Party General Secretary pays a working visit to the General Department of Politics

interpages | educator |

PANO - Pary General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, who is also Secretary of the Military Central Commission paid a working visit to the General Department of Politics, Vietnam People's Army on March 27th.

PANO - Pary General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, who is also Secretary of the Military Central Commission paid a working visit to the General Department of Politics, Vietnam People's Army on March 27 th .

At the working session, on behalf of the General Department, Senior Lieutenant-General Ngo Xuan Lich, head of the unit, briefed the Party General Secretary on 68 years of building, fighting, development and achievements of the unit.

General Lich also pointed out short-comings of the Party and Politics General Department and offered some recommendation in the coming time.

On behalf of the Defence Ministry, General Phung Quang Thanh, Defence Minister emphasized that over the past years, officers and soldiers in the army had boosted their practice, solidarity with local people and among each other and heightened their political knowledge, vigilance and combat readiness posture while being loyal to the Party, the State and people and ready to undertake and fulfill any assigned missions. Moreover, troops have been united and tighten their effective cooperation with public security forces to ensure political security, social order and safety. They had also actively given consultancies to the Party and the State on building strong whole-people defence and efficiently carried out the work of military external affairs.

Having heard all reports by senior officers in the army, General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong highly spoke of the good and serious preparation of the working session and affirmed the important role of the Party and Politics Department as well as the system of policial organisations and political staffs at all levels in Vietnam People's Army as it undertakes the task of building and organizing those who are the trainers while standing combat readiness to fight for the defence of the Party, the regime, the country and its people.

The top Pary leader praised the General Department of Politics for its well performance of a number of tasks, contributing to upholding ideology of the Party in the army, and ensuring that the army is always the faithful political force and a support of the Party and people in the cause of national renewal process and national construction and defence.

He affirmed that there is no country else in the world where the image of soldiers has a special corner in the heart of people like Vietnam with the image of Uncle Ho's Soldier. The Party, the State, people have strong belief and confidence in Uncle Ho's Soldier in fulfilling any assigned tasks.

General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong said that in 2012 and the years to come, new and rapid developments will be seen in Vietnam, in the region and in the world. Therefore, the missions for the army will have new developments to meet the more effective, rapid and higher demands. So, the General Department of Politics, political organs at all levels and their staff need to fully and thoroughly grasp their tasks to effectively carry out the work of Party and Politics.

He stressed that it is a need to promoting the work of popularizing the building of a strong and spotless Party commission in the army on media to fight against wrong viewpoints and doings of hostile and reactionary forces. He praised the People's Army Newspaper and the Magazine of Whole Army Defence and asked them to better such a task in the years to come.

Regarding suggestions by the General Department of Politics, General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong asked the Party Central Office to collect and classify and then submit to him to later assign related sectors to deal with in order to create favorable conditions for the General Department of Politics to fulfill its tasks.

He also sent his regards to officers, soldiers and other staff in the army.

Reported by Hoang Ha

Translated by Mai Huong

Theo en.baomoi.com

Learning About Farm Animals at Houston Livestock Show

xem tivi truc tuyen | educator |

Houston"s annual Livestock Show and Rodeo features big name entertainers, rodeo contests, livestock auctions and a carnival, among other offerings, but it also helps educate an urban public about farm and ranch life and agriculture in general. Animals are the stars of this show.

This is where cows get all "prettied up" for judging or auction.

For families from farms and ranches, being around these animals is part of everyday life.

But they are in the minority, says the Houston rodeo's manager of agriculture exhibits, Joel Cowley.

"Less than two percent of the U.S. population is involved in production agriculture, directly involved, and of the six million people that live in the Houston Metro area, those that come to our show, this may be the only direct interaction they have with agriculture," Cowley said.

So there are many educational exhibits that explain where the food we eat comes from.

One attraction examines how worms contribute to soil fertility and another shows a bee hive behind glass, which helps city folk understand the vital role of these small creatures in pollinating many crops.

