Lessons From Fukushima Taught on Capitol Hill

WASHINGTON — Almost all American nuclear power plants have backup batteries that would last only half as long as those at Japan’s troubled Fukushima Daiichi plant did after a tsunami knocked out power there, an expert testified Tuesday at a Senate committee briefing on nuclear safety. 
An industry official, addressing the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, conceded that battery life was “one of the obvious places” that nuclear operators would examine for potential improvements.
David Lochbaum, a nuclear expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists, which generally takes a critical tone toward nuclear reactors, said that just 11 of the nation’s 104 plants had eight-hour batteries, and 93 had four-hour batteries. The batteries are not powerful enough to run pumps that direct cooling water, but they can operate valves and can power instruments that give readings of water levels, flow and temperatures.
After the March 11 tsunami disabled the local electricity grid at the Fukushima Daiichi plant and the plant’s emergency diesel generators, the failure of the batteries deprived the plant’s operators of those crucial measurements.
Addressing the committee with Mr. Lochbaum was Anthony R. Pietrangelo, senior vice president and chief nuclear officer of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry trade association. “To get to 48 hours, or 72 hours, pick a number,” he said of the backup batteries. “We’re going to have to take a hard look and see what resources would be required.”
After the committee briefing, Mr. Pietrangelo said that one alternative to adding long-lasting batteries could be having portable diesel generators available for quick dispatch to a reactor. Some equipment intended to cope with a severe accident or terrorist attack is already centrally stockpiled, he said.
Separately, Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, said Tuesday that he would introduce legislation to require that American plants acquire 72-hour batteries along with 14 days of fuel for the backup diesel generators.
Fukushima reportedly had seven days of diesel fuel, but the tanks were washed away by the tsunami; most American plants bury their tanks for safety, according to industry officials.
The bill would also impose a moratorium on license renewals and on new plant licenses.
Another expert who spoke before the Senate committee, William Borchardt, the chief staff official of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said that the Fukushima crisis would have no impact on the commission’s granting of new licenses or license extensions.
If Japan’s experience shows that changes in reactors are needed here, he said, those will be ordered immediately, regardless of the status of the plant’s license, license extension or license application.
Another American practice that appears likely to be re-evaluated in view of Japan’s crisis is filling pools with spent fuel to the maximum extent possible. Mr. Markey and others called for reducing the risk by moving some fuel to dry casks, something that is done now only when the pool is at capacity.

Source: New York Timew

Read more »

Posted in: Experimental Society,Society

Washington Debates Idea of Arming Libyan Rebels

A Libyan rebel urged people to leave as government forces shelled an area near Bin Jawad in northern Libya on Tuesday

