Strain is a combination of UK and India variants and is said to spread quickly
Vietnam has discovered a new Covid-19 variant which spreads quickly by air and is a combination of variants first identified in India and the UK, state media has reported.
The country is struggling to deal with fresh outbreaks across more than half of its territory including industrial zones and big cities such as Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.
Continue reading...Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and Singapore race to contain clusters as experts warn jabs must be distributed more evenly
South-east Asian countries, including nations that managed to control the coronavirus last year, are struggling to contain recent outbreaks as new variants and vaccine shortages leave populations exposed.
Thailand’s cumulative caseload has more than quadrupled since 1 April, rising to almost 130,000, after infections spread in its cramped prisons, densely populated areas of the capital and construction sites.
Continue reading...We are raiding the Audio Long Reads archives and bringing you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors.
This week: In a special tribute to Martin Woollacott, the Guardian’s former foreign correspondent and foreign editor, who has died at the age of 81, Alan Rusbridger reflects on his fondest memories of Martin and how this ‘giant of journalism’ should be remembered.
From 2015: North Vietnamese troops who marched into the capital on 30 April 1975. It marked the most crushing defeat in US military history. Four decades after he reported on these events for the Guardian, Martin Woollacott reflects upon what it meant for the future of both nations
Two ringleaders receive sentences of 27 and 20 years after 39 Vietnamese people suffocated in container
The two ringleaders of the people-smuggling gang responsible for the deaths of 39 Vietnamese people who suffocated in a sealed refrigeration container as they were transported across the Channel from France have received prison sentences of 27 and 20 years.
Ronan Hughes, 41, who ran a haulage company and organised the lorries and drivers to transport the migrants, was sentenced to 20 years at the Old Bailey on Friday. He pleaded guilty last year to 39 counts of manslaughter and conspiring to bring people into the country unlawfully.
Continue reading...Find is chance for species’ survival say scientists as DNA results confirm turtle found in Hanoi district is a Swinhoe’s softshell
The last known male giant Swinhoe’s softshell turtle is no longer alone on the planet after the discovery of a female of his species in Vietnam.
The female 86kg (13 stone) turtle was found in Dong Mo lake, in Hanoi’s Son Tay district, and captured for genetic testing in October.
Continue reading...Criminal networks are depending on the chaos of Covid and Brexit. Now more than ever we need focus and international cooperation to prevent further tragedies
Trials in the UK of the drivers and haulage organisers involved in the Essex lorry tragedy in which 39 Vietnamese migrants perished ended in guilty pleas and convictions. Vietnam also convicted the agents who brokered the victims’ journeys to the UK and sentenced them to terms of imprisonment.
While these are positive developments in achieving some measure of justice for the victims, they won’t do anything to stem the smuggling and trafficking of Vietnamese migrants to the UK. No justice system has reached the actual masterminds and profiteers behind this horrific crime: the organised crime groups.
Continue reading...Boosted iron ore prices due to anxious markets are likely to help federal budget’s bottom line, Deloitte says
Australia’s losses from trade tensions with China are being offset by rising iron ore prices, according to new analysis, which also predicts the Morrison government will announce a smaller budget deficit than originally forecast.
Deloitte Access Economics said Chinese government moves against wine, beef, barley, lobsters and thermal coal have cost Australia money “but we’ve more than made that up in overall terms thanks to iron ore – and the taxman will be a considerable beneficiary of that”.
Continue reading...Police ordered to pay £15,500 to man trafficked to UK from Vietnam as a boy who was detained and threatened with deportation
The Metropolitan police is to pay £15,500 to a victim of slavery who tried to report his traffickers but was instead arrested for immigration offences and sent to a detention centre.
The man, referred to in court as KQT, was 15 when he was taken by traffickers from Vietnam through Russia to the UK in a refrigerated lorry. He was arrested on arrival and placed in foster care, but shortly after was collected by his traffickers and forced to work on a cannabis farm, where he was locked inside a storeroom and only fed one meal a day. In January 2018, he escaped his captors and walked into a police station to report his ordeal.
Continue reading...At least 15 already confirmed dead in central Quang Nam province following torrential rains brought by strongest storm in decades
Rescue teams in Vietnam have used heavy machinery to search for survivors buried under landslides triggered by torrential rains from Typhoon Molave, one of the strongest typhoons to hit the region for decades, the government said.
The landslides, which hit remote areas in the central province of Quang Nam a day earlier, have killed at least 15 and 38 people are missing with rescue efforts hampered by bad weather at the tail end of the storm, the government said.
Continue reading...UN says getting students safely back to classroom must be ‘top priority’; Philippines reimposes lockdown; record fines for isolation breaches in Australia
We’re reporting that builders in the Australia could lose $450m daily under Melbourne stage 4 Covid-19 lockdown.
Work levels from big construction sites to trade businesses set to be pummelled amid predictions new curbs will ‘knock wind out of’ state
Related: Victorian builders could lose $450m daily under Melbourne stage 4 Covid-19 lockdown
Reuters is reporting that Taiwan has provisionally approved the use of dexamethasone, a cheap and widely-used steroid, to treat the new coronavirus because the island faces a shortfall of the antiviral drug remdesivir after the United States bought nearly all global supplies.
