Have a nice Sunday!

Politics

-- Nguyen Phu Trong, the newly re-elected General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, on Saturday welcomed a delegation of overseas Vietnamese who are in their home country for a Tet (Lunar New Year) program organized by the Liaison Committee for Overseas Vietnamese.

Society

-- The last two fugitives, including a Vietnamese American, who broke out of an Orange County maximum-security jail in California on January 22 were arrested on a tip, Reuters cited authorities as announcing on Saturday, a day after a third escapee, also a Vietnamese American, turned himself in.

-- The Ho Chi Minh City Department of Transport on Saturday inaugurated the Rach Chiec Bridge and auxiliary structures, located in District 9 on the city’s eastern belt. Investment in the structures, one of the metropolis’ key projects, totaled VND871 billion (US$38.2 million).

-- The cables of a cargo elevator at the construction site of a hotel, located in Son Tra District in the central city of Da Nang, snapped early Saturday, killing two workers on the spot and three others in hospital while leaving another in a critical condition, local officials have confirmed.

-- The Ministry of Transport on Saturday opened to traffic a second project to improve the traffic grid in the Mekong Sub-Region and northern provinces. The first phase of the project, meant to upgrade National Highway 217 in the north-central province of Thanh Hoa, costs approximately VND1.899 trillion ($97.4 million), including a loan of $75 million provided by the Asian Development Bank.

Business

-- Police in Ca Mau City, the heart of the namesake province in the Mekong Delta, announced on Saturday that the provincial People’s Committee had slapped a fine of VND20 million ($878) on a 29-year-old Chinese national holding a tourist visa for purchasing crabs from local traders.

-- On Saturday, more than 600 workers of G-Tech Vietnam Co. in the Vinh Niem Industrial Cluster in the northern city of Hai Phong continued going on strike to claim their salaries following the company’s sudden announcement that they will temporarily lay off workers due to a shortage of orders.

-- The Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BIDV) confirmed to Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on Saturday that the Ministry of Public Security has decided to indict a number of members of the bank’s management board. These officials had previously held leading positions at Mekong Housing Bank before it was merged with BIDV.