.

Hanoi says the defoliants, nicknamed "Agent Orange" from the orange stripe on the barrels in which they were stored, have caused 400,000 deaths and millions of cases of cancer and other ailments. It says 4.8 million people were exposed.

The United States is involved in a project to assess and help clean up dioxin "hot spots" in the central city of Danang and is helping fund services to the disabled community in that area.

Many U.S. veterans exposed to the defoliant have complained for years about a variety of health problems.

Last month, a U.S. Institute of Medicine panel said a study had found that Agent Orange may raise the risk of heart disease and Parkinson's disease, but it said the evidence was far from definitive.[ID:nN24481722]

The findings added to the list of conditions that could be linked to the defoliants, including leukaemia, prostate cancer, type II diabetes and birth defects in the children of veterans.

In March, the U.S. Supreme Court let stand the dismissal of lawsuits by Vietnamese nationals and U.S. veterans against Dow Chemical Co (DOW.N), Monsanto Co (MON.N) and other chemical makers over the use of Agent Orange.

In 1984, seven chemical companies, including Dow and Monsanto, agreed to a $180 million settlement with veterans.

Vietnam capital closes schools to stop H1N1 spread

HANOI, Aug 7 (Reuters) - Authorities in Vietnam's capital, Hanoi, have effectively closed the schools in the city to try to prevent the spread of H1N1 flu, which has infected more than 1,000 people in Vietnam and killed one so far.

A circular by the Hanoi education department said that, effective Friday, schools must "immediately stop every activity that involves gathering students".

The new school year is scheduled to begin as planned on Aug. 17, it said, but some schools had started early and summer classes were in session at many others.

Three schools in Hanoi had reported students infected with the H1N1 virus, the news Web site VNexpress.net said. H1N1 cases have been reported in all regions of the country.

In its latest update last week, the World Health Organisation reported 162,230 confirmed cases and 1,154 deaths from the virus. Flu experts said this probably reflected only a fraction of the true count as not every patient can be diagnosed with a lab test.

Heavy rain hits north Vietnam, Hanoi traffic halted

HANOI, July 20 (Reuters) - Heavy rain from a weakened tropical storm has hit northern Vietnam, causing flooding that brought traffic to a halt in the capital Hanoi and prompted the government to warn of landslides in mountainous areas.

Tropical storm Molave made landfall on Saturday along the southern coast of China, where it weakened before dumping torrential rain across Vietnam's northern mountainous provinces from late Sunday, the national weather centre said.

Provincial authorities should inspect residential areas facing a high risk of landslides and flash floods so they can be active in preventive measures, the government said in a report.

Floods and landslides early this month have killed 34 people and damaged hundreds of homes in seven northern provinces, an area also affected by Sunday's rain.

Up to 120 mm (4.7 inches) of rain also fell in the rush hour on Monday in Hanoi, knocking down trees and submerging streets, witnesses said. Traffic was chaotic at intersections, with flood waters hip-high in some areas, they said.

Flooding has become more frequent in Hanoi as the road and the drainage systems struggle to accommodate a rising population.

Want to predict the weather? Watch the dragonflies

HANOI, July 16 (Reuters Life!) - Can dragonflies warn of impending rain? Can you predict the weather by looking at the colour of a cloud or by observing animals? For generations of Vietnamese farmers and fishermen, the answer is yes.

Although the weather in Vietnam is forecast using hi-tech satellite imaging, many communities still predict floods, storms and drought the traditional way -- by tracking nature.

For example, in a drought prone area of the coastal Ninh Thuan province, farmers believe that if the dragonfly flies high it will be sunny and if it flies low there will be rain.

In north-central Thua Thien Hue Province, fishermen are likely to bring their boats back to the shore if, in January or February, they look to the north and see a silver cloud that quickly disappears, as it is a sign of cold weather.

Many of these beliefs, which are kept alive through proverbs, folk songs and legends and which have so far been passed down orally, are now being recorded by a group of aid agencies in the Southeast Asian country as part of a project to see whether they still hold true in times of rapid climate change.

"The communities know a lot about disaster adaptation and the question now, in Vietnam, is to see if this indigenous knowledge is still accurate or not with the climate changing very quickly," Guillaume Chantry, project coordinator of Development Workshop France (DWF), told Reuters.

Climate change is expected to hit low-lying Vietnam hard.

In April, the Asian Development Bank said by the end of this century, Vietnam's rice production could dramatically decline while rising sea levels could submerge tens of thousands of hectares of cropland and uproot thousands of families living in coastal communities.

For the next two months, a group of agencies led by DWF will visit 10 disaster-prone areas from the mountainous north to the steamy Mekong delta in the south to collect information about traditional beliefs in the hope it could be used in programmes to reduce the risk of natural disasters.

Dr. Ben Wisner, a hazards expert at Oberlin College, Ohio and London's University College, says indigenous knowledge can help make disaster prevention programmes more effective by pinpointing areas that are vulnerable to flooding and which are not visible on satellite images or official maps.

The idea of using local knowledge to create better ways to adapt to climate change and reduce the risk of natural disasters is slowly gaining ground as experts, scientists and aid workers scramble to find ways of predicting and dealing with the threat.

Critics dismiss traditional ways of reading the weather as backward and old-fashioned.

But, according to a U.N. report, during the devastating 2004 tsunami, the Moken nomads on the coast of Thailand were among other Asian communities that were largely spared, because they noticed the change in environment, using knowledge passed down through generations, and fled to higher ground.

"It's important for us practitioners to know how communities usually protect themselves," Chantry said.

