Police in Vietnam arrested a top provincial official on Monday (Dec 25) in an investigation into illegal sand mining, the government said. Mining sand - mainly for concrete used in construction - has boomed in Vietnam in recent years, prompting dire warnings over the environmental impact of overexploitation. Nguyen Thanh Binh, the chairman of the people's committee in An Giang province in the Mekong Delta - a hotspot for sand mining - was arrested on suspicion of abuse of power, the Ministry of Public Security said in a public announcement. Binh, 59, had "abused his power, intervened and made orders so that the Trung ... (full story)