Killer cold snap in Vietnam...

Global warming hits again...

Record-setting cold weather has killed more than 8,000 cattle and 100,000 hectares of paddy rice in northern Vietnam since mid-January, officials said Tuesday. Most of the cattle have died in northern mountainous provinces, where temperatures during the month-long cold spell have sometimes dropped to below zero Celsius, a rarity in Vietnam.

"We fear that the number of cattle killed by coldness and shortage of food in northern provinces will keep rising in the coming days," said Hoang Kim Giao, director of the Ministry of Agriculture's Livestock Department.

The cold spell, which the National Hydrometeorology Forecast Center says is the longest ever in Vietnam, has also killed up to 100,000 hectares of the winter-spring crop of paddy rice throughout the northern provinces.