(VOVworld) - I’m reading an interesting letter from 61-year-old Lauri Niemi of Finland. He lives in a Helsinki surburb called Laajasalo, which actually is an island in the Gulf of Finland. “This is a quiet, green place to live. I’m recently divorced so I have a lot of time for my radio hobby. Besides D’Xing and radio I collect books. DX-ing or trying to catch foreign radio stations, has been my main hobby since 1968. That is 46 years now. In that time I have heard and identified about 1,200 stations from 205 countries.”

Today is August 19th. Vietnamese people inside and outside Vietnam are jubilantly celebrating the 70th anniversary of the August Revolution, August 19 and National Day, September 2.

A: First on our show today, we’d like to acknowledge letters from Abdukarim Ahmed Ali from Libya. This week, he sent us a batch of letters reporting listening to our broadcasts from June 13 to 23. Abdukarim listened to our programs on the frequency of 12005 khz from 01 to 0130 UTC and rated SINPO at all 4s for all programs.

(VOVworld) - Recently we’ve received more emails from listeners than post mails. But that doesn’t mean the number of letters from our loyal listeners is dwindling. We regularly receive letters from Yoshito Matsumoto, Masaru Sekimoto, and Fumito Hokamura of Japan, Chris Jenkins of the US, Grant Skinner of the UK, and Gordon Charland of Canada. With their reception reports, they often send us beautiful postcards of landscapes in their countries.

A: We’d like to say hello today to Mogire Machuki of Kenya. In an email to VOV this week, he wrote: “Greetings from Kisii Kenya, my pleasure connecting with VOV, it’s incredible, amazing. Your website is always rich in ideas and I’m so thankful for discovering VOV after so many years. Cheers”.

(VOVworld) - A number of youth festivals have been and will be held in many localities in Vietnam involving a large number of young people from many countries. These activities have drawn the interest of our listeners who want to know whether students from their country participated.

(VOVworld) - The contest “What do you know about Vietnam?” has closed. On the June 30 deadline, we received from John Rutledge of China; Muhammad Ibrar, Abiha Fatima, and Hamad Kiani of Pakistan; Saroj Bharti, Soumya Bhattacharjee, Ratan Kumar Paul, Aslam Khan, Jayanta Chakrabarty, Bidhan Chandra Sanyal, and Adita Prithika of India; Grant Skinner of the UK; and Iyed Ben Brahim of Tunisia.

B: The main educational goals in Vietnam are improving people’s general knowledge, training quality human resources and fostering and nurturing talent. With one of the highest GDP growth rates in Asia, Vietnam is currently trying to overhaul its education system to maintain its rapid economic growth.

A: First on our show today, we’d like to thank you all for participating in VOV’s Contest “What do you know about Vietnam?” which closed on Tuesday. Last week, we received a large number of impressive entries.

(VOVworld) - The deadline for VOV’s contest “What do you know about Vietnam?” is drawing near. The number of entries received by our office in recent days has been higher than in the past weeks.