By train through Vietnam - From Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City

A journey of about 1,700 kilometers. In Vietnam, the "Reunification Express" train travels from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City. After the end of the Vietnam War, the destroyed line was quickly repaired, to help support the reconciliation of the people of North and South Vietnam. The 32-hour journey through the Southeast Asian country is an opportunity to experience unique culture and take in breathtaking landscapes. The first stop is the Trang An Landscape Complex, a nature reserve that is home to Delacour's Langurs -- a very rare, endangered primate species.

Vietnamese electric vehicle maker valued at more than Ford

Vietnamese electric vehicle (EV) maker VinFast's stock market valuation has soared above Ford and General Motors (GM) on its first day of trading. The shares sale on the Nasdaq valued VinFast at $85bn compared to Ford's $48bn and GM's $46bn.

 

Train Driver record SE5 Hanoi - Ninh Binh (2017)

 

The refugees feeding a nation - BBC News

 After the Vietnam War, France relocated a small group of 45 Hmong refugees from Laos to its overseas territory in South America, called French Guiana.

Vietnamese Women Kidnapped and Sold into China

Vietnam's Cooking School of Hope

We visit a cooking school in Vietnam that offers disadvantaged teenagers a pathway out of poverty.

Vietnam is famous for its delicious food.

But at a cooking school in Hanoi, the focus is on more than filling stomachs.

For the teenagers who attend KOTO, an internationally recognised hospitality boarding school in the Vietnamese capital, the kitchen offers a path out of poverty - one dish at a time.

"My parents both passed away at a very young age," says Duong, who grew up in Vietnam's rural heartland. "I can't afford to study, or even to live, so I decided to apply to KOTO."

Ghosts of the Vietnam War

Hundreds of thousands of South Korean soldiers fought alongside the Americans in Vietnam, but the story of South Korea's involvement in the conflict is largely untold. More than fifty years later, a victim of Korean atrocities travels to the capital Seoul in search of justice.

The Downfall Of China's Economy - Vietnam Takeover?

Train Driver record SE5 Hanoi - Ninh Binh (2017)

Heart of Darkness: Return to the My Lai massacre (video)

A Vietnam War vet returns for the first time to meet survivors of the My Lai massacre and set the record straight.

Ten years ago, Al Jazeera Fault Lines host Josh Rushing travelled to Vietnam with a former US soldier who had taken part in the worst civilian massacre by US forces during the Vietnam War. They revisited the site of the My Lai massacre and met some of the few villagers who survived.

Pham Thi Tuan lay motionless among dead bodies for hours in a ditch that she and her baby daughter had been herded into, along with more than 100 other people. It was only her father's corpse that prevented her from being killed on March 16, 1968, in what became known as the My Lai massacre.

Dicing with death on the rivers of Vietnam and Laos (video)

Bamboo harvesters navigate rapids on rafts while Lao fishermen risk death casting their nets into a roaring waterfall.

There are two staples of Vietnamese life: rice and bamboo for its many uses.

The province of Thanh Hoa has one of the largest bamboo forests in Southeast Asia, with over 80,000 hectares of natural bamboo forest and 71,000 hectares of planted bamboo.

In just three years, the plant can grow up to eight metres tall.

With the global market for bamboo expanding, the bamboo industry contributes to Thanh Hoa's growing economy and sustains the livelihoods of thousands of small-scale farmers.

"Cutting the bamboo is very tiring work but it's the only we can make a living," says a bamboo labourer. "We go to the forest, cut the bamboo and carry it down to the river."

Catalan Referendum: Media, politics and independence (video)

Is the Spanish media coverage serving the people or its political masters? Plus, the persecution of Vietnam's bloggers.

Catalan Referendum: Media, politics and independence

For the second week in a row, we're taking a look at the media coverage in the aftermath of the independence referendum in Catalonia, where hundreds of would-be voters were injured by police trying to stop an electoral process that the Spanish government deemed unconstitutional.

But with the national and regional broadcasters, Spain's TVE and its Catalan version TV3, serving their political masters in Madrid and Barcelona, a private TV channel, La Sexta, has found itself filling the information gap and drawing criticism from all sides in the process.

Covering the Grenfell fire: UK media in the spotlight

Distrust in Britain's media grows following the blaze at Grenfell Tower. Plus, the persecution of Vietnam's bloggers.

Covering the Grenfell fire: UK media in the spotlight 

A tower block fire in London that left dozens dead has channelled rage over class, race, economic and social divisions not only at Prime Minister Theresa May but also at the British media.

When reporters arrived to cover the blaze, local residents expressed anger that the media had not heeded warnings about safety or engaged more closely with issues affecting their communities during years of government austerity. Voices from a neighbourhood in grief demanded to know if only the spectacle of tragedy could make their lives newsworthy.

Vietnam's Tech Rush

Vietnam's young tech entrepreneurs are transforming the country into Southeast Asia's Silicon Valley.

Communist Vietnam's start-up scene is booming.

