Viet
Nam donates books to Norway

The Ambassador to
Norway Ta Van Thong presented 54 books focusing on traditional Vietnamese
culture, cuisine, festivals as well as music videos and films to the Deichmanske
library in the Norwegian capital city of Oslo.
This is to help the Vietnamese community in Norway gain a better understand of
their homeland.
On the occasion, Ambassador Thong thanked the library for co-operating closely
with the Vietnamese Embassy in Norway to provide books for Vietnamese readers
living in the Scandinavian country.
He also said he hoped that this will boost co-operation between the library and
publishers in Viet Nam.
Deichmanske, which was originally set up in 1785, is the largest public library
in Norway and has 16 branches in Oslo.

HSBC funds NGO
projects

HSBC Bank (Viet Nam)
yesterday, Feb 15, began receiving applications for financial support from
international and local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) under its Future
First programme.

The applicants should
be providers of education and life skills for street children, orphans and
children-in-care, as well as vocational training for underprivileged young women
in Viet Nam, the banks said in press release.

HSBC Viet Nam last
year decided to select and fund more projects using its local Corporate
Sustainability budget. In the first year of this local scheme, four projects
were funded to the tune of VND710 million.

The total budget
estimated for 2011 is VND700 million.

The key areas of focus
for Future First projects are formal education; basic early childhood, primary
and secondary education; informal education; and vocational training to give
individuals the capability, resources and opportunity to pursue their personal
and household economic goals. The projects will also offer access to need-based
counselling, the release said.

Educational projects
will benefit children below 18 years, and life skills and vocational training
projects will target youths aged from 15 to 24 years.

The application
deadline is February 28. Successful applicants will be announced by the end of
March.

Heinz launches
ketchup iPad app

The Heinz Company has
a new ketchup cooking application for the iPad, a programme developed by multi
media company Caplan.

Now available at Apple
iStores, the application features 57 easy to prepare recipes using ketchup which
include original meat, fish and vegetarian dishes.

The recipes also
include cooking instructions as well as tips and tricks on how to spice up your
favourite recipes.

Application updates
for the Ketchup Cookbook will be available each month free of charge. Though
currently only available in English, other language versions are likely to
follow.

For a preview of the
application, cooking enthusiasts can check out
or visit the nearest Apple iStore.

Online drinking
contest launched

An online contest
entitled The Cheers Challenge at drink-savvy.com has been launched as part of
the Good Choices and Good Cheers programme by Asia Pacific Breweries.

The objective of the
game is to make fun by getting as high a score as possible in 60 seconds for
each game level. There are bonus levels after Level 2 and Level 4 with bonus
trivia questions, which allow players to score more points.

In both English and
Vietnamese, the contest will continue through May, with top regional scorers
each week winning a Sony Cybershot camera and the top regional scorer each month
an Apple iPad.

The top three country
scorers from each participating country at the end of the contest will compete
in The Cheers Challenge Championship, a regional face-off in Singapore.

VietNamNet/Viet
Nam News