But it's the big creatures that draw the most attention.

For a lot of urban families, a great attraction of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo is the chance to see a lot of animals up close.

Kids can get a good look at cows, sheep, pigs and other farm animals.

They can also see newborn chicks, fresh out of the shell and other chickens at different stages of growth.

One of the most popular attractions for families is the Birthing Center, where they can see newborn calves, lambs and piglets.

If they come at the right moment they may even catch sight of one of these animals giving birth.

Volunteer guides with farm experience, like Jackie Hill, explain the process and answer questions.

Girl: "How do you know when the cows will give birth?"
Hill: "Their muscles will start to contract and they will start to dilate and open up and you hopefully will be able to see the head of the cow."

Having grown up on a farm in central Texas, Hill enjoys educating city folk about such natural events.

"It is surprising to me what little some kids know and some adults even," Hill said.

But she says she enjoys answering questions from people young and old.

For three weeks every year, a bit of the country comes into the city to help Houstonians learn more about agriculture and the many animals that are part of it.

Theo www.voanews.com

Economists Say Africas Foreign Debt Fuels Capital Flight

khuyen mai, thong tin khuyen mai | educator |

New research suggests that mismanaged funds from foreign loans amount to more money than previously believed, according to the Africa Growth Initiative at The Brookings Institution in Washington.

Photo: Reuters

South Africa's President Jacob Zuma holds up a banknote bearing the face of former president Nelson Mandela in Pretoria February 11, 2012.

Osita Ogbu, a Brookings visiting fellow and professor of economics at the University of Nigeria, said billions of dollars in debt that Africa has accumulated in its post-colonial era are partially a result of irresponsible foreign lenders.

"Look, it took two to tango.  You knew that you were lending to a regime that was not representative," said Ogbu.  "You piled up debt knowing that the country did not have the capacity to pay.  And, in some instances, you saw part of the money come back to the bank that lent the original money."

Ogbu, who recently moderated a discussion for the book, Africa's Odious Debts: How Foreign Loans and Capital Flight Bled a Continent said the research by the book's authors, Léonce Ndikumana and James K. Boyce, highlights how those loans resulted in capital flight throughout Africa.

"In twenty five low-income African countries, from 1970 to 1996, capital flight was $193 billion compared to $178 billion external debt," he said.  "If one dollar came in, eighty cents left in the form of private assets, but the debt remains public."

Ogbu added foreign lenders often knew the money was going to be converted into private assets that would leave the countries rather than go toward the projects they were intended to fund.

"In many instances, the project may not have been executed at all," he said.  "You begin to wonder how does a bank lend money for a project, and will disburse it fully, without even going to provide for that project."

The authors of the book suggest that international law applies to some of these odious debts, as they referred to them, which means the debts could be cancelled.

Theo www.voanews.com

Letter

du lich | educator |

The Canary in the Ice

Published: April 2, 2012

• Sign In to E-Mail
• Print
• Reprints

To the Editor:

Re " Weather Runs Hot and Cold, So Scientists Look to the Ice " (front page, March 29):

Nature's best thermometer and most unambiguous indicator of climate change is ice. Ice asks no questions, presents no arguments, reads no newspapers, listens to no debates. It is not burdened by ideology and carries no political baggage as it crosses the threshold from solid to liquid. It just melts.

The continuing loss of summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is indeed affecting the weather beyond the Arctic. The canary of climate change is crying out, and ever louder.

HENRY POLLACK
Ann Arbor, Mich., March 29, 2012

The writer, professor emeritus of geophysics at the University of Michigan, is the author of "A World Without Ice."

Theo www.nytimes.com

Arrests in Shootings End a Terrifying Weekend in Tulsa

hoi dap | international summer school |

Nick Oxford for The New York Times

Jacob C. England's home in rural Tulsa where Alvin Watts lived with him. They were arrested in nearby Turley, officials said.

