Ho Chi Minh City (formerly known as Saigon) is the largest city in Vietnam and is one of the largest cities in the world. It is located near the Mekong River delta. Ho Chi Minh City has a population of over 3,000,000.
Growing flowers and Ornamental plants The total area in Ho Chi Minh City allotted for growing flowers and ornamental plants for the upcoming Tet (Lunar New Year) holidays has now reached 903 hectares. The city's Agricultural Promotion Center said January 5 that of this area, 402 hectares are being used to grow yellow apricot blossom plants, 17 percent more than last year. Read Full Story
BANGKOK (Reuters) - Changing weather patterns and rising seas are already affecting many people in Southeast Asia's Greater Mekong Basin and climate change threatens the livelihoods of millions more, a report released on Monday shows. Intense floods and droughts, coastal erosion, higher seas and heat waves in coming decades threaten rice, fruit and coffee crops and fisheries on which many of the basin's 65 million people depend, says the report by global conservation group WWF. "Across the... Read Full Story
A Vietnamese court sentenced two officials to up to three years in prison Friday for collecting $80,000 in rent from Japanese consultants but dividing it among colleagues instead of putting it in state coffers, a court official said. The embezzled rent was part of a bigger scandal over a Japan-funded road construction project that prompted Tokyo — Vietnam's biggest donor — to temporarily suspend millions of dollars in development loans in December and demand that Hanoi make more vigorous... Read Full Story
HANOI (Reuters) - More than a third of the Mekong Delta in Vietnam, where nearly half of the country's rice is grown, will be submerged if sea levels rise by 1 meter (39 inches), an environment ministry scenario predicted. A sea level increase of that magnitude would also inundate a quarter of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam's biggest city and home to more than 6 million people, according to the extreme scenario, outlined in the newspaper Tuoi Tre on Thursday. Environmental scientists have long... Read Full Story
A Vietnamese newspaper that helped expose a major corruption scandal announced on Saturday it was shutting down its daily English-language print edition, citing difficulties caused by the global economic crisis. In a front-page note to readers, Thanh Nien Daily said it was being transformed into a weekly paper to be launched on Friday, September 4. Thanh Nien is a popular Vietnamese-language daily, the publication of which will continue despite the closure of the English edition, which has... Read Full Story
A university student angry about flunking his English classes barged into a lecture, threw a bucket of acid at a professor and then stabbed him in the back as he tried to flee, a university official said Tuesday. Students later overpowered the alleged attacker, Tran Xuan Thanh, and turned him over to police. The teacher, Dang Huu Dung, and several students at the Agriculture and Forestry University in Ho Chi Minh City were injured in the melee and hospitalized. Dang was lecturing more than... Read Full Story
A college professor was severely burned and 13 learners also hurt when a former student upset over an English test splashed him with acid, a report said on Tuesday. Dang Huu Dung, a professor at the Agriculture and Forestry University, received acid burns to a third of his body, the Thanh Nien newspaper website reported, quoting the head of the burns unit at Cho Ray Hospital in southern Ho Chi Minh City. The professor told reporters that a former student used a large bowl to splash him with... Read Full Story
Vietnam plans to use Japanese bullet train technology for a transnational rail link, the chief executive of state-owned Vietnam Railways Corp. was quoted Thursday as telling Japanese media. The Vietnam government had already given basic approval for the Shinkansen system, although it still required financing and formal consent from the prime minister, Nguyen Huu Bang reportedly told the Nikkei business daily. Funding for the 56-billion-dollar project remained riddled with uncertainties, the... Read Full Story
Vietnam, ranked as one of the world's most corrupt countries, has ratified the United Nations Convention Against Corruption, the UN said Friday. President Nguyen Minh Triet ratified the convention, a UN statement said, following a report Friday in the Phap Luat Ho Chi Minh City (Ho Chi Minh City Law) newspaper, which said he ratified the pact on Tuesday. An official in the president's office would only confirm that the media reports were correct. The convention, which took effect in 2005... Read Full Story
Police have deported an American citizen of Vietnamese origin who had allegedly come to Vietnam to investigate recent arrests of local democracy activists, a state newspaper reported Saturday. Vo Tan Huan, 25, was deported via the international airport in Ho Chi Minh City on Friday in the presence of U.S. consulate representatives, the Labor newspaper said. Huan was arrested with anti-government documents on July 16, a week after arriving in Vietnam, the newspaper said. It quoted a police... Read Full Story
