Politics

-- Nguyen Phu Trong, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, received Thursday the heads of the delegations to the 19th ICAPP Standing Committee meeting in Hanoi on April 25.

-- Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung met his Thai and Singaporean counterparts on the sidelines of the 22nd ASEAN Summit in Brunei on April 24 - 25.

-- President Truong Tan Sang Thursday had a meeting with more than 400 voters in District 4, Ho Chi Minh City.

-- Vietnam and China reached the third round of negotiations on less sensitive fields at sea including marine environmental protection, marine science research, search and rescue at sea, and natural disaster consequence prevention and mitigation in Beijing from April 22-24.

Business

-- As of June 1, banks are required to classify all of their outstanding loans and set aside loan loss provisions at the highest rate of 100 percent, according to the State Bank of Vietnam’s Circular No.2.

-- Direct foreign investment to Vietnam in the first four months of this year reached more than US$8.2 billion, according to the Foreign Investment Agency.

-- Local retailers are facing fierce competition from foreign rivals, five years after Vietnam joined the World Trade Organization. 

-- Hanoi police caught Thursday 256 kilograms of snakehead fish and frog illegally transported from China.

 Society

-- Sixty exercising equipment worth VND700 million have recently been installed along the Nhieu Loc – Thi Nghe canal running through District 1, 3, Binh Thanh, Phu Nhuan, and Tan Binh District.

-- Three gold mine workers died Thursday due to suffocation at an illegal mine in Thai Nguyen Province, local police said.

-- Police bust Thursday a gambling den in the northern Hoa Binh Province, seizing 59 gamblers and VND600 million.

-- Vietnam should only set up some 500 golf courses, Nguyen Ba Thanh, Chief of the Central Internal Affairs Commission, told voters at Hai Chau District of the central city of Da Nang on Thursday.

-- Vietnam has some 1,200 new patients infected with HIV/AIDS on a monthly basis, experts said at a conference in Da Lat on Thursday.

Lifestyle

-- The Winner Is, a German-Dutch talent game show, has found 64 contestants for its Vietnamese version season 1 after the auditions. The show will be on air starting May 25.

Sports

--  Le Hung Dung, deputy chairman of the Vietnam Football Federation, said Thursday that there should be no betting limit should football betting is legalized in Vietnam. A draft decree on the legislation suggests that bettors should not be allowed to bet more than VND1 million for a match.