TUẦN 1
AT THE END OF OTHER TETHER
A Bronx couple win sympathy for trying to beat the mean streets
In New York City, parents are usually arrested for
trying to kill their children, not for trying to save them.
So when police were tipped off that a couple in the
Bronx were keeping their daughter chained to a
radiator, they moved in, figuring that they ‘would be
rescuing the girl and preventing a tragedy.
1B
None of this would be especially remarkable, except
that, by the end of the week, fewer people were
praising the courts for saving the child than were
defending the natural rights of parents to lash their
children to radiators.
2H
In spite of these good intentions, they wound up in a
court-room that has seen parents who threw their
children out windows, dipped them in boiling water,
beat them with electrical cords. The Marreros, who
had never had any trouble with the law, were accused
of unlawful imprisonment and endangering the
welfare of a child.
3F
As the story of their response to this danger unfolded
in the tabloids, it forced other parents to wonder
whether, given the same choices, they might not have
done the same thing. Friends and neighbors were
accustomed to seeing Linda in chains including, the
girl claims, the police themselves.
4C
To hear her story, they may not have been far wrong.
She dropped out of school in sixth grade, after
throwing a teacher down the stairs, and started selling
crack at 13. She was placed in a home for troubled
girls but fled after the first day. So her parents sent her
to live with her grandfather in Puerto Rico.
5G
Maria and Eliezer say they never wanted their
daughter to be mixed up in a scene where violence and
intimidation were seen as the norm. They had
petitioned the city for help, had called the welfare
agencies and urged the courts to intervene, but, as the
spokeswoman for the Child Welfare Administration
said, nothing was done.
6D
This lack of support from the authorities left the
parents to their own meagerresources. ‘They said what
I did was cruelty/ said Maria. ‘But when I begged
them for help, they denied it to me. How can they say
I was cruel?”
7A
After two nights in jail, Maria and Eliezer returned
home as heroes. Linda, meanwhile, had left the foster-
care center and turned up in a local crack house. She
said she had not been doing drugs - she just went to
see her friends, dance, listen to music, as though this
were a natural place for a teenage girl's pajama party.
‘I'm desperate now/ her father told the Daily News
after he tracked her down. ’I’m going tothe hardware
store to buy another chain.’
A drug. ‘We are not criminals,’ said Maria. ‘There was
Last week, Linda seemed to have reached the same
conclusion. ‘My mother preferred seeing me here,
chained, than dead in an alley/ she said, lending a
whole new meaning to the notion that parents need to
set limits for their children. She even said she would
be willing to be chained again. ‘As long as I'm with
them, I wouldn't mind’
B they said she owed them.
Maria and Eliezer Marrero were hauled off in
handcuffs; bail was set at $100,000, a suim fit for a
murderer; and their daughter Linda, 15, landed in a
foster-care center in the nearby borough of Queens.
C When all else failed, Eliezer, a building
Linda and her brother told reporters that she had called
them in the summer and that when officers came to
investigate, they found her locked up. Their response
was to tell her mother, ‘Good job. Just keep her away
from the phones.’ ‘They told me I was a lost cause,’
Linda recalls.
D
‘Children like Linda do sometimes fall through the
cracks’ she admitted. ‘We really haven't faced this
before, and I'd be hard-pressed to name a specific
program that specializes in the children. To do the job
properly would take a huge increase in funds.’
E
In her statement to the police, Linda claimed that she
had tried to kick her
drug habit, but that, as all her friends were involved,
she couldn't just walk
away from it. Her parents, she insisted, were more
concerned for her to return to education than support
her intention to keep off drugs.
F
There was an irony in that charge, since it was being
leveled at parents driven to despair as they watched
their daughter seduced by the ghetto’s most beguiling
nothing else to do.”
G
Her exile, however, was short-lived, and, when she
returned to New York, she began staying out all night
with a dangerous crowd. One time she disappeared for
three weeks and was returned, bruised and beaten, by
two gun-toting drug dealers demanding money that
H
The Marreros’ parenting skills had been stretchod to
the limit. They had tried everything to keep Linda in
school, off drugs and out of the local crack house.
superintendent, went down to the local hardware store
and bought a 4.5 meter chain. If the Marreros could
not drive drugs from their door, they could at least lock their daughter behind It.

From Potus to half an Egot as Barack Obama wins Emmy

Ex-president’s latest award, for narrating national parks series, takes him closer to joining rare group
who have won Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony

Barack Obama is halfway to becoming an Egot after winning an Emmy award to go with his two Grammys.

The former president won the best narrator Emmy on Saturday for his work on the Netflix documentary series Our Great National Parks.

The five-part show, which features national parks from around the world, is produced by Barack and Michelle Obama’s production
company, Higher Ground.