Vietnam flood toll hits 28: officials

HANOI (AFP) — The death toll from flooding and landslides in mountainous northern Vietnam has risen to at least 28, authorities have said.

Most of the deaths were in Bac Kan and Lai Chau provinces, said the National Flood and Storm Control Committee, updating its previous figure of at least 22 deaths since heavy rains began on Friday.

Thanh Nien newspaper quoted Trieu Kiem Vang, a farmer in Bac Kan's Khen Len hamlet, as saying his two sons, their wives and two granddaughters were buried in a landslide.

There were also deaths in Cao Bang, Son La, Lao Cai and Ha Giang provinces, the flood committee said, listing three people as missing.

The storms destroyed nine bridges, flooded hundreds of houses and about 600 hectares (1,480 acres) of cropland, authorities said.

Security forces are assisting in the aid and rescue effort, state television reported.

Vietnam's flood and storm season generally starts in July and lasts until November.

Last year at least 550 people died in disasters triggered by bad weather, the national statistics office said earlier.

Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved.

Vietnam sniffer dogs search for flood victims

PAC NAM, Vietnam (Reuters) - Vietnamese soldiers and police used sniffer dogs on Tuesday to search for victims of floods in the north of the country which killed at least 34 people.

Flash floods and landslides from heavy rain on Friday night hit eight northern mountainous provinces in one of Vietnam's most impoverished areas, with Bac Kan province topping the casualty list with 13 deaths.

Flooding and heavy rain late last week in neighbouring southern China forced 550,000 people to evacuate their homes and killed at least 15, Xinhua news agency reported.

The government said on Tuesday nearly 800 houses in seven provinces had been destroyed or submerged, while floods had damaged rice and corn crops, irrigation systems and roads.

Vietnam is often struck by floods and storms between July and October. The disaster area is far from Vietnam's main rice and coffee growing regions.

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

Vietnamese American returns to homeland to help disabled

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — Some wounds never heal.

At age 15 in 1968, Do Van Du lost a leg and part of an arm while serving as a combat interpreter for the U.S. Special Forces near the Cambodian border. He moved to the United States in 1971 and became a successful software engineer and systems analyst. Then, seven years ago, Du returned to his homeland to help found a college-level program run by Catholic Relief Services to train disabled young people to be software engineers and tech workers — a first for Vietnam.

"People with disabilities don't have a voice in Vietnam," said the veteran, whose fashionable black slacks and sports coat fail to disguise a perpetual sadness in his eyes.

You are basically thrown away. You are not 'normal.' You can't work. You are a leech on society," the former Bay Area resident said before walking with a slight limp into a classroom full of eager students on crutches and in wheelchairs. "In Asia, because of the belief in reincarnation, people think you have done something in a prior life and now you are paying for it."

Grim evidence of the harsh treatment of Vietnam's disabled citizens is easy to find among the students in Du's program.

Duong Anh My was peppered by rocks because his leg was deformed.

When Ha Mau Xuyen applied for work at a telecom company, her field of study, she knew as soon as human resources representatives saw her crippled leg the job interview had effectively
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ended. "I knew by their look they rejected me," said the 27-year-old polio victim.

Tay Duong Thi Ngoc Hoa is confined to a wheelchair in a country in which access to buildings, buses and schools for the disabled is rarely provided. "I had nothing to hope for," the 25-year-old said, her thin legs dangling from her wheelchair.

An estimated 5.6 million people of Vietnam's 90 million citizens are disabled, according to the government, though the World Health Organization places that figure at nearly 9 million. Vietnam has its own version of the Americans with Disabilities Act, but enforcement is rare. "There is no penal code to punish those who violate it," Du said.

For a small number of disabled young people enrolled in the tech training programs Du founded in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, that is changing.

"IT allows them to connect to the outside world in a way they haven't before," said Andrew Wells-Dang, deputy country director for Catholic Relief Services. "It also demonstrates that people with disabilities can do all kinds of jobs, including high-tech ones."

In all, 175 students have received tech training over the past two years, including 75 as software engineers who earn international software engineering certificates. The others get six months' training in business process outsourcing — which includes image processing, data entry and general office IT work that companies outsource to countries like Vietnam.

Du's Information Technology Training Center, which receives funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development, just expanded to Ho Chi Minh City, where more than 50 students are now attending daily classes at Van Lang University. They have been provided with brand-new PCs. Subsidized housing is available to those who need it. The program, which has a budget of about $200,000 a year, is free to the students.

"Some of these people had never touched a mouse before," said Du, who has also started a for-profit company, Hanoi-based PWD Soft, which employees engineers with disabilities.

Many in the program suffer from the continuing consequences from the war with the United States, even though the conflict ended more than 30 years ago. Some struggle with injuries from stepping on land mines. Others have ailments linked to Agent Orange, the highly toxic defoliant used by the U.S. military, said Van Lang University Chancellor Nguyen Dung. Some have been afflicted with illnesses, such as polio, that no longer threaten those in the West.

All too often, Vietnamese with disabilities are confined to home or work in low-skill jobs, such as making toothpicks or chopsticks. Some spend their lives begging.

"The IT industry is one of the few professional fields in Vietnam that are well-suited for people with disabilities," Chancellor Nguyen said. "They may have trouble getting around, but their minds are fine for IT."

The training, though, involves more than learning the intricacies of programming languages like C++ and Java. The students look after each other — pushing wheelchairs, carrying one another's crutches, helping to ease fellow students into a taxi. For some, it's the first time in their lives they feel accepted.

"It's not a class anymore. It's a family," said 30-year-old Nguyen Thi Xuan Thao, who is learning outsourcing tech skills.

