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Viet Nam sends team to UN meet on children
VNS- A high-level State delegation, headed by Vice President Nguyen Thi Binh, is off to New York early next month to attend the United Nations General Assembly's special session on children.
The UN meeting will review the efforts and achievements made in the wake of the 1990 World Declaration from the Summit on Children.
Leaders from the participating countries will also commit to a new plan of action to protect children's rights.
More than 4,000 representatives from 180 countries and various non-governmental organisations are expected to attend the meeting.
The session will come up with targets for the coming decade, by aiming to encourage healthy living, provide quality education, protect children from abuse and fight against HIV/AIDS.
Alongside the seven adults in the Vietnamese state delegation, two children will travel to the United States: Nguyen Thi Khanh Ngoc, a girl from HCM City, and Pham Nguyen Ha, a boy from Ha Noi.
Four other children will also make the trip to the special session as part of a delegation from Vietnamese non-governmental organisations.
The representatives from Viet Nam will participate in peripheral sessions such as a children's forum, a parliamentarians' forum and a dialogue between donors and State leaders.
Binh is scheduled to meet with parliamentarians from a number of other countries, including the US, and with Viet kieu (overseas Vietnamese).
VASC Orient

BachHop

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Delegation: a small group of people who are chosen to speak, vote, and make decisions for a larger group or organization. (Đại biểu)
Peripheral: in the outer area of something, or relating to an outer area, relating to the main idea question, activity etc., but less important than it. (n) a piece of equipment that is connected to a computer and used with it. (Ngoại vi, ngoại biên, bên ngoài)
Parliamentarian: (n) one who is expert in parliamentary procedures, rules, or debate. (Nghị sĩ hùng biện)
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Được sửa chữa bởi - quanbanh97202 vào 02/05/2002 12:25

Poor homes receive trade union?Ts gifts
Three hundred poor families in HCM City?Ts Long Thới Commune and three communes in Bình Chánh District have receive gifts worth VNĐ 150,000 each from the HCM City Trade Union.
The Union chairman, Đặng Ngọc Tùng, handed over the gifts on behalf of the association last week during a visit to the areas.
(VNS)

Poor homes receive trade union??Ts gifts
Three hundred poor families in HCM City??Ts Long Thới Commune and three communes in Bình Chánh District have receive gifts worth VNĐ 150,000 each from the HCM City Trade Union.
The Union chairman, Đặng Ngọc Tùng, handed over the gifts on behalf of the association last week during a visit to the areas.
(VNS)

HCM City seizes 72,000 videos
HCM City authorities seized 72,000 illegal DVDs, VCDs, CDs and VHS cassettes during the month-long sweep March.
HCM City officials conducted 1,400 inspections and uncovered 786 cases of illegal goods selling.
(VNS)

HCM City seizes 72,000 videos
HCM City authorities seized 72,000 illegal DVDs, VCDs, CDs and VHS cassettes during the month-long sweep March.
HCM City officials conducted 1,400 inspections and uncovered 786 cases of illegal goods selling.
(VNS)

Publisher donates books to university
HCM City Book Publishing Company (Fahasa) has presented 11,000 books worth VNĐ 250 million to An Giang University.
The gift includes dictionaries, textbooks, foreign language books and magazines.
The company just ended a two-day exhibition on the foreign and domestic books at the university, during which it sold books at a 5 per cent discount.
(VNS)

Publisher donates books to university
HCM City Book Publishing Company (Fahasa) has presented 11,000 books worth VNĐ 250 million to An Giang University.
The gift includes dictionaries, textbooks, foreign language books and magazines.
The company just ended a two-day exhibition on the foreign and domestic books at the university, during which it sold books at a 5 per cent discount.
(VNS)

HOLLAND COPES WITH THREAT OF FLOOD?
Flat, surrounded by water, and like New Orleans, largely below sea level, Holland lives with the threat of flooding from the North Sea.
Holland''s equivalent of Katrina happened in 1953 -- a storm surge at high tide destroyed the dykes, killing 1,800 people.
Huib de Vriend was one of the children rescued, and now is an expert in flood prevention.
"After the 1953 floods we said ''never again,'' but that''s an absolute statement of course, so we had to translate that into an acceptable level of safety," he said.
In Holland that meant raising the flood probability to one in 10,000 years -- by comparison the New Orleans standard was one in 250 years.
For the Dutch, this new, higher standard, involved large spending for instance on huge new dams across the river estuaries.
Being prepared meant having control rooms waiting just in case.
The latest project is a flood barrier system, with swinging gates towering 70 feet into the air.
This structure is absolutely vast, but then it has to be, because the idea is that the two sides come together in the middle of the river and sink to the bottom. Only then will they be able to protect Rotterdam from the storm surge.
Professor de Vriend believes the American authorities have to go back to the beginning.
"Decide politically what sort of level of flood safety you would like to have then derive the design con***ions to that level of safety and design a flood protection system to meet those con***ions," he said.
The U.S. Gulf Coast threat is very different from that faced by North Sea, so what has worked in Holland may not be suitable for New Orleans.
But as one resident told me: "Each Dutchman believes that it''s important to spend money on flood control and I don''t think they spent that much money in New Orleans lately."
Everyone agrees though, the principles remain the same.
(CNN)