By MANNY FERNANDEZ and CHANNING JOSEPH

Published: April 8, 2012

• comments
• Sign In to E-Mail
• Print
• Single Page
• Reprints

TULSA, Okla. — Late on Thursday afternoon, Jacob C. England, 19, posted a message on his Facebook page, expressing grief — and anger — over the second anniversary of his father's death. Mr. England's father, Carl, was shot on April 5, 2010, at an apartment complex here, and the man who was a person of interest in the case, Pernell Jefferson, is serving time at an Oklahoma state prison.

Connect With Us on Twitter

Follow @NYTNational for breaking news and headlines.

Twitter List: Reporters and Editors

Enlarge This Image

Tulsa Police Department/Tulsa World, via Associated Press

Jacob England, left, and Alvin Watts have been arrested in connection with multiple shootings in Tulsa.

Mr. England is a Native American who has also described himself as white. Mr. Jefferson is black.

"Today is two years that my dad has been gone," Mr. England wrote, and then used a racial epithet to describe Mr. Jefferson. "It's hard not to go off between that and sheran I'm gone in the head," he added, referring to the recent suicide of his 24-year-old fiancée, Sheran Hart Wilde. "RIP. Dad and sheran I Love and miss u I think about both of u every second of the day."

Hours later, the authorities say, Mr. England and his friend and roommate, Alvin Watts, 32, waged what city leaders believe was a racially motivated shooting rampage in the predominantly black neighborhoods of north Tulsa early Friday morning, driving through the streets in a pickup truck and randomly shooting pedestrians. Three black people were killed, and two others were wounded in the attacks.

Mr. England and Mr. Watts, who is white, were arrested early Sunday morning after investigators received tips to the state's anonymous Crime Stoppers line, the authorities said. They will face three counts of first-degree murder, they said, and two counts of shooting with intent to kill.

At a news conference in downtown Tulsa on Sunday, police officials said it was too early in the investigation to say precisely what motivated Mr. England and Mr. Watts, and they stopped short of describing the shootings as hate crimes.

"You can look at the facts of the case and certainly come up with what would appear to be a logical theory, but we're going to let the evidence take us where we want to go," said the Tulsa police chief, Chuck Jordan.

In Tulsa — a city of 392,000, about 62,000 of whom are black — the shootings shocked, frightened and angered many black residents on Easter weekend and prompted an intense manhunt. The authorities formed a task force called Operation Random Shooter, made up of more than two dozen local, state and federal investigators from the Tulsa Police Department, the Tulsa County Sheriff's Office and the federal Marshals Service. The Federal Bureau of Investigation also joined the investigation.

Jack Henderson, a city councilman who is black and whose district includes all of the shooting sites, said that before the arrests, many in the area were terrified.

"A lot of people in my community have been calling me, afraid that they couldn't go outside, didn't know if they could even go to church, didn't know if they could go to the grocery store," Mr. Henderson said at the news conference.

"With these two people off the streets, people in my community as well as the rest of this city can feel that they are safer," he said.

Tulsa officials said the shootings were unlike anything the city had ever seen in its modern history. None of the victims knew one another, and all of them were shot within a few miles. Mr. Henderson said he had heard from constituents that in one of the shootings, the suspects had approached their victims at random and asked for directions. "When they turned around to walk away, they just opened fire," Mr. Henderson said.

In 1921, Tulsa was the scene of a riot that is one of the deadliest episodes of racial violence in the nation's history, in which a mob of white Tulsans destroyed a black neighborhood and killed dozens, perhaps hundreds, of black residents.

After the Friday shootings, city leaders said that the anger in the black community had reached the point where people were talking about taking the law into their own hands. Asked on Sunday if he feared any sort of uprising, Chief Jordan replied: "I have much more faith in my fellow Tulsans than that. I think they let us do our job."

