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VN News (Mar. 3-4)
Mar 04: Benin foreign minister visits Vietnam
Mar 04: Vietnam: Glow-in-the-dark man
Mar 04: Heart-throb singer strikes sour note in Vietnam
Mar 04: No more crooning in Karaokes for provincial police:report
Mar 03: Vietnamese prisoners learn laws in quiz
Mar 03: Vietnam Boosts Family Planning Services
Mar 03: Senator Blocks Confirmation of Vietnam Envoy
Tuesday - Mar 04, 1997
Benin foreign minister visits Vietnam
HANOI (AFP) -- Benin Foreign Minister Pierre Osho arrived here
Tuesday at the start of a five day visit to Vietnam aimed at boosting economic
ties, officials said.
The visit by Osho, who is also minister for cooperation, will also focus on
preparations for the 7th summit of Francophone nations due to be held in Hanoi
in November, the first major international conference hosted by Vietnam.
Osho is the first Benin foreign minister to visit Vietnam since diplomatic
ties were forged in March 1973.
On Wednesday he is due to meet his Vietnamese counterpart Nguyen Manh Cam
for talks on bilateral cooperation particularly in trade, before meeting Prime
Minister Vo Van Kiet, they said.
The two countries signed several agreements on economic, trade, cultural
and scientific cooperation, as well as on health and education, during the
visit to Benin last November by Vietnam's deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Khanh.
Vietnamese vice President Nguyen Thi Binh visited Benin in December 1995
during the 6th Francophone summit.
Osho, who arrived here from China, is due to leave Vietnam Friday for Hong
Kong.
Tuesday - Mar 04, 1997
Vietnam: Glow-in-the-dark man
HANOI (AFP) -- A teenager in central Vietnam has developed an
ability to glow in the dark, a local newspaper reported Tuesday.
Cha Ma Le Buot, 17, first noticed last month that his body was unusually
warm, and after removing his shirt he discovered his body was covered with
spots giving off a bluish-white light which flickered then died, the Thanh
Nien newspaper said.
Buot, from Ninh Thuan province in south central Vietnam has experienced the
same symtoms nightly, although his appearance by day appears normal.
The publicity-shy youth has grown self-conscious and shuns the public, the
report said.
Buot is the third person reported to have exhibited the bizarre symptoms
which locals are at a loss to explain.
Tuesday - Mar 04, 1997
Heart-throb singer strikes sour note in Vietnam
Hanoi (Reuter) -- Vietnam's government-controlled press panned the first tour of
the communist country by an overseas Vietnamese singer on Tuesday, accusing
him of creaming off money from charity performances.
Heart-throb singer Jimmii Nguyen played to packed houses during a recent visit,
but official newspapers said just $900 had been donated to charities while
local organisers had been left facing major losses.
``The national tour by Viet Kieu (overseas) singer Jimmii J.C. Nguyen,
hyped as a humanitarian fund-raiser for the disadvantaged, has benefited
few others than the singer himself,'' the English-language Vietnam News said.
Vietnam opened its doors to the outside world in the late 1980s but visits
by foreign performers are still rare.
Music by members of the two-million-strong overseas Vietnamese community
is hugely popular, but remains subject to official suspicion, with some
still branded and banned as 'yellow music'.
A Culture Ministry official was quoted by state media on Monday saying that
while Hanoi would permit overseas Vietnamese singers to visit, those who
opposed the communist-government would be banned from performing.
The overseas Vietnamese community is largely comprised of people who fled
their homeland following the communist victory in 1975 over U.S.-backed
South Vietnam.
Tuesday - Mar 04, 1997
No more crooning in Karaokes for provincial police:report
HANOI (AFP) -- A province in central Vietnam has put the muzzle on
police officers, banning them from singing in Karaoke bars, known to harbour
certain socially undesirable activities, a local report said Tuesday.
The decision to curtail crooning by police officers in Quang Ngai province
was taken after a meeting on corruption and social evils within the police
force, the Thanh Nien newspaper said.
The officers are not banned from frequenting the bars, only from taking up
the microphone, the newspaper said.
Tens of thousands of karaoke bars have opened since Vietnam launched its
economic reform programme of Doi Moi a decade ago. Frequented by all levels of
society, they have become a popular centre for prostitution and illegal drugs.
At the beginning of 1996 the former minister of the interior, Bui Thien Ngo
issued a circular officially banning the consumption of alcohol by the
nation's police while on duty.
The karaoke ban comes against the backdrop of an anti social evils campaign
launched in earnest in February 1996, aimed at stamping out prostitution,
gambling and illegal drugs.
