Vietnam's movie business is growing quickly.
New theaters are being built across the country.
Young filmmakers are entering the market.
In the past, movies about Vietnam centered on Hollywood's ideas about the Vietnam War.
They starred American actors with Vietnamese playing background parts.
But this is changing.
Ngo Thanh Van became an international movie star with her part in the latest version of
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
Now she has turned to directing.
Her newest film is called The Tailor.
It will be Vietnam's official entry for next year's Academy Awards in the foreign
language category.
"Making movies in the Vietnamese market is a risky business, not just for me," Van
told the internet news site Zing.
"But it is because it is difficult that I want to put all my heart into doing it."
Increasing interest is coming from both Vietnamese filmmakers and Vietnamese movie-goers.
The theater group CGV reported a 30 percent increase in profits for 2017 compared to the
year before.
CGV is just one company that shows movies, but it controls nearly half the movie theaters
in the Southeast Asian country.
Critics call it a monopoly, but its market position shows the industry's growth.
Besides the South Korean-owned CGV, other movie theater companies in Vietnam include
BHD, Galaxy, Skyline, Cinestar, Cinebox and Lotte.
The theaters are trying to meet demand for movies in an economy
that is expanding at a rate of nearly 7 percent every year.
Vietnam's growth has caused companies like Netflix, and another streaming service, iflix,
to get into the Vietnamese market.
The investment advice company Investar wrote in an analysis of the film industry: "When
a country develops, the next developmental need will be entertainment, so it is important
to capture this demand."
It also said that money is being invested in the business.
The growth of Vietnamese movies comes as more Vietnamese and Vietnamese-American actors
appear in international films.
The Netflix movie To All the Boys I've Loved Before stars a Vietnamese-American born in
the Mekong Delta area.
In Downsizing, actor Matt Damon performs with Hong Chau, who uses a thick Vietnamese accent
but earned a Golden Globe nomination.
And people with Vietnamese ancestry are returning.
American actors, directors, producers and film editors have returned to Vietnam in recent
years, like Johnny Tri and Charlie Nguyen.
Filmmakers from France, a former colonial ruler of Vietnam, have also arrived, such
as two French-Vietnamese who set up an animation business in Ho Chi Minh City.
Performer Nguyen Cao Ky Duyen said on her Facebook page, "If you support Vietnamese
movies, the movies will be profitable, and investors will put in more money."
She added that Vietnam has plenty of beautiful areas to film movies.
Kong: Skull Island is a good example of a successful movie filmed in Vietnam.
It is the latest version of the famous King Kong movies.
It includes pictures of the green waters of Halong Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage place.
The film also signaled an important change in movies in Vietnam.
The film takes place during the Vietnam War.
But, it celebrates the performances of Samuel L. Jackson and Brie Larson and the natural
beauty of the country.
Vietnamese-language films are being watched around the world.
They include films like Cyclo and The White Silk Dress.
Local people hope those are just the start of a growing trend.
"We know that Vietnamese movies are not yet equal with neighboring countries, because
we are still in a period of opening up," said Ky Duyen.
"But that does not mean that we will not catch up."
India has Bollywood.
Nigeria has Nollywood.
Vietnam may soon develop its own version: Vollywood.
I'm Susan Shand
The man who has been named to be Iraq's Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi is trying
to find a way to reduce corruption in government.
To build his government, he opened a website where anyone can apply to run one of Iraq's
22 ministries.
These jobs have long been linked to patronage and other forms of corruption.
Local media reported that, within days, his office received more than 15,000 applications.
He will have meetings with 601 candidates.
It is unclear if Abdul-Mahdi can change how Iraq's government is run.
Many political parties have their own militias and threaten to create problems for Iraq if
they do not get their members in the ministries they desire.
Others are asking whether it is wise to give government jobs to those with little experience.
Hisham al-Dahabi is a social worker and philanthropist.
He said, "I'm fifty-fifty," meaning that he half supports the plan and half does
not.