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is engaged in a fierce debate over whether to supply weapons to the rebels in Libya, senior officials said on Tuesday, with some fearful that providing arms would deepen American involvement in a civil war and that some fighters may have links to Al Qaeda.
The debate has drawn in the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon, these officials said, and has prompted an urgent call for intelligence about a ragtag band of rebels who are waging a town-by-town battle against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, from a base in eastern Libya long suspected of supplying terrorist recruits.
“Al Qaeda in that part of the country is obviously an issue,” a senior official said.
These fears surfaced publicly on Capitol Hill on Tuesday when the military commander of NATO, Adm. James G. Stavridis, told a Senate hearing that there were “flickers” in intelligence reports about the presence of Qaeda and Hezbollah members among the rebels. No full picture of the opposition has emerged, Admiral Stavridis said. While eastern Libya was the center of Islamist protests in the late 1990s, it is unclear how many groups retain ties to Al Qaeda.
The French government, which has led the international charge against Colonel Qaddafi, has placed mounting pressure on the United States to provide greater assistance to the rebels. The question of how best to support the opposition dominated an international conference about Libya on Tuesday in London, attended by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other coalition leaders.
While Mrs. Clinton said the administration had not yet decided on whether to actually transfer arms, she reiterated that the United States had a right to do so, despite an arms embargo on Libya, because of the United Nations Security Council’s broad resolution authorizing military action to protect civilians.
But some administration officials argue that supplying arms would further entangle the United States in a drawn-out civil war because the rebels would need to be trained to use any weapons, even relatively simple rifles and shoulder-fired anti-armor weapons. This could mean sending trainers. It was not yet clear how that debate was breaking down, though the Pentagon has been most reluctant about any military action in Libya.
The question of whether to arm the rebels underscores the difficult choices the United States faces as it tries to move from being the leader of the military operation to a member of a NATO-led coalition, with no clear political endgame. It also carries echoes of previous American efforts to arm rebels, in Angola, Nicaragua, Afghanistan and elsewhere, many of which backfired. The United States has a deep, often unsuccessful, history of arming insurgencies.
President Obama pledged on Monday that he would not commit American ground troops to Libya and that the job of transforming the country into a democracy was primarily for the Libyan people and the international community. But he promised that the United States would help the rebels in this struggle.
In London, Mrs. Clinton and other Western leaders made it clear that the NATO-led operation would end only with the removal of Colonel Qaddafi, even if that was not the stated goal of the United Nations resolution.
Mrs. Clinton — who met for a second time with a senior opposition leader, Mahmoud Jibril — acknowledged that as a group, the rebels were largely a mystery. “We don’t know as much as we would like to know and as much as we expect we will know,” she said at a news conference.
In his testimony, Admiral Stavridis said, “We are examining very closely the content, composition, the personalities, who are the leaders of these opposition forces.”
The coalition members discussed other ways to help the rebels, like humanitarian aid and money, Mrs. Clinton said. Some of the more than $30 billion in frozen Libyan funds may be channeled to the opposition.
But a spokesman for the rebels, Mahmoud Shammam, said they would welcome arms, contending that with weaponry they would already have defeated Colonel Qaddafi’s forces. “We ask for political support more than arms,” Mr. Shammam said, “but if we have both, that would be good.”
So far, the rebels have obtained arms from defecting Qaddafi loyalists, as well as from abandoned ammunitions depots.
A European diplomat said France was adamant that the rebels be more heavily armed and was in discussions with the Obama administration about how France would bring this about. “We strongly believe that it should happen,” said the diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat and chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said he had had conversations with two senior administration officials about this issue. Mr. Levin said he was most concerned about how the rebels would use the weapons after a cease-fire. “Would they stop fighting if they had momentum, or would they be continuing to use those weapons?” he asked.
Gene A. Cretz, the American ambassador to Libya, said last week that he was impressed by the democratic instincts of the opposition leaders and that he did not believe that they were dominated by extremists. But he acknowledged that there was no way to know if they were “100 percent kosher, so to speak.”
Bruce O. Riedel, a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said some who had fought as insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan were bound to have returned home to eastern Libya. “The question we can’t answer is, Are they 2 percent of the opposition? Are they 20 percent? Or are they 80 percent?” he said.
Even if the administration resolves these concerns, military officials said it was unclear to them how an effort to arm the rebels would be carried out.
They said the arms most likely to be of use were relatively light and simple shoulder-fired anti-armor weapons for defense against tanks, as well as rifles like Soviet AK-47s and communications equipment. Although these weapons are not especially sophisticated, months, if not years, of on-the-ground training would still be necessary.
“You can’t just parachute crates of weapons and ammunition to them,” said Nathan Freier, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and an Army strategist in Iraq in 2005 and 2007.
Even with training, Mr. Freier said, anti-armor weapons and rifles would only allow the rebels to consolidate their gains and hold the territory they already have. “In order for them to expand those gains and move on to Tripoli,” he said, “they would need much more robust and sophisticated military capabilities.”
One crucial voice, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, has experience in the unintended consequences of arming rebels: As a C.I.A. official in the late 1980s, he funneled weapons to the Islamic fundamentalists who ousted the Soviets from Kabul. Some later became the Taliban fighting the United States in Afghanistan.

Mark Landler and Elisabeth Bumiller reported from Washington, and Steven Lee Myers from London.

source: New York Times

Read more »

