HANOI (AFP) - A truck driving in the wrong direction on a one-way road smashed into a bus in Vietnam's central highlands on Sunday (May 7) killing at least 11 people, state media said.

The accident in Gia Lai province occurred in the early hours of Sunday morning, also injuring 23 passengers, according to state-controlled Vietnam News Agency.

The truck was believed to have hit the bus head-on. The bus was carrying 36 passengers, state media said.

The coach driver was among the dead, the report added. It is not known whether the truck driver survived.

"The victims were trapped inside the coach. The authorities and local residents had to break the bus door to rescue them and take them to hospital," online newspaper VnExpress quoted Pham Van Uan, head of Gia Lai province's traffic police, as saying.

Road accidents are common in Vietnam, with nearly 9000 people killed last year.

Narrow highways, poorly maintained vehicles and drivers' disregard for road safety and traffic rules are blamed for most fatalities.</s>82 ChibokGirls have been freed — Lai Mohammed

 

 By Latifat Opoola | Publish Date: May 6 2017 10:10PMSegun Adeyemi , the Media aide to minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, Saturday evening confirmed on his facebook page that 82 of the remaining 195 girls in Boko Haram's …</s>82 ChibokGirls have been freed — Lai Mohammed

 

 By Latifat Opoola | Publish Date: May 6 2017 10:10PMSegun Adeyemi , the Media aide to minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, Saturday evening confirmed on his facebook page that 82 of the remaining 195 girls in Boko Haram's …</s>A truck driving in the wrong direction on a one-way road smashed into a bus in Vietnam's central highlands, killing at least 11 people, state media said. The accident in Gia Lai province occurred early yesterday morning and also injured 23 passengers, Vietnam News Agency said. The truck was believed to have hit the bus head-on.</s>HANOI, Vietnam (AP) - A truck has collided with a passenger bus in central Vietnam, killing 12 people and injuring 33.

State-run Lao Dong newspaper says 11 people died on the spot following the collision early Sunday in Gia Lai province, some 640 kilometers (400 miles) north of the southern commercial hub of Ho Chi Minh City.

All the deaths were on the bus except for the assistant truck driver. The driver was among the seriously injured.

There were 43 people traveling in the bus.

The newspaper quoted police as saying that the initial investigation showed the truck was speeding at 105 kilometers (65 miles) per hour and crossed into the lane of the bus.</s>HANOI
• A truck being driven in the wrong direction on a one-way road smashed into a bus in Vietnam's Central Highlands yesterday, killing at least 11 people, state media said.

The accident in Gia Lai province occurred in the early hours yesterday morning, and also injured 23 passengers, according to state-controlled Vietnam News Agency. The truck was believed to have hit the bus head-on.

The bus was carrying 36 passengers, state media said.

KUNDUZ (Afghanistan)
• Hundreds of Afghan families have fled fighting between the Taleban and government forces near the northern city of Kunduz as insurgents captured a strategic district soon after launching their annual spring offensive.

The militants began their assault on the Qala-e-Zal district in Kunduz province last Saturday and captured most of it, including the district centre.

The attack triggered intense fighting with government forces that sent civilians fleeing towards the provincial capital of Kunduz.

IPOH
• A 77-year-old woman was killed when a car crashed into the living room of her home in a village in Temoh town in Perak state.

Tapah district police chief superintendent Som Sak Din Keliaw said Madam Lai Kwai Lan, who was in the living room during the incident, suffered head injuries.

A 13-year-old boy, who was reversing the car, had accidentally stepped on the accelerator pedal before it rammed 20m across the road into Madam Lai's house last Saturday at about 5.15pm.

SANDAKAN
• Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Razak said yesterday that he will remove from June 1 a controversial policy called cabotage, where all goods imported by ship to, and exported from, Sabah and Sarawak must pass through Port Klang.