He said he applied to be the minister of labor and social affairs.
That position organizes services and pensions for veterans and their families.
Al-Dahabi said he does not believe Iraq's political parties will give up their hold
on ministry jobs.
Recently, he spoke to reporters and hosted a delegation from a European embassy at the
orphanage he operates in Baghdad.
Children cried for his attention and called him "Baba," Arabic for "Dad."
He had not told them that he had applied to be a minister, and he thought he probably
would not get the job.
It was a campaign by friends and supporters, he said, that led him to apply.
One week later, al-Dahabi met the prime minister-designate.
He said only that they had discussed ways to improve the lives of Iraqi children.
Abdul-Mahdi has remained quiet about his cabinet appointments.
His office refused a request to speak to reporters.
By law, he has until November 2 to appoint his ministers.
Then, parliament must approve them before they are sworn in.
Iraq's official newspaper, Al-Sabah, said Monday that 15 appointments could come this
week.
The others, the newspaper said, would be named later.
Many people think it is unlikely Abdul-Mahdi will be able to make big changes at the ministries.
But the website may help his image as a political reformer.
Many Iraqis are angry with party politics.
In parliamentary elections in May, only 44 percent of those who could vote completed
ballots.
That is the lowest number since elections started.
Iraqis gave the most votes to a list of candidates chosen by cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Al-Sadr had promised to provide a "government of technocrats."
Abdul-Mahdi is an economist.
He has worked as oil minister, finance minister and vice president since returning from exile
in 2003.
Many Iraqis consider him a political independent.
He is Iraq's first prime minister in 12 years who is not from the Dawa Party.
The party is blamed for many of the country's problems, such as the growth of militias and
poor government services.
Alaa Khudair is a retired government worker.
Khudair said the website was a good way to take power away from the parties that have
failed to "speak for Iraqis."
But political activist Yahya al-Hafiz warned that, if any of the applicants are appointed
ministers, they will be put in a difficult political environment.
"The political parties are refusing to go along…This is a government that works on
favors and deals.
It's impossible to think they're going to give that up," he said.
But Al-Dahabi said he and other experts are not afraid.
"At least we have some experience," he said.
I'm Susan Shand.
An American law that blocks placement of Native American children with non-native American
families was ruled illegal earlier this month.
A federal judge in Texas announced the decision, surprising many native groups.
The judge said the Indian Child Welfare Act, or ICWA, of 1978, is unfair.
He said it gives Native Americans seeking to adopt children favorable treatment based
on race.
He said that violates the equal protection guarantee in the U.S. Constitution.
Most tribes see the ruling as a continuation of years of culturally destructive U.S. government
policies.
Children are responsible for continuing the cultures and traditions of their tribes.
So, they argue, native children need to remain in native homes.
Iva Johnson is a member of the Navajo Nation.
She was living in Arizona in 2015 when she had a heart attack at her home.
After waking up days later, two women she did not recognize were sitting nearby.
They explained that they were with the Department of Child Safety (DCS).
They said they were removing three of her four children from their home because there
was no one to care for them.
Johnson was too sick to speak.
She wanted to tell them that her oldest child is 21 years old and able to care for the three
children.
Before she could speak, the women forced her to sign a document that gave her three younger
children up for adoption.
It took three years of court action before Johnson was reunited with her children.
They had been separated from each other and spent time in different non-Native homes.
Congress passed ICWA forty years ago in order to prevent such events.
At that time, as many as one-third of all Native American children had been taken from
their families and placed in non-native homes.
Stephen Pevar is a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
He explains how ICWA works.
"Before you can place an Indian child in a non-Indian home, you have to first look
for another member of the immediate family, then another member of the tribe, then another
Indian family before you can place that child in a non-Indian home."
Johnson says that the DCS in Arizona failed to follow the law.
DCS officials did not answer VOA's request for comment.
Today, Johnson, like many Native Americans, worries that such court rulings could cause
many more native families to lose their children.
