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

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Malaysia-Online Pornography
Malaysian employees warned not to download pornography at work
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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

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Vietnam-US-chemical
Vietnam hopes US will acknowledge Agent Orange legacy
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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

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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