Politics

-- Vietnamese State President Truong Tan Sang said farewell to outgoing Dutch Ambassador Joop Scheffers during a meeting in Hanoi on Thursday.

-- Vietnam is set to commemorate the 30^th anniversary of the July 12, 1984 battle against Chinese invaders in the northern border.  

Society

-- Vietnam will hold a memorial service on Friday for 18 soldiers who lost their lives in a military helicopter crash in Hanoi on Monday.  

-- Six Vietnamese fishermen arrested by China on July 3 are detained on Hainan Island at the moment, the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Thursday in a press conference.

-- Police are looking into a case in which a mother and her infant died when she was giving birth to her child in a hospital in the central city of Hue on Wednesday.

-- A wife was found dead Wednesday at home in the southern province of Binh Duong with 14 stabs in her body while her husband died the same day after crashing his motorbike head-on into a car, local police said Thursday.

Business

-- Vietnamese aviation authorities have suspended a series of staff members of a private airline after one of its planes landed at a wrong airport on June 19. The plane landed at the Cam Ranh airport near the beachside city of Nha Trang in the central province of Khanh Hoa instead of the intended Lien Khuong airport in the Central Highlands city of Da Lat.   

Lifestyle

-- Joan Lebold Cohen, an American woman, bought a painting that describes protests against China illegally placing its Haiyang Shiyou 981 oil rig in Vietnamese waters at an exhibition in Ho Chi Minh City in June. Cohen lived in China for three years and has published many books on Chinese history, arts, and society.

Education

-- The American Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam has just awarded eight scholarships, VND10 million (US$476) each, to excellent Vietnamese students in Ho Chi Minh City. The scholarship winners will also be given a chance to intern and work at the U.S.’s II-VI group.