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Vietnam floating market struggles to stay above water

2018-07-02T10:38:26Z

FletcherSmx:

A vendor prepares [https://Www.herfeed.com/?s=vegetables vegetables] that she sold to a resident of a house boat in a canal off the Song Hau river in the floating Cai Rang market in Can Tho, a small city of the Mekong Delta Fixing weighing scales used to be good business on Vietnam's floating Cai Rang market, but the last repairman on the river now makes just a few dollars a month as modernity pushes traders to land. [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] Surrounded by dusty old scales on his cluttered houseboat, Nguyen Van Ut says vendors are giving up their boats for better lives on terra firma where supermarkets draw the traders who once thronged the waterway. "I don't have many customers now. In the past, it was alright, but now many boats have left the floating market... people on vessels have switched to vehicles," the 71-year-old told AFP. He got into the repairs business 30 years ago on the Can Tho river to support his surviving children after his wife and two of his sons drowned in an accident. For a time life was good, but now he relies on handouts from his children -- three of them work in nearby Can Tho city. A resident of a house boat yawns as he swings on a hammock on the vessel in a canal off the Song Hau river at the floating Cai Rang market in Can Tho, a small city in the Mekong Delta Once reportedly two kilometres long, the [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html du lịch Bắc Kinh 5 ngày 4 đêm từ Hà Nội] Cai Rang market is a shadow of its former self. There are about 300 boats on the water now, down from 550 in 2005, according to the local tourism office. It has fallen victim to the economic rise of the Mekong Delta, which has rapidly developed over the last decade. Industrial and construction sectors have created nearly 570,000 jobs, hauling many from poverty. But people like Ut have been left behind, unable to afford a life on shore. Even vendors making a decent wage from the tourists who flock to the market yearn for the perks of living on land: better housing, better jobs and modern amenities. Nguyen Thi Hong Tuoi started working on the water when she was a child, just like her mother and grandmother before her. Though she earns decent money, she doesn't expect her [http://Www.wired.com/search?query=daughter daughter] to carry on the family tradition. Boats lie anchored in a canal off the Song Hau river in the floating Cai Rang market in Can Tho, a small city of the Mekong Delta "In the future, I will let my daughter live on land so she can study and have a proper job," the 34-year-old told AFP, as her elderly mother rested in a hammock surrounded by sacks of tapioca on their boat. It's a common aspiration for young people in Vietnam, where more than half the country's 93 million people are under the age of 30 and eager to move to fast-growing cities for work. - Supermarket squeeze - The origins of Cai Rang market reach back to when Vietnam and neighbouring Cambodia and Laos were occupied by the French, who readily exploited the natural resources of the colony previously called Indochina. The Mekong Delta's web of canals -- both natural and man-made -- were used to transport goods and people in the absence of a reliable road network. Kim Hui, 70, and her five-year-old granddaughter Nguyen Thi Ngoc Huyen sit inside a boat that they call home in a canal off the Song Hau river at the floating Cai Rang market in Can Tho, a small city in the Mekong Delta There are about a dozen surviving markets in Vietnam's Mekong Delta today, though like Cai Rang, many have shrivelled. "The local government is trying to keep the floating markets alive to (preserve) the culture and attract more tourists," said Nguyen Thi Huynh Phuong, a lecturer at nearby Can Tho University who has researched the market's history. It still functions as a wholesale market, with vendors waking each day before dawn to load boats with watermelons or radishes and advertising their products by spearing them to a bamboo pole on the bow of the ship. But its charm also draws millions of visitors each year who buy noodles, fruit and coffee from water traders, making it a well-established pit-stop on the Mekong tourist trail. Recognising the market as a tourism hotspot, the government designated Cai Rang as a national heritage site last year. For vendors like Ly Hung, who has lived on the water for 26 years, visitors have helped to maintain a traditional way of [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html du lịch Bắc Kinh] life. "Without tourism this floating market would disappear," he said. Advertisement

G7 agrees measures to respond to hostile Russian activity despite...

