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As any visitor to Vietnam can confirm, its people have a remarkable taste for meals made from each and every creature. From snakes and spiders to monkeys and rats, there are few wild animals not prized when it comes to the cooking pot.

But there is a price for this extreme omnivorousness. Experts have warned that the Vietnamese appetite for rare and exotic meat is threatening to eat many wild species into extinction.

Among the animals most seriously at risk from the burgeoning demand for "forest food" are the rhino, the white-handed gibbon and the civet.

Many businesses in Hanoi have ridden out the economic slowdown and shown signs of recovery thanks to their all-out efforts and the government’s economic stimulus packages.

Despite the gloomy picture of the world economy, the city’s industrial production value over the past 7 months has increased by 5.1 percent year on year to hit nearly VND44,000 billion. Many businesses have even achieved growth rates of between 18-54 percent, including those manufacturing precision tools, machinery, oil products, office equipment and chemicals.

Finding “last resting places” for people is now a matter for Hanoi authorities because all cemeteries are full. Encouraging cremation is now a temporary solution.

The local government declared the closure of Van Dien cemetery, the largest in Hanoi, as of July 1, 2010, but it has not identified a place to replace Van Dien.

Only cremation

Wind power is developing rapidly in the world, with a total capacity of over 100,000 MW at this moment. Vietnam is not on the outside of this expansion.

Potential for wind power

Surveys show that around 28,000 square kilometres of Vietnam’s land has an average wind speed of over seven metres per second at the height of 65 metres above sea level. This speed is considered suitable by international experts, who offered an assessment potential of over 110,000 megawatts (MW).

Top U.S. officials have reached out to a leading Vietnam war scholar who opposes American involvement in Afghanistan in an apparent effort to apply the lessons of the earlier conflict to the fight against the Taliban.

NATO's top commander in Afghanistan and the U.S. special envoy to the country telephoned renowned Vietnam War historian Stanley Karnow on July 27 to discuss the two conflicts.

Karnow is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian who authored the seminal 1983 book, "Vietnam: A History." He says envoy Richard Holbrooke called him and passed the phone to Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

Domestic fast food businesses are struggling to gain market share from their foreign counterparts, which have come to dominate this high-potential market, Vietnam News Agency (VNA) reported Monday.

Foreign franchises like KFC and the Republic of Korea's Lotteria so far dominate this market. KFC expects to open 12 additional restaurants this year, raising its total nationwide to more than 80 shops. Lotteria, currently with 56 restaurants, also has plans to open two dozens more.

The comprehensive free trade agreement between Japan and Vietnam that will come into effect later this year is the latest manifestation of the crucial role that Japan has played in Vietnam’s evolution from command economy to market-oriented one.

The domestic car market is still hot, pumped up in part by temporary tax reductions. For many models, car buyers have to put down a deposit and wait several months to get deliveries. The tax breaks will expire on December 31.

During the war I was a news analyst at Hanoi's American Affairs Department. From the beginning, we could tell that Robert McNamara was the mastermind. Each day, when we held a conference to discuss new developments, we always talked about McNamara first.

In the early years, he was bellicose. We called him the "hawk." He believed that if the Viet Cong could see how powerful American technology was, they would not fight. Of course, this was not the case. Much of what he and President Johnson authorized were war crimes, and we were furious.

An expert panel reported on Friday that two more diseases may be linked to exposure to Agent Orange, a defoliant used by the American military during the Vietnam War.

People exposed to the chemical appear, at least tentatively, to be more likely to develop Parkinson’s disease and ischemic heart disease, according to the report. The report was written by a 14-member committee charged by the Institute of Medicine with determining whether certain medical conditions were caused by exposure to herbicides used to clear stretches of jungle.