U.S. offers academic fellowships for local youth

The U.S. Mission in Vietnam is seeking candidates for the 2016 Young Southeast Asian Initiative (YSEALI) Academic Fellows on Civic Engagement and Social Entrepreneurship & Economic Development.

Vietnamese citizens between the ages of 18 and 25, full-time undergraduate students or those who have graduated from college, university, or other institutions of higher learning who demonstrate strong leadership qualities and potential in their university, place of work, and an interest in community service and volunteerism, and have a good command of English, are invited to apply for the program. 

Details about how to apply, and application form, are available at http://vietnam.usembassy.gov/yseali_academic_fellows.html. The application deadline is 5 p.m. on Monday, October 26, 2015.

YSEALI is President Obama’s initiative to strengthen leadership development and networking in ASEAN, deepen engagement with young leaders on key regional and global challenges, and advance people-to-people ties between the United States and young and emerging Southeast Asian leaders. 

Funded by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the YSEALI Academic Fellows is an intensive academic program whose purpose is to provide groups of fellows with a deeper understanding of the United States, while simultaneously enhancing their leadership skills.

Ho Giao, a farming hero, dies

Labour Hero Ho Giao, who was the inspiration behind various literary works, passed away on October 14. 

Well-known farmer Ho Giao, who figured in many literary works by Vietnamese writers, passed away on October 14 due to old age in his homeland in Quang Ngai Province.

He was 85 years old.

He was the only farmer to be awarded the title of Labour Hero twice -- in 1966 and 1986 -- for his work in raising cattle.

Giao was born into a farmer family in Tinh Son Commune in the central Quang Ngai Province's Son Tinh District. At the age of 13, he worked as a cowhand for various rich families in the province. 

At the age of 18, he joined the revolutionary troops to fight the French invaders. He then worked as a professional cattle raiser in Ba Vi Agriculture Farm in the 1960s. Soon, he became a good example of a successful farmer with his special way of raising milk cows. He was bestowed the title of Labour Hero by the state in 1966 and 1986, when he controlled a herd of 1,000 buffaloes that came from India. 

His unique contribution to the country's agricultural sector was the inspiration behind various characters in prose and poetry works, such as a poem entitled Gap Anh Ho Giao (A Meeting with Ho Giao) by poet To Huu, and a song entitled Bai Ca Anh Ho Giao (A Song on Ho Giao) by composer Nhat Lai.

His life was the inspiration behind two documentaries, entitled Chan Dung Mot Anh Hung (Portrait of a hero) by director Dinh Anh Dung, released in 1988, and Nguoi Binh Thuong (An Ordinary Man) by Quang Ngai Television Station in 2008, and a movie entitled Co Xanh Im Lang (Quiet Green Grass) by director Nguyen Thuoc.

A reading practice essay, entitled Dan Be Cua Anh Ho Giao (Ho Giao's Calves) by writer Phuong Vu, has been part of the Vietnamese language course book for second-grade students for dozens of years. 

Cable theft causes highway chaos in Lao Cai

Some cables and materials of Noi Bai-Lao Cai Highway's lighting system have been stolen since early this year, the operation and maintenance company under the Vietnam Expressway Corporation said.

The stolen cables and materials were installed at intersections in Cam Duong Town and Xuan Giao Commune in Bao Thang District in the northern mountainous Lao Cai Province.

The lighting system was not working following the theft, causing public and traffic chaos, a spokesperson of the company said.

The company's guards often patrolled the hot spots of thefts, but they faced several difficulties as the thieves collectively beat them up, the spokesperson said.

The company plans to join hands with Lao Cai Province authorities and other provinces and cities through which the highway passes to raise people's awareness about protecting the route. They would also consider strict punishment for the guilty persons, the spokesperson said. 

House blast kills one, injures two

One person died and two were injured in a gas explosion that destroyed three houses in the northern Nam Dinh Province at 8.30pm yesterday.

The three houses, numbered 13, 15 and 17, located next to each other in Tran Dang Ninh Ward's Doan Tran Nghiep Street in Nam Dinh Province.

Neighbours in the area said they heard a loud bang and ran out of their homes. They saw house number 15 completely engulfed in flames and the house owner, Toan, running out with his body also covered in flames.

