Beating will continue until morale improves meaning

The information was announced by Senior Lieutenant-General Tran Don, Deputy Minister of National Defense at a meeting with the south-central province's authorities Friday. In 2009, the government approved a plan to build Phan Thiet airport in beach town Phan Thiet of Binh Thuan, which lies more than four hours east of Ho Chi Minh City and currently has none. The plan said the airport would span 543 hectares (1,340 acres) to serve both civilian and military purposes and invested under the build-operate-transfer format by Hanoi-based Rang Dong JSC. It also said work would start in 2015 for the project to be finished in 2018. However, nothing had been carried out as scheduled. In 2017, Binh Thuan proposed to upgrade the civil rating of the planned airport from 4C to 4E as regulated by International Civil Aviation Organization. In specific, the province wanted to extend the airport's runway from 2,400 meters to 3,050 meters in order to raise its capabilities toward the 4E rating. The increased rating would allow it to handle Airbus A320s or equivalent sized and advanced military aircraft. The government agreed with the proposal within that year, which means the cost for the airport will stay at around VND10 trillion ($434 million). The problem with investment capital had prevented the plan to be executed. Now, the problem has been solved, said Deputy Minister Don. He said the Ministry of National Defense had previously relied on a plan to auction former Nha Trang airport in central Khanh Hoa Province to raise funds for building Phan Thiet airport. However, the government has recently agreed to build Phan Thiet airport using the state budget in the form of public investment. "The government has allocated the fund for the ministry and work on the joint-use airport should be carried out soon." If everything is to happen as planned, construction should be finished in 20 months so the airport could start operation next year, Don noted. Rang Dong JSC …

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* The Engineering Corps has just conducted practice of shifting its affiliated units to various combat readiness levels, aiming to make all units meet task requirements in the current context. Reportedly, all participating units completed their assigned mission as planned with absolute safety during the practice. * Naval Region 5 completed its combat readiness shifting exercise on March 5. Participating units flexibly and effectively handled numerous situations in the exercise, collaborated smoothly to ensure logistical and technical supplies, gained experience to improve combat readiness, and raised the commanding capabilities of their commanders. * Meanwhile, the exercises of Division 312 of Army Corps 1 and Division 363 of the Air Defense and Air Force Service consisted of various stages such as shifting the combat readiness from a regular level to higher levels, evacuating forces to safer places, and dealing with unexpected issues. Reportedly, all relevant forces overcame hardships and prepared facilities to fulfil their assigned missions. Translated by Trung Thanh …

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Two staff of Vietnam Vaccine JSC (VNVC), importer of Covid-19 vaccines to Vietnam, stand outside a freezer where the vaccines are kept. arrived in HCMC on a flight from Seoul . They are the first batch of 30 million doses Vietnam had ordered from the company. Only those assigned by the firm could enter and operate within this area. Part of the 117,600 vaccine doses inside the freezer. A staff member uses a forklift to practice unloading a supposed shipment of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Outside the freezer, a staff member places reusable dry ice gel packs into a Styrofoam box. Those boxes would store vaccine doses temporarily when transported from storage to specialized distribution trucks. Each box contains a certain amount of doses depending on the detailed plan of vaccination for each locality as regulated by the Health Ministry. Tran Han Tuan, 37, head of the VNVC warehouse department in southern Vietnam, said the truck is parked 2.8 meters from the freezer’s door and that loading a box takes only ten seconds. Therefore, "all movements must be especially quick and accurate." "We have yet to make any mistakes, but remain quite nervous since the entire nation is counting on this first batch of vaccines," he noted. The back door of the truck will be opened in only one minute to receive the vaccines to ensure their quality remains unaffected by exterior conditions. A package of vaccines is taken out of a Styrofoam box. Each package of vaccines is equipped with a temperature measuring device. If the temperature exceeds the allowable limit (2-8 degrees Celsius), this device will raise an alarm, which means the shipment is not eligible for administration. Two freezer trucks, valued at more than VND1 billion ($43,400) each, will be in use for the upcoming mass vaccination. For now, 13 cities and provinces that have …

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