The raid on September 3, 2013. PICTURE: JUSTIN WHITELOCK/The Courier

Trang Van Nguyen, 26, appeared briefly in Ballarat Magistrates Court on Friday where Crown prosecutors dropped charges including trafficking commercial quantities of cannabis.

Nguyen, who evaded police arrest for months after the September 3, 2013, raid of an Alfredton home, on Friday pleaded guilty to one charge of cultivating a commercial quantity of cannabis.

Previous court hearings have heard a police search of the Leicester Court property uncovered an elaborate hydroponic cannabis set-up consisting of almost 200 mature plants.

Co-accused Sih-Yu Wu, 31, a Taiwanese national, in June pleaded not guilty to charges including trafficking a commercial quantity of cannabis and cultivating a commercial quantity of cannabis.

Wu, who is on bail, will face trial in the County Court in coming months.

Read the full story by Patrick Byrne from The Courier.

A policeman, flanked by local militia members, guards the outside of the Saigon People’s Court, Aug. 10, 2011. (AFP)

U.S.-based Human Rights Watch said the new policy governing probes carried out by the police, known as Circular 28, is an improvement over past rules, but falls well short of the deep reforms needed to curb “widespread police abuses” in the one-party communist

“If the Vietnamese government is serious about ending police abuses, Circular 28 could provide a good start,” Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch, said in a report.

“But no one should assume that progress can be made unless top levels of the government are wholly committed to ensuring effective police reform.”

Human Rights Watch pointed out that the new rules require further improvements and clarifications of some problematic areas.

For instance, the Ministry of Public Security must specify that each officer’s responsibility before his  superiors does not take precedence over his responsibility before the law.

The group also criticized the new policy for emphasizing the role of the commune police, considered the least professional of the country’s police force with the fewest resources and minimal training to handle investigations. The commune police are also known to beat suspects in custody.

Vietnamese police have come under fire in the local media for abuse of suspects, some of whom have died in custody, raising concerns that the abuses are systemic.

In March, a 39-year-old man in the Central Highlands was allegedly beaten to death by local police who were interrogating him for supposedly stealing pepper.

“Local newspapers have reported many similar deaths—some occurring at police stations during interrogations and some after being released—prompting calls for better guarantees of the rights of the accused and for more police transparency,” the state-run Thanh Nien newspaper said when commenting on the case.

Lawyer Nguyen Van Hau, deputy chairman of the Saigon Jurists’ Association, said violations during interrogation could be easily avoided if investigating agencies strictly respected the right of those arrested to seek the services of a lawyer, the newspaper said.

The Criminal Procedures Code stipulates the participation of a defense lawyer at the beginning of investigations except for crimes that can affect national secrets or national security, he said.

Human Rights Watch said the new rules use language that presumes criminality before an individual is found guilty of a crime and limits the role of defense lawyers.

One article in particular says lawyers and their assistants can be subject to disciplinary measures for activities that hinder or “cause difficulties to investigation work,” and the new rules appear to encourage investigators to collect evidence proving that others have caused difficulties to their work.

Read the full story by Chan Nhu from Radio Free Asia.

Dan Nguyen (Multi Housing News)

The scholarship includes an all-expenses-paid trip to IREM’s 2014 Fall Leadership Conference in Orlando, Fla. At that conference, a formal recognition ceremony will take place to honor Nguyen. The scholarship was created to recognize college or university students who’ve displayed academic attainment, while also showing an interest in real estate management careers.

“IREM realized several years ago that the median age of credentialed Certified Property Managers stood in the mid- to upper 50s, and that it was critical we connect with younger generations to ensure ethical, qualified and experienced property managers continue to enter the field,” Dee Headley, Indianapolis-based CFP and vice president with Cassidy Turley, tells MHN.

IREM now works with a number of colleges and universities to make the institutions aware of the education provided by IREM. “For the past few years, we have been actually meeting with all these colleges, and we realize that at times, students could not afford to go to conferences,” Headley adds. “The scholarship awarded to the ‘Student of the Year’ allows that student to see the full scope of how IREM can be your career partner for life.”