The Nam Dinh police, fire police and local authorities rushed to the spot immediately and took Toan to hospital, but he died from severe injuries.

Chairman of Nguyen Dang Ninh Ward's People Committee Tran Dang Thong told VnExpress that the Toan family's gas tank had been leaking. The stove caught fire when food was being cooked, leading to an explosion.

"The two injured owners of house numbers 13 and 17 were also taken to hospital. One of them suffered only minor injuries and returned home last night," Thong said.

The explosion destroyed house number 15 completely, and all assets inside were burned down. The other two neighbouring houses were badly damaged.

The Nam Dinh authorities have temporarily cut electricity supply to this area to ensure people's safety. They have also sealed off the site to investigate the cause of the incident. 

Ha Noi to inspect old villas

The Ha Noi People's Council has asked the municipal People's Committee to check the quality of all old and downgraded villas and residential quarters in the city.

The request followed the incident where a 300sq.m part of a State-owned villa built by the French in Ha Noi 110 years ago collapsed all of a sudden on September 22, claiming two lives and injuring six.

The checks will focus on the buildings being built before 1954, especially the ones with a high risk of collapsing.

Ha Noi now has more than 1,200 old villas which were built before 1954, according to the Ha Noi People's Committee.

New bridges benefit ethnic minority people in Kon Tum

The Ministry of Construction has nearly finished the construction of five suspension bridges in Tu Mo Rong and Dak To districts in the Central Highlands province of Kon Tum after three months of work, benefiting more than 5,000 locals, mostly from the Xe Dang ethnic minority group. 

The steel and iron bridges, which are 2-metres in surface width and at least 100-metres in length, had a total investment of 28 billion VND (1.25 million USD). 

They are part of a Ministry of Construction project to build 186 civil suspension bridges in 28 mountainous provinces in the northern, central and Central Highlands regions. 

All old suspension bridges in the two districts were destroyed more than six years ago during devastating floods and storms, causing numerous difficulties in the travel and production of locals and nearly isolating the localities in the rainy season. 

A Lok, a local in Nang Nho 1 village, Dak Sao commune, Tu Mo Rong district, expressed his delight that the new bridges enable villagers to travel more safely and transport their farm produce to other localities. 

According to Tran Thanh Hai, Vice Director of Project Management Unit 1 under the Kon Tum Department of Construction, a training course will be held for officials in communes where the bridges are located on how to operate, manage and maintain the bridges to ensure their durability.

Elderly issues and response policies spotlighted

With a rapidly aging domestic population, local and international officials are calling for proper comprehensive preparation. 

The National Assembly’s Committee for Social Affairs coordinated with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) to organise a conference on October 15 on policies and laws on population and the elderly. 

Vietnam currently has 9.4 million elderly people, equivalent to 10.5 percent of the country’s total population, but the rate of the elderly with health insurance is low at just 55 percent. 

Moreover, only 50 percent of all hospitals have geriatrics divisions and dementia has not received enough attention. 

The UNFPA said Vietnam has had a large aging population stage since 2011 and is one of the countries with the highest population aging rate; the elderly will account for 23 percent of the population by 2040. 

Le Bach Duong, Head of the Population and Development Group and UNFPA representative in Vietnam, said policies and programmes on the elderly need to ensure and execute all basic human rights. 

Comprehensive programmes and policies to ensure social security and welfare for the elderly are needed, said Duong. 

The elderly need access to basic services such as education, health, and life environment as well as a long-term care system to reduce the cost of treating diseases, he said. 

Nguyen Van Lieu, Deputy Director of the General Statistics Office of Vietnam, said relevant research studies revealed many older people depend economically on their relatives and suffer from weak health or chronic or pernicious diseases. 

Socio-economic development policies, especially on social and health insurance, need to be revised to suit realities, said Lieu, adding that the Government needs to have a strategy to build health facilities to meet healthcare models for the elderly. 

Some opinions said that it is critical to boost law enforcement supervision of the elderly – especially of regulations caring for the elderly, exempt fees and revise the Law on the Elderly.

Software to streamline coach stations

The directorate for roads in Vietnam plans to use a coach station management software programme nationwide following a successful trial in the central city of Da Nang.

