Briefs of some of leading news stories published Tuesday (August 28) in Tuoi Tre Newspaper that will be carried today on Tuoitrenews.vn:

Society:

-- Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee today held a ground breaking ceremony for the construction of the first metro route in the city from Ben Thanh Market in the District 1 to Suoi Tien in District 9. The 19.7km route costs US$2.4 billion and is put in use in 2017. It is one of the seven metro routes planned in the city.

-- Vietnam Airlines has announced to increase 12 percent of seats on 11 domestic flights on the occasion of the National Day on September 2.

-- Vietnam police shot to death a drug trafficker named Ta Van Hung, 47, in the northern province of Hoa Binh after he had refused to surrender to police and opened fire against police and normal people with his guns. After killing him, police discovered five guns in his bag, over 33kgs of heroin, 800 pills of drug-related narcotics, and some cash.

-- One of the two elephants recently killed in the Yok Don national park in the central highland province of Dak Lak is the unique mature male of the 29-elephant herd in the park. His death will certainly badly affect the sustainable growth of the herd in the national park, said the Elephant Conservation Center director Huynh Trung Luan. Vietnam has had 19 elephants killed by wildlife traffickers since 2009, five of them killed this year, said Luan.

-- Four petrol pumps in the southern province of Tay Ninh were yesterday fined for VND142 million (US$6,800) for cheating customers in quantity.

Business:

-- Nguyen Dang Quang, chairman of the board of directors of Masan Corporation, yesterday raised his voice in rejection of rumor that he was arrested by police. He said at a meeting of Masan on Monday that he still remains deputy chairman of the board of directors of Techcombank.

-- More and more petrol pumps in Ho Chi Minh City and surrounding provinces as Dong Nai and Binh Duong have halted selling petrol to customers amid rumors that the fuel price is to hike up.

-- Ho Chi Minh City Tax Department has completed its inspection at 140 enterprises which reported financial losses to evade tax and collected an additional tax of VND143.5 billion ($6.9 million).

-- Vietnam has attracted only US$8.47 billion of FDI in the first eight months this year, approximately 66.1 percent of the same period last year.

Education:

-- Le Van Ly has resumed his post as the headmaster of the Hung Vuong University after his suspension from the title has ended. He had been suspended from the post in early March this year by the People’s Committee of Ho Chi Minh City.