According to the Directorate for Roads of Vietnam, the pilot program of using two automatic machines showed effectiveness in National Highway No.5 with the number of overloaded vehicles falling over 49 times, from 6.9 percent of the first seven months of 2020 to 0.14 percent. The number of daily violations decreased nearly 50 times, ranging from 176 vehicles a day to an average of 3.6 per day.

This is the first high-speed automatic machine system of Vietnam with its accurate, stable, absolutely automatic features without any human manipulations or intervention, promptly showing results within three to 15 seconds. It can control 100 percent of vehicle turns.

Most of the vehicle owners received violation notifications after functional forces showed the evidences of violation and they all paid the fines.

Earlier, in October 2020, the Directorate for Roads of Vietnam started using the most modern high-speed automatic machine system at Km78+770 on the National Highway No.5 through Hai Phong City.

The system was sponsored by Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) with the value of nearly VND30 billion (nearly US$1.3 million). The electronic weighing system will quickly read the information of vehicles via camera devices, automatically measure vehicles’ weight and analyze violations.

By Minh Anh – Translated by Huyen Huong

BEIJING, April 16 (Xinhua) — The Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee on Friday congratulated the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) on the convening of its Eighth National Congress.

In a message, the CPC hailed the PCC as the core leadership of Cuba’s socialist revolution and construction enterprise, saying that it has led the Cuban people in achieving a series of important accomplishments in economic development, improving people’s livelihood and fighting against the COVID-19 pandemic, for which the CPC feels truly happy.

Under the new circumstances, the PCC convenes the Eighth National Congress, and will put forward strategic planning for the development of the party and the country at present and for the time to come, which will be of great importance, said the message.

The CPC added that it is believed that under the strong leadership of the PCC, the congress will surely provide important guidance and impetus for the socialist cause with Cuban characteristics.

The CPC and the Chinese government attach great importance to the relations between the two parties and the two countries, and are willing to work with the Cuban side to continue carrying forward the friendly China-Cuba tradition, strengthen political mutual trust, and deepen strategic communication, so as to continuously enrich the connotation and outcomes of the two countries’ mutually beneficial cooperation, and jointly push for new achievements in the socialist cause of China and Cuba.

The CPC wishes the Eighth National Congress of the PCC a complete success. Enditem

The Detail is a daily news podcast produced for RNZ by Newsroom and is published on Stuff with permission. Click on this link to subscribe to the podcast.

Urgent changes to the law on the child sex offender register mean that hundreds of convicted offenders are back on the list. But one justice rights advocate says it doesn’t mean that children are safer.

“What we know about child sex offending is that the vast majority of it goes undetected, unreported, unprosecuted in the community,” says Jordan Anderson, whose PhD at Victoria University looks at the creation of the register and its impact.

“This register in New Zealand is solely a register for child sex offences, so we have not registered all sex offenders, we have deemed that sex offenders who have committed offences against children are the ones that need to be registered.”

READ MORE: Sex offenders to be added back on to register after urgent law change Principal backs MP’s bill after child sex offender moves in to the neighbourhood Thirty-two child-sex offenders granted permission to change their names The Detail: Convicted child sex offender in meetings with survivors of sexual abuse Mum of child abuse victim backs bill to alert schools when sex offenders released

Today on The Detail, Anderson explains the tragic case of 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling in 1989 in Minnesota that led to the establishment of a register in the US and triggered legislation to set up registers in other countries, including New Zealand.

In September 2016, the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill became law here, enabling the police to start registering offenders.

Someone on the register has to provide the police with up-to-date details such as their address, car registration, the children living in their household, and internet provider. They have to notify the police if there are any changes, within 72 hours of the change, and at least 48 hours prior to travel or change of address.

They must stay on the register for either eight years, 15 years, or for life depending on the severity of the offence they committed and the sentence they received.

When the bill was introduced it was criticised for both being too harsh on the offenders and not going far enough to protect society. Among the criticisms: that offenders on the register do not have proper access to support programmes, that it is too intrusive, that it will only be effective if it is made public.

“The thinking behind this legislation … as well as the amendments and attempts that we’ve seen over the last month to adjust it are essentially driven by the desire to keep kids safe,” Anderson says.