This is part of a strategic project on coach station management, said deputy head of the directorate Nguyen Van Quyen.

Quyen said that the application of technology in the management of coach stations, which was first adopted by Da Nang bus station in 2013, is ready for other stations to use.

"The programme is expected to help ensure consistent management over coach stations and connectivity between stations," Quyen said.

According to Da Nang Transportation and Bus Station Management Company, the application of technology helps ensure smoother ticket sales, parking and tracking of coaches.

The programme provides information on coach operators, coach routes and fees. It helps save labour, increases transparency and reduces losses in the fee-collecting process.

The directorate for roads plans to adopt the programme at 200 of the 457 coach stations nationwide.

Vietnam’s agricultural achievements are significant: FAO representative

The achievements that Vietnam has gained in agriculture is significantly ensuring food security and implementing the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals, heard an event to mark the 35th World Food Day in northern Lao Cai province on October 15. 

The outcomes were attributable to the farmers’ engagement in cultivating activities and application of new technologies to cope with climate change, said Jong-Ha Bae, a representative from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). 

Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Le Quoc Doanh thanked the international communities, including the FAO, for their technical assistance in agriculture for Vietnam. 

The theme of the 2015 World Food Day, which is “Social Protection and Agriculture: Breaking the Cycle of Rural Poverty”, holds significance to Vietnam, especially when the country is striving to build hi-tech agriculture to ensure sustainable food security, rural modernisation, and poverty reduction, he said. 

He noted that Vietnam has around 10 million farm households with over 30 million rural workers, accounting for some 70 percent of the country’s labour force and contributing 20 percent to the national gross domestic product (GDP). 

Vietnam is among the global leading exporters of farm produce such as rice, pepper, cashew nut, cassava, tea, rubber and seafood. 

The proportion of hunger slid to 6 percent in the previous year from 58 percent in 1993, while the ratio of malnourished people dropped to 11 percent in 2014-2016 from 45.6 percent in 1990-1992. 

However, the rate of poverty in Vietnam remains high, especially in rural, remote, and ethnic minority areas, Doanh noted. 

To help farmers increase their income from agriculture, the Vietnamese Government has been carrying out a restructuring programme in the field with special focus on promoting science-technology application and increasing production value chain connection, he said. 

Vietnam is sparing no effort to establish a social welfare network to enable people from disadvantaged backgrounds to afford social insurance cards and access to social services by 2020, he added.

New Decree tackles bottleneck in fishermen ship building

Government Decree 89, valid from November 25, will address roadblocks in fishermen’s ship building ​process regulated in Decree 67, according to Pham Ngoc Tuan, Deputy Director of the Aquatic Resources Exploitation and Protection Department under the Vietnam Directorate of Fisheries.

Decree 67, which took effect in August 2014, stipulates policies in investment, credit, insurance and tax incentives in support of fishermen and ship owners, who wish to build new fishing boats, upgrade their existing boats and buy fishing and marine equipment, among others.

Tuan said extending loan terms to 16 years in Decree 89 rather than 11 years as prescribed in Decree 67 and steady working capital turnover will help ease pressure on borrowers.

Under the new decree, fishermen will get full cost support for the design of steel and new-material fishing vessels with capacities above 400 CV. In addition, it does not require new machines for upgraded models, helping bring costs down for fishermen.

Regarding Decree 67, Tuan highlighted that it has modernised the fishing fleet, improved local livelihoods and made contributions to protecting sea and island sovereignty.

However, some obstacles are turning up in this decree, including incomprehensive implementation, no regulations for the design of wood vessels and steel vessels as well as unequal beneficiary treatment between members of the Vietnam Fisheries Trade Union and members of other production teams.

According to the Vietnam Directorate of Fisheries, 775 vessels have registered new construction projects while upgrades will be made to 107 others.

About 200 credit contracts worth nearly 2 trillion VND (89.5 million USD) have been inked among relevant sides. Currently, 38 fishing vessels have become operational for offshore fishing activities.

Credit policies effective in Central Highlands

More than 94,770 households in the Central Highlands have been lifted out of poverty thanks to credit policies over the past three years. 