According to official figures there are at least 300,000 sex workers and
180,000 drug addicts in Vietnam, a cause of grave concern given the rapid
spread of the Human Immuno-deficiency Virus (HIV) virus here.
Monday - Mar 03, 1997
Vietnamese prisoners learn laws in quiz
HANOI (AP) -- They may have failed the first time round
and landed behind bars, but inmates in Vietnam got a second
chance to prove their knowledge of right from wrong.
Prison inmates across the country were quizzed by the Ministry
of Justice recently on legal rights and laws as part of a
nationalcampaign to raise awareness of Vietnam's legal system,
official media
reported Monday.
The Communist Party newspaper, The People, didn't say how the
inmates did on the quiz, but said 93 percent of Vietnam's prisoners
took part in the test.
The quiz was part of a larger program in which prisoners were
taught about different social issues, ranging from national goalsto
family planning.
Vietnam has been organizing various activities for criminals
inan attempt to put a kinder face on government, the newspaper said.
The Ministry of Justice said some 2,000 illiterate inmates
werealso taught basic reading in prisons in 1996.
As for the quiz participants? Top scores still won't earn
them aget of jail free card, The People said.
Monday - Mar 03, 1997
Vietnam Boosts Family Planning Services
HANOI (Xinhua News) -- Vietnam is striving to raise the rate of
couple using contraceptive methods from current 50 percent to 70
percent by 2000, local press reported today.
The drive is part of efforts to keep population growth at 1.5-1.6
percent by the turn of the century. Even if the target rate is
achieved, Vietnam's population will reach 81 million by 2000.
The government has also approved a fund of 262 billion Vn Dong (23.6
million U.S. dollars) to the family planning programme in 1997 with 96
percent of the amount allocated to localities.
Among contraceptive methods introduced in Vietnam, the use of condoms
and vasectomies are most advised by medical experts.
There were over 1.4 million abortions for 19 million women in the
reproductive age group in Vietnam last year, according to official
statistics.
Monday - Mar 03, 1997
Senator Blocks Confirmation of Vietnam Envoy
WASHINGTON (Reuter) -- The fight over Democratic Party fund
raising Monday derailed President Clinton's nominee to be the
first U.S. ambassador to post-war Vietnam.
Sen. Bob Smith, a conservative New Hampshire Republican,
said he would do everything in his power to block the
confirmation of former Rep. Douglas "Pete" Peterson, pending
developments in campaign finance probes.
Under Senate rules, any senator may stall an ambassadorialnomination
indefinitely by putting a "hold" on it to keep itfrom coming to a
floor vote.
Peterson, a Florida Democrat and retired Air Force fighter
pilot held prisoner of war for six-and-a-half years by Vietnam,
had sailed easily through his confirmation hearings last month.
Smith said he had no objections to Peterson himself, but
argued it was premature to send an ambassador to Hanoi while
investigations continued into whether U.S. policy toward Vietnam
had been improperly influenced by illegal foreign campaign
contributions to Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign.
"At a time when there are so many disturbing reports which
cast doubt on the adminstration's publicly stated rationale for
moving forward with communist Vietnam over the last four years,
I believe it would be irresponsible for the Senate to just go
ahead and approve the president's request that we put a U.S.
ambassador in Hanoi, and allow Hanoi to do the same in
Washington," he told an audience at the American Legion,
the nation's largest veterans' group.
He said he would hold matters up, if necessary with a
filibuster, until Congress could get the testimony of John
Huang, a former Commerce Department official and Democratic
party fund-raiser who is fighting a supboena to testify before
a Senate panel.
Before taking up fund-raising duties, Huang worked for nine
years as chief of U.S. operations for the Lippo Group, part of a
$12 billion empire based in Indonesia that has emerged as a
focus of probes into alleged improper efforts to influence
Clinton's foreign policy.
"Let me be clear: right now, John Huang is refusing to
tesify before Congress," Smith said. "No testimony, no
ambasssador. It's that simple."
The Clinton administration had viewed the upgrading of ties
with Hanoi to ambassadorial level as key to advancing strategic
U.S. interests in Southeast Asia as well as boosting slow trade
relations.
After years of friction over the more than 2,000 U.S.
servicemen still listed as missing in Southeast Asia from the
war that ended in 1975, Clinton lifted a decades-old trade
embargo and, in July 1995, established diplomatic relations.
Smith said he was also opposing the nomination because of
what he called inadequate Vietnamese answers on the fate of some
of the Americans still missing from the war.