Posted in: Politics

Khanh Chi tops student beauty pageant

21-year-old Le Khanh Chi – young sister of Vietnamese football star Le Cong Vinh – convincingly beat 15 other contestants to win the student beauty pageant’s much-coveted crown at the finale at Hanoi University of Culture on March 24.
The first and second runners up were Le Thi Lan and Ngo Hang Nga, respectively.
At the final round’s Q&A session, Khanh Chi won the hearts and the minds of the judges and audience for her beauty, talent, and charm.
When asked about her opinions on ao dai (Vietnamese traditional costume), she answered confidently: “If Kimono is a symbol of Japan and Cheongsam is of China, ao dai is the embodiment of Vietnamese women’s beauty and charm. Today, ao dai travels with Vietnamese women everywhere, from Paris, London to remote corners of the globe.”
“The further they [Vietnamese overseas] live from home, the more homesick they feel when they see ao dai. Without question, I’m tremendously proud to be seen in a ao dai,” she added.
Also at the finale, contestants and audience joined hands to raise funds for Japanese victims struck by the recent earthquakes and tsunami.
The pageant is to mark the 80th anniversary of Ho Chi Minh Youth Communist Union and the 52th of Hanoi University of Culture, aiming to create a healthy playground for students.
The jury members included People’s Artist Le Khanh, designer Duc Hung, the second best of Miss Vietnam 1992 Nguyen Minh Phuong, and the university’s representatives.

 source: tuoitrenews

Read more »

Posted in: Experimental Society

Hanoi theatre fights HIV stigma

Starting March 28, Hanoi’s Youth Theatre will bring its interactive drama, named “Don’t wait until tomorrow,” to universities in three central provinces of Kon Tum, Nghe An and Thanh Hoa, following its success in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh last year.
The program, free to all university students, is the latest effort of Youth Theatre to introduce theatrical works aimed for social changes that question unquestioned moral values and challenge long-established social stigmas, such as those attached to HIV for years.
In 2006, the well-received drama series Stereo Man exploring homosexuality and related social issues in contemporary Vietnam was the theatre’s first social project that has paved the way for its recent work.
Tuoi Tre spoke to Bui Nhu Lai, director of these theatrical programs about his latest works on HIV and their effects on students in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh.
You brought a person living with HIV (PLHIV) on stage to perform with other actors, what do you think is the effect of this experimentation?
While working on this project, we had a chance to get to know the life and stories of many people living with HIV through a self-help group named For a Bright Future. At first, they just remained in the audiences and helped us answer the students’ questions at the end of each performance. Later, a member of the group joined our troupe to perform with us. There were many touching stories that emerged from our Q&A session with the audience.
Last year, when we were in Ho Chi Minh, a student came on stage after the show, held our special actor’s hands, and apologized for the prejudice he had held against PLHIV up to then.
Why are you targeting only students and young people, but not other audience groups?
First of all, because they are young adults who are open-minded and easily accept new ideas. They also belong to the most vulnerable group. Imagine if someday they have the misfortune of contracting this disease and most of them still have not had sufficient understanding of HIV.
Through our project, we want to prove that HIV is not as horrible as many may think. It’s just an infectious disease that we can well prevent. Even PLHIV can give birth to perfectly healthy babies.
Besides our stories on stage, there are many other real life stories that were told by members of the For a Bright Future group in a Q&A session after each show. One of them is from a woman, who does not contract the virus after marrying a PLHIV. The couple now has a healthy 13-year-old son.
What about the stories that you bring to students?

There is a school principal who accepts a girl with HIV into his school despite fierce objections from other parents. There is a brokenhearted woman finding out the truth many years later that her boyfriend left her because he had HIV without telling her. What she said at the end of the play - “If only we had known more about the disease...” – can resonate with many of us.
How did you come to address the topic of HIV?
Like many people, I thought it was a terrible disease at first. But since a friend of mine was infected, I got to know about it more. Working here on community development projects, I met a lot of PLHIV and addressed many other social issues such as homosexuality, prostitution, and drug addictions through my works.
After university students, who will be your next audience group?
At the end of this year, we will perform at industrial zones and factories where most of the young workers have little access to informative and entertainment programs.

Actor Tran Hoang (R)

 Youth Theatre’s social project is sponsored by the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) and U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) program since 2006.
“Don’t wait until tomorrow” will be performed at Kontum, Nghe An and Thanh Hoa’s universities from March 28 to April 8.
Tran Hoang, 36, used to take part in many theatrical and propaganda programs on HIV before joining Youth Theatre on stage in the role of a PLHIV like himself.
“I decided to join the project hoping it will produce more widespread social effects and to prove that despite my health condition, I am living well and in full control of to my own happiness,” Tran Hoang said.
“Young people nowadays know more about HIV, they want to help and support PLHIV instead of discriminating against them as before, which is exactly what the project is about,” he concluded.