He was the biggest name in a category full of famous nominees for the award, handed out at Saturday night’s creative arts Emmys,
including Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, David Attenborough and Lupita Nyong’o.

Barack Obama is the second president to have an Emmy. Dwight D Eisenhower was given a special Emmy in 1956.

Obama previously won Grammy awards for his audiobook reading of two of his memoirs, The Audacity of Hope and A Promised Land.
Michelle Obama won her own Grammy for reading her audiobook in 2020.

Egot refers to a special category of entertainers who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony. To date, 17 people have done
it.

The late Chadwick Boseman also won an Emmy on Saturday for his voice work. The Black Panther actor won for outstanding character
voiceover for the Disney+ and Marvel Studios animated show “What If...?”

On the show, Boseman voiced his Black Panther character, T’Challa, in an alternate universe where he becomes Star-Lord from
Guardians of the Galaxy. It was one of the last projects for Boseman, who died of colon cancer in 2020 aged 43.
Energy citizenship: Europe’s communities forging a low-
carbon future
Europe’s swift transition to a sustainable, low-carbon future will not happen without the engagement and involvement of citizens producing and
consuming energy locally, experts say – and across the continent, there are signs it is happening.

A summer of wildfires, drought and record heatwaves fuelled by climate breakdown has combined with soaring gas and electricity prices,
following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, to inject a new urgency into the switch to alternative, renewable sources.

From solar panels in the Netherlands to biomass burners in Spain, communities across Europe are increasingly making, consuming and
selling their own energy, a trend the EU sees as vital if the bloc is to meet its climate targets.

According to the latest data, 2 million Europeans are now involved in 7,000 local energy communities across the continent, with
numbers growing rapidly since EU directives promoting clean energy and energy communities were introduced in 2018 and 2019.

They will be key to Europe’s green transition because, as heat pumps replace gas boilers and electric vehicles supplant internal
combustion engines, highly centralised electricity production and distribution systems – power stations and grids – will simply not be
able to adequately handle the huge increase in demand.

“At least, not on their own,” said Gonçalo Mendes, a senior researcher and energy systems modeller from LUT University in Finland and
part of a European Commission-funded initiative, GRETA, working to define and enable what it has dubbed “energy citizenship”.

The only way forward, Mendes said, is “to decentralise more and more, produce and consume more energy locally with sources like solar
and wind – and boost storage and smart solutions for efficient energy management”. All of which means involving ordinary citizens.

Some communities have operated successfully for years. The Bera Bera neighbourhood of San Sebastián in Spain has had a cooperative
providing hot water and community heating to its more than 500 members since 1985.

One of the projects being studied by GRETA, the collective, known as Ur Beroa, has since moved with the times, abandoning heating oil
for natural gas and adding a cogeneration system – to produce both heat and electricity, which it sells to the grid – 10 years ago, followed
by a biomass boiler and solar panels.

“The first target for solar is self-consumption for 100 families,” said board member Juan Luis Llorens. “The next step, next year, will be
green hydrogen, to replace part of our current gas consumption. The goal now is obviously complete decarbonisation.”

Llorens said Ur Beroa had been able to freeze its members’ heating and hot water bills this year thanks to revenues from electricity sales,
and was offering “the cheapest prices in town. My son lives outside Bera Bera, and his bills have exploded”.
But if price is a big motivator for members, other aspects play a major part. “We make our own decisions,” he said. “For those who care
about the environment, we’re making progress collectively, in a way that would be difficult individually. There’s a sense of having control
of something that’s important in your life.”

As things stand, Europe is “nowhere near” meeting its target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 55% in the next eight years, said
Mendes, unless “we work urgently on the role everyday citizens will have to play. And to get there, we need to explicitly recognise the
social side of the energy transition.”

Lurian Klein, an academic expert on energy communities now working with Cleanwatts, said all the research on peer-to-peer energy
sharing models showed they were “far more accessible, democratised, collaborative and socially just” than traditional top-down energy
markets.

“Fundamentally, they thrive on social interconnectedness among end-users, rather than being based on competing economic self-
interests,” he said. “They reinforce positive social values, really strengthen empowerment and social engagement.”

Fortunately, technology is now making it possible. “A lot is coming together,” said Michael Pinto of CleanWatts, which has arranged
financing, designed and installed systems to produce, store and trade electricity, as well as control and optimise consumption, for 100
communities in Portugal – with 2,000 more inquiries waiting.

“You have electricity needs that are going to double and grids that won’t cope. But you now also have sustainables – solar panels – that
are competitive now, and smart technology to measure, manage and balance production, storage and consumption efficiently.”

