http://www.dailyitem.com en-us Copyright CNHI All Rights Reserved. 5 Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:26:00 +0000 http://www.dailyitem.com/vietnamtoday/local_story_268113255.html http://www.dailyitem.com/vietnamtoday/local_story_268113255.html When Ho Chi Minh’s battalions swept into Saigon 33 years ago to establish a reunited Vietnam, the communist conquerors made one critical miscalculation: military victory would make life better for the war-weary nation. Instead, economic conditions worsened, starvation spread across the entire country, and national sacrifice became the common denominator that defined a long and dark post-war period for the north and the south. Wed, 24 Sep 2008 11:49:00 +0000 http://www.dailyitem.com/vietnamtoday/local_story_268115030.html http://www.dailyitem.com/vietnamtoday/local_story_268115030.html Vietnam’s population, severely depressed by 50 years of war that finally ended in the early 1980s, is now growing so fast the government has passed a law imposing fines on families having more than two children. Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:28:00 +0000 http://www.dailyitem.com/vietnamtoday/local_story_268115936.html http://www.dailyitem.com/vietnamtoday/local_story_268115936.html Vietnam is a country blessed by fertile lands, bountiful seas and an industrious human spirit. Yet the average personal income is less than $500 per year, and nearly one-third of the people live in poverty. Dreadful as those statistics can seem, they’re a vast improvement from the country’s dark period during and after the Vietnam War and before the adoption of open-market capitalism in the 1990s. Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:18:00 +0000 http://www.dailyitem.com/vietnamtoday/local_story_270144920.html http://www.dailyitem.com/vietnamtoday/local_story_270144920.html The 1975 photograph of the last Marine helicopter lifting off the rooftop of the American Embassy in Saigon, a long line of luckless Vietnamese evacuees stranded below, created an indelible portrait of human desperation. Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:44:00 +0000 http://www.dailyitem.com/vietnamtoday/local_story_270154415.html http://www.dailyitem.com/vietnamtoday/local_story_270154415.html Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:19:00 +0000 http://www.dailyitem.com/vietnamtoday/local_story_270152112.html http://www.dailyitem.com/vietnamtoday/local_story_270152112.html Today’s Vietnam is preoccupied with becoming one of Asia’s leading economic tigers by growing its international trade connections. To achieve that objective, it has invested heavily in public education, including pre-school programs in rural areas and making the Internet available to students throughout the country. Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:32:00 +0000 http://www.dailyitem.com/vietnamtoday/local_story_270153102.html http://www.dailyitem.com/vietnamtoday/local_story_270153102.html