Social isolation, poverty and poor health care services on many Native American reservations
have added to the rise in rates of alcohol and drug abuse rates and crime related to
such problems.
A 2014 examination of child removal cases in Pennington County, South Dakota, showed
that alcohol abuse was involved in more than half of the removals.
Violence in the home was noted in 22 percent of cases.
Child abuse was given as a reason in nine percent of all cases.
Children who are removed from their homes and placed with strangers suffer higher rates
of mental health problems, including drug and alcohol dependency.
Parents who lose their children suffer loss, guilt and shame.
"And it's even worse when you place somebody in a different culture, which is usually what
happens to Indian children," said ACLU lawyer Pevar.
Jase Roe is 41 years old.
He agrees.
He was born on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Montana but taken from his mother when
he was a baby.
At first, he lived with a relative in Minnesota.
He was later sent to a non-native home.
"Everything was different there," he said.
"They didn't understand my culture or where I was coming from.
They didn't understand the humor that goes along with my culture or the way we interact
with each other."
One of the only minority students in school, Roe said he was always treated badly.
"I grew up ashamed of who I was, ashamed of being Native," he said.
"I wished I was white."
Roe became dependent on alcohol and other drugs at an early age.
It took him many years to break free of them.
"It took a lot of work," he said, "and I'm still in therapy…."
Roe said he believes placing native children in non-native homes does more harm than good.
"It doesn't give them a sense of who they are," he said.
The U.S. Department of the Interior is against ending ICWA.
They say groups that support children's rights consider it to be the best example
of children's interest policies.
Pevar said he is not worried about attacks on the law.
He said, "There have been challenges to ICWA from Day One."
Yet, he thinks the law will stay.
I'm Dorothy Gundy.
Water is a necessary resource for the health and survival of living things.
But the availability of fresh water is decreasing for much of the world's population.
The United Nations estimates that about 3.6 billion people currently live in areas that
face water shortages at least once a month.
Officials expect this number to keep rising with continued population growth, economic
development and climate change.
Many companies and non-profit organizations have attempted to find new ways to deal with
the crisis.
One of them is The Skysource/Skywater Alliance, an American business in Venice, California.
Experts there developed a machine that can make water from air.
The invention is seen as having great promise.
It won an international award for proposed solutions to ease the world's water crisis.
The system's creators were awarded the XPrize for Water Abundance.
The award – which includes a $1.5-million prize – sought ideas for "creating water
from thin air."
The husband and wife team of David Hertz and Laura Doss-Hertz won the award.
They are the co-founders of The Skysource/Skywater Alliance.
Hertz owns a business that specializes in creating environmentally friendly homes.
But he decided to begin water experiments when he learned that water can be made from
air under the right conditions.
Hertz and Doss-Hertz worked with another partner to build a small machine that was able to
produce about 570 liters of water a day.
Then, Hertz heard about the XPrize.
He and his team decided to create a larger water-making machine to compete for the award.
The competition had three main requirements.
Devices had to produce at least 2,000 liters of water per day from the atmosphere.
They had to operate at a cost of no more than 2 cents per liter.
And the devices had to use 100 percent renewable energy.
Hertz and his team settled on a design built from shipping containers.
The device heats up wood pieces to warm the air and produce humidity.
Water is then collected from the process.
Hertz told the Associated Press that his team chose shipping containers because they do
not cost a lot of money and are generally easy to move.
And there are a lot of them.
If wood is not available, Hertz says people can use other materials to produce heat.
These could include coconut pieces, rice, walnut shells, cut grass or many kinds of
waste material.
Matthew Stuber is a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University
of Connecticut.
He is also an expert on water systems.
He served as a judge for the XPrize.
He told the AP that the winning team's design can make the machine useful in many areas
of the world that have serious water issues.
"Certainly in regions where you have a lot of biomass this is going to be a very simple
technology to deploy," he said.
Stuber called the invention a "really cool" mix of simple technologies.
He said this makes it easier for the devices to be moved quickly to provide water to areas
hit by natural disasters or drought.
