“Keep your ears and eyes open and pay attention to the light and train horn signals,” she says, “to avoid being hit by trains.”

Khoa has lived less than a yard away from the railway line for 27 years, so she knows how to stay safe, and to keep others out of trouble, too — she’s raised her children and grandchildren there.

She’s used to the noise, used to the dirt and used to the risks, just like all the people who live their lives on the train line in Hanoi.

Several stretches of the North-South railway line passing through Ha Noi have become points of attraction for foreign tourists because of the houses people occupy just a few steps away from the tracks.

Dating back to 1881, the 1,730km North-South railway line passes through 21 provinces and cities across Vietnam. When Hanoi Station opened in 1902, the train lines that entered it were built in barren areas. But as the city grew and became more populated, houses were constructed closer and closer to the tracks.

It is estimated there are hundreds of households living this way in the city’s inner districts, including Ba Dinh, Hoan Kiem and Dong Da.

Most of the residents used to be railway workers. Some moved to the capital city from other provinces to find jobs.

“Living here is not nearly as good as other places,” says Nguyen Thi Dau, who has been living near the railway line for 33 years. “But we’ve been living here so long we’ve all got used to it.”

Open up Dau’s front door and there’s a small kitchen, bare walls, a room and an electric fan, constantly pointing in the direction of her husband, who lies on the bed.

He suffered a stroke seven years ago and has rarely moved since.

“The noise used to keep us awake, and we used to freak out when trains passed by because they shook our house. But then we all got used to it,” Dau adds. “Life is tough here but we accepted it.”

Using a method like Khoa’s, Dao Van Chinh scrubs away dirt from his clothes as he sits leaning over a plastic basin where he washes his garments.

They may come out of the water clean this time, but it won’t be long before they need a new rinse.

“People here live a hard life,” he says. “The noise, the train exhaust, the dirt.”

“It would be nice if the State clears this place and provides us with an apartment building, for example,” he adds. “Or some money, or any other forms of support.”

Though life here is hard for residents, to the tourists who regularly visit it is a magical place and a must-see during their stay in Hanoi.

The place is often a hive of activity packed with visitors desperately searching for a new profile picture.

“It’s a completely different cultural experience to where we are from,” says Jamie Smith, from Scotland.

“Living close to the railway line, you don’t get this in the UK. You have to stay far away, it’s all behind fences, and everyone is on top of the railway line.”

Children play, pets run around and plastic chairs are placed in the centre of the railway while people just chat and go about their normal lives, many playing board games, others sipping tea.

Businesses operate yards from the track, such as restaurants, beauty salons and cafes. One shop even sells clothes.

Each day dozens of trains pass through these tracks, even more on weekends and evenings.

Tourists know the train times and come prepared. Long before the engines come, they move towards the middle of the line, posing for the camera, looking for the coolest of shots.

When they hear the noise of the train in the distance, the whole scene changes. Backs firmly to the wall, lenses pointed in the direction the train as it approaches, they are ready to record this once-in-a-lifetime experience.

It’s illegal

Though considered by tourists a unique cultural mark of Vietnam, living close to the railway line violates the country’s railway safety regulations.

The 2006 Law on Railways stipulates that the space between the railway line and residential areas must be five to seven metres.

That’s what Phuong Thanh Dai remembers. Having worked as a train driver for 27 years, it has become his daily routine to carefully negotiate the challenges faced by all train drivers picked for those particular routes.

“When I first started as a train driver, there was ample distance between the train line and the residential areas,” says Dai. “It must have been a few metres but now they are too close to one another. Residents encroach illegally on the space to the rail line because they live so close.

“It is often said we are driving on the pavement.”

Citizens of Hanoi are often seen crossing the railway line wherever they see fit. Small vendors, street hawkers gather near the line to sell stuff, only rising to their feet when hearing the train horn signal.

Around 5,000 level crossings in the country, of which 4,302 are illegal, remain unguarded and are the main cause of railway accidents, according to the Vietnam Railways Corporation.