Taiwan Centres for Disease Control Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang told reporters on Tuesday that medical experts had decided to provisionally allow dexamethasone to be listed as a COVID-19 treatment but that procedures still needed to be completed before it could be given to any patients.
Continue reading...UN says getting students safely back must be ‘top priority’; France says ‘situation is precarious’; record fines for isolation breaches in Australia
France’s Accor, the world’s sixth largest hotel chain, said it was slashing 1,000 jobs worldwide in a major cost cutting plan accelerated by the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
The group, which runs high-end chains such as Raffles and Sofitel, and budget brands like Ibis, plans to cut costs by €200m by 2022.
After weeks of railing against what he claimed were the potential risks of voting by mail, president Donald Trump has urged voters in at least one Republican state - Florida - to vote by any means.
Trump, who is trailing presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden in polls, has repeatedly warned in recent weeks - without evidence - that mail-in voting carries more risks than voting by absentee ballot and could result in widespread fraud.
Whether you call it Vote by Mail or Absentee Voting, in Florida the election system is Safe and Secure, Tried and True. Florida’s Voting system has been cleaned up (we defeated Democrats attempts at change), so in Florida I encourage all to request a Ballot & Vote by Mail! #MAGA
Continue reading...First local case in three months reported over the weekend in holiday spot of Da Nang
Vietnam is on high alert and bracing for a rise in coronavirus cases, after local media reported that infections have been detected in the capital, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and the Central Highlands region.
The country’s prime minister, Nguyen Xuan Phu warned on Wednesday that every province and every city was at risk, adding that the new “wave” appeared to be different to that seen in Vietnam earlier this year.
Continue reading...Nation brings in strict new measures and evacuates 80,000 people from city of Danang
Vietnam is evacuating 80,000 people from the central city of Danang and reimposing disease-prevention measures after four local coronavirus cases were detected, the first to be recorded in the country for more than three months.
Life had returned to normal for many in the country, which had been praised widely for taking quick action to contain Covid-19 and was on the brink of reaching 100 days without any new local infections. On Saturday, however, a 57-year-old man was confirmed to have tested positive, in the first community infection since April.
Continue reading...As a lucrative deal with the EU looms the country is rushing to repair its reputation on human rights, which has been plagued by reports of forced labour
An inmate grasps a hefty wooden mallet and smashes it through concrete at his feet, working in the shade of a stately white building that his fellow prisoners are constructing in southern Vietnam.
Police officers in bold green uniforms usher everyone away from the men working in faded, olive and white-striped prison garb.
Continue reading...A British pilot who spent more than two months on life support in Vietnam after contracting the coronavirus has been discharged from hospital and has returned to the UK. Stephen Cameron, 42, was the sickest patient medics had treated during the coronavirus outbreak in the country and had been given 10% chance to live. The Vietnam Airlines pilot from Motherwell, Scotland, spent four months in hospitals in Ho Chi Minh City, including 10 weeks on a ventilator. Vietnam has recorded no official deaths related to the pandemic after a fast and proactive response
Continue reading...The pick of the world’s best flora and fauna photos, including a perky grasshopper and a sleepy turtle
Continue reading...Chau Van Kham’s family has lost contact with him for nearly four months and fear the Australian government has ‘forgotten about him’
A 70-year-old Australian democracy activist has “disappeared” inside Vietnam’s prison system: no one from his family or the Australian government has been allowed to see or speak with him for nearly four months.
Human rights advocates, lawyers and Chau Van Kham’s family said the charges against him are baseless and politically motivated, his single-day multiple-defendant trial was grossly unfair, and his failing health means his 12-year prison sentence is “effectively a death sentence”.
Continue reading...Group of mainly French and Vietnamese nationals accused of organising migrants’ journey from Asia
Thirteen suspects arrested by French police over the deaths of 39 Vietnamese people found in a refrigerated lorry in Essex have been charged with people trafficking and manslaughter, a judicial source has said.
Six of the group – mainly Vietnamese and French nationals – were taken into custody on Tuesday in the Paris region, while the alleged key figure in the ring of smugglers was caught in Germany.
Continue reading...Strict quarantining and widespread testing have helped the country avoid disaster, but with tourism on hold the nation’s future is uncertain
Vietnam didn’t just flatten its coronavirus curve, it crushed it. No deaths have been reported, official case numbers have plateaued at just 271, and no community transmissions of the virus have been reported in the last two weeks. On 23 April, the nation eased lockdowns in its major cities and life is gradually returning to normal. It is a stark contrast to many other nations including the US, where more Americans have died from Covid-19 than during the entire Vietnam war.
Kidong Park, the World Health Organisation’s representative to Vietnam, has praised the country’s response to the crisis.
Continue reading...Despite a border with China, nation has kept confirmed cases low through quarantining, contact tracing, testing – and propaganda
A masked healthcare worker stands valiant as a soldier, flanked by a bold slogan proclaiming that “to stay at home is to love your country”. Beneath, fine print implores residents to declare symptoms or report anyone escaping quarantine.
The poster, by artist Le Duc Hiep, is just one of numerous art forms to emerge from Vietnam – from viral hand washing songs to state stamps – that reflect the war-time spirit many in the country are invoking as they try to contain the virus.
Continue reading...