• 1
• 2

Next Page »

Manny Fernandez reported from Tulsa, and Channing Joseph from New York.

Theo www.nytimes.com

Turkey Denounces Cross-Border Attack on Syrian Refugees

loa, speaker | saint james medical school |

Ankara has reacted angrily to an incident Monday in which Syrians were shot while seeking refuge in Turkey, with the Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman warning that "necessary steps" will be taken if such incidents are repeated. The incident comes as Syrian forces intensify their crackdown on the opposition ahead of Tuesday"s United Nations cease-fire deadline.

Photo: Reuters

Workers walk between container houses on the Turkish-Syrian border in the southeastern city of Kilis, Turkey, February 2012. (file photo)

The Turkish government strongly condemned Monday's incident, accusing the Syrian military of firing on Syrian refugees after they crossed over into Turkey. The incident occurred at the Kilis refugee camp on the Syrian border. Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Selcuk Unal says it was an unprovoked attack.

"Some Syrian civilians were trying to enter the Turkish border, [when] some of them were wounded and shots were fired at them. Two of those injured have died after entering Turkey. And two of the Syrian nationals who were inhabitants of the camp in Kilis were wounded. One police offer and a Turkish female translator working in the camp were also slightly injured," Unal said.

The Syrian charge d'affaires was summoned to the Turkish Foreign Ministry to receive a formal complaint. Ankara is becoming increasingly alarmed over the deepening Syrian conflict and the growing numbers of Syrian refugees fleeing into Turkey. Observers expect Monday's shootings to add to that sense of alarm. Foreign Ministry spokesman Unal says Damascus has been warned there can be no repeat of such events.

"All the Syrian nationals or who've escaped from the persecution from Syria are under Turkey's full protection, and if these affairs are repeated, we will take necessary measures," Unal said.

Unal refused to say what those necessary measures might be. But Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned last month that if the crisis in Syria continues, his government is considering creating a safe haven in Syria for refugees from the conflict. Unal said that option remains on the table.

"No announcement has been released on that issue so far. That is one of the options we have been considering," Unal said.

Last week, Prime Minister Erdogan warned his country is prepared to take steps against Damascus if the current United Nations efforts to resolve the conflict fail. According to Turkish observers, that seems increasingly likely. Instead of winding down their operations in compliance with Tuesday's U.N. cease-fire deadline, Syrian security forces have escalated their crackdown. Damascus has also made last-minute demands for the Syrian rebels to lay down their weapons before Syrian security forces withdraw. The rebels have rejected that demand.

Theo www.voanews.com

Dont Call Her a Trophy Wife

gia de hang | saint james medical school |

A one-stop destination for Times fashion coverage and the latest from the runways.

Cassandra Huysentruyt Grey in a video for Italian Vogue that began with text reading "Meet the Princess of Bel-Air."

By BROOKS BARNES

Published: April 6, 2012

• Sign In to E-Mail
• Print
• Single Page
• Reprints

WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif.

Related

• For These Couples, Power Isn't Just His (April 8, 2012)

• Everywhere at Once (March 18, 2012)

The Collection: A New Fashion App for the iPad

• Download It From the App Store

Follow Us on Twitter

Follow @NYTimesfashion for fashion, beauty and lifestyle news and headlines.

Enlarge This Image

Axel Koester for The New York Times

Cassandra Huysentruyt Grey in her studio in West Hollywood.

IN "The Help," the hit book and movie about white Southern women and their black maids, Celia Foote is a twangy sweetie pie who marries rich and attempts (with painful eagerness) to fit in with the town's blue-blooded biddies. She gets a nose full of splinters from their slammed doors.

Change a few details and you have Cassandra Huysentruyt Grey, the pretty young second wife of Brad Grey , the chairman and chief executive of Paramount Pictures.

