Category Archives: Trang tiếng Anh

ASEAN can survive great-power rivalry in Asia

4 October 2015

Author: Amitav Acharya, American University

Eastasiaforum – Pundits and policymakers increasingly see changing great-power politics in Asia as a challenge to ASEAN. China’s growing military assertiveness in the South China Sea, the US ‘rebalancing’ strategy, Japan’s moves to reinterpret its constitution, and India’s growing military presence and assertive diplomacy all press upon ASEAN’s choices in the region.

A satellite image, issued by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank, showing an airstrip under construction at Fiery Cross Reef in the Spratly Islands. (Photo: AFP)Some argue that ASEAN is both toothless and clueless in responding to these changes. Seen as ‘talk shops’, ASEAN’s regional institutions — the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), ASEAN+3, ASEAN+6 and the East Asian Summit (EAS) — might have been sufficient when great-power relations were less volatile right after the Cold War, but they have outlived their usefulness. ‘ASEAN centrality’, and even its very survival, is being written off.

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CSIS: Vietnam Eyes Greater International Integration— & That’s Good News for the United States

by  • October 15, 2015 •

By Phuong Nguyen

Street in the business district of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Source: Jo.sau's flickr photostream, used under a creative commons license.

For the first time since Vietnam opened up to the world in the late 1980s, the country’s trajectory could shape the future geopolitics of Southeast Asia in significant ways. What that trajectory ought to look like has been a topic of intense discussions among Vietnamese leaders in recent months, as Vietnam gears up for the twelfth Communist Party Congress, expected to take place in early 2016.

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Two UXO call-ins from local people lead RENEW teams to dangerous munitions caches left from the war

Project RENEW

Hai Lang, Trieu Phong Districts, Quang Tri (22 October 2015)

On Tuesday local Quang Tri residents made two urgent phone calls to Project RENEW’s hotline to report their discovery of wartime ordnance, and to ask for assistance.

35-year-old Hoang Van Ty, a villager in Trieu Van Commune of Trieu Phong District, was preparing land to build a temple in the village cemetery when he encountered unexploded ordnance (UXO).  He reported the discovery immediately to commune military officer Nguyen Van Lam, who used his mobile phone to call to Project RENEW.

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Thailand, China to team up on long-proposed Kra Isthmus canal

Wantchinatimes

Staff Reporter 2015-05-18 12:12 (GMT+8)

The white star marks the location of the Kra Isthmus. The red star is Singapore, at the entrance to the Strait of Malacca.(Map/China Times)The white star marks the location of the Kra Isthmus. The red star is Singapore, at the entrance to the Strait of Malacca.(Map/China Times)

China and Thailand recently agreed in Guangzhou on a canal project through the Kra Isthmus, the narrowest part of the Malay peninsula in southern Thailand, which means the project, in the pipeline for years, may start construction soon, according to the website of Hong Kong-based Oriental Daily.

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How the Left Has Sabotaged Marriage and Family

The Daily Journal October 15, 2015

Commentary By

Portrait of Paul Kengor

Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College. He writes about Margaret Sanger in his latest book, “Takedown: From Communists to Progressives, How the Left Has Sabotaged Family and Marriage.”

On June 26, 2015, four of the Supreme Court’s liberals joined Justice Anthony Kennedy in discovering a new right to same-sex marriage in the U.S. Constitution, one thereby imposed upon all 50 states.

In response, of course, liberals were jubilant. Their leader, the one who promised to fundamentally transform America, responded by literally illuminating the nation’s house in rainbow colors.

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“One Belt, One Road” and RMB internationalization serve global interest: Report

xinhuanet
English.news.cn   2015-10-09 08:51:21

OBOROBOR-mapOBOR Map

NEW YORK, Oct. 8 (Xinhua) — The “One Belt One Road” initiative and internationalization of Renminbi (RMB), the Chinese currency, are two strategies that serve both China’s national and global interests, according to a report released here Thursday.

The RMB international Report 2015, done by the International Monetary Institute (IMI) of Renmin University of China, said China has been promoting the two important strategies as an emerging country and the world will be benefiting from implementation of the two strategies.

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Water resources, eroding land need saving

Updated  September, 28 2015 09:09:38
 Water management has become a major topic of discussion in recent years among Viet Nam’s lawmakers, experts and society. The country has been struggling to deal with water-related issues such as a rising sea level, land subsidence and saline intrusion in the Mekong Delta. Lawmakers and experts shared their views on water management with Viet Nam News reporters Thu Van and Hoang Anh.
Nguyen Thai Lai

Nguyen Thai Lai, deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environment

What are the major problems that Viet Nam is facing in water management?

There is an actual risk of the degradation and depletion of water resources due to the impact of climate change and an increase in the exploitation and use of water in upstream countries. It is shown on the following aspects:

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Home is where I don’t need my own private room

A dear friend of mine recently came home for a visit after several years studying and living abroad. He was so happy sharing with me: “Mom has been so kind to make space to give me a private room. This is the first time I have my own room at home actually!”

I too was happy for my friend and congratulated him for having such a privilege :D. I told him: “I have never had my own  room at home, and probably will never have one”.

