World cup years

MultiGlass was the winner of Techfest's start-up contest this year. (Photo: VNA) Quang Ninh (VNA) - Around 14 million USD in investment was pledged during the national innovative start-up day, Techfest 2019, in Ha Long city, Quang Ninh province. A series of seminars were organised by 12 technology villages during the three-day event, attracting 250 foreign investors and experts, and nearly 300 start-ups. The first prize in the National Innovation Talent Contest for Start-ups was awarded to MultiGlass, a start-up providing smart technology to help people with disabilities use computers. The smart communication device combines iris recognition technology and Artificial Intelligence. MultiGlass will represent Vietnam at the Start-up World Cup 2020 in San Francisco, the US. At the Techfest closing ceremony on December 6, Deputy Minister of Science and Technology Tran Van Tung said the ministry will  continue to assist the innovative start-up … [Read more...] about 14 million USD invested in start-ups at Techfest

How about the first time you went to a supermarket in your new country overseas only to discover a favourite food item had a price tag that nearly knocked you off your feet? Or you visited accommodation while apartment hunting that was expensive yet missing what you consider to be basic features? When we move abroad we have to decide which toys, trinkets, and habits we’ll keep in our adoptive country and which we’ll let go. I recently wrote an article about the cost of living for an expat retiree in Vietnam and discovered during research that I was spending money on things out of habit, not need, and that I could save a fair amount by tweaking priorities:  How much does it cost an expat retiree to live in Vietnam? - Tuoi Tre... Part of that exercise was a sanity check on where money was going because the cost structure is quite different in Vietnam, so simply converting prices from a foreign currency to Vietnamese dong (VND) only tells part of the story. Some … [Read more...] about Out of sight…

Editor’s note: Aban Marker Kabraji is regional director of the International Union for Conservation of Nature Asia and director of the IUCN Regional Hub for Asia - Oceania.  Known for its beautiful beaches and coral reefs, Trat Province, on the eastern coast of Thailand, is struggling with a very real problem. Like other coastal areas in the country, the province is being polluted by the daily dumping of waste into the ocean. While there is no shortage of environmental management efforts in Trat, dealing with waste, particularly plastic pollution, remains a big struggle. For long-time village chief Natsini Intaraprasert of the Mairood sub-district, home to one of the province’s giant landfills, waste is the “most challenging problem to manage.” Trat’s waste and plastic woes are not unique, with plastic pollution topping the list of problems affecting the world’s oceans. Every year, the world produces over 300 million tons of plastic, half … [Read more...] about ​Solving the plastics crisis in Vietnam, Asia