BANGKOK (AP) — Russia is a key supplier of military goods to Vietnam, providing it with fighter jets, tanks and ships. Moscow’s ongoing war against Ukraine, however, has given rise to international sanctions and the United States, European Union and others are threating more unless Russia relents.
Internal Vietnamese documents obtained by The Associated Press reveal that Hanoi and Moscow have prepared for this possibility, establishing a complex system through which Vietnam can conceal its payments to Russia for defense goods by avoiding any open transfers of cash through the global banking system.
Here are some takeaways from AP’s report:
How does it work?
The system established last year uses Vietnam’s profits from joint oil and gas ventures with Russia to pay for defense goods bought on credit from Moscow.
Final details of the mechanism were laid out in a 2024 memo obtained by the AP from the Vietnam Oil and Gas Group, known as Petrovietnam or PVN, to Vietnam’s Ministry of Industry and Trade ahead of a visit to Hanoi by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Under the system, Vietnamese profits from the Rusvietpetro joint venture in Siberia are sent to Moscow to pay back credit extended for military purchases. Vietnam’s profits exceeding the loan repayments are then transferred to Russian state-owned oil and gas company Zarubezhneft in Russia. And finally in Vietnam, Zarubezhneft uses its joint venture company there to transfer an equal amount of money to PVN, effectively avoiding any international financial transfers.
Why does it matter?
The system has been put in place at a precarious time when the U.S. is trying to strengthen ties with Vietnam as a bulwark against growing Chinese assertiveness in Southeast Asia, and has ongoing trade negotiations after the White House imposed 20% tariffs on Hanoi, while at the same time President Donald Trump is threatening even more stringent sanctions on Moscow.
The European Union has also added a raft of new sanctions to pressure Putin to end the war, and Trump recently issued an executive order doubling tariffs on India to 50% to pressure New Delhi to stop buying Russian oil and military equipment, which he said was helping enable the war against Ukraine.
The AP obtained the documents related to the mechanism from a Vietnamese official who said that he was part of a faction opposed to closer ties to Russia at the risk of jeopardizing the growing relationship with Washington. He provided the documents on condition of anonymity to protect himself from possible reprisals from Vietnam’s authoritarian government.
The U.S. State Department refused to comment specifically on the documents or the payment plan designed to skirt American sanctions, referring comments to the Vietnamese government. It reiterated broadly, however, that “our sanctions remain in place.”
Vietnam’s Ministry of Industry, PVN and the Foreign Ministry did not respond to multiple emails seeking comment on the payment scheme. Russia’s Finance Ministry, which conducted the negotiations for Moscow, also did not respond.
Is it necessary?
Experts say the mechanism is probably not needed to avoid sanctions that are in place right now, but indicates the two countries are exercising an abundance of caution by putting a system in place to avoid possible future secondary sanctions - sanctions that could be put in place on companies and governments that deal with sanctioned Russian entities.
The main threat of secondary sanctions comes from the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, or CAATSA, measures adopted during Trump’s first term, which make it possible to impose sanctions on countries or people with commercial dealings with Russia’s military-industrial complex.
“If you want to insulate yourself from any kind of risk, you then basically avoid cross-border transactions and create these kind of offsetting payment schemes,” said. Ben Hilgenstock, a senior economist at the Kyiv School of Economics who is an expert on Russian sanctions and analyzed the Vietnamese documents for the AP.
PVN’s general director, Le Ngoc Son, spells out the concerns in the June 11, 2024, document that outlines the agreement, writing that: “In the context of the U.S. and Western countries imposing sanctions on Russia in general and removing Russia from SWIFT in particular, this payment method is considered relatively confidential and appropriate because money only circulates within the territory of Vietnam and Russia and Vietnam does not have to worry about the risks of being affected by the U.S. embargo.”
In 2005, the Food and Drug Administration approved a combo shot for all four—the MMRV vaccine—which provided an alternative to the previous method of giving an MMR vaccine dose (against measles, mumps, and rubella) plus a separate varicella vaccine dose at the same time. (This vaccination strategy is shorthanded as MMR + V.) Thus, the MMRV combo shot meant one fewer shot for children. But, in 2008, post-market data suggested that the MMRV shot might have a slightly higher risk of causing febrile seizures (seizures associated with fevers), which is a very low risk with the MMR + V separate shots.
