Politics

-- Vietnamese Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong and Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung met Wednesday in Hanoi with Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong who is on an official visit to Vietnam. Prime Minister Dung announced the same day that Vietnam and Singapore have brought their relationship to the strategic partnership level.

-- Vietnam and Cuba signed Wednesday an MOU on cooperation on the judicial sector in Hanoi. The two countries believed that the signing will contribute to strengthening the Vietnam-Cuba friendship. 

-- Vietnam has yet to sign any agreement with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to name him adviser to the government, the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs told Tuoi Tre on Wednesday, following reports of such a deal by British newspaper The Telegraph.

Society

-- International donors have agreed to lend Ho Chi Minh City authorities 850 million euros (US$1.1 billion) to build the first phase of the Metro Route number 5, which crosses a distance of 23.4 kilometers and connects the Saigon Bridge in Binh Thanh District to Can Giuoc Bus Station in Binh Chanh District, the local Management Authority for Urban Railways said Wednesday. The authority added that the city will chip in 7 million euros ($9.3 million) to construct the 8.9km section in this phase.

-- A 60-year-old woman was killed Tuesday in the Mekong Delta province of Ben Tre when she was wearing many jewelry pieces. Local police are hunting for the suspect, who has been identified as one of her neighbors. The suspect admitted to his two elder brothers by telephone that he had murdered her to rob the jewelry, but then buried it in a flower pot.

-- A 42-year-old man is suspected of shooting dead the vice chief of a land development center in the northern province of Thai Binh and injuring another vice chief together with three center staff. Police are looking into allegations that the shooting resulted from the man’s objections to local authorties’ decisions on land withdrawal, site clearance, and compensation.

-- Hanoi police have arrested a former secretary at the People’s Court in Dong Da District on charges of “brokering a bribery scheme.”

Business

-- Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Myanmar are mulling issueing one single visa to international tourists in order to boost regional tourism cooperation, their tourism ministers said Wednesday at a conference in Ho Chi Minh City.

-- Vietnam is expected to welcome 7.5 million international arrivals in 2013, yielding a revenue of $10 billion, which accounts for 6 percent of the country’s GDP, Hoang Anh Tuan, Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism, said at a tourism conference on Wedneday in Ho Chi Minh City.

Sports

-- Vietnam takes on Malaysia at 15:30 on Thursday at the 2013 ASEAN Football Federation U-19 Championship, currently hosted by Indonesia. Vietnam beat Thailand 3-2 in its opener two days ago.

Education

-- Vietnam's higher education provides students with training that is irrelevant to what is needed in reality, a deputy education minister complained at a conference on Wednesday. The country has been struggling to reform its college and university system but nothing much has been achieved so far.