Category: News

  • Vietnam convicts 3 bloggers for criticizing government; sentences range from 4 to 12 years

    CHRIS BRUMMITT, Associated Press, Updated: September 24, 2012 – 5:11 AM HANOI, Vietnam – A Vietnamese court issued jail sentences ranging from four to 12 years on Monday to three bloggers who wrote about human rights abuses, corruption and foreign policy, intensifying a crackdown on citizens’ use of the Internet to criticize the government. The cases…

  • Under fire, Vietnamese bloggers keep up dissent

    By AP News Sep 14, 2012 1:55PM UTC HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Vietnam’s government has vowed to crack down on three dissident blogs, a move that appeared to backfire Thursday as record numbers of people visited the sites and the bloggers pledged to keep up their struggle for freedom of expression. Prime Minister Nguyen Tan…

  • Undercover Reporter Jailed

    RFA, 2012-09-07 Vietnam throws a journalist in prison for bribing police during an undercover investigation. Photo courtesy of Tienphong Online. Hoang Khuong (2nd from L) in court in Ho Chi Minh City, Sept. 7, 2012. In a conviction condemned by rights groups, a Vietnamese journalist has been sentenced to four years in jail for offering…

  • People’s Court rejected appeal by anti-graft activist

    A top court in Vietnam turned down an appeal by a prominent labor activist who was sentenced to five years in prison in June for distributing propaganda against the state. The People’s Supreme Court in southeastern Vietnam’s Ninh Thuan province on Wednesday upheld the prison sentence of 53-year-old Phan Ngoc Tuan, an advocate for workers’…

  • Vietnam Risks Biggest East Asia IMF Rescue Since 1990s

    Bloomberg News on September 06, 2012 Vietnam risks becoming the biggest East Asian economy to seek an International Monetary Fund rescue loan since the region’s financial crisis more than a decade ago as it moves to support a faltering banking system. The nation may need IMF aid to recapitalize banks and must act quickly to…

  • Vietnam political battles heat up as economy falters

    AFP, August 26, 2012 HANOI: The arrest of one of Vietnam’s top banking tycoons reflects a wider power struggle among the Communist rulers over how to tackle the country’s deepening economic troubles, experts say. Flamboyant multi-millionaire Nguyen Duc Kien, a shareholder in some of Vietnam’s largest financial institutions and a founder of Asia Commercial Bank…

  • Insight: Debt risks lurk in Vietnam’s unreformed state giants

    By Stuart Grudgings HANOI |         Thu Aug 23, 2012 5:37pm EDT HANOI (Reuters) – From the rural heartlands to traffic-choked cities, Vietnam Electricity Group is hard to miss. It builds apartments, runs a bank, oversees a stock brokerage, provides electrical power to millions of homes and employs 100,000 people. Today, Vietnam’s sole retail power supplier,…

  • Much at stake for US as tensions rise in troubled China Seas

        Masataka Morita / AP A boat from Hong Kong, center, is surrounded by Japanese Coast Guard vessels after Chinese activists landed on Uotsuri Island, one of the Senkaku or Diaoyu Islands, on Aug. 15. By NBC News staff Vast oil reserves, trillion-dollar trade routes, fervent nationalist sentiments, competing territorial claims and bitter histories…

  • Wealthy Vietnamese Face Backlash as Economy Worsens

    ASIA NEWS, Updated Updated August 23, 2012, 8:00 p.m. E.T. By JAMES HOOKWAY The arrest this week of Vietnamese banking and soccer mogul Nguyen Duc Kien comes amid a growing backlash against Vietnam’s wealthy tycoons, as the country struggles with an economy that is going from bad to worse. Some of Vietnam’s Communist leaders have…

  • Vietnam arrests point to greater malaise

    Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email [email protected] to buy additional rights. August 24, 2012 4:53 pm By Ben Bland in Jakarta On Tuesday afternoon, 72-year-old retiree Trinh Van Yen rode his bicycle to the bank through a heavy Hanoi rainstorm. “My son just called and told me that, whatever the weather is, I…