According to the Steering Committee for the Central Highlands Region, the poverty rate was reduced to 11.22 percent in 2015 from 18.92 percent in 2011. 

Preferential credit policies have also helped generate jobs for approximately 34,000 labourers, provided school loans for more than 53,000 underprivileged students and built over 6,000 new houses and 296,000 clean water facilities in rural and far-flung areas. 

In Dak Lak province, credit programmes have contributed to implementing the sustainable poverty alleviation target programme and ensuring political security. Its impoverished household rate fell from 14.67 percent in 2013 to 10.02 percent last year and it is expected to decrease an additional 3 percent this year. 

The Central Highlands comprises the five provinces of Kon Tum, Gia Lai, Lam Dong, Dak Nong and Dak Lak.

Desalination plant to be built on Ly Son island

A desalination plant using non-refundable aid from the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) will be built on Ly Son island, 30km off central Quang Ngai province, according to Vice Chairwoman of the Ly Son District People’s Committee.

The plant, designed to have a capacity of 2,000 cu.m per day, will be built with a total investment of 260 billion VND (11.8 million USD).

Once operational, the project will provide enough fresh water for 16,000 residents living on the island. It will ease the serious shortage of fresh water on the island during the dry season between April and May.

Ly Son currently has more than 500 wells but many of them have become saline.

The 20,000-cubic metre Thoi Loi reservoir in the island has a limited amount of water it can store for farming and daily living needs.

Ly Son district has a population of around 21,000 people. The majority of residents earn a living from fishing and farming garlic and spring onions.

Earlier, the Republic of Korea’s Doosan Vina Company donated a desalination factory with a total value of 21 billion VND (about 1 million USD) that supplies fresh water for locals in to An Binh islet commune.

Vietnam IT outsourcing conference opens in HCM City

The 2015 Vietnam IT outsourcing conference (VNITO) opened in Ho Chi Minh City on October 15 with 400 corporate executives from Vietnam and 20 other countries worldwide taking part. 

Hosted by the Quang Trung Software Park and Ho Chi Minh Computer Association (HCA), the two-day event intends to discuss IT development and outsourcing trends, trade promotion, investment and business. 

HCA General Secretary Vu Anh Tuan said VNITO is the first large-scale event held by Vietnam since the country entered the IT outsourcing market 15 years ago. It is expected to introduce Vietnamese enterprises to partners in the region and the world. 

Le Thai Hy, Director of the municipal Department of Information and Communications, called for more government incentives for IT staff, including reducing personal income taxes. 

On the occasion, 33 leading IT software outsourcing companies will be honoured in the largest, leading and best prospect business categories. 

Last year, they raked in 5.48 trillion VND (249 million USD) in earnings and are expected to enjoy a 25 percent growth in revenue this year; some of them are on track for a 145 percent growth. 

According to the 2015 report of Tholons, a leading strategic advisory firm for global outsourcing and research, Ho Chi Minh City ranks 18 th and Hanoi 20 th among the top 100 most attractive cities for software outsourcing in the world. 

The global real estate advisor Cushman & Wakefield also recently chose Vietnam as the top spot in the business process outsourcing (BPO) index for the first time.

HIV treatment cost to be covered by health insurance

Health insurance will step in to replace international provisions of antiretroviral (ARV) drugs used to treat HIV by 2017, according to an official from the Vietnam Social Insurance Fund (VSIF). 

VSIF Deputy Director Nguyen Minh Thao said health insurance will be the solution to helping HIV patients access ARV drugs after 2017. 

The fund will recommend the government allow patients to buy health insurance at their temporary residences instead of only at their permanent residences. 

The VSIF and the Ministry of Health are working on circulars to instruct the implementation of the Law on Health Insurance and the Law on HIV/AID Prevention to ensure the costs of HIV treatment are covered by health insurance, he said, adding that they will propose drug supply mechanisms via national-level concentrated bids. 

Once all the proposals are approved at the end of this year, the VSIF will begin paying the cost of ARV drugs in 2016, he stated. 

According to statistics, Vietnam has more than 227,000 people living with HIV, 71,000 of whom have progressed to full-blown AIDS. Most HIV patients live in northern provinces, the Mekong Delta and the southeast region. 