That means the options are basically either “blackouts and massive volatility, and completely rebuilding national grids”, Pinto said, or
“changing the way electricity is produced, delivered and consumed. More agile, more resourceful. That’s local energy communities.”

EU directives on energy communities are being incorporated into national law around the bloc at different speeds and with different
incentives, but an ideal starting scenario for a new project, Pinto said, was “say, a big warehouse: large, big roof, low energy use”.

In Portugal, that warehouse – projects also involve barracks, football clubs and village schools – can expect 20% to 30% off its electricity
bills; in Austria it would get cashback. And the 80% excess it produces but does not use can be sold to locals, and beyond.

“There are tens of thousands of municipalities in the EU,” said Pinto. “There are 8,000 in Italy alone – about 5,000 of them with fewer
than 5,000 inhabitants. The potential here is just enormous. But it has to be – the challenge is enormous, too.”

In the Netherlands, Steven Volkers of Grunneger Power in Groningen, which has 2,500 members, said the decade-old cooperative was
born of people’s “passion and frustration” at the slow pace of the green transition.

The cooperative owns two solar parks totalling 10,000-plus panels, as well as smaller sites on homes and buildings across the city,
generating green electricity that it also sells to a sustainable energy provider with profits invested back into the collective.
It also offers help with insulation and installations. Dutch government targets – 50% community-owned and 30% sustainably generated
electricity – underline a belief that “we won’t reach sustainability targets without citizen participation”, Volkers said.

Elsewhere, the potential is still being explored. In Bologna, Italy, a green energy community project (GECO) involving the university,
municipality, residents’ associations, the regional energy agency and other bodies has been under way since 2019 in the north-eastern
district of Pilastro-Roveri.

“What’s interesting is this is actually two districts in one,” said Martina Massari of Bologna University’s architecture department, which
is leading the university’s involvement in the GRETA project. “Pilastro is a 1960s residential area – 6,800 people, lots of social housing,
mixed populations.

“Roveri, across the rail tracks, is industrial, lots of factories, warehouses – and the EU’s largest solar power plant on industrial rooftops.
They’re slowly making the housing blocks more energy-efficient, which is essential, and interest among residents is growing rapidly as
energy prices rise.”

Carlo Alberto Nucci, a professor of electrical power systems at the university and technical lead for the project, said it was a pilot, “like a
living lab”, and recent government incentives for local energy communities in Italy would make a significant difference.

“What’s fundamental is that we start to produce energy where it’s consumed, and we can do that now because of renewables,” he said,
adding that ultimately, about 20% of energy produced in cities should come from energy communities.

Smart meters, connected appliances and end-user apps will be critical to the system’s success, Nucci said. “A smart app can
automatically switch on your home devices, choosing the best moment for you – and for the efficiency of the whole community – to use
your washing machine, for example.

“Much of this is really about the concept that energy is of value, that information about it is really important, and that virtuous energy
behaviours absolutely can make a difference – to both individuals and the community. This is all quite new.”

Bologna’s deputy mayor, Anna Lisa Boni, said the project was “clearly a fantastic idea” but was being held up, in part, by a delayed
legislative process at national level and by bureaucracy. “The legal framework is very complex, the devil’s in the detail – what happens
with the various partner’s VAT systems, for example,” she said.

Ultimately, Mendes said, more than 80% of EU households could play an active part in the energy transition: “Energy citizenship, we call
it. Obviously, awareness and engagement levels will differ. But it’s all about agency.”

There can be no more hiding, and no more denying. Global heating is supercharging extreme weather at an astonishing speed, and it’s
visible in Vietnam and beyond. Guardian analysis recently revealed how human-caused climate breakdown is accelerating the toll of
extreme weather across the planet. People across the world are losing their lives and livelihoods due to more deadly and more frequent
heatwaves, floods, wildfires and droughts triggered by the climate crisis. At the Guardian, we will not stop giving this life-altering issue
the urgency and attention it demands. We have a huge global team of climate writers around the world and have recently appointed an
extreme weather correspondent. 

Our editorial independence means we are free to write and publish journalism which prioritises the crisis. We can highlight the climate
policy successes and failings of those who lead us in these challenging times. We have no shareholders and no billionaire owner, just the
determination and passion to deliver high-impact global reporting, free from commercial or political influence.

And we provide all this for free, for everyone to read. We do this because we believe in information equality. Greater numbers of people
can keep track of the global events shaping our world, understand their impact on people and communities, and become inspired to take
meaningful action. Millions can benefit from open access to quality, truthful news, regardless of their ability to pay for it. 
Vietnam's ST25 rice used in dishes at Japanese Cabinet Office
Sunday, September 04, 2022, 16:30 GMT+7

Vietnam's ST25 rice was for the first time used to process dishes on the menu of the Japanese Cabinet Office, according to
Vietnamese Trade Counselor in Japan Ta Duc Minh.