The policy, started in 1980 to boost Port Klang's growth, caused goods in the two east Malaysian states to be costlier than those in peninsular Malaysia due to the double handling of goods at two ports.</s>At least 11 people killed in collision in central Vietnam

At least 11 people were killed in central Vietnam in a collision of a bus and a tractor, Sputnik reported citing local media.

According to the VnExpress newspaper, the accident took place in Gia Lai province. The bus was carrying 36 passengers, and the tractor had two people on board.

​The Vietnamese Traffic Police Department as quoted by the Xinhua news agency said that in the first four months of 2017, over 6,000 traffic accidents were registered in the country, killing some 2,800 and injuring over 5,000 people.</s>The Mỹ Lai Massacre was the Vietnam War mass killing of between 347 and 504 unarmed civilians in South Vietnam on March 16, 1968. It was committed by U.S. Army soldiers from Company C, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade, 23rd (Americal) Infantry Division.

Victims included men, women, children, and infants. Some of the women were gang-raped and their bodies mutilated.

Twenty-six soldiers were charged with criminal offenses, but only Lieutenant William Calley Jr., a platoon leader in C Company, was convicted. Found guilty of killing 22 villagers, he was originally given a life sentence, but served only three and a half years under house arrest.

The massacre, which was later called “the most shocking episode of the Vietnam War”, took place in two hamlets of Sõn Mỹ village in Quảng Ngãi Province. These hamlets were marked on the U.S. Army topographic maps as My Lai and My Khe. The U.S. Army slang name for the hamlets and sub-hamlets in that area was Pinkville, and the carnage was initially referred to as the Pinkville Massacre. Later, when the U.S. Army started its investigation, the media changed it to the Massacre at Songmy. Currently, the event is referred to as the My Lai Massacre in the United States and called the Sõn Mỹ Massacre in Vietnam.

The incident prompted global outrage when it became public knowledge in November 1969. The My Lai massacre increased to some extent domestic opposition to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War when the scope of killing and cover-up attempts were exposed. Initially, three U.S. servicemen who had tried to halt the massacre and rescue the hiding civilians were shunned, and even denounced as traitors by several U.S. Congressmen, including Mendel Rivers, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Only after thirty years were they recognized and decorated, one posthumously, by the U.S. Army for shielding non-combatants from harm in a war zone. Along with the No Gun Ri massacre in Korea eighteen years earlier, My Lai was one of the largest single massacres of civilians by U.S. forces in the 20th century.

Four Hours in MY LAI, anatomy of a massacre</s>MOSCOW (Sputnik) — According to the VnExpress newspaper, the accident took place in Gia Lai province. The bus was carrying 36 passengers, and the tractor had two people on board.

​The Vietnamese Traffic Police Department as quoted by the Xinhua news agency said that in the first four months of 2017, over 6,000 traffic accidents were registered in the country, killing some 2,800 and injuring over 5,000 people.</s>That Lai Mohammed has reduced himself from minister for information to minister for explaining why President Muhammadu Buhari does not attend to official duties is now obvious! Instead of busying himself generating ideas for the betterment of Nigeria, he is more concerned with generating excuses for Buhari’s failure!

Why has Lai done this to himself? Why has he turned himself into the Southern end of a bull?

And when CNN’s Richard Quest gave him an opportunity to redeem himself by asking him the leading question, ‘which country makes the best jollof rice’, Lai Mohammed proved how irredeemable he is by saying, and I quote, “I want to say Senegal.” Really! Senegal.

Is Lai Mohammed now the minister of information for Senegal?

And to make matters worse, Lai tried to spin the storm that came after his disappointing response by claiming that he misunderstood Mr. Quest’s question.

If Lai can misunderstand such a simple question, then it falls into question his capability for the job he holds.

Perhaps when you have a jollofless Lai as information minister and French graduate as agriculture minister, even jollof rice runs away to Senegal! Is this sycophancy taken too far? This is the same Lai Mohammed that said Fulani herdsmen come from Mauritius, a country that is in the Indian Ocean and shares no land border with Africa. The same Lai Mohammed that told us in January that President Muhammadu Buhari is perfectly healthy. I hear that even satan is praying for Lai to go to heaven because he fears he will lose his seat if he comes to hell!