 source: tuoitrenews

Read more »

Posted in: Experimental Society

Tree saves drunk Russian after 7th floor fall

A Russian who jumped from the seventh floor of his apartment building while heavily drunk miraculously survived by getting tangled in trees on the way down, RIA Novosti agency said Monday.
The man aged about 50 was noticed by his neighbours when he was lodged in the branches on the level of the third floor of the building in Novosibirsk, a large city in Siberia, said Dmitry Chepukhalin, a representative in the local rescue service.
The man was taken off the tree by rescue workers and taken to the hospital with several bruises and scratches, he said.
Alcohol abuse kills around 500,000 Russians annually and greatly impacts male life expectancy, which is lower than in such developing countries as Bangladesh and Honduras, according to official figures.

source: tuoitrenews

Read more »

Posted in: Entertainment

Japan to discuss nationalising Tepco, reports say

Speculation is growing that the Japanese government may start talks to nationalise Tokyo Electric Power, which owns the Fukushima nuclear plant.

Conflicting reports in local media caused nervousness among investors and Tepco's share price fell by 18%.

Tepco employees bow to apologise for the radiation
leaks from the Fukushima power plant

Tepco's future has been in question after the earthquake that struck Japan caused a radiation scare at Fukushima.
The company has said it will need to raise about $25bn (£15.6bn) to shore up its finances.
The talk of Tepco being nationalised has been fuelled by a statement from cabinet minister Koichiro Gemba to the Reuters news agency that a discussion about bailing out Tepco was possible.
But Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the government was not currently considering a nationalisation.
"Although details cannot be seen such as how exactly the government is going to nationalise the company, as long as there are concerns that Tepco may be nationalised, investors don't want to hold the stock," said Hajime Nakajima of Cosmo Securities.
On Tuesday a flood of sell orders caused Tepco shares to stop being traded temporarily.
A day earlier, the shares dropped to their lowest level in three decades.
Conflicting reports A spokesman for Tepco told the Reuters news agency that he was unaware of any plan for nationalisation.
"Our first and biggest priority at this moment is to prevent the nuclear power plant accident from worsening further," Hajime Motojuku said.
However, The Yomiuri Daily has reported that some members of the government proposed a plan for the state to take a majority stake in the company and help it pay for damages from the nuclear accident.
Some Japanese banks have said they are in talks to give the company emergency loans.

Source: BBC

Read more »

Posted in: Business

Japan nuclear: PM Naoto Kan signals 'maximum alert'

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan has said his government is in a state of maximum alert over the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant.

The BBC's Chris Hogg reports on life inside the nuclear exclusion zone

Plutonium has been detected in soil at the facility and highly radioactive water has leaked from a reactor building.
Officials say the priority remains injecting water to cool the fuel rods.
Mr Kan told parliament the situation at the quake-hit plant "continues to be unpredictable".
The government "will tackle the problem while in a state of maximum alert", he said, adding that he was seeking advice on whether to extend the evacuation zone around the plant.
Meanwhile National Strategy Minister Koichiro Gemba said the government could consider temporarily nationalising Tepco, the company running the plant.
On Monday shares in the company dropped to their lowest level in three decades.

'Utmost efforts'

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano, in another press briefing, described the situation at Fukushima as "very grave".

Workers are battling to restore power and restart the cooling systems at the stricken nuclear plant, which was hit by a powerful quake and subsequent tsunami over two weeks ago.
The twin disasters are now known to have killed 10,901 people, with more than 17,000 people still missing across a swathe of northern Japan.
"We are doing our utmost efforts to contain the damage," Mr Edano said.
"We need to avoid the fuel rods from heating up and drying up. Continuing the cooling is unavoidable... We need to prioritise injecting water."
But he said work to safely remove contaminated water was also a priority.
On Monday highly radioactive water was found for the first time outside one of the reactor buildings at Fukushima plant.

The leak in a tunnel linked to the No 2 reactor has raised fears of radioactive liquid seeping into the environment.
Plutonium - used in the fuel mix for one of the six reactors - has also been found in soil at the plant, but not at levels that threaten human health, officials say

Correspondents say the government has been accused of indecision and delay in tackling the crisis.