Headley adds there are a number of initiatives offered by IREM to help students comprehend property management careers. “For instance, there are job shadowing opportunities,” she says. “Many of our members have appeared on panels discussing property management at various college’s real estate clubs. We have student memberships in IEM on a local level, allowing them to affiliate with a local chapter. We have young professional events in conjunction with some colleges.

“And at the high school level, we are working to produce a YouTube video introducing high school students to property management as a career option. Those videos will be distributed through guidance counseling offices.”

Read the full article by Jeffrey Steele from Multi Housing News.

Thang Van Tran, 26, was arrested by members of the Mobile County Street Enforcement Narcotics Team on Thursday, Aug. 14, 2014. He was charged with one count of trafficking marijuana. (Courtesy of the Mobile County Sheriff’s Office)

On Aug. 14, officers arrested Thang Van Tran, 26, on one count of trafficking marijuana.

Police estimated the seized cannabis was worth around $61,500.

Read the full story by Theresa Seiger from AL.

 Gas rig offshore. (Photo Photo by Albatross via Getty Images)

Idemitsu Kosan, which operates the connected 05-1b and 05-1c blocks with a 35% share, announced on Thursday that it had discovered gas and condensate in the fourth well drilled in the area.

The blocks lie in the Nam Con Son Basin, Vietnam’s largest offshore gas reserve with 159.3 billion cubic metres of proven gas reserves, according to Malaysia-based bank CIMB. Along with its partners JX Nippon Oil & Gas Exploration (35%) and Inpex (30%), Idemitsu announced two other discoveries in the area in 2011 and 2013.

The consortium did not provide any estimates on the size of the resource, but Idemitsu said it plans to carry out a detailed reservoir study and evaluate other potential prospects in the blocks.

Should the partners decide to develop the gas finds, they would likely be delivered to the planned Nam Con Son 2 (NCS2) gas pipeline, which is expected to pass through the area to collect gas from the Hai Thach, Moc Tinh, Thien Ung Dai Hung, and Mang Cau gas fields farther south.

PetroVietnam’s subsidiary PV Gas is leading the $1.3 billion, 325 km subsea NCS2 pipeline, which would eventually have a transmission capacity of 7 bcm/y – similar to the Nam Con Son 1 pipeline which began operating in 2003.

The pipeline would run to the onshore Dinh Co gas processing facility near the city of Vung Tau. Gas from Ding Co is then delivered to industrial consumers, fertiliser companies and power plants.

Read the full story by Robert Sullivan from Interfax Energy.

Bri Nguyen is into animal rights and sustainability. (OC Weekly)

Bri Nguyen, 20, of Westminster, in one of the cast statements from the new Fox reality show Utopia, which network executives call “the largest, most ambitious social experiment on television.”

The series moves 15 “pioneers” to a remote location where they are tasked with creating a society from scratch, seeking to answer the question: “If you could restart the world, what would you do differently?” So what does Nguyen, a single veterinary technician and student, bring to the pioneering table?

According to her cast bio, Nguyen’s skills include farming, raising livestock, horseback riding, canning fruits and vegetables and building huts and she is “passionate” about animal rights and sustainability.

Read the full article by Matt Coker from OC Weekly.

Blackberry Q10 smartphone (Photo by Adam Berry/Getty Images)

In seven-month period, Vietnam spent some 3.25 billion U.S. dollars importing phones and accessories from China, up 4.4 percent year-on-year, according to VITIC under Vietnam’s Ministry of Industry and Trade.

During the period, Vietnam’s total import revenue of phones and accessories reached some 4.49 billion U.S. dollars, up 0.77 percent year-on-year, VITIC quoted statistics of Vietnam Customs as saying.