Du said the program is modeled after one he attended in Seattle in 1987, dubbed Resources Center for the Handicapped. Sponsors included Boeing Computer Services, Microsoft and IBM. "There was probably nothing like that anywhere except in the U.S.," he recalled.

Du went on to enjoy a successful career as an engineer, pulling down a six-figure salary. He lived in Oakland during the late 1990s when he was an IT consultant for health-care services company McKesson in San Francisco.

Now 56, Du is a man haunted by the events that reshaped his life four decades ago. He was recruited to help the Americans because of his strong English-speaking abilities. "I was a kid," Du said. "The U.S. had child soldiers."

While on patrol one day in Loc Ninh, his unit found itself surrounded. The soldiers called in artillery support. The shells, though, landed on the Americans, killing a lieutenant.

"It blew up my left arm and right leg. It was very difficult for a kid at that age to go through that. I had three choices — kill myself, start begging, or not select one or two," Du grimly jokes.

Du, who moves stiffly and remains self-conscious of his artificial limbs after all these years, is a hero in the eyes of the students. He embodies all they hope for — independence.

"We've learned how to believe in ourselves," said Nguyen Thi Xuan Thao, whose left arm and leg were partially paralyzed after she contracted meningitis as a child.

"I have a heart and a mind just like everybody else," she said. "The only thing that is different about me is the way I walk."

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Barbecues and baking: relief of Vietnam's Net addicts

HO CHI MINH CITY (AFP) — By 10:00 pm Phan Le Hong Duc still had not come home. His worried mother, Le Thi Hoang, knew her teenage son was playing computer games somewhere, so she set out to find him by renting a motorcycle taxi and knocking on the doors of neighbourhood Internet cafes.

"They all said that there were no children inside but actually I knew there were, because from the outside I could hear the sounds of them playing games," Hoang, 54, recalled.

At 5:00 am, his gaming finished for the night, Duc finally came home.

He was addicted.

His late nights at the keyboard had taken the place of evening classes at school, which he was skipping.

His mother felt he needed help, and she found it at Vietnam's first treatment programme for online game addicts.

Most people in Vietnam remain farmers but against this traditional background is a rapidly modernising nation confronting 21st century problems including computer game addiction.

The government says about one quarter of the 86 million people in Vietnam already have Internet access.

Asia's Internet gaming craze hit the country only about four years ago, but now online game shops can be seen even in rural villages, and the number of gamers is expected to rise.

Late last year a report by US-based Pearl Research, a consultancy specialising in games and interactive entertainment, forecast that Vietnam's online gamers will exceed 10 million by 2011.

"I don't know whether I can call myself an addict of online games," said Nguyen Nam Cuong, 15, playing in a Hanoi Internet shop during his school holidays.

Almost all of the 30 computers were occupied by youngsters engrossed in fighting or football games, the only noise coming from their keyboards.

Cuong said he plays one or two hours on school days and about double that during the holidays.

"I enjoy it. Here, I think I can live a more interesting life than my actual life," says Cuong.

Nguyen Thanh Nhan, director of the centre that runs what he called the country's first cyber addict treatment programme, did not know how many game-players need help.

"I can only say that the figure is very big," he said, noting that "thousands" of people called to ask about the course run by the Communist Youth Union, which also offers other educational programmes for young people.

"Online game addiction is something like drug addiction," says Nhan, 35, director of the Union's Southern Youth Centre.

Duc, 15, admits that he was addicted.

"When I first started, I played from around five to six hours a day and the time played just increased day by day. Sometimes the longest I played was 10 hours overnight," he said in an interview arranged by the Youth Union.

He said he favoured a game in which teams of four or five players fight each other. With 20,000 dong (1.11 US) in daily breakfast allowance from his mother, Duc said he had enough money to play for at least five hours at Internet cafes.

"No, I did not eat anything," he said.

Betting on the games also helped to fund his addiction.

"Mostly, our team won," said Duc, who failed grade eight because of his gaming.

Duc's symptoms were "not that serious" compared with others who stole, quit school or turned to violence because of their habit, Nhan said.

Duc's mother, a professor at a teachers' college, said her son eventually realised he had a problem. Unlike others, he did not have to be pushed into treatment, she said, adding the 16-day course was worth the fee of about 3.5 million dong.

"We are ready to pay to take back our children," she said.

Duc was one of 20 teenagers in the first course, run on weekends, last November.

Nhan said the organisers studied successful programmes from China and South Korea but came up with their own method which incorporates a type of group therapy, "so they can share with each other about their feelings."

The course also aims to re-establish bonds between the addicts and their families through simple activities like baking a cake or having a barbecue, he said.

"They told us about what are the precious things in life," said Duc.

A second course, which ended in early June, treated about twice as many addicts and incorporated physical training because many game players are very weak, Nhan said.

Five psychologists were among the more than 30 staff treating the addicts on Duc's course, he said.

Among their goals was to expose the youngsters to new activities and ways of expressing themselves.

"Suddenly, they discover that they like football or they like hip hop dancing," Nhan said.

About 90 percent of participants give up online gaming, and those who continue to play are more respectful of their families, he said.

While the government has, in years past, tried to control excessive computer gaming with regulations, Nhan said such efforts will not work.

"We must change the awareness, the behaviour of the children themselves," he said.

The bespectacled Duc says he now dreams of being a pop singer. He already looks the part, with a hairstyle reminiscent of a Japanese manga comic character, a black and white shirt, and a dragon pattern on his trouser leg.

The treatment programme sparked his interest in hip hop, he says, and insists on demonstrating his skills even though there is no music.