In this world of highly respected individual privacy, having one’s own room at home sounds nothing fancy, especially in the environment where I am living. But still, it could be something fancy for some of us. Continue reading Home is where I don’t need my own private room

Nuclear Power in Vietnam: International Responses and Future Prospects

Published by American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
Cambridge, MA 02138, 2014

Download the PDF

Preface

MO_HINH_DTN_NINH_THUAN.jpg (480×268)

In 2006, with the adoption of the document “Strategy for Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy up to 2020,” Vietnam’s government officially announced its long-term plan to meet rising domestic energy consumption by including nuclear energy in its energy portfolio. The following year, another document, “Strategy Implementation Master Plan,” was released to provide further details on the roadmap that the Vietnamese government intended to follow to develop a nuclear energy program. According to the latter document, Vietnam’s nuclear program would include the construction of two 1,000 megawatt of electrical power (MWe) reactors in Phuoc Dinh in the southern Ninh Thuan province by 2015, originally scheduled to be in operation by 2020. Following this, another 2,000 MWe nuclear power plant (with two reactors) is set to be built in Vinh Hai, a seaside community 40 kilometers from Phuoc Vinh, and scheduled to come online by 2021.

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Cooking and writing

Starting writing this piece, I felt a bit humorous for me to talk about cooking, for the reason that… my Mom and my sister had given up on my laziness about cooking when alone. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate cooking, I just don’t have passion for it 😀 . I do cook for myself mostly on a daily basis, I have an acceptable fine taste, I just can’t stand fast and processed food.

Many of my Vietnamese friends who are studying and living away from home, especially the single ones, whenever stressed or bored, would just jump into the kitchen and cook something as a stress therapy. Continue reading Cooking and writing

Why trying to help poor countries might actually hurt them

Nobel-winning economist Angus Deaton argues against giving aid to poor countries


Federal Nigerian troops walk along a road to the frontier with Biafray, Oct. 13, 1968. On the roadside two emaciated Nigerian boys suffer from starvation and malnutrition. (AP Photo/Dennis Lee Royle

Washingtonpost – It sounds kind of crazy to say that foreign aid often hurts, rather than helps, poor people in poor countries. Yet that is what Angus Deaton, the newest winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, has argued.

Deaton, an economist at Princeton University who studied poverty in India and South Africa and spent decades working at the World Bank, won his prize for studying how the poor decide to save or spend money. But his ideas about foreign aid are particularly provocative. Deaton argues that, by trying to help poor people in developing countries, the rich world may actually be corrupting those nations’ governments and slowing their growth. According to Deaton, and the economists who agree with him, much of the $135 billion that the world’s most developed countries spent on official aid in 2014 may not have ended up helping the poor.

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Extreme Weather and Food Shocks

09 September 2015

Rob BaileyRob Bailey Research Director, Energy, Environment and Resources

Tim Benton Professor of Population Ecology, University of Leeds

Taking smart and practical steps to ease the impact of the changing climate on food supplies is vital to ride out the droughts and storms that will impact food prices.

The US midwest was hit by its worst drought in over 50 years in 2012. Photo via Getty Images.The US midwest was hit by its worst drought in over 50 years in 2012. Photo via Getty Images.

chathamhouse – Recent events highlight concerns about the risks to global food security posed by changing patterns of extreme weather affecting the world’s ‘breadbasket’ regions such as the American midwest, South America’s southern cone, the Black Sea and the Yangtze River valley. In 2012, the worst drought to hit the US midwest in half a century sent international maize and soybean prices to record levels. In 2011, wheat prices nearly doubled after an unprecedented heat wave devastated the Russian harvest. The global food price crisis of 2007-08 had its roots in a run of poor harvests in previous years.

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Why is it so incredibly hard to stop deforestation?

Who really holds power over land use decisions? Why are efforts to keep forests standing, such as REDD+ and other initiatives, still so far from altering development trajectories? CIFOR researchers Anne Larson and Ashwin Ravikumar explore.

By Anne Larson and Ashwin Ravikumar
Friday 10 July 2015

Eco-business: Who really holds power over land use decisions? Why are efforts to keep forests standing, such as REDD+ and other initiatives, still so far from altering development trajectories?At the recent biennial conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC), held in Edmonton, Canada, we presented preliminary findings of research on the politics of multilevel governance in land use change and climate policy.

 

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Compassion Fatigue: Being an Ethical Social Worker

By: Tracy C. Wharton, M.Ed., MFT

Socialworker – When I was a young counselor just out of school, I took a job at an alternative school. I provided crisis intervention and behavioral therapy to children who were unable to succeed in normal educational environments. One of my clients was a six-year-old girl who had been repeatedly sexually abused and had been bounced around foster homes with her aggressive outbursts. After one particularly bad day of her active flashbacks, I found myself sitting in my clinical supervisor’s office in tears.

Clinical-Social-Worker.jpg (288×237)

“How do you do it?” I asked. “I can’t sleep without thinking about her, about all of them. How do you deal with it?” He turned around and slammed his briefcase shut. “Like that,” he said, latching the locks shut. “You just have to learn to walk away. If you can’t do it, maybe you’re in the wrong field.”    I hated him at that moment, and suddenly I felt as if all my teachers had betrayed me for not letting me in on this little secret. Why hadn’t anyone told me that this job would hurt so much sometimes?

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A triple amputee who overcame tragedy and built a new life

landmines.org.vn – Trieu Phong, Quang Tri Province, 10 September 2015 – On the road that leads to Ai Tu Village of Trieu Ai Commune, a man is hurrying home on his three-wheel bike.  He has finished tending his cows, and now he’s coming home to have lunch with his family.  He’s bringing fruit he just bought at the market.

As his wife prepares lunch, 44-year-old Hoang Than talks with his two children, 9-year-old son Hoang Anh and 6-year-old daughter Hoang Thi Dieu Anh, about their first day at school. The kids just started school after their summer break. The photo above is a picture of happiness, father and children together.

However, it was not always this way.  Than has overcome much tragedy in his life.

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