In Central Vietnam’s factory, wood chips are accumulated in the rear of a three-wheel vehicle used to transport acacia wood to the processing machine. Image by Thanh Nguyen.
Vietnam is ranked the fifth-largest country in the world, second in Asia, and the largest in Southeast Asia in furniture exports. Vietnamese furniture has been directly exported to 120 countries and territories.
However, behind this impressive figure is that series of natural forests that have been cut down and quickly. These forest land areas have been occupied for growing short-term timber trees.
Deforestation makes natural disasters in Vietnam more severe, local people suffer the most from the consequences.
The Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity – Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant – & Islam), and I imagine many other God-based religions such as Hinduism and Sikhism, have the concept of Kingdom of God aka Kingdom of heaven. The Churches-Mosques-Temples and their faithful think of Kingdom of God as a physical (or spiritual) realm where you may come after you leave this earthly world. Continue reading What is the Kingdom of Heaven?→
(Buôn Ma Thuột) – Ngày 8 tháng 1 năm 2024, Hội Từ Tâm Đắk Lắk tổ chức lễ trao học bổng Đọt Chuối Non lần thứ 17 cho 121 học sinh thuộc 15 huyện thành trên địa bàn tỉnh Đăk Lắk. Cũng tại đây, Quỹ Từ Tâm Đắk Lắk chính thức được công bố và đi vào hoạt động. Đồng hành tổ chức sự kiện này, có sự phối hợp của Sở Giáo dục và Đào tạo Đắk Lắk, và trường TH-THCS-THPT Hoàng Việt (42 Phạm Hùng, Tân An, Thành phố Buôn Ma Thuột, Đắk Lắk). Continue reading Trước giờ khai mạc Lễ trao Học bổng Đọt Chuối Non lần thứ 17, ra mắt Quỹ Từ tâm Đắk Lắk→
Cánh chim hòa bình . Em là Bồ Câu Trắng Đôi mắt dịu hiền thay Mang cành hồng trao tay Đem an bình khắp chốn . Em trao người tình mến Tan biến bao muộn phiền Thương chúc đêm bình yên Anh say tròn giấc mộng. .Continue reading Cánh chim hòa bình→
Đây là bài hát do nhạc sĩ người Mỹ Prince Rogers Nelson sáng tác, viết lời và sản xuất; được Prince thể hiện cùng ban nhạc Revolution; phát hành vào vào tháng 2-1986.
Bài hát ngay lập tức trở thành bản hit số 1 trên toàn thế giới, giữ vị trí quán quân bảng xếp hạng Billboard Hot 100 của Mỹ trong hai tuần. Cũng năm đó, bài hát đã mang về cho Prince giải Grammy cho “Màn trình diễn giọng hát nhạc R&B (Rhythm & Blues) xuất sắc nhất”. Continue reading Hôn – Kiss→
In the working world, be it business or politics, your success doesn’t depend on your degrees or intelligence. Those are only good, sometimes, for new graduates looking for job. But after you get your first job out of college, your degrees and intelligence don’t mean much anymore. What will determine your career success is your ability to work with people.
Sitting on my tiny rooftop garden, how much I cherish the early morning tea with the sweet sounds of a bird family. These birdies graciously made my roof their home since the day I settled here.
How thankful I am for this precious gift of sound, offered by my birdy friends despite the city noise that they have to compete with. How unbearable it would be, imagine one day, I find no birdy singing on my roof nor in any other corner of this Earth.
In the quiet corners of our world, where nature once thrived and rang its melody, Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” warned us about a future where the symphony of Nature would be no bird chirping, no insect buzzing, not even leaf rustling, but replaced by creepy hush, only. And that scary destructive silence was caused by the pesticide and herbicide.
These days, we find ourselves in a different strike of silence. One that haunts the holiday season in Gaza, Palestine – a Silent Christmas. The laughters of children and the voices of joyous carols are muted by the horrors of war and genocide.
This is not a Christmas story from a distant land. This haunting silence deeply matters to our conscience. For this silence echoes the death of humanity. For this silence is the death of the voice in our heart.
Today, the Silent Spring’ metaphor manifests as a heart-wrenching reality in Gaza. The land, once filled with life, is now and again suffering the cries of dead innocent civilians on a muted Christmas. The parallel is striking. It hits me hard. It is close to our heart and home. The death of Nature is intimately tied to our own humanity’s loss of conscience. The birds had no trees to nest then died, the people of Palestine had no land to home then perished.
This silence is a collective human tragedy.
The Silent Christmas is not a call to just stop celebration or stop singing. It’s about the collective loss of innocence and joy of thousands of children, many of them even died unborn.
The Silent Christmas is not about no festive meals prepared by loving hands of thousands of mothers and women, many lost their lives and their unborn babies in labour, because of bombardment.
