Typhoon Noru strikes Vietnam, hundreds evacuated from popular beach resort city of Da Nang

Typhoon Noru struck Vietnam within 36 hours after it destroyed the Philippines. There is was called Karding. In Vietnam, it targeted its popular beach resort city of Da Nang. It brought powerful winds and heavy rain and led to evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people. It fell in a high-end Category 2 hurricane with winds of nearly 109 mph. Before its made landfall, the authorities had banned vessels from the sea and asked students to stay at home. Because of this climatic disturbance central Vietnam, southern Laos, and northern Thailand face a risk of floods over the next 48 hours. It seems about 11,000 foreign tourists and 7,000 domestic visitors are staying in the city. The government instructed thousands of boars and hundreds of thousands of laborers to move to safe shelters. Hundreds of thousands evacuated as Typhoon Noru makes landfall in Vietnam’s Da Nang. The province of Thua Thien Hue is home to more than 2,000 fishing ships and around 11,000 fishermen. It has imposed ban on vessels from going out to sea with warnings of strong winds, high waves and flooding.

Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh of Vietnam chaired an urgent meeting with officials from at least eight provinces. These were expected to be affected by the storm. The discussion related to response efforts. He went on to say – “Climate change is becoming increasingly extreme and unusual, causing very serious consequences.” He wanted all concerned like ministries, branches and localities, especially the heads of such units, to enhance their responsibilities in order to ensure the safety, life and property of the people and the state in the context of the weather. It seems eight people lost their lives in typhoon-related incidents. They included five rescue workers.

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More than 200 drug addicts breakout of rehabilitation centre in Vietnam

More than 200 drug addicts overpowered the security staff and are believed to be on the run after a mass escape from a rehabilitation center in Vietnam. The inmates overpowered the security and forced them to open the main gate to let them out.
This has been reported in news.sky.com dated 24 October 2016.

There were two inmates who initiated the breakout and as many as 562 (including 58 women), escaped from the centre in Dong Nai province, in the south east region of the country. Police managed to recapture 332, but 230 are still missing from the compound. The centre accommodates 1,481 inmates.
As per estimates, there are 200,000 drug addicts in Vietnam and, many of them heroin users. The Vietnamese government enforces compulsory treatment for these drug addicts. These programs involve education, communist ideology and physical labor for up to two years.
However, the conditions in the rehab centres have been condemned by the US-based Human Rights Watch group. In their opinion, these should be closed because the treatment centres are like "forced labour camps" where inmates do not receive proper health care and are often subjected to physical violence.


Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org


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Bear bile farm in Vietnam finally closed down, only one bear survived out of 27

Vietnam is known for its bear bile farms in which ‘moon bears’ are kept captive and crude catheters are jabbed into their abdomen to drain out fluid twice a day. This fluid, then, is used in Chinese medicine as aphrodisiac and hangover cure. The 'moon bears' are named after the yellow moon-shaped crescents on their chests.
The media had reported last November about the Cau Trang bile farm in Halong Bay, Vietnam where 27 of the endangered animals has been kept captive in cramped metal cages. It has finally been closed down and, only of the bears has been rescued alive. It was found in a half-starved condition and gasping for life on the floor of his tiny cage at the farm.
This has been reported in dailymail.co.uk dated 19 June 2015.

It is believed that the owner milked the bears for their valuable bile and sold them at huge profits to Asian tourists and must have either starved the bears to death or slaughtered them to sell off their paws and gall bladders.
Incidentally, the paws, meat and gall bladders of the ‘moon bears’ are sold for the equivalent of £625 a bear and usually smuggled to China for use in traditional medicine.
(Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org)

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#babytiger #Vietnam #Hanoi #catmeat #BacNinh It is a thriving trade where pet cats are snatched off the streets, killed and passed off to the unsuspecting customers as baby tigers. These are served with noodles as reported in dailymail.co.uk dated 16 April 2015. The cats are slaughtered in tens of thousands across Asia - to feed the booming appetite for their meat in Vietnam and restaurants that specialize in this sort of cuisine of serving domestic cats as 'baby tiger' are mushrooming across northern Vietnam. This is in spite of laws against eating the animals.

The man who steals the cats gets paid anything from £37 to £52 for every animal by the owners of restaurants. It may be recalled that in January a lorry with three tonnes of cats crammed into bamboo cages stacked one on top of another was seized by police as it was on its way from China to Hanoi. In Va Town located in Bac Ninh province which is an hour's drive from Hanoi, ‘baby tiger’ is in the daily menu of a popular restaurant. The most popular dishes of this restaurant are cat meat hot pot – this is on sale for around £40 pounds and feeds seven. This is a huge sum in rural Vietnam. Of course, cat meat noodles are priced at £3 pounds a bowl. As a restaurant owner has admitted - the best cats are aged two and a half years old and weigh 2.5-Kg and the live cats come for £3.50 per Kg and the meat sells for about £7 per Kg. The clientele consists of lawyers, policemen and company directors who eat it at the start of the lunar month. Then there are the factory workers who eat it at the beginning of the month. And, the rich people eat it all month long.

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