Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet is scheduled to meet with Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican Friday, as part of his ten-day European tour, starting December 9.

The talk is set to focus on religious activities and establishing relations between Vietnam and the city state.

Relations between the two states have thawed recently on the back of delegation exchanges.

In 2007, Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung paid a visit to the Vatican; meeting again with the current pontiff.

In February this year, a delegation from the Vatican led by the Undersecretary of State for Relations with States, Pietro Parolin, made a week-long visit to Vietnam to discuss the establishment of diplomatic ties between the Vatican and Vietnam.

Triet will also visit Italy, Spain, and Slovakia during his trip.

(Source:VNA)

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has asked the Ministry of Information and Communications to conduct inspections of online websites after local media sources ran stories featuring websites hosting violent and pornographic material.

The Government has issued a seven-point programme for advancing women during the country’s national industrialisation and modernisation process in an effort to turn Vietnam into a regional leader in gender equality issues by 2020. 

More than half of Vietnamese Internet users are gamers, a Thursday conference was told.

According to the Vietnam Software Association (Vinasa), Vietnam has 12 million gamers; meanwhile, statistics by the Vietnam Internet Center shows the country has 22.2 million Internet users as of October, 2009.