Febrile seizures are a somewhat common reaction in young children; this type of seizure almost entirely occurs in children under age 5 years, most often striking between 14 and 18 months. The seizures are short, usually less than a minute or two, and they can be caused by essentially anything that can cause a fever—ear infections, vaccines, the flu, etc. For parents, a febrile seizure can be very scary and lead them to bring their child to a doctor or hospital. However, febrile seizures are almost always harmless—the prognosis is "excellent," as CDC staff experts noted. Nearly all children fully recover with no long-term problems. By age 5, up to 5 percent of all children have had a febrile seizure at some point, for some reason.
Low risks
In post-market studies of the MMRV vaccine, it was very clear that a slightly increased risk of febrile seizures was only linked to the first dose (given at 12 to 15 months, not the second, given at 4 to 6 years). In studies of over 400,000 children, data found that the risk of a febrile seizure after a first-dose MMRV vaccine was 7 to 8.5 seizure cases for every 10,000 vaccinations. That's compared to 3.2 to 4.2 seizure cases in 10,000 vaccinations with MMR + V. In all, a first-dose MMRV vaccine had about one additional febrile seizure per 2,300 to 2,600 children vaccinated compared with MMR + V.
In 2009, CDC vaccine experts reviewed all the data and updated the vaccine recommendation. They maintained that MMRV and the MMR+V vaccinations are still both safe, effective, and recommended at both vaccination time points. But, they added the nuance that there is a preference (or a default, basically) for using the MMR + V shots for the first dose, unless a parent expressly wanted the MMRV vaccine for that first dose. This skirted the slightly increased risk of febrile seizure in young children, without entirely taking away the option if a parent prioritized fewer jabs and wanted the MMRV. For the second dose, again, both MMRV and MMR + V are options, but the CDC stated a preference for the one-shot MMRV.
The indefinite suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s TV show amid pressure from the FCC is prompting libertarian-leaning Republicans to consider redrawing their boundaries when it comes to limiting speech.
Disney, the parent company of ABC, removed the late-night comedian from its airwaves after a conservative outcry over Kimmel’s remarks about Charlie Kirk’s assassin culminated in public pressure from FCC Chair Brendan Carr.
Carr hinted at further actions against media companies on Thursday, telling CNBC that “we’re not done yet” as President Donald Trump urged NBC to take similar action against two other late-night comedians who have criticized him. That’s complicated things in Washington for a GOP that built itself up to be a champion and protector of free speech.
In fact, some Republicans who consider themselves defenders of unfettered speech are getting more comfortable with limiting it. Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., told Semafor that “an FCC license, it’s not a right. It really is a privilege.”
“Under normal times, in normal circumstances, I tend to think that the First Amendment should always be sort of the ultimate right. And that there should be almost no checks and balances on it. I don’t feel that way anymore,” Lummis added.
“I feel like something’s changed culturally. And I think that there needs to be some cognizance that things have changed,” she added. “We just can’t let people call each other those kinds of insane things and then be surprised when politicians get shot and the death threats they are receiving and then trying to get extra money for security.”
Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., said he’d “suppose” Carr could have kept quiet and let pressure build naturally but had no problem with the chair’s comments.
“I didn’t think it was that scary. I think Jimmy Kimmel made it pretty easy for the company,” said Cramer, who often says he’s not easily offended. Carr’s comments, he argued, “were so veiled.”
It’s a busy evening at Bauman’s on Oak, the popular new taproom in Southeast Portland. At the bar towards the back of the room, customers are ordering drinks from a 30-strong list of intriguing-sounding ciders including Looking Glass and Forbidden Fruit. Over to the right is a window into the tiny galley kitchen where Chef Daniel Green is expertly sautéing squid with sofrito and black rice in a cast iron skillet.
So far, so to be expected in a trendy neighborhood joint such as this. But there is one notable thing missing from the scene (two if you count the lack of sweat from the chefs) and that is the flash of flames licking their way around the pots and pans, and flaring up at moments of culinary intensity. Forget industrial gas stovetops altogether, in fact, because Green is cooking on a single Mirage Cadet induction cooktop.