Mrs. Grey's opulent wedding one year ago, attended by Hollywood royals like Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, made her an official member of moviedom's AAA-list, with West Coast homes in Bel-Air and Holmby Hills. A New York perch comes via a recently purchased $15.5-million apartment at the Carlyle .

But don't call her a trophy wife. Mrs. Grey may have a Lilliputian figure, but she has big ambitions for a fashion studio and vintage clothing line that she runs from this town's trendy shopping district.

How big? Asked that question the other day, she picked up a copy of Salvador Dali's 1942 autobiography, "The Secret Life of Salvador Dali," and pointed to a passage: "At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since."

If she was joking, it sure didn't seem that way. Mrs. Grey had even taped a blown-up photocopy of the paragraph to her office wall — a type of mission statement.

It's this kind of did-she-just-say-that? candor that has popped claws in show business society, which plays faster and looser than old-money circles in New York or even Pasadena, but still has unspoken rules of propriety. One is that ambition from mogul wives, unless it's for charity or political fund-raising, is best kept hidden. Another involves public perception. You may live a lavish life (stars, yachts, red carpets), but you work overtime not to appear as filthy rich as you are.

Flirting with Tinseltown clichés? Unspeakable.

Whether it's because she doesn't care, thinks she knows a better way or simply hasn't yet learned, Mrs. Grey in many ways has not played that game. The gossipy movie world's eyebrows started to arch soon after she started publicly dating Mr. Grey in 2008. There was chattering in particular about a party at the Cannes Film Festival where she was seen as being overly flirtatious with Steven Spielberg. Some players were also suspicious of the friendship she formed with Sue Mengers, the agent and Hollywood hostess .

Before Ms. Mengers died last year, Mrs. Grey became a confidante. But some members of Ms. Mengers's inner circle say it appeared as if Mrs. Grey were studying the older woman. "I definitely pursued Sue," Mrs. Grey said. " I really, really miss her."

And then there is The Video. In December, Italian Vogue posted on its Web site an over-the-top video profile of Mrs. Grey. It began with text reading "Meet the Princess of Bel-Air" and depicted her as a self-involved one-percenter riding in a chauffeured sedan and fixated on what to wear while walking the dog.

"I'm taking my role as a wife and a lover and a stepmother very seriously, meaning I want to be really, really good at it," she said to the camera, sitting on a bathroom counter in a short robe and smoking a cigarette in a Marlene Dietrich pose, her makeup heavy and her head wrapped in a red scarf.

The video landed in a who's who of in-boxes (David Geffen, half of William Morris Endeavor) to the point that The Los Angeles Times declared it " the hottest new film in Hollywood. " Some studio executives started quoting from it as they would a "Saturday Night Live" sketch.

"Contrived" is how a mortified Mrs. Grey, 34, now describes her video. "It did not turn out like I expected," she said, taking a nervous sip of Fiji Water. "But I'm not afraid of creative mistakes, and I'm sure I'll make more of them." Of the people mocking her, she said, "I really don't have any time for toxicity."

Mr. Grey, 54, maintains a tightly controlled public image, and Hollywood has been clucking with speculation that he winced at his wife's faux pas. In an e-mail, Mr. Grey struck a rolling-with-the-punches tone, saying he comforted Mrs. Grey by telling her, "when you make content, you try things, and they don't always work. You learn from it and figure out what's next."

Mr. Grey, whose producing credits include "The Sopranos," added: "My wife is a wonderful combination of creative spirit, optimism, intelligence, humor and beauty. I know her talent and hard work will continue to produce fabulous results."

The clip recently disappeared from Italian Vogue's site. "We removed the video because we usually respect our interviewee, and Cassandra told us she is much more of a behind-the-scenes person," a spokeswoman for the magazine, Laura Piva, wrote in an e-mail.

• 1
• 2

Next Page »

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: April 8, 2012

An earlier version of this story misspelled the name and address of a Web site. It is NewYorkSocialDiary.com, not NewYorkSocialDairy.com.

Theo www.nytimes.com