Young, highly skilled entrepreneurs are grabbing the attention - and cheque books - of international investors and turning the country into one of Southeast Asia's most exciting breeding grounds for tech innovation.

The country has big ambitions - the government wants to double the number of start-ups to one million in the next five years.

So Close So Far Away

Cath Turner examines the consequences of 'Operation Babylift' at the end of the Vietnam war.

'Operation Babylift' was one of the defining events of the Vietnam War and its legacy will continue for many years. The world is unlikely to ever see anything like it again.

It was at the end of the war in 1975, when under 'Operation Babylift' thousands of Vietnamese children were removed from the country and put up for adoption across the Western world.

Al Jazeera's Cath Turner was one of those children - an Asian child growing up in white Australia.

In this episode of Al Jazeera Correspondent, Cath returns to her native and adopted homeland to explore the psychological effects of transnational adoption on these Vietnamese babies.

Can Multiculturalism Work In South Korea?

South Korea like Japan is very homogenous with 3% of the population being of foreign origin.  Foreigners can, like in places face obstacles they wouldn't otherwise encounter  like racism and discrimination.   Because there are no laws to deal with these types of behaviour discrimination and racism can be open and blatant.  That said because Korea like Japan is facing declining birthrates the government has instituted policies which are meant to encourage immigrants to settle in the country.  While it won't be easy and there will be moments of discouragement Korea could become a multicultural society.

It's happening most notably in a place called Wongok Village outside the city of Ansan, an hour's drive south of Seoul. At Ansan West Elementary School, the students represent dozens of countries — China, Vietnam, Sri Lanka and several more. Most of them have managed to pick up the Korean language quickly, but for those who don't, the school is one of few public schools in the country to offer remedial Korean classes.

The elementary school is in the heart of Wongok, which is billed as a "borderless village" in which two-thirds of the 17,000 residents are non-Korean. Industrial work requiring cheaper migrant labor and Ansan city's efforts to provide services for non-Koreans led to a fourfold jump in Wongok's immigrant population from 2002 to 2010.

     "There is real immigration going on that is supported, facilitated, advocated by the South Korean government," says Katharine Moon, the SK Korea Chair at the Brookings Institution. Her research focuses on the impact of a changing Korean population.

This epic map shows the border disputes that could tear Asia apart

Chau, Beyond the Lines (video)

We follow a Vietnamese teenager disabled by Agent Orange as he struggles to realise his dream of becoming an artist.
More than 40 years after the fall of Saigon, the scars of the Vietnam War are still visible.

Born in the Agent Orange hot spot of Dong Nai, in 1991, Chau has a rare disability caused by Dioxin - the chemical found in Agent Orange.

During the Vietnam War, the United States is estimated to have dropped more than 70 million litres of chemicals on to the dense jungles of the country in order to rid the Northern Vietnamese army of their food and cover. Unknowingly, Chau's mother drank from a contaminated river while pregnant with him.

China Places Missiles On DIsputed South China Sea Island

In Novmber of 2014 China issued its Dash 9 map which claimed 90% of the South China Sea.

Since then the Chinese government has created several artificial islands in an effort to further bolster its claims over the disputed waters.  In April of 2015 China moved an oil drilling rig into an area near the Paracel  Islands causing violent widespread anti Chinese demonstartions in Vietnam.  Now its been revealed that the Chinese military has placed surface to air missiles on of the artificial islands causing governments in the region to seek further military corporation with the U.S.

From the Guardian:

Tensions in the South China Sea, a vital shipping route, could rise after two batteries of eight missile launchers and a radar system were deployed to Woody Island in the past week according to images taken by the private company ImageSat International.

The images were first published by Fox News. Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, did not deny that missile launchers had been installed but said the reports were an attempt by “certain western media to create news stories”.

“As for the limited and necessary self defence facilities China has built on islands and reefs stationed by Chinese personnel, that is consistent with the self defence and self preservation China is entitled to under international law,” he said.

China is also in a territorial dispute with Japan over the Senkaku Islands in the East China sea which have been a part of Japan since 1898.

The goverment in Beijing keeps insisting that its intentions are peaceful yet its actions would say otherwise considering the now placed missiles and the constant intrutisions by armed Chinese navel vessiles into Japanese territorial waters.

The Tech Threat - part two

As automation gets cheaper than the cost of labour, developing economies are being hit the hardest.



Robotics has been used in manufacturing for decades. But advances in sensors and machine learning software are rapidly expanding their use, especially in industry. A new generation of robots is emerging that can work alongside humans and replace them in ways never seen before.

Some of the most innovative robotics technology for industry was on display at the Automate 2015 expo in Chicago earlier this year. Wynright, a US company that provides material handling and distribution systems, showcased its Robotic Truck Unloader that landed it on the list of the top 50 robotics companies to watch.

Wynright’s robot autonomously moves in and out of trucks to load and unload shipments, arranging different products by box size. The robot can send different products in a truck to distinct locations in a warehouse, or prepare an order for shipment that includes varied products.