Hertz and Doss-Hertz told the AP that bringing machines to people is now one of their main
goals.
They plan on using their new prize winnings to help make it a reality.
"Laura and I have committed to using all (the money) for the development and deployment
of these machines," Hertz said.
"To get them to people who need the water most."
I'm Bryan Lynn.
Each year, millions of people visit the 4,570-meter-high Baishui Glacier in southern China.
Scientists say it is one of the world's fastest-melting glaciers.
The huge body of ice is in the southeastern edge of a Central Asian region called the
Third Pole.
It is about 4.5 million square kilometers in area and holds the world's third largest
collection of ice after Antarctica and Greenland.
Third Pole glaciers are critical to billions of people from Vietnam to Afghanistan.
Seasonal glacier melts feed Asia's 10 largest rivers, including the Yangtze, Yellow, Mekong,
and Ganges.
Ashley Johnson is an energy, trade and economics expert at the National Bureau of Asian Research,
based in the United States.
She says the Third Pole is one of the world's largest sources of fresh drinking water.
She says an increase in melting from climate change may put that at risk.
Johnson said, "Depending on how it melts, a lot of the freshwater will be leaving the
region for the ocean, which will have severe impacts on water and food security."
Earth is one degree Centigrade hotter than in pre-industrial times.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently reported that that
rise is enough to melt 28 to 44 percent of glaciers worldwide.
And temperatures are expected to keep rising.
Baishui is about as close to the equator as Tampa, Florida.
And the effects from climate change are already extreme.
A report this year in the Journal of Geophysical Research showed that the glacier has lost
60 percent of its mass.
Since 1982, it has shrunk by 250 meters.
In 2015, scientists found that 82 percent of glaciers studied in China had decreased
in size.
They warned that the effects of glacier melting on water resources are becoming "increasingly
serious" for China.
Jonna Nyman is an energy security expert at the University of Sheffield in England.
She said, "China has always had a freshwater supply problem with 20 percent of the world's
population but only 7 percent of its freshwater.
"That's heightened by the impact of climate change," she added.
For years, scientists have observed global warming change Jade Dragon Snow Mountain in
the Chinese province of Yunnan.
One research team has recorded Baishui's decrease at about 27 meters per year over
the last 10 years.
Wang Shijin is a glacier expert and director of the Yulong Snow Mountain Glacial and Environmental
Observation Research Station.
The station is part of a group of stations run by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Wang notes that flowers have rooted and grow in the area once covered with ice.
The research station that houses Wang and his team is outside Lijiang, a city of about
1.2 million people.
The team uses special equipment to collect data on temperature, wind speed and rainfall.
Other devices measure water flow in streams fed by melted ice.
Cold temperatures, heavy rain, falling rocks, strong winds and glacier movement can damage
the equipment.
One recent morning the team had to replace a broken weather research station.
However, the difficult weather conditions will ensure Yunnan has plenty of freshwater.
In other areas, glacier loss creates serious risk of a dry period across the Third Pole,
Wang said.
The next day, the team had to wear special ice climbing footwear while repairing other
research devices on the glacier.
Wang spoke of how the area had changed.
He said, "Where we're at right now was back in 2008 all covered with ice.
From here to there at the side, the glacier shrank about 20 to 30 meters."
The team crossed streams and jumped across deep, narrow divides in the glacier.
They were looking for some measuring equipment they had placed in the ice earlier.
The equipment shows how much the glacier has moved and the amount it dropped in height
over the summer.
One team member launched a camera drone over the Third Pole.
The images it captured help tell a story of extreme loss: 25 percent of its ice and four
of its 19 glaciers have disappeared since 1957.
Wang said such changes to the Baishui glacier provide the chance to educate visitors about
global warming.
Last year, Yulong Snow Mountain park officials reported that 2.6 million visitors came to
the mountain.
On a recent windy day, hundreds of visitors climbed wooden stairs to take pictures in
front of the glacier.