“It’s perfect for all our needs,” says the chef, who has earned acclaim for his simple menu and house-made bread and pizza. He especially likes that the cooktop is mobile, so if need be the kitchen crew can move it to another room to create more counter space for kneading dough or slicing veggies.
Daniel Green at Bauman’s on Oak. Credit: Kelly Mooney.
Green is part of a growing cohort of professional chefs and home cooks who are ditching gas burners in favor of induction stoves, driven by everything from personal choice to policy. A number of cities and states in the U.S., concerned with the health and climate impacts of gas stovetops, are taking action. In 2021, New York became the first city in the country to set an air emissions limit for indoor combustion of fuels within new buildings, effectively banning the installation of new gas-burning stoves. Over the past few years, more than 129 cities and local governments across the country — from San Francisco to Washington D.C. — have adopted policies to encourage or require all-electric buildings. Five states — California, Colorado, Maryland, New York and Washington — have also passed such policies.
Cooking over an open flame inarguably comes with a certain charm, but it turns out that it is seriously detrimental to our health. The evidence is piling up: Gas cookers release noxious fumes like benzene, methane, carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide. These chemicals aren’t good for anyone, but they are particularly damaging to children, whose lungs and immune systems are still developing. Scientists at Stanford have found that using even a single gas burner on high can increase indoor concentrations of benzene, which is linked to cancer risk, to levels on a par with those found in second-hand tobacco smoke.
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You’re not even safe when your burners are off, it turns out. Alarmingly, three quarters of a stove’s methane emissions leak out of the stove when the burners are off. Long-term methane gas poisoning can cause lasting cardiovascular, respiratory and neurological problems.
Chef Daniel Green says his single Mirage Cadet induction cooktop is perfect for all his needs. Credit: Hannah Wallace.
Natural gas appliances like stoves are also large contributors to climate change. That’s because they emit both carbon dioxide and unburned methane, both potent greenhouse gases, into the atmosphere. A Stanford study from 2022 found that the annual methane emissions from all gas stoves in U.S. homes have a climate impact comparable to the annual carbon dioxide emissions of about 500,000 gasoline-powered cars.
Health and climate aside, today’s induction stovetops are winning over chefs because they’re more efficient, precise and consistent than gas stoves. They boil a pot of water in just minutes and their heat is instantaneous, so there’s no lag time for alliums to brown or meat to sear. Induction stovetops require only a quick wipe-down to clean and they emit less heat, which makes fast-moving kitchens much more comfortable.
Chef Eric Ripert of Manhattan’s Michelin-starred restaurant Le Bernadin installed induction cooktops in his homes in Manhattan and the Hamptons. “After two days, I was in love,” he told journalist Melissa Clark in 2022. He has also had a Gaggenau induction stove installed at Le Bernardin. Chef Alton Brown also upgraded to an induction stovetop. His home kitchen, he says, is both cooler and cleaner without a gas range.
Andrew Forlines, in his role as cooking electrification administrator for the City of Denver, spends a lot of time educating chefs, distributors and restaurant operators about the benefits of induction stovetops. He says most chefs find it easy to make the switch. “Really, the learning curve is that it gets hotter quicker,” he says. That means that you have to have everything chopped ahead of time, unlike with a gas range when you could throw the onions and garlic on a burner and then continue chopping vegetables while the alliums are heating up in the sauté pan. “You want to have your mise en place ready to go,” he says.
In his conversations with chefs and operators, Forlines often reminds them that induction stovetops have digital interfaces that allow a certain amount of pre-planning and programming. “A lot of what I talk about is labor savings. When you integrate your workflow into the equipment […] you get better yields,” he says. “Someone said it to me best. ‘It’s an expensive oven, but it’s a really affordable employee.’”
Using even a single gas burner on high can increase indoor concentrations of benzene to levels on a par with those found in second-hand tobacco smoke. Credit: RGtimeline / Shutterstock.