Figures from the corporation show that only 641 level crossings, which are built to cross railway tracks, are manned by its staff. The rest, including 4,302 illegally built level crossings, are only equipped with warning signals or alarms.

They also show that 70 per cent of rail accidents reported in 2017 occurred at these crossings.

A survey by the Vietnam Railway Authority in 2012 showed Hanoi as one of the localities with the most violations of railway safety, Kinh te & Do thi (Economic and Urban Affairs) newspaper reported.

No solutions

Today it is near impossible for the authorities to change the area. Short of knocking down all the houses, it would be extremely difficult to move those that live here to new accommodation.

Nguyen Chi Trung, chairman of the People’s Committee of Dien Bien Ward says: “The Ba Dinh District has assigned its natural resources and environment division to review the origin of residents living close to the railway line in the district.”

“They will then report to the higher-level authority so as to develop house clearance and relocation options,” he adds.

With safety in mind, the committee wants to make sure the area is well patrolled and people who live and visit the area take extra care.

“The biggest difficulty is we cannot prohibit residents from entering their houses,” Trung says. “In order to ensure their safety every day we send civil guards to patrol the area and instruct residents and foreign tourists to comply with the railway and road traffic laws.”

Pham Nguyen Chien, head of the railway safety and security department of Viet Nam Railways Corporation, says that although living so close to the railway line is against the law, enforcing it would be difficult.

“It is impossible for the railway sector to address rail safety violations alone,” he says. “This is a social issue. Managing railway safety is similar to managing constructions in urban environments. It’s complicated.”

“We are just an enterprise,” he adds. “We do not have the authority to impose penalties, let alone force them to move away.”

With few options available, the railway residents of Hanoi must continue to live their lives on the line. While they admit it’s not easy, many of them are that used to living there, it has become normal.

And while they all share the same common denominator as they struggle day to day, they have managed to form a community with a close-knit spirit far higher than many other neighbourhoods.

“We’re all poor, but we stick together and help each other when needed,” says a resident, Dao Van Chinh.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres today said they will put more pressure on Myanmar to make them understand what they should do on the Rohingya issue.

“We’re keeping up pressure on Myanmar…we need to put more pressure on Myanmar to make them understand what they should do on this issue,” he said.

Antonio Guterres said this when he met Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at her office.

World Bank President Jim Yong Kim also the Prime Minister at the same time.

He said the United Nations and the World Bank will continue their support to Bangladesh over the Rohingya issue.

Guterres mentioned that the international community reiterated their solidarity towards Bangladesh on the issue and appreciated the government of Bangladesh for giving shelter to the Rohingyas.

He noted with satisfaction that the World Bank has come forward to help Bangladesh deal with the Rohingya issue.

The Prime Minister apprised them about the current situation of the Rohingyas and mentioned that these people started entering Bangladesh in 1977.

Sheikh Hasina said Bangladesh has given shelter to 1.1 million Rohingyas only on humanitarian ground and various services, including healthcare, are being provided to them.

She said the government is preparing an island to relocate around 100,000 Rohingyas where they will get better living condition and livelihood opportunities.

The Prime Minister said the local people of Bangladesh are experiencing adverse impacts as over one million people have taken shelter in Bangladesh. “We’ve to look into their problem as well and we’re doing that.”

Regarding the dialogue between Bangladesh and Myanmar governments to repatriate the Rohingyas, she said both countries signed agreements over the matter. “But they’re yet to take any action for its implementation,” she added.

The Washington Post cited four unnamed US officials who, it said, had seen or been briefed on new intelligence findings that point to preparations for deceiving the United States.

The Post’s report came after NBC News said the North has been increasing nuclear weapons fuel production.

The reports followed Trump’s boast that the summmit denuclearization pledge made by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had effectively ended the North’s nuclear threat, after months of inflammatory language from both sides.

The Post said the evidence of North Korean cheating had emerged since the June 12 summit, where Kim and Trump signed a pledge “to work towards complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

The stock phrase failed to clearly define denuclearization or produce a specific timeline towards dismantling the North’s atomic weapons arsenal.

It also stopped short of longstanding US demands for North Korea to give up its atomic arsenal in a “verifiable” and “irreversible” way.

