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France and Italy, by defeating strong opponents, have secured the highest scores and will compete for the title on the final night of the Da Nang International Fireworks Festival (DIFF) 2023. The festival is themed ‘The World Without Distance’ and Ngo Thi Kim Yen, the vice chairwoman of the Da Nang municipal administration and head of the organizing board, has announced that the prize value has been doubled for this year’s winners. The champions will receive a prize of US$20,000 and the runners-up will be awarded a US$10,000 prize. Eight teams from Vietnam, Finland, Canada, France, Australia, Italy, Poland, and the UK have participated in DIFF 2023. Yen admits that it was a difficult task to select the two best teams for the final night due to the exceptional performances of all the participants. However, France and Italy stood out with their impressive displays, thus earning their spot in the final night Vietnam Television’s channel 1 (VTV1) will broadcast the final night of D...

Across the country, streets are decked out with statues of felines and shops are stocked full of cat-themed decorations, popular gifts during Vietnamese New Year, known as Tet. Vietnam and neighbouring China share 10 of the zodiac calendar’s 12 signs — the rat, tiger, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog and pig. But the Vietnamese honour the cat instead of the rabbit, and the buffalo instead of the ox. There are a host of theories to explain why the Vietnamese plumped for the cat. Nguyen Hieu Tin, an expert on traditional Vietnamese culture, said the answer may lie in the rice fields prized by farmers. “Rice is a huge part of Vietnam’s agriculture, but with the threat of many rats in the fields, the cats (which can hunt them) are a popular animal for the Vietnamese,” he told AFP. “Another explanation is that the Vietnamese don’t want to observe two years with a similar animal. They see the mouse and the rabbit as being closely linked,” Tin said. There is also a...