Duc twists his body, arms moving slowly, feet sliding. Then he falls to the floor, gets up, and puts his stylised baseball cap on sideways -- a dance of success.

Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved.

Vietnam cuts list of death penalty crimes: official

HANOI (AFP) — Vietnam on Friday removed rape and several other offences from the list of crimes punishable by death, an official said, but deputies maintained capital punishment for drug trafficking.

"This morning, the national assembly approved some amendments to the criminal code," an official from the National Assembly office told AFP.

He said that, in addition to rape, deputies voted to remove six other offences from the list: awarding of bribes, counterfeiting of money and bonds, hijacking ships and planes, destruction of weapons and military equipment, and appropriation of property through swindling.

Seventy-five percent of deputies in the communist-dominated National Assembly endorsed the amendments to the penal code, which take effect January 1 next year, state media reported.

The amendments were controversial, with lively debate particularly about rape and drug trafficking, according to local media reports of the proceedings, which were closed to foreign reporters.

A draft amendment presented to the deputies had proposed removing eight crimes from the list, including drug trafficking, but as their month-long sitting closed on Friday deputies rejected the move.

Global human rights group Amnesty International said it "very much" welcomed the reduction in the number of capital offences.

"And we hope that this is the first concrete step in a move towards abolition, which the highest levels of the Vietnam government have indicated support for," and which is a worldwide trend, Amnesty's Janice Beanland said from London.

She said Amnesty was disappointed that drug offences were excluded from the changes, despite a recommendation from Vietnam's Ministry of Justice, but was encouraged by the National Assembly's debate of the issue.

More than 90 percent of National Assembly deputies are Communist Party members but the parliament has in recent years become more vocal over the country's major problems.

"I think the National Assembly is doing a good job in not being seen as a rubber stamp... It's a start," an Asian diplomat said before the voting.

Vietnam last reduced the number of death penalty crimes in 1999, but even with the latest amendments the country still has 22 crimes on its statutes that are punishable by death.

Dozens of people each year in Vietnam are sentenced to die by firing squad, mostly for murder and drug trafficking.

Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved.

Vietnam: Where the schools have no loos

HANOI, 17 June 2009 (IRIN) - For Nguyen Cong Tuan, 10, a primary school student in Hanoi, using the toilets at school was a frightening experience.

The filth and stench made him afraid to go near them. So Tuan would wait until he got home; his mother rightly worried that he could develop urinary tract problems.

Yet Tuan could be considered one of the lucky ones - many schools in Vietnam, even in the capital, Hanoi, lack any toilets at all.

The Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) recently surveyed sanitation facilities in 11,200 schools across the country.

"About 30 percent of inspected schools had no toilets or inadequate toilets," says La Quy Don, deputy head of the ministry's student affairs department.

A separate survey conducted in Hanoi found that of 1,400 schools nearly all failed to have enough sanitation facilities, says Nguyen Nhu Hoa, deputy head of the office for planning and finance in the city's education department.

Failed standards

Regulations require one toilet for every 100 students and one tap for every 60 students.

"There are few schools in Hanoi that meet these standards," says Hoa. "And many schools in the outlying districts have no toilets at all."

Tran Thu An, a sanitation programme officer with the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), says the issue of toilet facilities rarely gets the consideration it deserves.

The UN, as part of its "child-friendly" schools campaign in Vietnam, has been trying to focus on proper sanitation facilities. In the past year, it has been working with MoET, helping to design and build better toilet facilities across the country.

Priorities

Part of the problem is that there are so many pressing needs when it comes to education that sanitation is often the last thing considered.

At the moment, the government's priority is to replace all the makeshift shelters that serve as classrooms with concrete schools that can withstand monsoon winds and rains, says An. Yet when these new schools are built, toilets are not part of the plans.

The responsibility for building latrines lies in part with local authorities and communities, who often lack the funds or interest. So in the end, says An, toilets just do not get built. The result is that students are forced to use "the bushes surrounding the schools", she says. "It's hard to believe."

Tran Duy Tao, head of administration for the school infrastructure and equipment department at the education ministry, says it is not always a lack of money. Space is also an issue. In crowded, yet wealthier, urban areas, schools may have the funds but no room to build more toilets, he says. The rural authorities often have the land to build sanitation facilities but no money.

Health issues

The government is trying to tackle the problem, says Don, at MoET's student affairs department. In 2006, the government declared that all kindergartens and schools would have hygienic toilets and all children would have access to clean water by 2010.

But Don says at the current rate of construction, it is highly unlikely this goal will be met.

"This has a negative effect on students' health as well as their studying ability," says Don. "Students may try to hold it in due to their fear of dirty toilets. And where schools do not have toilets, students have to do it somewhere else and it causes environmental problems."

As for Tuan, he no longer has to wait until he gets home. Parents at the Hanoi elementary school were so upset over the dirty facilities and concerns for their children's health that a few months ago they decided to chip in and pay a monthly fee to have them cleaned.

For US50 cents a month per family, Tuan and his classmates are no longer afraid to go to the bathroom.

IRIN

US wartime bombs still killing in Vietnam

BAC GIANG (AFP) - At first, Dinh Thi Bac thought the blast came from a blown tyre as someone drove past her scrap metal shop.

She looked outside and saw the air thick with smoke, and when it cleared a little she saw all the blood.

One woman lay badly hurt, bleeding and riddled with metal pellets in a corner.

Another ran, wounded, towards the road and collapsed where motorcycles are now parked a few metres away, Bac recalls.

"I was told that she died just a few hundred metres from here, on the way to hospital," Bac said.