China was followed by the Republic of Korea among phones and accessories suppliers to Vietnam during the period, with revenue of 1.02 billion U.S. dollars, down 19.2 percent year-on-year.

In January-July period, Vietnam also imported phones and accessories from China’s Taiwan, Japan, China’s Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, the United States and Sweden.

Phones and accessories imports from Japan posted the highest growth of 366.83 percent year-on-year among other markets, said VITIC.

Read the full story from Xinhua.

General Martin E. Dempsey (C), chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, and General Do Ba Ty (not pictured), deputy defense minister and chief of general staff of the Vietnam People’s Army hold talks at the Defense Ministry in Hanoi on August 14, 2014. Dempsey, who is the first ever US chairman of the joint chiefs of staff to visit Hanoi since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, is making a three-day official visit focused on bilateral ties.  (HOANG DINH NAM/AFP/Getty Images)

General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, was in Vietnam last week, marking the highest ranking military officer to visit Vietnam since 1971. During his four-day landmark tour, Dempsey met with Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung and high-ranking military leaders in Hanoi, visited the central city of Da Nang, a strategic deep water harbor facing the South China Sea previously used by American forces, and symbolically concluded his trip in Saigon, once the political and economic hub of the US-backed regime during the Vietnam War.

Dempsey was upbeat about the prospect of Washington lifting its 30-year ban against selling lethal weapons to Vietnam, a move both Vietnamese top echelons and influential US Senator John McCain have advocated.

“There’s a growing sense among our elected officials by our administration, by non-governmental organizations, that Vietnam has made progress against the limitations that led to the lethal weapon ban,” said Dempsey at a press conference. “I think the maritime domain is the place of our greatest common interest right now, common security interest. My recommendation, if the ban is lifted, will be that we start with that.”

In early May, when China first towed a US$1 billion oil exploration rig into waters Vietnam considers part of its 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and continental shelf in the South China Sea, the move triggered tense skirmishes between Chinese and Vietnamese coast guard vessels.

In an unprecedented move on the disputes, China sent United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon a position paper detailing what it called Vietnam’s “illegal disruption” of its “routine” offshore drilling operations in the contested Paracel Islands region.

When the confrontation sparked deadly anti-China riots in central and southern Vietnam, Hanoi’s leaders “realized that they have to reduce their dependence on China. China’s troop movements near the Sino-Vietnamese border and its [alleged] hidden hands in the anti-China riots inside Vietnam during the oil rig crisis have led to a change in Vietnamese leaders’ perception of China’s role vis-a-vis Vietnam,” said Alexander Vuving, a security analyst at the Hawaii-based Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies.

Prime Minister Dung said that “bad elements” escalated the violence, while other anonymous officials have said China inflamed the on-the-ground situation to tarnish Vietnam’s image.

At the height of the bilateral tensions, Vietnam’s top Communist Party leaders, including premier Dung, spoke publicly on several occasions about plans to take legal action against China, a move that would internationalize the conflict. “We always want peace and friendship but this must ensure independence, self-reliance, sovereignty, territorial integrity, and maritime zones,” Dung said in late May. “These are sacred and we will never trade them off for some kind of elusive, dependent peace and friendship.”

Since China withdrew the oil rig in mid-July, Hanoi has maintained that it could opt to take international legal action against Beijing, similar to the claim the Philippines has filed against China through the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). At the same time, Hanoi has sought to bolster alliances with both the US and treaty ally Japan, a hedging strategy many analysts view as Vietnam’s best option in countering China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea.

“China is acting on the assumption that it has ‘undeniable sovereignty’ in the sea. If Vietnam wants to challenge this it must have the physical means to protect its claims,” said Bill Hayton, author of the forthcoming book South China Sea: the struggle for power in Asia. “Nobody wants open conflict but Vietnam wants to acquire the capability to deter the kinds of non-military tactics that China has been using recently while also preparing for a hypothetical military confrontation in the future. To do this the country needs as many friends as possible.”

Read the full story by Brian Leung from Asia Times.