France bares all for sake of art

Men and women of all ages had gathered before dawn for the shoot
Almost 1,500 men and women have stripped naked in the name of art in the French city of Lyon.
The volunteers gathered before dawn to join the latest nude photo shoot by New York artist Spencer Tunick.
Directed by the artist from a crane, they posed with arms and legs in the air between shipping containers in Lyon''s port, and on a waterfront.
Previous shoots have been held in New York, Belgium, Barcelona and Brazil, as well as London and Tyneside in the UK.
Art festival
Men and women of all ages, most of them from the Lyon area but some from further afield, arrived in the city at 0430 GMT to receive their instructions.

Spencer Tunick has set up nude photo shoots all over the world
Addressing them from the crane, Tunick told the crowd he saw the port as representing the mystery of commerce, the AFP news agency reports.
The point where the rivers Saone and Rhone joined was a meeting point that he liked to think of "as like the legs of a woman", he said.
As dawn broke, the volunteers stripped naked and scurried into place, ready to move into formation with arms and legs held high.
Questioned after the shoot, the models said they had signed up "for the experience" or "for art''s sake".
"I was determined to do it, just for the pleasure of running naked on the grass in the centre of Lyon, this town people call so bourgeois and stuck in its ways," a young Lyon resident told AFP.
Another model, Diane Wailes from London, said she had come to France with her family to take part, after appearing in previous Tunick shoots in Belgium and Tyneside this year.
The photographs will go on display in Lyon in November, as part of the city''s biennial modern art festival.
Tunick, 38, carried out the world''s largest nude photo shoot in Barcelona in June 2003, when 7,000 volunteers stripped for the camera.
In 1994 both he and a female model were arrested in New York when she posed nude on top of an eight-foot high replica Christmas tree in Manhattan''s Rockefeller Center.

Pollution levels on rise in new tunnel
DA NANG â?" Rising levels of pollution in the newly opened Hai Van Tunnel in Da Nang City are seriously damaging the health of people using the route.
An average of 143 vehicles travel through the tunnel every hour with 300,000 vehicles using the road since the tunnel became operational in March. This figure indicates that the levels of pollution will continue to increase.
Travelling through the tunnel in a bus without air-con has become a nightmare. Passengers are subjected to exhaust fumes and dust onboard these buses 3km into the tunnel.
Now that vehicles no longer have to cross the 22km mountain pass, nearly all buses have increased the number of passengers that they carry. The increase in weight and the 2.5 per cent gradient of the tunnel causes these buses to discharge black smoke.
Unroadworthy vehicles also heavily contribute to the pollution.
In July, two cases of passengers becoming unconscious were reported. In one incident six people fell unconscious while waiting for a rescue team to tow them out of the tunnel.
In another case, a man fell unconscious while driving through the tunnel.
Nearly all of the passengers who have been reported as falling unconscious were on buses without air-con or buses where the doors were left open.
According to Road Control Team 5, Hai Van Tunnel does have a problem with pollution but road users who fell unconscious while using the tunnel have not been reported and received check-ups and the pollution levels in the tunnel have not been measured due to a lack of equipment. As a result, the cause of these incidents remains unexplained.
Dao Ngoc Hung, deputy director of the Road Control Team 5, said his team had already reported the issue to the Road Control Department of the Transport Ministry. Hung told the relevant agency that Hai Van Tunnel should be equipped with facilities to control pollution and that proper solutions to deal with the problem should be implemented.
He added that he had called on the Road Control Department and the Public Security Ministry to fine overloaded and unroadworthy vehicles.
Temporary solutions
As an effort to deal with the pollution facing road users, the Hai Van Tunnel Management and Development Company (Hamadeco) proposed to the Transport Ministry that the tunnel was closed to traffic between 3am-4am every day so that it could be cleaned. This proposal was approved and came into effect in August.
According to Hamadeco director Nguyen Dinh Bach, maintenance and clean-up work would focus on the tunnelâ?Ts camera system, lights, mirrors and electronic signals which become badly polluted. At present, Hamadeco is working on regulations to target vehicles that should not be allowed to use in the tunnel.
However, the management board is not authorised to fine overloaded vehicles that are heavily blamed for the rising pollution. The only thing Hamadeco can do is to inform traffic police stationed outside the tunnel. â?" VNS