More than 35 years after American warplanes dropped their last bombs on this area of northern Vietnam, they have killed again.

Nguyen Thi Van, 39, died and her co-worker, Nguyen Thi Lien, 33, was badly wounded when a cluster bomblet which they unknowingly collected exploded, local officials said.

The bomblet was among beer cans and other scrap metal the collectors wanted to sell and were weighing on a small green scale outside the village junk shop run by Bac, 26, and her husband Pham Van Trung, the officials said.

This was the first time in 30 years that anyone had been killed by unexploded ordnance (UXO) in this area, commune police chief Tran Xuan Dan said.

In comparison, Quang Tri province and other parts of central Vietnam have a much bigger UXO problem.

Quang Tri recorded more than 2,600 fatalities from bombs and other ordnance between the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 and December last year, according to Project Renew, which has spent years trying to protect Quang Tri residents from UXOs.

But Van's death in northern Bac Giang province, about 60 kilometres (37 miles) from Hanoi, emphasises the extent of the problem which all of Vietnam faces.

"I don't think there's any province in the country that is not affected to some extent by UXO contamination," says Chuck Searcy, country representative for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, which sponsors Project Renew.

Cluster bombs explode in mid-air to randomly scatter hundreds of small bomblets, many of which fail to explode and can lie dormant for decades until someone disturbs them.

The bomblet that killed Van was filled with metal pellets that penetrated her brain, said Nguyen Nhu Thang, chairman of the local commune's People's Committee.

Many other pellets tore into her co-worker Lien's legs. Some hit her in the face. She declined to comment when AFP found her sitting on her bed eating lunch at a district military hospital.

Dinh Thi Ha, 28, was luckier.

"I didn't know that I was hit. I was calling people to bring the victims to hospital when I saw that I was bleeding, and then suddenly the baby just cried," she said at her tailor shop beside the scrap metal business run by her sister and brother-in-law.

A pellet hit Ha in the leg and then went into her baby, Le Quynh Anh, who is just a few months old.

"The doctor had some difficulty getting the pellet out," Anh's mother said, showing two pea-sized marks that look like bruises on either side of the child's lower back.

Other than those marks, baby Anh, wearing a cute yellow hat, appears happy and physically normal.

"She is a bit sensitive to big sounds now," her grandmother Ninh Thi Hien, 51, said after the family shows off the pellet which they keep in a child's plastic purse.

The tile roof in front of the shops has been repaired but still carries about 10 pea-sized holes from the pellets that shot through it.

Ha said she never imagined that, three decades after the war, she and her baby would be hurt in this way.

Searcy called them victims of a weapon with almost no legitimate military application.

"For a baby to be injured by this, that's unspeakable. That's an unspeakable crime against humanity," he said at his Hanoi office.

But it was probably only a matter of time before someone got hurt in this commune of red soil and rice paddies, where more than 9,000 people live.

"There are still quite a lot of cluster bombs in this area," Thang said, adding that the women who delivered the scrap had no idea of the danger it posed.

Area residents report bomb discoveries several times a year, officials said.

Large bombs will be dealt with by higher-level authorities but the commune itself can take care of cluster bomblets by burying them with two kilograms (4.4 pounds) of salt in a hole, Thang said.

"After one month, it will be OK," Thang said.

Searcy, who served in army intelligence, reacted with shock when told of the commune's solution.

"Salt will not corrode," he said, adding local authorities put themselves at risk by moving the bomblets.

The incident in Bac Giang reinforces the need for a nationwide awareness campaign about bomb safety, Searcy said.

As part of its work in Quang Tri, Project Renew conducts a comprehensive education programme that uses everything from billboards, posters, radio and television to art contests and cultural events.

There is a free hotline, and people are taught to report things that look dangerous, Searcy said.

"It's now becoming institutionalised. It's a community practice so the whole community is sort of involved in the effort, but that doesn't exist in a place like Bac Giang province. Net yet anyway."

While northern Vietnam was bombed only from the air, Quang Tri and other areas of then South Vietnam were hit by everything from airborne bombs to artillery and sea-based weapons, accounting for the higher concentration of UXOs there.

Bac Giang would not need a public education programme as extensive as Quang Tri's, but some public awareness along with training for local officials might help keep people out of danger, Searcy said.

"One of the things that I hope can be implemented in Vietnam very soon, maybe this year, would be a national awareness programme about safety, even in areas such as Bac Giang where there are very few" incidents, he said.

Searcy is optimistic because of the Oslo Convention on Cluster Munitions which prohibits their use, production, transfer and stockpiling. The treaty entitles signatories to financial and other assistance for destroying the bombs and making local residents aware of their danger.

"We hold that the anti-cluster bomb treaty needs widespread participation," Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Dung said. "At present, Vietnam is considering participation in this treaty."

Countries began signing the Convention in December and Searcy said he expects Vietnam will soon adopt it, a move that could make "substantial resources" available against UXOs for the first time since the war.

He is hopeful that, in the future, fewer innocent people like Van will die because of left-over bombs.

"I think that we're entering into a period where Vietnam may be able to look at a decade of tremendous progress in cleaning it up." (By IAN TIMBERLAKE)

Let's not distort history of the Vietnam War

Anthony H. Cordesman engages in some revisionist history in his May 14 commentary, "Complete War, Peace in Iraq," when he declares that we "won" in Vietnam, and that we left having "forced North Vietnam to halt its offenses."The cease-fire signed in January 1973 was in no way a military victory for either side. The Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese knew that the inconclusive fighting had gone on for too long and that the people of the United States wanted it to end. They also understood that U.S. leaders would not want to leave having it appear they were beaten.