Tepco, meanwhile, was criticised by the government after issuing incorrect radiation readings.
On Sunday it said radiation levels at reactor No 2 were 10 million times higher than normal, before correcting that figure to 100,000 - something the government called "absolutely unacceptable".
It has also been accused of a lack of transparency and failing to provide information more promptly.
Regional fallout Officials in China, South Korea and the United States say they have recorded traces of radioactive material in the air.
The US Environmental Protection Agency said it had detected traces of radiation in rain water in the north-east of the country.
It said these were consistent with the Fukushima nuclear accident and also said they did not constitute a health hazard.

Continue reading the main story

• Q&A: Health effects of radiation

China's Ministry of Environmental Protection has said that "extremely low-level" doses of iodine-131, a radioactive material, have been found in coastal areas including Jiangsu, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Anhui, Guangdong and Guangxi.

It had already reported traces of the radioactive material in the air above the northeastern province of Heilongjiang.
However, the doses were so small as to not pose a threat to public health and no measures against it were necessary, the agency statement said.
Water and food is being tested for radiation; bans on some imported Japanese foodstuffs remain in place.
In Vietnam, the Thanh Nien newspaper has reported that Vietnamese scientists have found small amounts of radiation in the air.
The Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety said it had detected traces of iodine-131 in Seoul and seven other places across South Korea.
However, an agriculture ministry official told AFP that "no trace of radiation has been found so far either in our own fish or those imported from Japan".

source: BBC

Read more »

Posted in: Society

Obama defends Libya intervention

President Barack Obama: ''Broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake''

US President Barack Obama has defended the first military intervention of his presidency, insisting US involvement in Libya will be limited.

He said US participation in the coalition had saved "countless lives", but that overthrowing Muammar Gaddafi by force would be a mistake.
Delegates from dozens of countries are gathering in London for a conference on the future of Libya.
The rebel advance there has been halted near Col Gaddafi's birthplace, Sirte.
Anti-Gaddafi forces had made rapid progress westwards from their stronghold in Benghazi in recent days, greatly aided by international air strikes.
But rebel fighters said pro-Gaddafi forces had used heavy weaponry to check their advance some 50km (30 miles) east of Sirte, says the BBC's Ben Brown in Ajdabiya.
In eastern Libya, rebel radio has been urging more people in the west of the country to join the anti-Gaddafi uprising.
While Nato insists it is impartial in the conflict, Russia has renewed its expressions of concern, saying intervention in an internal civil war is not sanctioned by UN Security Council Resolution 1973.
Ahead of Tuesday's conference, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said he wanted Col Gaddafi to leave power and face trial at the International Criminal Court.
Some 40 delegations - from the coalition, the UN, Nato, the African Union and Arab League, but not the Libyan government - will be represented in London. Rebel officials have been invited for talks on the meeting's sidelines, although not to the conference itself.
In a letter to those attending the conference, Col Gaddafi called for an end to the "barbaric offensive" on his country.
'Regime change' ruled out In his first televised address on the Libyan intervention, Mr Obama said that having led the initial campaign, the US would hand over to Nato allies on Wednesday.

"We have stopped Gaddafi's deadly advance," he said at the National Defense University in Washington DC.

But the lead in enforcing the no-fly zone and protecting civilians on the ground would now move to the Americans' allies, he added.
"Because of this transition to a broader, Nato-based coalition, the risk and cost of this operation - to our military, and to American taxpayers - will be reduced significantly," Mr Obama said.
"We must always measure our interests against the need for action," the president continued. "But that cannot be an argument for never acting on behalf of what's right."
Earlier on Monday, in a video conference with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and UK Prime Minister David Cameron, Mr Obama had agreed that Col Gaddafi "had lost any legitimacy to rule and should leave power, and that the Libyan people should have the political space to determine their own future", the White House said.
Symbolic target An Italian proposal to end the crisis includes offering Col Gaddafi an escape route from Libya, ensuring a quick ceasefire and facilitating dialogue between rebels and tribal leaders.
Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said he had discussed the proposals with Germany and France.
Libyan Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim, meanwhile, has called on those attending Tuesday's conference in London to act as "peacemakers, not warmongers".

In recent days, anti-Gaddafi forces have seized a number of coastal communities and important oil installations, including Ras Lanuf, Brega, Uqayla and Bin Jawad.
However, repeated attacks by government troops have prevented them reaching the symbolic target of Sirte.