She commends the “intention of it” to address an information gap around the movements and activities of child sex offenders, in particular, living in the community. She says there is cross-party consensus that there is a genuine community need to take greater action around sexual harm and abuse of children, but there is “absolutely no evidence that this policy produces that result”.

Anderson, who also chairs the justice advocacy group JustSpeak, has spoken to people on the register as well as community groups about the impact. She studied three cases where the community was notified or found out about sex offenders in the neighbourhood.

Currently, around 2,500 people – mostly men – are on the register after last month’s law change, the Amendments to the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Act.

It followed a Supreme Court decision in February that found the Act was not clear enough about people who committed an offence before it came into force in 2016, and were convicted and sentenced after 14 October that year.

The court found it did not cover that group of offenders, so police had to remove “hundreds of individuals” from the Child Sex Offender Register.

The law change will mean the Act now applies to all individuals who have committed a qualifying child sex offence, regardless of when the offence occurred.

Also last month, National’s Matt Doocey tried unsuccessfully to bring in a law that would make it mandatory for Corrections to notify schools if there are sex offenders in the area. At the moment, the community is notified when the police or Corrections deem it to be in the best interests of every person involved including the offender. Panels in each district are responsible for deciding if notifications should be made.

Jordan Anderson tells The Detail’s Sharon Brettkelly why she’s against mandatory notification of schools and the reaction of principals she has spoken to for her thesis.

In her ideal world, she says, there would be no register and offenders’ names would be kept secret when they are released and they would get proper “wraparound” support in the community.

“The evidence that I have examined would indicate that things like registration and notification are major stresses in the lives of people that have offended and been released and the number one trigger for reoffending is stress.”

Note: The Detail is produced for the ear and designed to be heard. If you are able, we strongly encourage you to listen to the audio above, as this written piece is a short summary of the podcast.

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Unvaccinated border workers may continue in some frontline MIQ jobs for the next three weeks before they are moved to other roles.

Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield, speaking during today’s 1pm Covid-19 update, said employers of border staff had started having conversations with them about moving into other non-frontline roles if they refused the vaccine.

Staff who refused to get a vaccination could still be working for another three weeks before the government forced them into other roles. Bloomfield said those workers were at the “head of the queue” for having a conversation about redeployment.

“They won’t have been required to be redeployed yet, the end date for that has always been May,” he said.

READ MORE: Covid-19: Expert calls for vaccination register, as PM says 86pc of MIQ workers jabbed Covid-19: Brigadier Jim Bliss won’t express confidence in routine testing of border staff Covid-19: Bloomfield ‘would have hoped’ latest cases were vaccinated by now Covid-19: Unclear why infected MIQ worker unvaccinated seven weeks into rollout

The delay was because moving that number of staff off the frontline would have a knock-on effect, Bloomfield said.

“There is a very good practical reason for this, you can’t immediately withdraw 10 or 20 per cent of your workforce and still run the facilities.”

E tū organiser Mat Danaher said it was important the remaining few weeks be used to address workers’ fears and concerns about getting the vaccine.

“It does make sense to redeploy people from high-risk areas if they can’t be vaccinated, but at the end of the day they have been working in these roles unvaccinated since the beginning of the MIQ system and nothing has changed expect the vaccination has become available,” Danaher said.

While the union agreed all workers should be vaccinated by 1 May, any that had not and needed to be moved should be with no penalty, he said.

“We accept they may need to be deployed but it should be to work of equivalent value – so similar wages, similar hours of work.”

The government and unions initially agreed a ten-week window for frontline workers to get vaccinated or be moved to other roles.

National’s Covid-19 response spokesperson Chris Bishop said he wanted all border workers who weren’t vaccinated against Covid-19 to be removed from the frontline immediately .

“We’ve now come to the point where the rule should be if you’re on the frontline you have to be vaccinated and if you choose not to be you can’t work at the frontline. It should be a pretty simple rule,” Bishop said.

He said it was “astounding” unvaccinated staff would be allowed to continue working on the frontline for the remainder of April.

This follows a third worker at the Grand Millennium managed isolation hotel in Auckland who tested positive for Covid-19 yesterday .

Head of MIQ Brigadier Jim Bliss said a rule change would come into place next month.

“It’s our expectation that any worker that comes into work at our facilities comes in vaccinated. That’s been the conversation with employers – both government and private – late last week setting out expectations for that to occur on May the first,” Bliss said.

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