One visitor named Hou Yugang said he was not too concerned about climate change and Baishui's
melting.
"I don't think about it now because it still has a long way to go," he said.
To protect the glacier, officials have limited the number of visitors to 10,000 a day and
have banned hiking on the ice.
China plans to create snow there and block streams to increase the amount of water in
the air, which slows melting.
Security guard Yang Shaofeng is a member of the local Naxi minority community.
It considers Jade Dragon Snow Mountain to be sacred.
Yang says he remembers being able to see the glacier's lowest edge from his home village.
But that time has passed.
"Only when we climb up can we see it," he said sadly.
I'm Ashley Thompson.
And I'm Caty Weaver.
United States health officials say an estimated 80,000 people died of influenza and problems
resulting from the flu last winter.
The director for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported the
number to The Associated Press.
It represents the largest number of flu deaths nationwide in at least 40 years.
Health experts were expecting the winter of 2017-2018 to be a bad year for flu deaths,
but not that bad.
Doctor William Schaffner is an expert on vaccines.
He works at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee.
Schaffner noted that 80,000 deaths is nearly two times as much as what health officials
once considered a "bad year."
CDC officials say that between 12,000 and 56,000 Americans die every year from flu-related
causes.
While 80,000 deaths seems high, the exact number could be even higher.
CDC officials do not have an exact count of how many people die from the flu each year.
Influenza is a relatively common disease and not all flu cases are reported.
Also, flu is not always listed on death records as the official cause of death.
For that reason, the CDC must estimate the number of dead based on statistical models.
While last winter was a bad flu season in the U.S., it was not the worst.
The 1918 flu pandemic lasted nearly two years.
Historians estimate that the disease was to blame for between 500,000 to 700,000 deaths
during that period.
The exact number is still not known.
One thing that made the 2017-2018 flu season so bad was that the strain of the flu virus
was strong.
Usually the disease kills the very young, the very old or those who are already sick.
However, last winter, the flu killed many healthy Americans.
Another thing that made the flu season so deadly was that the flu vaccine was not as
effective as experts had predicted.
In a 2017 statement to the press, the World Health Organization said that every year up
to 650,000 deaths are connected with influenza or influenza-related illnesses.
This is a new estimate by the U.S. CDC, the WHO and global health partners.
This is more than the global estimate from ten years ago.
At that time, experts estimated that between 250,000 to 500,000 people died from influenza
or influenza-related illnesses.
Back in the U.S., health officials are predicting a weaker strain of flu virus this coming winter.
Drug makers have made changes to the vaccine.
Even though the vaccine did not work well last year, health experts still strongly suggest
getting vaccinated.
I'm Anna Matteo.
Americans learned last week of pipe bombs sent by mail to Democratic Party political
leaders and other critics of President Donald Trump.
The leaders included former President Barack Obama and his Vice President Joe Biden, former
Secretary of State and 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and several current lawmakers.
No bombs exploded and no one was hurt.
On Friday, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that Cesar Sayoc of Florida was
arrested and charged with the crimes.
He added that the suspect, a 56-year-old Republican Party member and Trump supporter, in Sessions'
words, "appears to be a partisan."
News of the arrest seemed to give the country a moment to breathe before the Nov. 6 mid-term
elections.
The voting could change the balance of power in Congress.
However, not even 24 hours later, a mass shooter killed 11 people in a Jewish religious center
in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The gunman, Robert Bowers, said "all Jews must die" as he surrendered to police.
"It's like our country is becoming 'The Hunger Games,'" Elisa Karem Parker, an
independent voter from Kentucky told the Associated Press.
The book and film series "The Hunger Games," is set in a future in which citizens watch
on television as young people hunt and kill one another in a survival competition.
The mail-bomb plot is the latest in a series of attacks against members of both political
parties.
In June 2017, a liberal activist attacked Republican Party lawmakers and supporters
on a ballfield near Washington.