2018-06-24T09:34:17Z

FletcherSmx:

Divisions over how to deal with Russia have been revealed as the G7 agreed a robust set of measures to counter hostile activity directed by Moscow. Theresa May�s tough line on Russia has been undermined by US President Donald Trump and Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte who have suggested that Vladimir Putin should be readmitted to the group of world leaders. The Prime Minister insisted that Russia needs to �change its approach� before any consideration of whether it should resume its place in the group of leading industrialised nations after being thrown out in 2014. Theresa May (Steve Parsons/PA) Shortly before arriving at the summit in Canada Mr Trump said: �Russia should be in the meeting, should be a part of it.� But Mrs May told the BBC: �We should remind ourselves why the G8 became the G7, it was because Russia illegally annexed Crimea. �We have seen malign activity from Russia in a whole variety of ways, of course including on the streets of Salisbury in the UK. �So we need to say, I think, before any such conversations can take place Russia needs to change its approach.� The Prime Minister has been at the forefront of diplomatic efforts to build an alliance against Russia after the Salisbury nerve agent attack on ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. Despite Mr Trump�s comments, the US had signed up to a G7 initiative to establish a new mechanism to respond to hostile activities directed by states such as Russia. Under the plans agreed by the UK, US, France, Germany, Canada, Italy and Japan at the summit in Quebec, there will be greater co-ordination to identify and respond to threats including cyber attacks [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html du lịch Bắc Kinh] and other breaches of international rules. Mrs May also pushed for action to [http://www.Answers.com/topic/tackle%20Russian tackle Russian] �dirty money� and work to curtail the movement of Moscow�s spies. And the Prime Minister urged other countries to back giving the chemical weapons watchdog the power to identify states responsible for attacks such as the nerve agent poisoning in Salisbury. At the summit in La Malbaie, in the Charlevoix region of Quebec, the G7 leaders formally agreed to set up a new rapid response mechanism. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson had already preempted the announcement of the measure in a leaked recording of him telling a private dinner that Mrs May would use the summit to set up the rapid response unit to �identify Russian malfeasance � whether it�s cyber warfare, assassinations, calling it out and identifying it�. At the summit the Prime Minister emphasised that recent events, including the reckless use of NotPetya ransomware and the attempted murder of the Skripals, demonstrated the importance of a unified international response. The new mechanism involves the sharing of threat intelligence and measures to protect physical and digital infrastructure from attack. It also calls for co-ordinated attribution of hostile activity so more countries name and shame perpetrators of cyber attacks and other abuses. In an effort to counter propaganda, the G7 leaders agreed to work together to assert a �common narrative and response� to incidents. At the summit on Friday, Mrs May said: �There is no doubt that foreign interference in our democratic institutions and processes, and other forms of hostile activity, pose a strategic threat [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html du lịch Bắc Kinh 5 ngày 4 đêm từ Hà Nội] to our shared values and interests. �So I welcome today�s agreement that the G7 will exchange information, co-ordinate action, and develop strategies to reinforce our democracies, strengthen our societies� resilience and uphold freedom of expression and a free and independent media in the face of this growing threat. �Today�s announcement shows that the G7 will not tolerate foreign interference in any one of our democracies, that we are getting organised, and that we [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] will take coordinated action against those who seek to violate the rules-based international system. �Calling out malicious activity helps to end hostile states� false sense of impunity, demonstrates our awareness of their activity, and underlines our unwavering willingness to defend ourselves.� A senior UK Government source said despite Mr Trump�s comments �the Americans have been very clear in negotiating they are signed up to the rapid response mechanism�. Mrs May was also pushing the leaders to do more together as the G7 to better understand illicit money flows and then agree concrete actions to stop dirty cash being used to undermine democracy. The Prime Minister also called for G7 countries to share information so that Russians expelled from one state do not simply redeploy to another. Ahead of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) special conference of states parties, expected to take place later this month, Mrs May urged her counterparts to back calls to allow the watchdog to point the finger at states behind chemical weapons attacks rather than simply confirming an incident has taken place and identifying the substance. The UK has called for a special Conference of the State Parties to the OPCW. We call on all states to use this opportunity to defend and strengthen the global ban on chemical weapons. #[http://Edublogs.org/?s=NoImpunity%20pic NoImpunity pic].twitter.com/xHh9Oe07oT - Foreign Office 🇬🇧 (@foreignoffice) May 30, 2018 Mrs May�s attempts to strengthen the international response against Russia comes ahead of a meeting with Italy�s new prime minister Mr Conte who has called for sanctions against Moscow to be eased. The Prime Minister told reporters accompanying her to the summit: �I�ve had a telephone conversation with the new Italian PM and I�ll be having further discussions with him here at the G7. �I will continue to make the case as I have done within the European Council of the importance of those sanctions against Russia. �They were of course part of the response that the EU gave in relation to Russian activity in Crimea, the importance that we get the full implementation of the Minsk agreement. � Advertisement

User:FletcherSmx

2018-06-24T09:34:10Z

FletcherSmx: Created page with "I am Fletcher from Irvine. I love to play Piano. Other hobbies are Computer programming. Take a look at my page: [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay..."

I am Fletcher from Irvine. I love to play Piano. Other hobbies are Computer programming. Take a look at my page: [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html du lịch Bắc Kinh]