News Crawl 2-05-07

Vietnam unveils liberal policy on religion

HANOI - To be religious is now officially welcomed in Vietnam.

Yesterday, the ruling communist regime released a White Paper explaining a new liberal policy towards religion.

It marked the first time the communist government has published a formal document setting forth its stance towards the nation's 20 million religious believers.

For full text of the White Paper on Religion and Religious Policy in Vietnam, click title link


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Vietnam Expands Protection for People with HIV

Richard Knox, NPR
Sister Tue Linh and an AIDS orphan at the Mai Hoa AIDS Center in Cu Chi, about an hour outside Ho Chi Minh City.

A garden at the Mai Hoa AIDS Center. Until recently the center was a hospice where homeless people with AIDS died. Now it's a treatment center where nearly all patients return to health.

Morning Edition, February 5, 2007 · Vietnam is embarking on a campaign to end discrimination against people with AIDS and HIV. A new law will give new rights and protections to people with HIV, and the country is expanding the number of people getting treatment for AIDS.
About 6,500 people currently are receiving antiretroviral drugs. That's about one-quarter of the 25,000 Vietnamese that are estimated to need AIDS treatment now.

You Can Read The Rest and Listen To Report At Title Link

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New Pentagon Numbers Raise Health Care Worries

All Things Considered, February 4, 2007 · Last month, Harvard professor Linda Bilmes presented a paper at a meeting of social scientists about the cost of treating injured soldiers. She reported that 50,000 American troops had been wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq.
A few days later she got a call from a senior Pentagon official.
"The assistant secretary for Health of the DOD phoned me up asked me where I had found the numbers, and I faxed him his own Web site and that was the last I heard from them," Bilmes says.
Now both the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs have changed the number of wounded on their Web sites.

You Can Read Report And Listen To At Title Link


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The speech that made the U.S hate Saddam

This speech was delivered by Saddam Hussein to the Amman Summitt meeting on Feb. 24, 1990. Present were the heads of state of the key Arab allies of the United States: the president of Egypt and the kings of Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The president of Syria was also present. In its sweeping proposals for Arab unity against U.S.-Israeli domination, it was a blunt challenge to imperialism. It is this speech that was the flash point of the U.S.-U.N. aggression, not the Kuwait crisis which was engineered in response.

You Can Read The Speach At Title Link