Chef Josh Dorcak at Mäs in Ashland, Oregon agrees. “It is kind of like having an extra set of hands sometimes,” he says of his two Breville Control Freak models. “And they’re easy to clean up.” His pans have less wear and tear because they don’t get licked by flames every night, he says. Mäs, which has been nominated for a James Beard Award in the Northwest/Pacific category for three years in a row, seats 14 to 16 guests per seating, so having just two single induction stovetops works. But Dorcak has also innovated: He balances a pizza steel on top of each induction burner so he can keep some sauces warm on the periphery while searing meats or vegetables in the center.
“It kind of goes from a one burner type-of-situation to a plancha, or warming table,” he says. During service, he can fit up to eight pots on one induction burner. “So we’re able to hold sauces and do things without juggling so much on one sensor.”
Dorcak says the decision to open Mäs, in 2017, with an induction stovetop rather than gas was simple. “We had no hood,” he says, and most code regulations require gas ranges to have a hood. The hood build-out is typically the most expensive part of a restaurant’s start-up costs, says Forlines, so skipping that can often make the cost of an induction stovetop (or two) more on par with the cost of a gas range.Even better, Dorcak adds that the Control Freak models are more accurate than the gas stoves he’s used in the past. It’s a bonus that the kitchen is a lot more comfortable for him and his colleagues. “[The induction stovetops] really don’t produce that much heat at all,” he says. “It’s not like a raging fire.”
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Currently, the cost of induction stovetops is still about one third more than gas stovetops. However, experts agree that the cost should continue coming down over time as demand increases.
There are also two major rebate programs under President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act — HEAR (for home electrification) and HOMES (for energy efficiency), both of which give substantial rebates to homeowners who qualify. Both remain authorized and funded through 2031. According to Alana Murphy at Rewiring America, demand for induction stoves has been high in states that have active rebate programs. (Rewiring America is an underwriter of this story). Earlier this year, Georgia’s Home Energy Rebate program achieved a significant milestone by surpassing $1,000,000 in total rebates paid to residents for home energy upgrades across the state.
The only thing that an induction stovetop can’t do, admits Forlines, is create that exposed-flame char for peppers or meat. In that case, Forlines says, he and other chefs will use a blowtorch, broiler, or even a grill. But for most applications, including meat that’s been cooked sous vide, searing it on a cast iron skillet on the induction stovetop works perfectly.
While I'm talking about the Lunar Rover, I want to tell a tale of
two models. One you've met: the Lego model. The other is a
model, currently
on display at the Museum of Flight in Seattle. (The Museum has a longer
blog post that implies the one on display is a training mock
up.) The two models could barely
be more different: One weighs a few pounds and can be held in your
hands. The other probably weighs a few hundred. One is very high
fidelity, the other quite low. One you can play with... the other
one I didn’t check, but there is a fence around it.
When we say “All models are wrong, and some models are useful,” we
have to understand the goals of a model. One of these was used to
plan a moon mission, the other is mostly fun, and also
educational. (For example, the Lego model has stickers marked “wax”,
because you can’t use oil as a lubricant in a vacuum. The liquid
evaporates, and you probably don’t want to be spraying graphite
around and contaminating samples.)
Being explicit about the goals of a model means you can tune your
engineering work to maximize the return on investment. Even when the
goal is “analyze this system,” or “get everyone to understand the
design,” being explicit can let you loop back to that goal to
assess if you’re spending the right amount of work.
One weighty goal that’s quite hard to balance with other goals is that the
model accurately account for gravity off Earth. For space, NASA has
the Neutral Buoyancy Lab. There are Mars Rover models that only
simulate the weight of a rover on Mars. That is, they’re tuned for
that purpose and nothing else. In the case of the moon buggies,
designed to carry “almost four times their weight” (according to
the Museum of Flight blog) or twice
(according to Wikipedia), that means that the
model has to be almost entirely focused on wheels and chassis and
leave everything else out. Looking at some other photos I took
that show what look like real toggles, I think the museum has
either the human factors model or the one-g trainer. (Wikipedia
has a list of the eight full scale models.)