Khaled Kaim: "The solution is for all parties to be involved in peace-making

A Pentagon spokesman in Washington, Vice Admiral Bill Gortney, said that because the Libyan rebels were not well organised, any military gains they made would be tenuous.
He said the rebels were clearly benefiting from actions of the US, which has started using heavily-armed low-flying aircraft against government forces.
Nato has denied that its air strikes are meant to provide cover for a rebel advance.

Mark Mardell BBC North America editor

Critics on the left and right in the US are asking why their country is involved in Libya.

President Obama answered them in this major address, his first speech on Libya since action started some 10 days ago.

He said he had ordered military intervention to enforce the UN resolution because if the coalition had waited one more day, there could have been a massacre in Benghazi that would have stained the conscience of the world, eclipsed the dawning democratic impulses across the region and crippled the credibility of the UN.

He said he had refused to wait for images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.

But the president also addressed the limits of action: he said there was no question that the world would be better off with Gaddafi out of power but to broaden military aims to regime change would splinter the coalition and mean US troops on the ground.

source: BBC

Read more »

Posted in: Politics

Bob Dylan seeks simplicity for live show

All audiences, VIPs included, will sit on green grass for a live performance of Bob Dylan to be held at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University (RMIT) on April 10.

This is one of the requirements Dylan has made for his live show in Vietnam. The other requirement is for the sound system. It must meet international standards to ensure high quality for his performance.

Unlike the Backstreet Boys, who handed local organizers a thick manual on how to serve them, the legendary American musician didn’t ask for any VIP greeting at the airport or recording for the show.

Dylan only wants a room with two windows at an ordinary hotel.

Besides Dylan’s classics, the live concert will also pay tribute to the Vietnamese Bob Dylan, the late songwriter Trinh Cong Son, whose life and career Dylan said he knew and admired and made him want to perform in Vietnam.

Well-known local singers and artists including saxophonist Tran Manh Tuan will perform the Trinh Cong Son songs.

The live concert is being organized by Saigon Sound System, Thanh Nien Media Corp and Trinh Cong Son’s family.

Tickets range from USD$50 to $120 and are available at www.thaiticketmajor.com for international reservation, and at www.saigonsoundsystem.com for reservation in Vietnam.

Tickets can also be booked in Ho Chi Minh City at Juice (49 Mac Thi Buoi Road, District 1), The Boathouse (40 Lily Road, APSC Compound, 36 Thao Dien, District 2) and Boomerang (The Crescent, Phu My Hung, District 7)

source: tuoitrenews

Read more »

Posted in: Entertainment

Cop, taxi driver bury the hatchet after assault

A Hau Giang police officer who assaulted a taxi driver last week and threatened to shoot him has apologized and admitted he was drunk, and the driver has agreed not to press charges.


The Hung Thanh Ward police in Cai Rang District, Can Tho City, yesterday held a mediation meeting between the officer, Major Bui Minh Thang, deputy head of the Hau Giang Province’s road traffic police, and the driver, Do Quoc Thai, who works for Mai Linh Corporation in Ho Chi Minh City.

Thang admitted that he was so drunk when he got into the taxi on March 20 that he was unable to control himself.

Thai had picked up Thang at Cai Khe Island and when they neared the access road to Can Tho Bridge, Thang twice ordered him not to stop at the red light. When he refused to obey, Thang grabbed the wheel from the back and threatened to shoot him.

The two then exchanged blows, with Thang using a belt to attack Thai and injuring him on the head.

When the police summoned both Thai and Thang for inquiry, Thang threatened officers and asked one to kneel and apologize to him.

When contacted by Tuoi Tre over phone, Thang admitted to “exchanging some angry words” and getting into a “minor fight” with the driver and to earlier drinking wine and beer with friends.

At the meeting, Thang and Thai agreed it was an unfortunate incident and consider the matter closed. Thai also agreed not to take legal action.

Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Van Sang, deputy head of the Cai Rang District police, said the ward police will decide about the administrative punishment to be awarded to Thang today.

Thai is on leave from work and will resume when he fully recovers.

Colonel Nguyen Hoang Dieu, deputy director of the Hau Giang Province Police, said he is awaiting reports on the incident.
source: tuoitrenews.vn

Read more »

Posted in: Society