The Gong Culture Festival 2012 will take place on April 21st at Don Duong District, Lam Dong Province. The festival will draw the participation of 12 delegations with over 300 veteran gong artists from ethnic groups in the region. Mr. Nguyen Vu Hoang, director of Lam Dong province cultural centre, the vice organizer of the event, said, “The 12 artisan delegations this year fully represent the two major ethnic groups who speak Mon-Khmer and Ma [...]

A seminar on training and developing traditional music during integration will be held in Hanoi on April 25th and 26th by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. The seminar aims to assess: the quality of traditional music training at music training establishments nationwide over the past year; lecturers and facilities for study and research at current music training establishments; methods of traditional music training in music training establishments; current cooperation with foreign establishment in [...]

A preliminary conference to review three years of implementing the Prime Minister’s Decision on ‘Vietnam Ethnic Group Cultural Day’ (April 19) has been held during the festival, along with a conference on promoting tourism, a mountain market fair and traditional games, sports and entertainment. This is an opportunity for ethnic minority people to review obtained results and shortcomings which need to be overcome to fully implement policy, especially policies for ethnic minority groups, and people [...]

Famous Vietnamese mathematician Prof. Ngo Bao Chau has been elected to be a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s most prestigious honorary societies. Among the newly elected members are US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, director Clint Eastwood and musician Sir Paul McCartney. Prof. Chau, who teaches at the University of Chicago won the Fields Medal, the mathematics version of the Nobel Prize, in 2010. Since the [...]

State-owned Vietnam Post and Telecommunications group is seeking government permission to retain full ownership of mobile network operator MobiFone, saying that selling its stake in the company will hurt the group’s revenues. MobiFone accounted for more than 60 percent of total profits over the past five years and the company should not be privatized until 2015, news website VnExpress reported Thursday, citing a new restructuring plan prepared by the group. The group, also known as [...]

Health authorities in the central province of Quang Ngai Wednesday said 19 local people have died from an unidentified skin condition over the last 12 months. This is 11 more than the figure reported earlier by authorities in Ba To District, the disease’s epicenter. Le Han Phong, chairman of Ba To People’s Committee, said the earlier figure did not take into account the victims who had died at home. “We know about the deaths, but [...]

Vietnam is having trouble finding good staff for its planned nuclear power plants and their construction should be delayed by a couple of years for the sake of safety, an official has said. Dr Nguyen Quan, Minister of Science and Technology, told news website VnExpress in a Friday report that the construction of nuclear power plants depends largely on the human factor, which Vietnam is having difficulties with. As Vietnam’s education sector provides little nuclear [...]

Two 300-kilogram bombs left over from the Vietnam War were discovered in Ho Chi Minh City’s Tan Binh District Tuesday by workers digging at a construction site. The 1.3-meter-long bombs were found in an alley off Ly Thuong Kiet Street in a plot owned by Nguyen Thi Ngat. The workers reported to local authorities and military sappers soon turned up to unearth the bombs from about 30 centimeters under the ground. “We are yet to [...]

Many real estate companies are hopeful that the recent lifting of restrictions on home loans will help revive the sector, but they say the recovery will be slow. Le Hung, general director of Hoang Anh Housing Development, a subsidiary of Vietnam’s top real estate company Hoang Anh Gia Lai, said his company had planned to launch many new projects but was discouraged by the market slowdown. Market liquidity was weak and homebuyers could not access [...]

A report on the quality of Vietnam’s gasoline will be sent to the Prime Minister next week, but is unlikely to pinpoint the causes of hundreds of vehicle fires that have plagued the country since 2010. Inspections were launched by the Ministry of Science and Technology in January per the orders of PM Nguyen Tan Dung, after experts alleged that adulterated gasoline was probably the cause of the mysterious fires, VnExpress reported Friday. However, Nguyen [...]