And Lai does not seem to realise the extent of the damage he has done to Nigeria’s image. If I were the Senegalese government, I will feature Lai’s answer to Richard Quest’s question as a publicity advertisement for the Senegalese tourism industry on CNN and other global media.

It almost seems that since Muhammadu Buhari became our President, it is not only foreign investors that are divesting from Nigeria. Even jollof rice has divested to Senegal. In fact, as Jollof rice has divested, we must not forget that the minister of agriculture had announced plans to import grass from Brazil so Herdsmen will be comfortable. You see, even grass had divested from Nigeria to Brazil!

But on second thoughts, perhaps we owe Lai an apology. He is right after all. Jollof RICE originates from Senegal. It is jollof LIES that originate from Nigeria through Lai Mohammed.

In fact, I want to play a game called Name Your Favourite Jollof LIE that Lai has cooked. I will start. My favourite is the lie that one masquerade can create 1000 jobs. What is yours? Send me an email of yours to reno@renoomokri.org or tweet it at me using the hashtag #NameYourFavouriteJollofLIE!

But on a more serious note, Lai’s most recent misadventure should prompt the federal government to do some introspection because incidences like this are too commonplace with this administration that one may be forgiven if he thought we were being governed by people who do not know much about Nigeria.

For instance we have a President who told the Telegraph of U.K. that Nigerians are “criminals”, a lying information minister who thinks Nigerian jollof rice originates from Senegal, a French graduate agriculture minister who wants to import grass for Fulani Herdsmen while Nigerians have no food, a minister of finance that wants to tax Nigerians who own homes in London, a minister of internal affairs who thinks the job of uniformed military officers is to shine his shoe in public, a pot-bellied minister of transport whose only major achievement is inaugurating what the previous administration built, and a Science and Technology minister whose publicly stated ambition is to produce pencils in two years’ time – in fact, maybe the whole government should just go to Senegal along with our jollof rice!

And God keeps giving Lai Mohammed opportunities to redeem himself and his government and he keeps failing to live up to his title as the chief-image maker for the government.

48 hours after Anthony Joshua TKO’ed Wladimir Klitschko to become the undisputed heavy weight champion of the world on April 29, 2017, the Nigerian government had not congratulated him. It was not until Senator Ben Murray-Bruce tweeted about it that he congratulated the champion pugilist. I hope Lai does not think Anthony is from SENEGAL!! You never know with this Buhari administration!

And this dereliction of duty from Lai Mohammed is more telling when you consider that Nigerians do not really know what is happening with their government.

Whether true or false, we hear about a cabal governing. Executive Council of the Federation meetings either do not hold or where they hold, little to nothing is done because the President is not there.

It is either Lai tells us that the President is resting on doctors’ advice or that he is working from home. Being that the President’s office is 5 minutes from his home (I have walked it myself) one begins to wonder what Lai Meshe when he says that President Muhammadu Buhari worked from home.

And Lai’s comments betray the disconnect in this government. Lai tells us that the President needs to rest on doctors’ orders, yet the minister of transport, Rotimi Amaechi, only this week said the President was fit enough to govern and re-contest in 2019.

Speaking as a guest on Channels Television’s Hard Copy, Mr. Amaechi’s exact words were:

“The president is fit enough to govern and if he makes the decision to run again, if he does, I don’t think there is anything wrong in supporting him.”

So who should we believe between Amaechi and Lai?

And then the minister of communications, Adebayo Shittu, joined the fray by saying:

“We would urge him to seek re-election because it is only once in a while that you get a father figure for a nation to move forward and attain greatness. He is unlike former President Goodluck Jonathan, who never, with due respect, symbolised anything for the country.”

