Hanoi, Beijing move to settle disputes
Hanoi, Beijing move to settle disputes
VIETNAM: Vietnam and China have moved a step closer to settling their decades-old territorial disputes through the laying of a symbolic marker stone on their land border, Vietnamese officials said on Sunday.
The first marker along the western section of their common frontier was placed between Vietnam's border town of Lao Cai and the Chinese border station of Hekou in the southwestern province of Yunnan on Saturday.
"This will lay a solid foundation for the building of a friendly and stable borderline between Vietnam and China," Vietnam's Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Le Cong Phung, told the official Vietnam News Agency (VNA).
Phung said the event would bolster stability along the border, the scene of a bloody war two decades ago, by creating favorable conditions for completely marking the entire Vietnam-China border.
The marker was the second of more than 1,500 markers that are set to be placed along the 1,350-kilometer (840-mile) border within the next three years. -- AFP
;AP;ANJ; ANPAu..r.. Malaysia-Online Pornography Malaysian employees warned not to download pornography at work JP/11/ASEAN2
Employees warned over pornography
MALAYSIA: The government is warning civil servants not to surf the Internet for lewd material at work, after an employers' federation proposed sacking immediately any workers caught downloading pornography, news reports said on Sunday.
Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said government employees would receive a warning letter if caught visiting pornographic Web sites and hinted that stiffer action would be taken against repeat offenders.
Abdullah was commenting on a proposal by Malaysia's main employers' federation on Friday that workers found searching online for pornography should be sacked immediately. The proposal is for all the country's workers.
Workers' unions have condemned the firing proposal as being too extreme, saying that bosses should consider less severe penalties.
Malaysia has a high level of Internet usage. Government officials have estimated that the country will have 10 million Internet users by next year, or more than one-third of the 23 million population. -- AP
;AFP;ANJ; ANPAu..r.. Vietnam-US-chemical Vietnam hopes US will acknowledge Agent Orange legacy JP/11/ASEAN3
U.S. must 'take blame for Agent Orange'
VIETNAM: Vietnam said on Sunday it hoped a conference in Sweden later this month on the impact of chemical weapons used during the Vietnam War will force the United States to acknowledge responsibility for a legacy of contamination and destruction.
In a letter to organizers of the July 26-28 meet in Stockholm, Vice President Nguyen Thi Binh said she hoped the United States would "recognize the heavy consequences" of their actions, the official Vietnam News Agency reported.
Binh called on the United States and the rest of the international community to step up assistance to victims of Agent Orange.
Hanoi says that more than a million Vietnamese were exposed to the spraying of the cancer-causing defoliant, which it blames for tens of thousands of birth defects.
The U.S. military used some 57 million liters of Agent Orange to deny communist guerrillas food and cover from jungle vegetation during the decade-long war which ended with a Vietnamese victory in 1975. -- AFP
;AP;AP; ANPAu..r.. Philippines-Flooding Landslide, drownings bring up death toll to 61 from Philippine JP/11/ASEAN4
Landslide, drownings claim 61 lives
PHILIPPINES: Mud and debris loosened by pounding rains buried a house, killing three people and bringing to 61 the death toll from a week of monsoon storms that have swamped most of the northern Philippines, relief officials said on Sunday.
In the northern provinces of Pangasinan and La Union, four other people drowned over the weekend and one was fatally bitten by a snake, which was apparently forced from its hiding place by the floods, officials said.
New casualties were also reported in Cavite province, where police said a man drowned after being swept away by a swollen river on Saturday. Two men wading in the swirling waters in the province, which is south of Manila, were also electrocuted, but relief officials did not have any other details on Sunday.
Forty-three more people have been injured and four are missing throughout the northern Philippines, added Melchor Rosales, executive director of the National Disaster Coordination Center.
About 1.4 million people in 16 provinces and 26 cities, including metropolitan Manila, have been affected by the flooding, but only about 10,000 of more than 24,000 people who have been evacuated remain in temporary shelters, Rosales added. -- AP