On Sunday Trump stuck by his confidence in the North’s efforts.

“I think they’re very serious about it,” Trump said during during an interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”

Asked how he could trust Kim’s vow to denuclearize, Trump replied: “We had great chemistry. I made a deal with him. I shook hands with him. I really believe he means it.”

The interview was broadcast Sunday but taped late in the week, before the reports of North Korean cheating emerged publicly.

“We gave nothing. What we are going to give is good things in the future,” the president said.

His National Security Advisor, John Bolton, insisted on Sunday that the administration was fully aware of North Korea’s history of deception and was not entering the denuclearization talks naively.

“There’s not any starry-eyed feeling among the group doing this,” Bolton said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Separately, he told “Fox News Sunday” that “we are using the full range of our capabilities to understand what North Korea is doing.”

‘Unequivocal evidence’

NBC News quoted intelligence officials as saying Pyongyang has in fact been increasing fuel production for nuclear weapons at several hidden sites. It said the North was working to “extract every concession” from the White House rather than give up an atomic arsenal it has spent years developing.

“There’s no evidence that they are decreasing stockpiles, or that they have stopped their production,” NBC quoted one US official as saying.

While Pyongyang has suspended its missile and nuclear tests, the official said, “there is absolutely unequivocal evidence that they are trying to deceive the US.”

The only uranium enrichment spot North Korea has acknowledged publicly is in Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang, but reports of secret facilities have surfaced.

Last week, the respected 38 North website said recent satellite imagery showed that not only were operations continuing at Yongbyon, the North was also carrying out infrastructure works.

US officials have been vague or dismissive when asked whether Pyongyang has provided a full and detailed accounting of its nuclear program and arsenal — a requirement if monitors are to reliably monitor its destruction.

Experts say they fear Washington may accept a lukewarm deal centered exclusively on Yongbyon but disregarding known underground sites.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said he plans to meet with Kim to “flesh out” details of the disarmament promise, but has insisted North Korea is serious.

“There’s a lot of work between here and there. My team is already doing it. I’ll likely travel back before too terribly long,” the top US diplomat said in June.

US Defense Secretary James Mattis has reassured East Asian allies that the US commitment to Seoul is “ironclad” — despite Trump’s unilateral suspension of military exercises with South Korea and his warm words for a North Korean leader widely viewed as a brutal dictator.

Officers cordoned off the property in the north of the capital where the bodies of seven female and four male victims were discovered early Sunday morning.

“Ten of the 11 family members were found hanging when we reached the house. The last, a 75-year-old female, was dead on the floor,” a Delhi police official said.

“It is still too early (to know what happened). It is an ongoing investigation and we haven’t ruled out anything.”

A police statement drew attention to the family’s spiritual beliefs.

“During search of the house, certain handwritten notes have been found which point towards observance of some definite spiritual, mystical practices by the whole family,” the statement said.

“Coincidentally, these notes have strong similarity with the manner in which the mouths, eyes etc of the deceased were tied and taped,” it added.

The police said that the house had not been robbed or ransacked, and detectives await the results of post mortem examinations on the bodies.

The dead included two brothers, their wives, five children and a 77-year-old woman. The youngest to die were two 15-year-old brothers.

Local news reports said a neighbour made the grisly discovery after checking on the family after they failed to open their shop.

Their bodies were hanging from an iron grill in the ceiling.

Police are questioning neighbours and scanning CCTV footage in the area for leads.

    Supported by a youth movement with links to the nation’s ruling party, more than 23,000 people took part in the six-month weaving marathon outside Phnom Penh’s Royal Palace.

Thousands of young people then rolled out the krama along a street in the capital Sunday for a visiting Guinness official to measure the garment.

“With 1,149.8 meters, you have set a new Guinness World Record!” Swapnil Dangarikar, a Guinness adjudicator, told a large cheering crowd.

Long-serving Prime Minister Hun Sen earlier gave his own blessing to the campaign by weaving a few strands of thread into the scarf.

