内容摘要：Camara said she doesn’t usually handle the burning herself; that task is typically left to men. But she and other women regularly mix and shape the mercury amalgam with no protection. One of her children suffers from frequent stomachaches, though she hasn’t noticed any other symptoms. Still, the risks loom.

Camara said she doesn’t usually handle the burning herself; that task is typically left to men. But she and other women regularly mix and shape the mercury amalgam with no protection. One of her children suffers from frequent stomachaches, though she hasn’t noticed any other symptoms. Still, the risks loom.

A group of people fills the sidewalk outside a restaurant as they share dishes made from rice in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, on Saturday, Jan. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)Changing centuries-old forms of rice farming is expensive, and even though methane is a more potent cause of global warming than carbon dioxide, it only receives 2% of climate financing, Ajay Banga, the World Bank’s president, told the

Combating methane emissions is the “one rare, clear area” where low-cost, effective and replicable solutions exist, Banga said. The World Bank is supporting Vietnam’s efforts and has begun helping the Indonesian government to expand climate resilient farming as a part of more than a dozen projects to reduce methane worldwide.The hope is that more countries will follow, though there is no “one-size-fits-all,” said Lewis H. Ziska, a professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University. “The one commonality is that water is needed,” he said, adding that different methods of planting and irrigation can help manage water better.Growing more genetically diverse rice varieties would also help because some are more resilient to excess heat or require less water, while others might even emit less methane, he said.

Nguyen Van Nhut, director of the rice export company Hoang Minh Nhat, said its suppliers are using varieties of rice that can thrive even when the water is briny and the heat is extreme.Now, the business is adapting to the unseasonal rains that make it harder to dry the rice, adding to risks from mold or insect damage. Typically, rice is dried in the sun immediately after harvest, but Nhut said his company has drying facilities in their packaging factory and also will install machinery to dry the grains closer to the fields.

“We don’t know which month is the rainy season, like we did before,” he said.

A farmer sprays fertilizer onto the rice fields in Long An province in southern Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)Many ultimately settled in Southern California’s Orange County in an area now known as “Little Saigon,” not far from Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, where the first refugees were airlifted upon reaching the U.S. The diaspora now also has significant populations in Virginia, Texas and Washington state, as well as in countries including France and Australia. Still, the community in Southern California comprises the largest and most well-established Vietnamese population anywhere outside Vietnam.

Memories of Wednesday’s anniversary of the fall of Saigon — the South Vietnamese city renamed Ho Chi Minh City by the communists — has conjured up mixed feelings from grief and resentment to honor and pride in the diaspora here.Hung Vu, 73, a former South Vietnamese army officer who left the country in 1975, works at his army surplus store in the Little Saigon neighborhood of Westminster, Calif., April 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Hung Vu, 73, a former South Vietnamese army officer who left the country in 1975, works at his army surplus store in the Little Saigon neighborhood of Westminster, Calif., April 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)A woman walks past a “1975" installation in the parking lot of Asian Garden Mall as the sun sets behind it in the Little Saigon neighborhood of Westminster, Calif., April 21, 2025. The display marks the year of the fall of Saigon. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)