The gunman shot and injured Congressman Steve Scalise of Louisiana and several other people.
A couple months later, a white supremacist killed a 32-year-old woman and wounded 19
other people in Charlottesville, Virginia.
The attacker drove his car into a crowd that had gathered to protest a white supremacist
demonstration.
More recently, officials accused a former Navy serviceman of mailing letters filled
with the poison ricin to President Trump, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, and other members
of the administration.
"I just can't believe the kind of violence that we're experiencing in our country,"
Cindy Jennings of Pittsburgh told the AP at a ceremony to honor the victims of Saturday's
shooting.
"I feel like the leadership in our country right now is just encouraging violence, and
I wish that that would stop."
Robb Willer is a sociology professor at Stanford University.
He said, "That is the question of our time: Are we going to choose to continue the war,
or are we going to choose peace?"
Willer suggested that most Americans disliked the political divisions but feel trapped in
them.
He said, "It will get worse before it gets better."
A Pew Research Center study this month of Republican and Democratic voters shows just
how wide the political divisions in America have grown.
Democratic
voters say the most important issues facing the country
are mistreatment of minorities, climate change, the divide between rich and poor, gun violence
and racism.
In contrast, Republicans view illegal immigration, terrorism, crime, federal budget deficit and
drug dependence as the biggest problems for the U.S.
Seventy-nine percent of voters who support Republicans say they also support the National
Rifle Association, a gun rights group.
Only 12 percent of Democratic Party voters express support for the NRA.
Sixty percent of Democrats describe themselves as "feminist."
The percentage of Republicans who do so is 14.
A little more than 75 percent of Democratic voters call themselves "environmentalist,"
while only 44 percent of Republicans describe themselves as such.
Something both Democrats and Republicans agree about?
Having their own party in control of Congress after the elections "really matters."
I'm Caty Weaver.
Germany's Angela Merkel says she will not seek a fifth term as chancellor in 2021.
In an announcement on Monday, Merkel also said she would step down as leader of her
conservative Christian Democratic Union, or CDU party, in December.
Merkel, who is 64, has served as chancellor since 2005.
She has led the CDU since 2000.
Her decision to step down as party leader came after the CDU suffered setbacks in local
elections in recent weeks.
Merkel currently leads Germany as part of a "grand coalition" of the country's
biggest political parties.
These include the CDU and its partner in the southern state of Bavaria, the Christian Social
Union, or CSU.
The center-left Social Democratic Party, or SPD, is also part of the coalition.
Her current coalition began its leadership in March after six months of difficult political
negotiations.
Her party's latest election setback happened Sunday in the central state of Hesse.
Merkel's CDU party narrowly finished in first place, while suffering an 11-point drop
from the last election in 2013.
The SPD also suffered losses.
Sunday's voting followed a state election in Bavaria two weeks ago, in which the SPD
and CSU also suffered major setbacks.
The losses came as support has increased for Germany's Green Party as well as the anti-immigrant
Alternative for Germany, or AfD.
Merkel told reporters in Berlin that, after leading the CDU for 18 years, she felt "today
it is time to start a new chapter."
Merkel added that she would "not aim for any other political office."
Observers had widely expected that Merkel would not seek another term in office after
2021.
But her announcement marked the first public confirmation of it.
Merkel has said in the past that she believed the chancellor should also serve as party
leader.
But on Monday, she said she had decided that splitting the two jobs may help strengthen
the party.
She said she would not interfere in the choice for her successor.
Merkel also said she hoped her decision to step down would permit "the government to
concentrate its strength, finally, on governing well."
She added: "People rightly demand that."
Growing anti-immigrant feelings in Germany have fueled support for the AfD in recent
years.
In one of her most debated political decisions, Merkel approved the acceptance of more than
one million refugees during Europe's migrant crisis in 2015.
Many of the arrivals were fleeing fighting in Syria.
Her decision led to lasting tensions within the conservative movement.
Merkel later accepted more restrictive migration policies.
I'm Bryan Lynn.
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