Briefs on some of leading news stories published on Tuesday (April 15) in Tuoi Tre newspaper:

Politics:

-- Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung paid a working trip to the central city of Da Nang on Monday and urged local authorities to take effective measures to curb increasing public debt.

Society:

-- The Ho Chi Minh City Department of Transport yesterday put into operation its sixth mobile weighbridge on entrance highways leading to the city. This month, 291 trucks have been fined VND1.1 billion (US$52,900) for carrying overloaded cargo.

-- The state-owned Lottery Company located in the Central Highlands province of Lam Dong has been found committing financial wrongdoing of VND30 billion ($1.44 million) in the 2011-12 fiscal year.

-- Ho Chi Minh City collected almost VND60 trillion ($2.9 billion) for the state budget in the first three months of this year, municipal authorities announced in a meeting on Monday.

-- Japanese professor Kenichi Ohno of the Japan Policy Research Institute confirmed to Tuoi Tre on Monday that Vietnam has fallen into the middle income trap thanks to a series of signs, including a slowdown in GDP growth, low labor productivity, environment pollution, graft, and the gap between the rich and the poor.

-- Twenty-five child patients have died of measles in the last 75 days, according to the Vietnamese Ministry of Health.

-- Vietnam has around 4 million people suffering diabetes, experts said at a conference in Ho Chi Minh City on Monday.

Business:

-- Vietnam’s first consignment of 200kg of fresh mango fruit have arrived in the Republic of Korea after the latter opened its door for the Vietnamese fruit in November last year.

-- Vietnam has uncovered three websites in Hanoi selling smuggled goods. They include www.techland.com.vn, www.dongho88.com, and www.ducdongho.com.

-- Asia Commercial Bank has announced the bank had reclaimed an original debt of VND1,247 billion ($60 million) from Nguyen Duc Kien in 2013. Kien, a tycoon, has been charged with fraud and conducting illegal business activities and is now in custody, awaiting his trial.

Education:

-- The Ho Chi Minh City Department of Education and Training has confirmed that the city’s primary schools will admit all children aged 6 to the first grade, without asking for their kindergarten graduation certificates as before.