Last week in a threat modeling training, we had someone spend nearly an hour
crafting a beautiful DFD of a fake system that we use in our
trainings. It was, admittedly, a nice diagram. Elements were
grouped, nicely arranged, good labels... and he spent an hour on
it. Other people kept calling it “the better diagram,” and I
pushed back: it’s not better on some universal
scale. It was a different return on investment than other people
had made.
Similarly, as much as I wouldn’t mind having my own Lunar Rover,
storing it would be a pain. We need to consider the properties
that we need in a given model.
Sometimes the models we make in threat modeling leave a great deal
out: we might want an infrastructure model that focuses on the
infrastructure. Including software components can make for an
overwhelming diagram. We might create a diagram focused on a
specific scenario, like upgrading or canceling an account that
digs into components that aren’t otherwise prioritized.
Plugins! This was the first time a web page could make sound, via RealAudio.
Incremental display of progressive JPEGs on slow dialup connections (which I demoed a few years back.)
Animated GIFs that were actually useful. Our support for GIF89a meant inter-frame timing, transparency, and the ability for animations to loop -- a Netscape extension present in every animGIF to this day: Application Block "NETSCAPE2.0"!
HTML frames.
JavaScript! That wasn't my fault, but you still have my apologies. In our defense, if we hadn't done it, MICROS~1 would have done something far, far worse.
And of course my baby, the first release of Netscape Mail and News.
Importantly, all of these features existed identically on Mac, Windows, and nine flavors of Unix, and were released simultaneously. This was basically unheard of at the time.
Terry and I got to push Netscape Mail out to something like 4 million users in those first few weeks, most of them new to the internet, so for a huge number of people it was their introduction to email. It didn't have some power-user features found in Eudora, but it was light years ahead of AOL.
Also it was almost certainly the first mail reader that allowed you to send HTML email. You had to compose them separately and then attach the files, but it worked. So HTML email is probably my fault. You're welcome.
It was also a USENET reader. You will not believe (or probably you will) the hate I got for this from people whose thought this was an abomination, because their ideas about user interface design told them that a mail reader and a USENET reader have nothing to do with each other and should have no UI components in common. It's not like they display lists of messages and allow you to reply to them. They certainly don't do that. That's just science.
Anyway this also meant it was the first easy-to-use program that let you post HTML to USENET. Again, you're welcome. Oh and also MIME-encoded attachments rather than uuencode, and it would also display those attachments inline -- so again, for all the porn, you're welcome.
The wild popularity and success of Netscape Mail indirectly helped kill the company.
We had built this really nice entry-level mail reader in Netscape 2.0, and it was a smashing success. Our punishment for that success was that my boss (now capo of noted criminal enterprise Andreessen-Horowitz-Whorfin-Lizardo, and a noted murder enthusiast and fascist in his own right, but I digress) saw this general-purpose mail reader and said, "Since this mail reader is popular with normal people, we must now pimp it out to 'The Enterprise', call it Groupware, and try to compete with Lotus Notes!"
To do this, Netscape bought a company called Collabra who had tried (and, mostly, failed) to do something similar to what we had accomplished. By which I mean: they had like 20 or more engineers and over several years had built a Windows-only mail reader that did did like 3/4ths of what Terry and I had built in 6 months, and had completely face-planted in the market. So Netscape bought this company and spliced 4 layers of management in above us. And like a chestburster, somehow Collabra managed to completely take control of Netscape, as if Netscape had been acquired instead of the other way around.
Anyway, since they won the startup-acquisition lottery, they then they went off into the weeds with Second System Syndrome so badly that the Collabra-driven "3.0" release was obviously going to be so mind-blowingly late that "2.1" became "3.0" and "3.0" became "4.0". Netscape "3.0" was the bugfix patch-release for 2.0, because it had been intended to be called "2.1" all along.
And "4.0" was the beginning of the long death spiral.
(I mean, the fact that Microsoft illegally used their monopoly in one market (operating systems) to destroy an existing market (web browsers) by driving the market price for browsers to zero, instantaneously eliminating something like 60% of Netscape's revenue, didn't help. We were stabbed in the front and the back at the same time.)
I would say that Netscape 3.2 is the canonical, best version of the original browser. But 2.0 was pretty fuckin' good.
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