Tuoitrenews briefs the salient news published on Tuoi Tre on October 31.

Society:

-- 48-year-old Hoang Thi Phuong, Chief of the secretariat of Steering Committee for Corruption Prevention and Control of Gia Lai central highlands province, was found dead, hanged on a rope, at her house in Pleiku city, Gia Lai province at 7:15pm on October 30.

-- Two song-writers Vo Minh Tri and Tran Vu Anh Binh were sentenced to four and six years in prison, respectively, on charges of spreading propaganda against the state at a court in Ho Chi Minh City on October 30.

-- 21 workers suffered burns, four of whom are now in critical conditions, after a fire hit a wood factory in Vinh Cu district in the southern province of Dong Nai on October 30 afternoon.

-- Vietnam has 200,000 new patients suffering strokes each year, with about 10,000 fatalities, according to statistics released by Vietnam National Association of Cerebrovascular Accident Prevention.

-- 15 percent of the Vietnamese population has mental problems, professor Dang Van Phuoc, Dean of Medical Department of Vietnam National University based in Ho Chi Minh City, addressed at a medical conference held in HCMC on October 29 and 30.

-- At about 9am on October 30, a taxi driver who parked on a section of Ton Duc Thang Street facing Hydrofoil Terminal drove his bike into a traffic inspector after the latter asked him to show his vehicle papers. The cabbie identified as Nguyen Ngoc Truong is charged with illegal parking and fighting with an officer on duty.

-- Police in My Tho city in the southern province of Tien Giang have detained lawyer Le Nguyen Dan hailing from Ho Chi Minh City’s Tan Binh District pending investigations after they found him driving without a driver license and bike papers and discovered two shot guns with three bullets and a sport gun with five rubber bullets on his bike on Tuesday evening.

-- 7 people were killed and five others have gone missing after powerful typhoon Son Tinh slammed into Vietnam’s northern and central provinces, according to official reports by the National Steering Committee for Storm and Flood Prevention and Control.

-- Vietnam Maritime Search and Rescue Coordination Center (MRCC) on October 30 received emergency signals in potentially hazardous situations from Vietnamese-flagged cargo-ship Saigon Queen with 22 crew members on board off Sri Lanka while it was transporting wood products from Myanmar to India. As of 9:20pm the same day, rescuers from Cyprus-flagged vessel Pacific Skipper have rescued three people and kept in touch with 16 others going adrift on a lifebelt. However, three other crewmen of Saigon Queen still remain missing.

Politics:

-- Vietnam hopes to deepen and broaden cooperation with Malaysia in social housing construction and development, said Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung while receiving former Malaysian Prime Minister Ahdullah Ahmad Badawi on October 30 in Hanoi.

-- National Assembly (NA) deputies have emphasised the urgent need to remove difficulties for businesses, which serve as blood vessels to feed the economy, as they are weakening alarmingly.