Cordesman states that we left "something approaching a functioning democracy." More revisionism. The cease-fire left South Vietnam still governed by military leaders, many of whom had governed without respect for their own citizens and a religion that the generals did not share.

As far back as 1963, the leaders of South Vietnam with U.S. support raided the Buddhist holy sites.

After the overthrow of the Diem regime and the assassination of the Diem brothers, the generals fought for the honor of directing American aid. The 12 years of battle resulted in the deaths of more than 58,0000 American military personnel and caused the death of more than 2.5 million people overall, not to mention untold disfigurement and crippling injuries many of which were caused by indiscriminate bombings.

And perhaps Cordesman does not remember the surrender South Vietnam President Duong van Minh, a former general, to the Viet Cong on April 30, 1975, and the pictures of American and South Vietnamese being evacuated off the roof of the American Embassy.

One wonders at mankind's inability to learn from history, but history distorted by the highly honored Anthony Cordesman does a great disservice to those too young to remember.

William P. McMillen, a Delmar resident, refused induction into the armed services in March 1965. He served 26 months of a six-year prison sentence.

Times Union

US doubles funds for Agent Orange cleanup

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — The United States government has doubled its funding for dealing with the environmental and health consequences of its wartime use in Vietnam of the toxic herbicide Agent Orange, the embassy said Friday.

President Barack Obama recently signed a bill increasing the funding from $3 million to $6 million, embassy officials said. Most of the money is being used in Danang, where U.S. troops used to mix and store Agent Orange at an Air Force base before loading it onto planes.

During the Vietnam war, which ended in 1975, the U.S. sprayed more than 20 million gallons (75 million liters) of Agent Orange and other herbicides across the country to strip Vietnamese guerrillas of ground cover and kill their crops.

Agent Orange contains dioxin, a highly toxic substance that remains in soil and sediment for years and poses a serious health threat to anyone who touches it.

Vietnam believes as many as 4 million people have suffered serious health problems from the herbicide, such as cancer, spina bifida and other birth defects. The U.S. says the actual number is probably far lower and that further scientific study is needed to understand the health impact. The U.S. and Vietnam only began working together in 2007 to address the consequences of Agent Orange after years of disagreement.

The embassy said in a statement that one third of the $6 million is being used for health programs to serve people in the Danang area. The rest will be used to remove dioxin from the soil and sediment near Danang airport.

The first $3 million in U.S. funds was allocated during the administration of George W. Bush. Some of that money was used to contain dioxin at the Danang site to prevent it getting into the water supply.

Friday's People's Army newspaper quoted Lai Minh Hien, a Vietnamese environmental official in charge of Agent Orange issues, as saying that Vietnam needs additional 1 trillion dong ($57 million) to clean up dioxin in Danang as well as at former U.S. air bases in Bien Hoa and Phu Cat.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Vietnam honours Russian embalmers of Ho Chi Minh

HANOI (AFP) — Vietnam has presented awards to Russian scientists who have helped preserve the body of founding president Ho Chi Minh for the past 40 years, the foreign ministry said.

Valery Bykov and Yuri Denisov-Nikolsky each received Vietnam's Independence Order, third class, at a ceremony in Moscow on Wednesday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.

It said they were honoured for "great services for the past 40 years to the embalmment and preservation of the body of President Ho Chi Minh as well as the construction of mausoleum for him."

The Independence Order is the country's third-highest national honour.

Colonel Nguyen Van Cuong, commander of the Mausoleum Protection Command, said the former Soviet Union, and now Russia, had helped train a team of Vietnamese scientists and bio-medical experts working on the preservation of Ho's body, the foreign ministry said.

White-jacketed guards protect the grey stone mausoleum, surrounded by parkland in central Hanoi's embassy district, where tourists line up to see the body of Vietnam's revolutionary leader who died in September 1969.

In 2007 on the 90th anniversary of Russia's Bolshevik Revolution, Nguyen Thi Minh Hien, deputy secretary of the Vietnam-Russia Friendship Association, said that each year Russian experts "come to Hanoi to maintain (his) embalmed corpse."

Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved.

Forged art legacy of Vietnam war

How many of the paintings displayed at the Vietnamese National Museum of Fine Arts in Hanoi are originals and how many are copies?

That question has been a topic of hot discussion in Vietnam for quite some time.

It is well known among Vietnamese artists that the museum has been hanging works of art that are in fact copies of very famous Vietnamese paintings as some of the originals were either sold or lost.

The leading art historian and Vietnamese painting expert, Nora Taylor, from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, believes that about half of the paintings displayed at the museum are in fact copies.

According to Nguyen Do Bao, the former chairman of the Hanoi Fine Arts Association, the practice began with the best of intentions.

"The practice started during the war (between North and South Vietnam) in the 1960s. Copies were displayed at the museum while the originals were taken away to avoid being damaged during bombing raids," he explained.

At the time it seemed a great idea, but the problem was that nobody seemed to be in control.

Not all of the original paintings were returned to the museum after the war.

Now no-one is certain what has happened to the originals, but it is thought that some were sold by officials and are now in private hands or in galleries around the world.

Artists themselves were asked by the museum to copy their own paintings, and now no-one knows for sure which are original and which are copies.

To make the matter worse, the demand for Vietnamese art means that "young painters who have not made names for themselves, and even undergraduates who need money, make copies to sell", according to Nguyen Do Bao.

Going downhill

One very famous example of a copied painting on display at the museum was "Playing the O An Quan" by Nguyen Phan Chanh.

