About 20 artists from the US Southwest Symphony Orchestra will play with Vietnamese artists in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City from March 11-21 and then in Pasadena and Los Angeles from April 15-May 4.

World gastronomy festival 2010 will be held in the southern coastal province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau from July 21-25.

A book entitled “Traces of Indian culture in Vietnam” by Indian writer G.Sharma has been made available to the Indian public.

The Ascending Dragon Music Festival will kick off this week in Hanoi with musicians from the Grammy Award-winning Southwest Chamber Music orchestra and members of the Vietnam National Academy of Music (VNAM).

Hanoi, Hue and Ho Chi Minh City will hold various events to celebrate the 2010 International Francophone Day which is scheduled to run from mid March to early April this year.

A wide range of cultural and sport activities will be held in the northern province of Phu Tho to mark the Hung Kings’ death anniversary and the Hung Temple Festival in 2010.

A celebration of Vietnamese cinema has been planned for next week to honour Vietnamese film talents.

Around 10 provinces will attend the 7th Culture, Sports and Tourism Festival for Ethnic Groups in the Northwestern Region to be held in the northern province of Phu Tho from April 14-17.

Choi voi (Adrift), directed by Bui Thac Chuyen won the Bronze Taiga at the 8th international film festival in Khanty-Mansiysk city, Russia.

The stone steles of doctoral candidates in the Le-Mac dynasties (1442-1779) have been recognized as part of the World’s Documentary Heritage.

A special concert in commemoration of the 200th birthday of talented Polish composer Federich Chopin will start at 8pm on March 12 in the Hanoi Opera House.

Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Sinh Hung has approved the opening of the Thang Long Royal Citadel Relic Site for visitors on the occasion of the 1000th anniversary of Thang Long-Hanoi.

A new exhibition is taking place at the Bui Gallery in downtown Hanoi to showcase the underlying mysteries on the city.

The Hanoi Craft Week 2010, entitled “A thousand years of quintessence” is taking place at the Friendship Cultural Palace in Hanoi with the participation of 500 craft villages.

New titles by both local and international writers will be a treat that avid readers look forward to the opening of the sixth Ho Chi Minh Book Fair later this month.

The Republic of Korea’s conductor Lim Jun-o and violinist Paik Jae-jin will perform with the HCM City Ballet Symphony Orchestra and Opera in a concert at HCM City’s Opera House on March 9.

HCM City art lovers are in for a treat with two new exhibitions, one of which displays works by 44 women painters to greet International Women’s Day on March 8.

A group of US students from Loyola Chicago University will go to Ho Chi Minh City during the fall semester from September-December to attend lectures on Vietnam’s culture, history, society, economy and politics.  

With 12,823 Vietnamese students in the US, Vietnam is one of the top 10 countries with the largest number of students in the US, according to the International Institute of Education (IIE).

Five Vietnamese short films will be chosen for screening at the 5th Cinema Symposium at the University of California at Los Angeles on April 18.  

Authorities of Italy’s Florence province and its cities of Trento, Milan and Genoa have pledged to actively celebrate the millennium anniversary of Thang Long-Hanoi.  

Educators and experts have called for reforms in the administration of local universities as a necessary step to improve the quality of education for the 2009-10 academic year.

An ancient Cham tower has been discovered in Ban Binh district in the southern province of Binh Thuan, said Nguyen Xuan Ly, director of the provincial museum.

Japan will provide funding for a project on upgrading displays and audiovisual equipment for the museum of animals of the University of Natural Sciences.

An exhibition showcasing films that highlight the image of Vietnamese women in wartime and in the process of national reconstruction opened on March 5 in Hanoi.

The management board of the Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park said that film makers from the US prestigious National Geographic magazine will shoot a film about the Son Dong grotto, the largest one in the National Park, starting on March 11.

The film Choi voi (Adrift), directed by Bui Thac Chuyen, is being shown at a Film Festival in Beijing, China.

The Australian consulate in Ho Chi Minh City and the city of Melbourne announced results of the latter’s 2010 Young Artist Grants Programme for Vietnamese artist on March 4.

The HCM City-based Vietbooks and Vietnam News Agency’s Publishing House have released a collection of Vietnamese records.

On March 4, 1,000 Vietnamese entrepreneurs joined a crowd of 3,000 people at Bai Dinh pagoda, the largest in Southeast Asia, to pray for the country’s peace and development.