Youngest son Hun Many, a fast-rising potential successor to his father, represented the 65-year-old premier at Sunday’s event.

“This Guinness World Record is for all Cambodians,” he said at the event.

In recent years Hun Sen has tried hard to court the nation’s youth, launching a Facebook page and displaying a lighter, more approachable side in public.

The Guinness event comes just weeks before a highly controversial election that Hun Sen, who has ruled for 33 years, is poised to win after backing the dissolution of the opposition party last year.

Analysts say the prime minister is also trying to build a political dynasty by priming his three sons in leadership positions.

His eldest son Hun Manet was on Saturday promoted to two senior and powerful military posts while his second son Hun Manit is the head of a powerful military intelligence unit.//AFP

The 41-year-old man said he did not elope with his third wife. Instead the marriage was agreed upon by the girl’s parents who had attended the wedding ceremony at Sungai Golok, southern Thailand on June 18.

He promised that he will obtain the marriage certificate of his wife in five years when she turns 16 before they live together.

“I am disappointed by the baseless and ridiculous accusations thrown at me on social media because I married my third wife.

“I am looking at this issue carefully to take legal action because of these inaccurate accusations,” he said when met at his house in Kampung Lalang, Kuala Betis on Sunday (June 1).

He also pointed out that before the marriage, he had met with her parents and together agreed to have a suspended marriage.

A suspended marriage is when a couple gets married but they do not live together for a certain period as agreed upon by the groom and bride’s family.

He also denied accusations that his marriage was breaking apart as his first and second wives have asked for a divorce.

He added that both his wives have never voiced their intention to seek a divorce and had instead accepted his marriage to his third wife.

Read also :

Child bride a serious matter : Malaysian deputy premier

Malaysian man takes Thai girl, 11, as third wife

“Anyone who has knowledge of such marriages should report it to the nearest Welfare Department.

“We must make sure there is no discrimination or coercion in this marriage, especially towards the child,” she told reporters here.

“Our officers have gone to the house and met with the girl’s mother.

She said she was looking at the case from several aspects, such as whether poverty, education level or the family of the girl led to her getting married at such a tender age.

In Petaling Jaya, women groups and social activists lambasted the 41-year-old man for taking the girl as his third wife and called on the authorities to act.

Read also : Malaysian man takes Thai girl, 11, as third wife

They urged the Government to take legislative action to put an end to child marriage in the country.

The Joint Action Group for Gender Equality (JAG) said this must be done by raising the marriageable age to 18.

It said Muslim-majority countries that have raised the minimum age of marriage include Algeria (19), Bangladesh (18 for women and 21 for men), Morocco (18) and Turkey (18).

“The solemnisation of the marriage, which allegedly took place in Thailand, also demonstrates loopholes in our legal system that can be taken advantage of by men to take on more wives without the consent of their wives.

According to JAG, this marriage did not nullify the fact that sexual relations with a child below 16 years is statutory rape.

It also said that child marriage placed obstacles on a girl’s formal education as there would be expectations that she should take care of the household and start a family.

JAG said the marriage violated Articles 3 and 24 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child which outlined that the interests of the child be the primary consideration in any action by the authorities.

Social activist Syed Azmi Alhabshi, who highlighted the case on Facebook, said the act was exploitation at the maximum level.

“What is the stand of the country, especially the religious authorities, on this? We cannot just let it be because the girl is not Malaysian.

“In this case, the religious authorities are not in the picture yet because they allegedly got married in Thailand.

“What about her rights?” he asked, saying that he had spoken to one of the man’s two wives, relatives and neighbours, and they were stunned as well.

He also raised concerns that many social media users actually sided with the man and blamed the two wives for embarrassing their husband.

The Women, Family and Community Development Ministry, in a statement, said there was no record in the courts or the Gua Musang Religious Office permitting the marriage.

It added it was unlawful for parents to marry off their children, who were under the legal minimum age, without written consent from a Syariah court’s judge.

It is an offence under Section 40 of the Kelantan Islamic Family Law Enactment, and the individuals involved could be fined up to RM1,000 or jailed up to six months, or both, if found guilty.