Each month, between 800 and 1,000 new HIV patients need to be treated with ARV drugs provided free-of-charge by international organisations. Since 2015, the State has increased budget for ARV drugs to 60 billion VND (2.68 million USD). 

Statistics from the Agency of HIV/AIDS Prevention under the Ministry of Health showed that only 30 percent of people living with HIV have health insurance.

HCM City to measure all households’ power consumption by 2020

By using a remotely operated system, electricity firm employees in Ho Chi Minh City will be able to record household power consumption without having to come to each home by 2020, the local power supplier said.

Such convenient consumption recording will be made under a remote measurement program that the city’s power sector has applied to over 7,600 customers that are not households during the past few years, said Nguyen Phu Vinh, head of the business department of the Ho Chi Minh City Power Corporation, which is under the state-owned Vietnam Electricity.

This program, part of the corporation’s smart power project, will be extended to those customers who are families from next year, Vinh said.

There are about two million electricity meters in the city, of which 1.8 million are being used by households, he added.

It is expected that the program will be implemented in the whole city by 2020, Nguyen Van Ly, deputy general director of the company, said.

Under the program, a small modem will be fixed to every electricity meter to transmit power consumption readings, among other necessary data, through 3G signals to servers placed at the power firms under the corporation, said Pham Duc Thanh, head of the business department of the Saigon Power Company.

Such transmission will be carried out once every 30 minutes, Thanh elaborated.

The remote measurement program will help the corporation enhance its capability to serve customers, Luan Quoc Hung, deputy head of its technical department, said.

Nguyen Phuoc Duc, deputy general director of the Southern Power Corporation, which manages 21 power firms in southern Vietnam, said it has also applied the same program to about one million out of seven million families and 40,000 out of more than 100,000 other customers.

VFF officials cleared of bribery allegations

The Ministry of Public Security has cleared two top officials of the Vietnam Football Federation (VFF) of corruption allegations, saying it found no evidence that they received bribes during a downsizing process last year.

Earlier, Nguyen Van Chuong, former director of the Young Football Players Training Center, accused VFF chairman Le Hung Dung and deputy chairman Tran Quoc Tuan of taking money from him in exchange for job security.

Chuong said he had paid Dung and Tuan VND100 million (US$4,587) each to be able to keep his job, but at the end he was still being fired in a major downsizing.

In a complaint, Chuong said he gave Tuan the money on July 15 last year, but in May, Tuan returned the money, saying he could not help. 

An undated photo shows Vietnam Football Federation's Chairman Le Hung Dung (L) and his deputy Tran Quoc Tuan

Chuong said he met Dung at the latter's house on August 28 last year to give him the money and other gifts.

In his complaint, Chuong said Tran Duy Long, a former VFF chairman, had accompanied him to Dung’s house.

Long confirmed that he and Chuong did visit Dung, who he said was sick at the time. 

However, Long said he only saw Chuong gift Dung some fruit and a clock, he said.

In July, Dung requested the Ministry of Public Security to probe the case.

Dung also instructed VFF’s Supervising Committee to launch an inspection, which then found he and Tuan innocent.

Police also said Dung and Tuan have the right to take legal action against Chuong for defamation, but the two officers did not show intention of doing so, said Nguyen Xuan Gu, VFF deputy chairman.

World Food Day marks 35th

Viet Nam and leading world food organisations yesterday celebrated the 35th World Food Day with a vow to pair nutrition and food security in order to end malnutrition and stunted growth across the country.

The celebration was held in Lao Cai Province by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN (FAO).

World Food Day's theme this year is Social Protection and Agriculture: Breaking the Cycle of Poverty. Viet Nam has made efforts to move toward its 2020 goal of forming a social protection system covering the entire population to ensure people have jobs, a minimum income and social insurance. It would also support people with difficulties, such as children with special needs, low-income households and those with disabilities to ensure access to basic social services, said MARD Deputy Minister Le Quoc Doanh.

FAO has made progress fighting global hunger and poverty in recent decades, and contributed to Viet Nam's achievement of a number of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) ahead of schedule, according to a press release. Between 2009 and 2014, more than 1 million people escaped hunger and the country's poverty rate fell to 6 per cent.

