Việt Nam News

TV footage of Hà Giang's students and their parents braving the cold and the angry water during the time made a fine example of dedication and the strength of human spirit in the face of adversity. The country looked north with sympathy and admiration. Fast forward half a month and the province now finds itself at the centre of a national scandal: they were found to have modified the results of more than a hundred students favourably. How did they get there? 

Now all of us have new stories to tell our children when they ask about superheroes, but not Spiderman, Captain America or Iron Man.

Senior public servants in the central coastal city of Đà Nẵng are likely to receive support of VNĐ200 million (around US$8,900) if they volunteer for early retirement.

It was Mark Twain who inimitably said: “Buy land, they are not making it anymore.” Sound advice when land is turned into a commodity that is bought and sold in a “free market,” but this is a mythical entity for many people in Việt Nam, because they can only dream of owning a piece of land or a home in the nation’s urban areas.

It was the stuff of action movies.

Five unarmed men stepped in to foil a group of armed thieves as they were trying to unlock and steal a motorbike.

A violent scuffle broke out, but, unlike in most movies, the heroes did not emerge winners, scathed or unscathed.

A professor at Hoa Sen University in HCM City who shot to fame when he taught a class on innovation wearing a pair of shorts has come up short at the hand of some bureaucrats’ rigid interpretation of regulations.

Vietnamese have avoided multi-level marketing as though it were the plague, and for fair reason.

The Ministry of Finance has proposed imposing a new tax on people who own property worth VNĐ700 million ($31,000) or more.

Nothing else will work. More than a year after a hefty increase in fines for littering violations, there has been no appreciable improvement in the situation, not a dent in the magnitude of change that is needed. We can no longer afford to accept inane, comforting messages that say small actions make a big difference. We need big actions that make a huge difference!

There seemed to be a collective gasp of horror as the news spread recently of a mother and her new-born dying as she tried to give birth at home.

Given their frequency, we should not be surprised, but we continue to be shocked each time an instance of corruption in high places comes to light.

In recent times, it seems that the spring tree planting ceremony has been made unnecessarily pompous with the richness of its original meaning having been lost to many.

During an unprecedented trial between a HCM City taxi firm against Grab, a Uber-type company, for alleged unfair competition, the judge posed a simple but fundemental question: “What field was Grab’s business licence registered in?”

Last month a Vietnamese woman in Hanoi was attacked and set on fire by her foreign ex-boyfriend, who allegedly threw petrol at her, leaving her in critical condition with life-threatening burns. This shocking news is a painful reminder of the universality of the issue: there is no safe space from gender-based violence. The #MeToo movement around the world has underscored the widespread prevalence of sexual abuse and violence.

It is not for nothing that prostitution has been called the world’s oldest profession. To end it, we have to end male demand for sex and remove the socio-economic constraints that propel women into the profession.

On Monday, Deputy Chairman of the District 1 People’s Committee Đoàn Ngọc Hải in HCM City handed in his papers, admitting failure in his efforts to clear pavements of unauthorized vendors and other forms of illegal encroachment.

In just several hours on Wednesday, two explosions constantly occurred at the same place in a village in the northern Bắc Ninh Province’s Yên Phong District, killing two people, both of whom are children, and injuring eight others, all are nearby locals.

In a Đà Nẵng plot that has thickened steadily over the last several years, police are seeking a 42-year-old real estate tycoon, Phan Văn Anh Vũ, for criminal charges of “revealing State secrets.”