What you need to know in Vietnam today:

Society

-- Many state officials reaching their age of retirement in southern Binh Phuoc, An Giang, and Tien Giang Provinces have been sent to the U.S., Canada, Hong Kong for learning their models to manage lottery and sports betting.

-- The operator of the Mien Dong (Eastern) Bus Station in Ho Chi Minh City is planning to use 14,045 buses to carry 359,000 passengers during the ten days ahead of the Lunar New Year festival, which is to come in two months and a half.

-- Strong winds in the past days have moved thousands of cubic meters of soil and sand to block the Da Rang port in Tuy Hoa, which is the capital city of the south-central province of Phu Yen.

-- Fourteen Vietnamese fishermen have been repatriated to Vietnam by Thai authorities after they had been caught fishing in the waters of Thailand.

Business

-- Mai Van Ha, director of Hoa Phat Steel Company, said Vietnamese authorities should launch a dumping investigation into steel imported from China.

-- Experts have said that it is not easy for Vietnamese enterprises to export goods to the ASEAN market with a 600 million population because of similarities in the production capacity of regional nations.

-- Vietnam is forecast to lack 500,000 employees in information technology by 2020, according to the recruitment company VietnamWorks.

Education

-- The vocational training center of Tra Bong District in the central province of Quang Ngai was built at a cost of VND32 billion (US$1.4 million) but it has been left almost empty for three years for having no learners. The center is designed to receive 1,200 learners a year but it has merely trained over 1,400 learners in the past three years.

International

-- Englishman Len Aldis, who made efforts for years to support and struggle for the benefits of Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange/dioxin, died on November 27 at 85. Many Vietnamese army generals, doctors, and state officials have expressed their deep regret and respect for the venerable man.