Barrister Adebayo Shittu says Muhammadu Buhari is like a father to Nigerians and Goodluck Jonathan was not. How sad that we forget history so soon! Between ‘the dog and baboon will be soaked in blood’ and ‘my ambition is not worth the blood of any Nigerian’, who sounds like a father?

Instead of Buhari’s minister to pray for his health, they are prodding him on to seek re-election in 2019. Learn from Abacha and Yar’adua. Do not tempt God! I just thank God that there are men who fear God like Chief Bisi Akande in the APC. While Amaechi, Kachikwu, Shittu and Oyegun are playing God, Akande this week released a statement that he “wept” because of the state of Buhari’s health.

What did Jesus say in Mark 8:36? “What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” The enemies of Buhari are those who are encouraging him to cling to power instead of clinging to his health!

If I were President Muhammadu Buhari, I will sack Amaechi and Shittu for pressuring me over 2019 at a time I should focus on my health. Except the aim is to kill me. It is taken that every sane man intends the reasonable consequence of his actions. What is the reasonable consequence of pressuring a man who is too sick to work full time or attend mosque to start contemplating the rigours of a re-election campaign? The reasonable consequence will befall Buhari’s enemies, not Buhari. Amaechi, Shittu and Oyegun are Buhari’s biggest enemies!

In all these, what I find alarming is the silence of both Tunde Bakare and Father Mbaka. Pastor Tunde Bakare and Reverend Father Ejike Mbaka, who knew you guys could be so silent. You used to be so talkative!!! Sometimes it seems as if God made Muhammadu Buhari to be President purposely to expose the hypocrisy of some people.

These guys were so narky under the previous administration but now it seems the cat has got their tongue. What a pity.

But there is a silver lining. Vice President Yemi Osinbajo is a man who has won my heart for his conduct and carriage in office. President Buhari could not have made a better choice!

Just take in the comment he made while addressing “The Platform” at Covenant Christian Centre in Lagos. On May Day 2017, Professor Osinbajo said, “And by the way, we all know that Nigerian jollof rice is the best!” And in just one sentence, Vice President Professor Yemi Osinbajo exposed Lai Mohammed for the liar he is.

This is why even though I pray for President Muhammadu Buhari, I am quite satisfied that Nigeria is safe in the hands of Osinbajo. Osinbajo understands what it is to lead a nation. After Lai embarrassed Nigeria over jollof rice, President Buhari kept mute, but Osinbajo has redeemed Nigeria’s image. God bless Professor Yemi Osinbajo!

Noah built the Ark when it was sunny. You can’t prepare for adversity during adversity. You prepare for it during prosperity. While you are building your ark, haters will laugh at you. Don’t waste anger on haters. When they annoy you, use the anger as energy to achieve more. It will annoy them more than your anger. And always remember that the world won’t understand you if you try to explain yourself with words. Your only explanation they will understand is your success #RenosNuggets

Reno Omokri is working on his book, Facts Versus Fiction: The True Story of the Jonathan Years: Chibok, 2015 and Other Conspiracies, is set for release in June.

QUOTE: 48 hours after Anthony Joshua TKO’ed Wladimir Klitschko to become the undisputed heavy weight champion of the world on April 29, 2017, the Nigerian government had not congratulated him. It was not until Senator Ben Murray-Bruce tweeted about it that he congratulated the champion pugilist. I hope Lai does not think Anthony is from SENEGAL!! You never know with this Buhari administration! And this dereliction of duty from Lai Mohammed is more telling when you consider that Nigerians do not really know what is happening with their government. Whether true or false, we hear about a cabal governing. Executive Council of the Federation meetings either do not hold or where they hold, little to nothing is done because the President is not there. It is either Lai tells us that the President is resting on doctors’ advice or that he is working from home. Being that the President’s office is 5 minutes from his home (I have walked it myself) one begins to wonder what Lai Meshe when he says that President Muhammadu Buhari worked from home.
At least 11 people are dead after a bus and truck collide in Vietnam's Gia Lai province.