An initiative for managing natural disasters was introduced on Friday in the context of increasing extreme weather events in Việt Nam.

The College of Business Administration and Management signed an agreement on November 23 for offering "double vocational training" for Vietnamese students in Germany with German non-profit education and training organisation SBH Group.

Việt Nam’s agricultural sector should focus on developing the economic value of domestic plant varieties by ensuring their output and protecting branding, instead of importing large amounts of other plant varieties. Otherwise, typical and valuable local species will disappear, experts have warned.

Việt Nam has a great opportunity to use information technology in teaching English since 70 per cent of the country’s population use the internet and broadband internet connection is available in every village, Assoc Prof Dr Nguyễn Văn Long, vice rector of the University of Foreign Language Studies, said yesterday.

The Quảng Nam People’s Committee collaborated with other functional forces to organise rehabilitation exercises for radiation and other nuclear incidents yesterday.

The Ministry of Education and Training recently proposed raising teachers’ salaries, but it’s unclear whether this will be approved given the small portion of the State budget spent on education, according to experts.

Statistics from countries whose senior citizens continue working show no increase in unemployment rate of young workers, an official of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in Việt Nam said.

Twelve technology transfer contracts worth more than US$10 million have been signed among scientific application centres nationwide and foreign partners at the technology demonstration and connection conference (TechDemo) in Da Nang, the Department for Technology and Science Application and Promotion under the Ministry of Science and Technology said.

It is estimated that Việt Nam has lost VNĐ45,000 billion (US$2 billion) due to natural disasters this year, Nguyễn Đỗ Anh Tuấn, director of the Institute of Policy and Strategy for Agriculture and Rural Development (IPSARD) under the Ministry of Agricultural and Rural Development (MARD), said.