Fourteen days across the Atlantic, perched on a ship’s rudder | Why are Vietnam’s schools so good? | China wants to choose the next Dalai Lama. He has other plans

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You Might Like � � � You Might Like � � � � � � � � � Don't like ads? Go ad-free with TradeBriefs Premium Fourteen days across the Atlantic, perched on a ship's rudder    Four Nigerian stowaways set out for Europe on the rudder of a tanker. They had no idea they were bound for Brazil, and a two-week ocean voyage that would nearly kill them. A little after midnight on 27 June, Roman Ebimene Friday gathered up the food he had been collecting for a few months and set out in the dark for the large commercial port in the city of Lagos, Nigeria. Earlier that day, Friday had spotted a 620-foot (190m) tanker docked at the port and decided that it would be the ship to deliver him to Europe. Friday was aiming for the tanker's rudder - the only accessible point on its massive hull for a person who isn't supposed to be aboard. There was no way to bridge the gap from the dock to the rudder, other than convince a fisherman to ferry him across. "He was a holy man, that fisherman," Friday recalled. "He did not ask for money. He could see that I wanted to leave." Continued here Why are Vietnam's schools so good?    Ho Chi Minh, the founding father of Vietnam, was clear about the route to development. “For the sake of ten years’ benefit, we must plant trees. For the sake of a hundred years’ benefit, we must cultivate the people,” was a bromide he liked to trot out. Yet despite years of rapid economic growth, the country’s GDP per person is still only $3,760, lower than in its regional peers, Malaysia and Thailand, and barely enough to make the average Vietnamese feel well-nurtured. Still, Ho Chi Minh was alluding to a Chinese proverb extolling the benefits of education, and on that front Vietnam’s people can have few complaints. Their children go through one of the best schooling systems in the world, a status reflected in outstanding performances in international assessments of reading, maths and science. The latest data from the World Bank show that, on aggregate learning scores, Vietnamese students outperform not only their counterparts in Malaysia and Thailand but also those in Britain and Canada, countries more than six times richer. Even in Vietnam itself, student scores do not exhibit the scale of inequality so common elsewhere between the genders and different regions. A child’s propensity to learn is the result of several factors—many of which begin at home with parents and the environment they grow up in. But that is not enough to explain Vietnam’s stellar performance. Its distinctive secret lies in the classroom: its children learn more at school, especially in the early years. Continued here You Might Like � � � � � � � � � China wants to choose the next Dalai Lama. He has other plans    The boy’s existence had been little more than a rumour. When he appeared during a ceremony in March on a small throne below the Dalai Lama, the ageing leader of Tibetan Buddhism, the monks and nuns in the audience didn’t seem to recognise him. The boy, about eight years old with short black hair, wore a copper-tinted robe with oversized cuffs covering his hands and – as if to add to the mystery – a white mask over his face. Midway through the ceremony, held in Dharamsala, the north Indian refuge for Tibetan exiles, the Dalai Lama paused and gestured nonchalantly toward the boy: “We have the reincarnation of Khalkha Jetsun Dhampa Rinpoché of Mongolia with us today.” This was, in the world of Tibetan Buddhism, a mic-drop moment. The last Jetsun Dhampa – one of the religion’s most important figures – died in 2012. But the significance of the announcement was not only religious. The Dalai Lama had managed to outmanoeuvre China in the geopolitical chess game of reincarnation. Seven years ago, the Dalai Lama told a press conference in Mongolia that he was convinced Jetsun Dhampa’s reincarnation had been born in the country. “However, the boy is very young right now,” he said, “so there is no need for haste in making an announcement.” The Chinese government, which claims sole authority over all Tibetan Buddhist reincarnations, was incensed. It closed its main border crossing with Mongolia and delayed loan negotiations with the cash-strapped country. Continued here

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