According to Nora Taylor, "the purported originals of 'Playing the O An Quan' are now in galleries in both Singapore and Japan".

One of the most copied painters is Bui Xuan Phai, who is best known for his paintings of the streets in Hanoi's old quarter.

His son, Bui Thanh Phuong, was upset to hear that one of the faked paintings described as Phai's work was sold for $120,000 (£76,000) at an international auction.

"I would be very glad if the painting was done by him. No paintings by Bui Xuan Phai have reached that price in Vietnam," says Phuong.

"I feel very upset about it, because any painter who knows about Phai's style can see at a glance that it is not his, it is a fake. The painting technique is so poor."

The fake is in lacquer which according to Phai's son was "very unfamiliar" to his father, whose original work can be seen in the National Museum, painted in oil.

Analysts say the practice of copying original works has damaged the reputation of Vietnam's art in the international market.

"People are complaining that the Vietnamese art market, which once used to be so hot, is now going downhill badly," says Nguyen Do Bao.

The biggest loss, according to Nora Taylor, is that prestigious museums around the world do not want to borrow works from the Vietnamese National Museum of Fine Arts.

Now there is growing pressure from the Vietnamese art community for the museum to sort out the genuine works from the copies.

The Vietnamese Culture Ministry has said it would like to set up a panel to clear up the confusion.

BBC

Vietnam reports first death from recent cholera outbreak

HANOI (AFP) — Vietnam has recorded its first cholera death during an outbreak that has spread to 11 out of 63 provinces and cities across the communist nation, the health ministry said on Tuesday.

The 50-year-old victim from northern Ninh Binh province died on May 12 a few hours after hospitalisation, said a Ministry of Health website report.

The victim was an alcoholic who tested positive for vibrio cholera bacteria. He had diarrhoea and serious dehydration, the ministry said.

It added that a total of 53 patients have been confirmed with cholera since April 20, while more than 500 others had acute diarrhoea.

In March and April last year the country battled cholera outbreaks which hit Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and 16 other provinces. More than 100 people were infected but no fatalities were reported.

Vietnam has a long standing problem with food safety and hygiene.

Authorities in Hanoi have temporarily closed at least a dozen dog slaughterhouses -- where the popular meat is prepared -- over fears their unhygienic conditions may help spread cholera bacteria to people, an official said Monday.

Cholera is an acute intestinal infection transmitted through water or food contaminated with the bacteria vibrio cholera. It causes diarrhoea and dehydration and can lead to kidney failure and death if untreated.

The World Health Organization (WHO) says cholera can be easily avoided through good hygiene, especially by washing hands with soap after using the toilet.

The WHO on Tuesday referred to a 2006 survey of rural sanitation that found only 12 percent of people washed their hands before eating, 15.5 percent washed after urinating, and 16.9 percent cleaned their hands after defecating. The survey was carried out by Vietnam's Department of Preventative Medicine and Environment.

Bacteria from the faeces of a contaminated person are one of the main sources of cholera contamination, the WHO says.

As part of its joining the World Trade Organization two years ago, Vietnam's food safety needs to adapt to international standards, WHO said.

"Coordination of activities to ensure safe practices into the entire food chain is a challenging task for Vietnam's government," it said.

Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved.

Vietnam plans ban on dancing to karaoke

HO CHI MINH CITY (AFP) — It is early evening and another night of singing has begun in earnest at Style Karaoke, a plush club where high-flyers in Vietnam's commercial capital come to let off steam.

Music blasts from behind the glass doors of the small rooms where groups gather to sing and, as the rhythm takes hold, to dance.

And that, the communist government says, is the problem.

It wants to ban dancing at karaoke bars in what reports have said is a bid to limit drug use.

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism posted the proposed ban on its website last month and invited public comment on the move, its latest attempt to clamp down on lawlessness at the popular singing venues.

But at Style and other neon-lit clubs on Su Van Hanh street, the heart of karaoke entertainment in the city formerly known as Saigon, the proposal is dismissed as unworkable.

"I think it's not feasible because these people who go to karaoke want to relieve their stress," says Dang Duy Thanh, the gel-haired manager of Style.

"If we just force them to stay there singing without feeling comfortable, that's not right".

Le Anh Tuyen, head of the culture ministry's legal department, reportedly sees things differently.

Tuyen, who five years ago warned that karaoke was linked to prostitution, was quoted by the VietnamNet news website last month as saying the drug ecstasy would be used in karaoke rooms if dancing was not banned.

"Ecstasy always goes with wine and music," he said. "In my opinion, karaoke is a cultural activity which is always latent with social evils."

Tuyen did not respond to AFP's requests for an interview.

Ecstasy became popular around the world at "rave" dance parties.

Tuyen told VietnamNet the government has statistics about the use of ecstasy at karaoke bars, but the report gave no data.

"I'm sure the real number of cases is higher than in our statistics. Evils will not be prevented without banning dancing," he was quoted as saying. "In our country, karaoke often goes with ecstasy and prostitution."

Karaoke workers on Su Van Hanh street said ecstasy could be found in some clubs -- but not theirs.

"Not all karaokes allow the use of ecstasy," says Thanh, whose club targets middle to higher-class customers and charges about double the room rate of nearby singing clubs like Karaoke K-T.

"This is what we call 'family karaoke'," said Pham Ngoc Khanh, 40, a staffer at K-T.

He said the business, open for several years, has a loyal following of civil servants, students and workers.

"It is not karaoke with what we call 'social evils'."

Clubs in other parts of the city might be more prone to vice, he said.