Viet Nam will continue to focus its efforts on maintaining and enhancing the MDGs, while moving toward a more sustainable and comprehensive development model.

However, ensuring these achievements are obtained for all social groups, especially vulnerable groups, remains a major challenge.

"With most poor and hungry people still living in rural areas and dependent on agriculture, twinning social protection with agricultural development programmes makes compelling sense," said JongHa Bae, Viet Nam's FAO representative. "This is why FAO chose social protection and agriculture as the theme of World Food Day this year."

Bae said the organisation was committed to helping member countries achieve this target and determined to break the cycle of rural poverty by linking social protection to improvements in agricultural production, with a backstop for when things go wrong.

Social protection programmes on their own were not enough to move people out of poverty, food insecurity or malnutrition, as they did not address the structural causes of these problems, FAO said in a statement.

Quang Binh builds houses for poor women

The Quang Binh Women's Association has built a total of 344 houses for poor single women in the province since 2008.

This was declared today at a meeting of the association, held to mark the Vietnamese Women's Day, which will fall on next Tuesday.

The association also set up nearly 1,200 models of manufacturing and trading outlets as examples for local women to study.

By June this year, nearly 86 per cent of local women had joined the association's activities.

At the meeting, standing deputy secretary of the provincial Party Committee Hoang Dang Quang asked the association to improve the training it provides to its workers, especially in poor and remote areas.

The association should also diversify its activities to attract more women to join it, he said. 

Quang Ngai recognised as second-class city

Quang Ngai city was recognised as a second-class city pursuant to a government decision announced at a ceremony held by the People's Committee of Quang Ngai province on October 15.

Since its establishment in 2005, Quang Ngai city has grown stronger with the rate of urbanisation at 46.75%, an average economic growth rate of 12.45% in the past three years, and an average income per capita of VND48.36 million (US$2,176) per year.

The poverty rate has been reduced to 4.27% with improvements in the living standards of local residents and the political and social stability.

At the ceremony, the city was presented with the Labour Order, second class in recognition of its achievements over the past time.

Speaking at the event, Chairman of Quang Ngai provincial People's Committee Tran Ngoc Cang said that the government's recognition of Quang Ngai as a second-class city has moved Quang Ngai city into a new stage of development with both advantages and challenges, requiring more efforts from the people and authorities to fulfil assigned tasks and targets.

He noted that the city administration would focus on upgrading the urban infrastructure system aligned with urban planning towards a modern, sustainable and environmentally-friendly city.

Vietnam to give foreign inmates 2 ‘days off’ every year

Foreign prisoners in Vietnam will be given two days with preferential treatment during their national holidays, in addition to enjoying the same welfare as Vietnamese inmates, a new rule says.

This new policy for foreign inmates was introduced by the central government and will take effect on November 11, 2015.

Accordingly, foreign prisoners will enjoy two days off every year, one on their nation’s traditional festival and another on the National Day of their country.

On the two preferential days, they are exempted from doing their everyday work and allowed to have the same special food rations as those intended for Vietnamese prisoners during their Tet (Lunar New Year) or other national holidays.

The new rule also stipulates that convicted foreigners will be detained and supervised separately from other inmates, and will be entitled to the same welfare as their local peers when it comes to food, clothing, accommodation, and healthcare during their jail terms.

The new policy reflects the humanitarian nature of Vietnam’s laws related to foreign prisoners, Major General Nguyen Ngoc Bang, head of the General Department of Criminal Verdict Execution and Judicial Assistance Police, under the Ministry of Public Security, told Tuoi Tre(Youth) newspaper.

In that spirit, foreign inmates should be given the rights and interests that they deserve in accordance with Vietnamese law, Major General Bang said.

Vietnamese culture shines in Greece

Vietnamese Culture-Tourism Days opened at the Megaron concert hall in Athens, Greece on October 14 (local time) as an event to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the two countries' diplomatic ties.

The programme features an exhibition entitled ‘Vietnamese culture space’ and traditional arts performances by artists from Vietnam’s national art troupe, and Vietnamese culinary advertisement.

