Sixty-five cyber cafe owners have been reprimanded, 27 of them fined, after authorities found they were breaking strict rules regarding use of the Internet in communist Vietnam, officials said Friday.
The investigation was conducted by the city department for culture and information and the department for science and technology and other relevant authorities of the city, said Chau Quoc Dung, chief investigator of the city's Culture and Information Department.
Most of the cafes were allowing customers to access pornographic Web sites, with 27 issued fines totalling US$5,270 dollars, Dung said.
The other 38 cafes are still being investigated, with more fines to follow, the official said.
The offending cafes were discovered during a 15-day-long inspection tour by city authorities last month, Dung said.
Around 2 million of Vietnam's 81 million people regularly access the Internet, but home computers are rare and most people use cybercafes to access the web.
The government operates firewalls on certain sites that are critical of the regime, and press freedom advocates Reporters Without Borders says there are seven cyber dissidents in prison or detained in Vietnam after using the Internet to express dissent.
Two of the dissidents on the list were arrested in Internet cafes as they were posting messages, the press freedom group said.
Last month, Vietnam announced that a new ministry of public security taskforce to tackle cyber crime would begin work.
Cyber crime is not yet a significant problem in one-party Vietnam, a police officer said. Internet users are still limited at the moment, he said, so crimes are not as common there as in other countries.
On the other side of Hanoi, Nguyen Tu Quang, the 29-year-old director of the Bach Hoa Internet Security centre, is more forthcoming.
Nauru has started selling passports to fund climate action, but is so far struggling to attract new citizens to the low-lying, largely barren island in the Pacific Ocean. Nauru, one of the world’s smallest nations, has a novel plan to fund its fight against climate change by selling so-called “Golden Passports.” Selling for US$105,000 each, Nauru plans to drum up more than US$5 million in the first year of the “climate resilience citizenship” program. Almost six months after the scheme opened in February, Nauru has so far approved just six applications — covering two families and four individuals. Despite the slow start —
North Korean troops have started removing propaganda loudspeakers used to blare unsettling noises along the border, South Korea’s military said on Saturday, days after Seoul’s new administration dismantled ones on its side of the frontier. The two countries had already halted propaganda broadcasts along the demilitarized zone, Seoul’s military said in June after the election of South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, who is seeking to ease tensions with Pyongyang. The South Korean Ministry of National Defense on Monday last week said it had begun removing loudspeakers from its side of the border as “a practical measure aimed at helping ease
DEADLY TASTE TEST: Erin Patterson tried to kill her estranged husband three times, police said in one of the major claims not heard during her initial trial Australia’s recently convicted mushroom murderer also tried to poison her husband with bolognese pasta and chicken korma curry, according to testimony aired yesterday after a suppression order lapsed. Home cook Erin Patterson was found guilty last month of murdering her husband’s parents and elderly aunt in 2023, lacing their beef Wellington lunch with lethal death cap mushrooms. A series of potentially damning allegations about Patterson’s behavior in the lead-up to the meal were withheld from the jury to give the mother-of-two a fair trial. Supreme Court Justice Christopher Beale yesterday rejected an application to keep these allegations secret. Patterson tried to kill her
CORRUPTION PROBE: ‘I apologize for causing concern to the people, even though I am someone insignificant,’ Kim Keon-hee said ahead of questioning by prosecutors The wife of South Korea’s ousted former president Yoon Suk-yeol yesterday was questioned by a special prosecutor as investigators expanded a probe into suspicions of stock manipulation, bribery and interference in political party nominations. The investigation into Kim Keon-hee is one of three separate special prosecutor probes launched by the government targeting the presidency of Yoon, who was removed from office in April and rearrested last month over his brief imposition of martial law on Dec. 3 last year. The incident came during a seemingly routine standoff with the opposition, who he described as “anti-state” forces abusing their legislative majority to obstruct
RSS