ST25, a high-end rice variety produced in Vietnam, was used in the fried rice dishes during Friday’s lunchtime at the Japanese Cabinet
Office.

Nikkokutrust Company, a major enterprise specializing in providing meals at schools and offices in Japan, succeeded in bringing ST25
rice into the kitchen of the Cabinet Cabinet, Minh stated.

A representative of Spice House Company, a distributor of ST25 rice in Japan, said that ST25 won the title of the World's Best Rice in
2019 and is trusted by many consumers.

Therefore, Spice House decided to cooperate with Kiraboshi Bank and Suntomi International Company to bring ST25 rice from Vietnam
to the Japanese market.

In order for ST25 rice to enter the Japanese market, Vietnamese enterprises must meet more than 600 strict technical standards and
very high requirements of Japanese consumers, according to Trade Counselor Minh.

At the Japanese Cabinet Office, the brochures about ST25 rice provide information on the cultivation, quality monitoring, harvesting,
packaging, and management of the rice variety.

ST25 rice can be used in dishes such as grilled chicken rice and fried rice, a harmonious combination of Vietnam's agricultural products
and Japanese cuisine, Minh stated.

The introduction of Vietnam’s high-quality agricultural products to the Japanese market through influential agencies, units, and people
will help these products win the hearts of local consumers.

The entry of ST25 rice into the Japanese Cabinet Office is a step forward for Vietnamese rice to gain a foothold in this market, the
official explained.
Ho Chi Minh City police hunting for two who snatched wallet,
phone from woman on street
Sunday, September 04, 2022, 15:21 GMT+7

Police in Ho Chi Minh City are tracking down two young men who snatched a wallet and a
cellphone from a woman on a street this week.

Phu Nhuan District police officers on Saturday said they were coordinating with units of the municipal
police to search for two suspects in a robbery that happened a day earlier on Huynh Van Banh Street.

According to initial reports, T.V., living in District 7, and a boy were walking across the street at 3:45
pm on Friday when two young men on a scooter without a license plate approached them from
behind.

When the scooter got close to the woman, the man riding pillion quickly grasped a wallet and a mobile
phone from the left hand of the woman and the scooter driver sped up to escape.

The woman shouted for help and ran after the robbers but she failed to catch them.

All the details of the robbery were recorded by a security surveillance camera system in the area.

Local police have looked into the relevant data from the system to hunt for the snatchers.
Experts blame Da Lat’s serious flooding on greenhouses,
garbage, concrete
Sunday, September 04, 2022, 16:01 GMT+7

Many experts attributed the recent flooding in Vietnam’s Da Lat City, which shocked both residents and visitors, to the
increasing numbers of greenhouses, construction works, and garbage.

A downpour lashed Da Lat City in the Central Highland province of Lam Dong on Thursday afternoon, causing Cam Ly stream to
overflow and submerging many nearby streets.

Although the flooding lasted only about 30 minutes, the rainwater rose too fast for local residents and tourists to react.

The Da Lat People’s Committee said that the city was partially flooded in a short time, citing problems related to greenhouses and
drainage systems, which local authorities have been trying to deal with.

Many experts believed that the large number of net houses and greenhouses, as well as the increase of concrete in the inner city have
reduced the permeability of soil.

The increasing frequency of flooding in the city has something to do with the rapid expansion of agricultural production and
greenhouses, especially along Cam Ly, a 70-kilometer stream flowing through Da Lat.

Statistics from the Lam Dong Department of Agriculture and Rural Development show that Da Lat has about 18,000 hectares of land for
flower and vegetable production, of which greenhouses and net houses cover 10,000 hectares.

Most of the greenhouses are located along Cam Ly stream.

“In theory, the soil in areas with greenhouses has zero ability to absorb water, which means that all of the rainwater will pour into the
stream,” said Nguyen Mong Sinh, former president of the Lam Dong Union of Science and Technology Associations.

Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper reporters also noticed that many residents tend to dump garbage into Cam Ly.

Phan Cong Ngon, a former irrigation official, previously voiced his concern about the pressure of domestic and agricultural waste on the
drainage capacity of the stream.

Meanwhile, Lam Ngoc Tuan, former environmental studies lecturer at Da Lat University, the increase of concrete houses and buildings
has a negative impact on the city’s drainage system.
Da Lat was originally planned for about 20,000 people, but the local population is now more than 200,000.

If visitors are taken into account, the number of people in the city can reach 300,000, Tuan elaborated.

Da Lat’s drainage system was previously renovated, but it is still not enough for the current volume of concrete in the city, he added.

Duy Khang - M.Vinh / Tuoi Tre News