The activities are expected to introduce Greek friends an image of a peaceful and dynamic Vietnam, its friendly people, longstanding culture, and attractive tourist attractions.

Speaking at the event, Vietnam’s Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Hoang Tuan Anh expressed his belief that the event would provide an opportunity for artists and peoples from the two countries to discover the cultures and arts of each other.

It would also contribute to deepening the friendly, traditional relations as well as solidarity, co-operation and mutual understandings between the two nations, he added.

Over 28,000 children’s paintings featuring Uncle Ho

Do Thi Linh Chi, a pupil from Tan Mai primary school in Hanoi won the first prize at an awards ceremony for the 2015 children’s painting contest ‘Uncle Ho and Children’.

With 1,586 entries, Le Ngoc Han Primary School won the collective prize of the competition.

Three months after its launch, the competition attracted 28,585 entries submitted by children aged 5-14 from across the country.

The event aimed to help children learn more about the life and career of President Ho Chi Minh, his teachings for children, as well as create an opportunity for the children to express their feelings about the late beloved leader, and show their talent in painting.

Although they only know about President Ho Chi Minh through films, photographs, historical documents and stories, children's paintings show their affection for Uncle Ho in a very warm and innocent manner.

The competition was held jointly by the Kim Dong Publishing House and Thieu Nien Tien Phong (Youth Pioneers) newspaper.

Russian literature books in Vietnamese made public

As many as seven Russian classical and modern literature books translated into Vietnamese were made public in Hanoi on October 14.

The publication of the books is in the fourth phase of the project on translating literature from Russian into Vietnamese and vice versa. 

Nguyen Xuan Thanh from the Authority of Publication, Printing and Distribution under the Ministry of Information and Communication hailed the land and people of Russia as reflected in Russian literature, saying that they have inspired generations of Vietnamese people in their past struggle for liberation and current nation development. 

The project, which began in 2012, has contributed to fostering friendship and cooperation between Vietnam and Russia, he said. 

Director of the Russian Centre of Science and Culture Elena Robertovna Zubtsova attached significance to the translation of Russian literature works into Vietnamese, saying that it helps draw more Vietnamese enthusiasts into Russian classical and modern literature. 

She praised the project achievements thus far and hoped the project would continue to provide more Russian works to libraries, schools and social organisations. 

Some of the books include renowned “Du ngoan vong quanh Chau A” (Travel around Asia) by Vyazemskyi A, featuring the beauty of the landscapes, culture and history of Vietnam in the late 19th century; “Chang ngoc” (a fool) by Dostoevskyi, reflecting the livelihood of Russian aristocrats in the 19th century; and the “Marxism and Linguistic Philosophy” (Chu nghia Marx và Triet hoc ngon ngu) by Voloshinov V. 

Under the project, 25 Russian literature books have been translated into Vietnamese.

Opera on Don Quixote presented at Vietnam National Academy of Music

A concert featuring Don Quixote, an opera by Richard Strauss for cello, viola and large orchestra will take place at Vietnam National Academy of Music in Hanoi on October 15-16.

Soprano Ha Pham Thang Long, cellist Maximilian Hornung, viola soloist Nguyen Nguyet Thu and artists of the Vietnam National Symphony Orchestra will join the show under the baton of Japanese conductor Honna Tetsuji. 

German cellist Maximilian Hornung was born in a musician’s family. When he was 22 he successfully applied for the position of the first solo cellist at the Bayrischer Rundfunk Symphony orchestra. He has been known as a so called Fruhvollendeter (a young artist who’s genius reached his climax early).  He plays as a soloist in various musical institutions, like Czech philharmonic orchestra, Vienna symphony orchestra, the Tonhallen Orchestra Zurich.

With his striking musicality, instinctive stylistic certainty and musical maturity, the young cellist Maximilian Hornung began his career when he won the German Music Council’s Competition in 2005.

He received an ECHO Klassik prize as best newcomer of the year for his first Sony CD in 2011, followed by an ECHO Klassik prize for the best cello concerto recording of the year for his recording of Dvořák’s Cello Concerto with the Bamberg Symphony under Sebastian Tewinkel in October 2012.

VNA/VNS/VOV/SGT/SGGP/TT/TN/Dantri