The Việt Nam News Agency, abbreviated to TTXVN in Vietnamese, VNA in English, AVN in Spanish and AVI in French, is the official news service of Việt Nam. It was formally established on 15 September 1945 with the first wire service bulletin released in Vietnamese, English and French, which carried the Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Việt Nam (now the Socialist Republic of Việt Nam) read by President Hồ Chí Minh at Ba Đình Square in Hà Nội on 2 September 1945. Directly attached to the government, VNA is authorised, when necessary, to make official statements reflecting the state's points of view on important national or international issues. With a range of news reports, photos, daily bulletins, daily and weekly newspapers, magazines, pictorials, data and other publications, VNA provides information on current domestic and world events for individual readers, the mass media and research institutions operating in-country and abroad. Starting from a small agency with poor technical equipment, VNA has developed into a national information centre. With international assistance and using its own strengths, VNA's news and photo service has been gradually modernised and its telecommunication lines computerised. News stories and photos are stored electronically. VNA began its Internet wire service on 1 August 1998. It has since brought continuous online information in Vietnamese, English, French and Spanish, covering political, socio-economic, cultural, scientific and technological and other issues in Việt Nam. The agency has regional offices in Hồ Chí Minh City and Đà Nẵng (see below), as well as bureaux in all other provinces and cities throughout the country. It also has 22 overseas bureaux in Asia, Europe, Africa, America and Australia. VNA is a member of the Non-Aligned News Agency Pool (NANAP) and is a member of its Co-ordinating Committee. It is also a member of the Organisation of Asia-Pacific News Agency (OANA) and is a member of its Executive Board. VNA now has bilateral agreements on news exchange with 35 national news agencies and international press agencies. VNA issues more than 30 publications, including daily bulletins, the daily Tin Tức (News) Newspaper in Vietnamese, Việt Nam News in English, Le Courrier du Vietnam in French, the weeky Sports and Culture and World Science, Technology and Economy Journals in Vietnamese; Việt Nam Law and Legal Forum in English; monthly and quarterly reviews in Vietnamese; and Việt Nam pictorials in Vietnamese, English, French, Lao, Chinese and Spanish. VNA issues daily photos on the political, economic, cultural, social and scientific activities, exchanges photos with foreign news agencies and supplies photos at the request of subscribers at home and abroad. Annually, it publishes more than one million 18 x 24 cm photos. VNA's National Documentary Photo Service stores more than one million negatives, with 5,000 of President Hồ Chí Minh and 1,000 of the country's 54 ethnic groups. Many of VNA's news bulletins and other publications are now available on VNANET, its electronic net, to provide information for clients via either the Internet or the domestic postal service. At the time of writing VNA's new 15-storey headquarters is under construction and is scheduled to open by December 2005.