"It's not right to ban us from dancing in karaoke clubs," said one K-T customer, who arrived with a laptop bag on his shoulder. "Maybe they should ban dance bars where they have prostitutes. If they just make a general ban on dancing in karaokes, it's not reasonable."

The customer declined to give his name.

Khanh, the K-T worker, said karaoke was a popular form of entertainment and a ban on dancing would be "a bit strange" for customers trying to relax.

Karaoke was introduced to Vietnam in the early 1990s. The bars are now found throughout the socially conservative nation, even in remote mountainous villages.

"It's impossible" to ban dancing, says Dang Duc Han, standing in a T-shirt, his arms folded, outside the Karaoke 64 club he manages.

If people feel in the mood they will dance, Han says as customers ride up on their motorcycles, and a child with a toy bicycle brushes against his leg.

In 2006 Vietnam banned alcohol in karaoke bars -- but in practice drinking continues -- while a year earlier it stopped issuing licences for bars, karaoke parlours and dance halls.

Earlier draft legislation even called for karaoke clubs to be shut down, after Tuyen said many served as brothels.

In his interview with VietnamNet, Tuyen admitted inspectors were not able to check karaoke clubs very often and said "people themselves must obey the rules".

Khanh, of Karaoke K-T, said officials have lost touch with reality.

"They have been sitting in a high position for quite some time," he said. "They are not realistic."

Ngo Thi Bao Ngoc, 28, a black-stockinged staffer at the Style club, said that as the number of karaokes proliferates, authorities have a hard time controlling them.

"They get confused and they don't know how to deal with it," she said.

Serious business owners will not want ecstasy on their premises because it damages their reputation while bringing no benefit, and banning dancing would not work, Ngoc said.

"Dancing is understandable. There is no reason to ban it," she said.

Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved

Hanoi pol seeks to silence noisy wartime relic

By BEN STOCKING

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Each day at around 4 p.m., Hoang Thi Gai tries to lull her five-month-old grandson to sleep so that she can prepare supper. About 15 minutes later, a loudspeaker starts blaring just outside her Hanoi home.

"He starts screaming and crying and his face turns purple," said Gai, 61. "My dear boy hasn't been able to adapt."

As signs of the Vietnam War fade away in this rapidly modernizing country, one relic is hard to miss: a nationwide network of loudspeakers from which the communist government blasts propaganda at dawn and dusk, 30 minutes at a stretch, whether the public likes it or not.

Now a Web-savvy Hanoi politician wants to silence the head-rattling messages and put them on the Internet, where people can read them at their leisure.

During the Vietnam War, the loudspeakers aired crucial warnings about bombing raids. Today, they broadcast an odd mix of local news, bureaucratic trivia, communist ideology and patriotic songs.

"I must admit, for people who live near the speakers, it's a disaster. It hurts their ears," Pham Van Hien said in an interview.

Hien, 38, is chairman of the People's Committee in Hanoi's Khuong Mai commune, one of more than 500 such elected officials in the capital. And, like any good politician, he has his finger on the popular pulse. His campaign against the loudspeakers has received resounding support in Vietnamese chat rooms, blogs and newspaper Web sites.

"Imagine if you lived near a loudspeaker and someone in your family was terminally ill and had to keep hearing a song like 'There Has Never Been Such A Beautiful Day As Today,'" Hanoi resident Tran Hung wrote to the Tien Phong newspaper's online edition.

"It's cruel," he continued. "If my neighbor made that kind of noise, I would take him to court. Why does the government give itself the right to create noise pollution?"

At the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, which oversees the system, officials declined to comment on Hien's effort.

Hien says his idea has received warm reviews from some of his higher-ups in the Communist Party who are eager to embrace technology and update their party's image. But he is also careful not to push his plan too hard lest he annoy party bosses. Instead he is showing how the system can be modernized, hoping that officialdom will get the message — that people should be allowed to "choose to listen rather than be forced to listen."

Thousands of wards across Vietnam make loudspeaker broadcasts, including 577 in Hanoi alone. They tailor the content to their needs, but incorporate lots of information from the Ministry of Culture.

In Hien's ward of 20,000 people, 60 loudspeakers on utility polls broadcast messages from a tiny guard house.

On a recent day, the reader was Tran Anh Tuyet, a 33-year-old state employee. She read from a government pamphlet called "Happy Family," offering information about an upcoming national census. Then came exhortations to people to "enrich their spiritual life" by skipping TV and attending cultural events instead.

"Let's make Hanoi beautiful in the eyes of international friends," she read, urging citizens to create a "polite, cultured environment."

The broadcasts often urge listeners to follow the example of Ho Chi Minh, the father of Vietnam's communist revolution: "Live virtuously, work hard, and give your heart to the people."

Hien's Web site, The Khuong Mai News, offers everything the loudspeakers deliver, plus extra coverage ranging from floods to a Russian fortuneteller predicting Barack Obama's future.

Hien says more than half the households in his district have access to the Internet at home, and there are also several Internet cafes in the area.

He says the site has received over 800,000 hits since it went online last year. VietNamNet, an online newspaper, wrote a story about the site, and then state-run television did a story.

When the 7 a.m. loudspeaker broadcasts come on, Nguyen Thi Oanh, 23, buries her head under the blankets.

"Who cares about the news they read?" she said. "The sound is so bad, they all sound like they have a stuffy nose."

At 68, Nguyen Thi Phuong is old enough to remember the speakers in wartime.

"Whenever they warned us about air raids, we rushed to the bomb shelters," she said. "Those speakers saved many lives."

But now they're simply annoying, Phuong said. "Putting that information on the Internet is a wonderful idea."

Associated Press Writer Vu Tien Hong contributed to this story.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.