The faces behind the silence are real people, like you and me. They are my children, your children, our children, the children who should be playing, laughing, dreaming and having peaceful futures. They are my mothers and your fathers. They are our sisters and brothers. Yet their families are all killed by the brutalities of war. Their pain is our pain; their silence is our collective responsibility.
Break the silence, speak out! Speak from the deepest spot of your heart
In this profound silence, there is hope – the collective voice of humanity rising against the atrocity and against the genocide. For the Carson’s work ignited a powerful environmental movement, the catastrophes in Gaza have sparked a global outcry. The silence matters. The silence urges each and any of us to take responsibility and compels us to speak up against the genocide, against the destruction of lives. The silence matters. It deeply reminds us of our interconnectedness as human beings.
Let us break free from the shackles of apathy. Let us call out the hypocrisy. Let us raise our voices against the silence of atrocity and genocide.
Speak out!
Speak from our hearts, speak through our songs, speak with our stories, speak by our actions.
Speak out in your prayers, and ask for you to be the voice of love, hope and Peace.
With compassion.
Đào Thu Hằng
HANOI, Dec 29 (Reuters) – Vietnam’s economic growth slowed to 5.05% this year from an expansion of 8.02% last year, official data showed on Friday, weighed by weak global demand while public investment stalled amid an intensified anti-graft crackdown.
This year’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth was below a government target of 6.5% and lower than average growth of 5.87% during the previous decade, according to data released by the government’s General Statistics Office (GSO).
Vietnam is a regional manufacturing hub that relies heavily on trade. Exports in 2023 fell 4.4% from last year to $355.5 billion, with shipments of smartphones, its largest foreign currency earner, dropping 8.3%, the GSO said in its report.
Đây là bài hát nhạc blues được Muddy Waters sáng tác và trình diễn, phát hành vào tháng 2-1950. Bài hát là cách giải thích của ông về “catfish blues” – “nhạc blues cá da trơn”, nhạc blues Châu thổ có từ những năm 1920 ở Mississippi, Mỹ.
McKinley Morganfield (4/4/1913 – 30/4/1983) được biết đến với nghệ danh Muddy Waters, là ca sĩ và nhạc sĩ nhạc blues người Mỹ, là nhân vật quan trọng trong bối cảnh nhạc blues thời hậu chiến tranh thế giới thứ 2, và thường được trích dẫn là “cha đẻ của nhạc blues Chicago hiện đại”. Sự nổi tiếng của ông đóng vai trò là cầu nối giúp nhạc blues cá da trơn có lượng khán giả rộng rãi nhất. Continue reading Đá lăn – Rolling Stone→
You are OK when you sit by a lake to enjoy the cool breeze and the little waves twinkling under the warm sun and think about nothing other than “This is so relaxed and wonderful.”
Ivory seized from a smuggler is destroyed in Da Nang City, Dec. 28, 2023. Photo by VnExpress/Ha Hoai
Nearly 10 tons of endangered animal parts from Africa, including ivory and rhino horns that were seized from a smuggler in Da Nang City, have been incinerated.
A court in the central city ruled Thursday to burn 456.9 kg of elephant tusks, 140 kg of rhino horns, 6.2 tons of pangolin scales, and 3.1 tons of lion bones.
The animal parts, which would cost an estimated VND300 billion (US$12.36 million) on the black market, were seized from Nguyen Duc Tai, 33, a Da Nang resident.
theguardian.com Saltwater damage could see precious historical Buddhist artworks dating back hundreds of years slowly fade entirely from view
by Rebecca Ratcliffe and Navaon Siradapuvadol in NonthaburiWed 29 Nov 2023 02.37 GMT
Inside Wat Prasat, a temple in Nonthaburi, just north of Bangkok. Thailand. The temple contains faded, salt-damaged murals. The salt damage comes from rising sea levels caused by the climate crisis. Photograph: Rebecca Ratcliffe/The Guardian
If you look closely, you can just about see the characters and scenes that once stretched across the walls of Wat Prasat, a temple in Nonthaburi. There’s the dark shape of an elephant’s head, a figure slouching on its back; outlines of swords pointing upwards to the centre of the display; patches of curved roofs.
“The mural used to be more vivid,” says Phra Maha Natee, the abbot of Wat Prasat. Even when he was a novice monk, 20 years ago, the image – which shows one of the jātakas stories that recall the Buddha’s past lives – was easier to understand. “The colour was brighter and sharper,” he says.
The murals offer a glimpse into a past era – a time of prosperity but also social upheaval, when a more empowered nobility had emerged, as did a desire, say historians, for Buddhism to play a more stronger role in reinforcing discipline in society. They date back to the mid or later years of the Ayutthaya kingdom in Siam, which existed from 1351 to 1767, in what is now Thailand and are a treasured early example of the art form.
Đọt Chuối Non 