Good morning from Tuoi Tre News!

Politics

-- Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and his Laotian counterpart Thongloun Sisoulith on Wednesday launched the Vietnam-Laos Solidarity and Friendship Year 2017 at a ceremony in Vientiane, in celebration of the 55^th anniversary of the countries’ diplomatic relations and the 40^th anniversary of the signing of the Vietnam-Laos Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation.

Society

-- Police are searching for a masked bank robber who threatened tellers at a Vietcombank branch in the Mekong Delta province of Tra Vinh on Wednesday with a gun and got away with VND1.6 billion (US$70,000) and $30,000 in cash.

-- The administration of Da Lat City in Vietnam’s Central Highlands has ordered the evacuation of citizens living in 13 houses on Nguyen Van Troi and Truong Cong Dinh Streets after major earth cracks had been found in the area that could pull down the houses at any time.

-- Fifty-one locations across An Giang Province in the Mekong Delta region are at risk of sinking into the river in a manner similar to a land collapse on Saturday that swallowed 16 houses in the province’s Cho Moi District, local authorities said.

-- Ho Chi Minh City residents may have to pay for the costs of garbage transport and treatment, which until now have been subsidized by the government, in addition to the usual fee for garbage collection, according to a draft plan proposed by the municipal Department of Natural Resources and Environment on Wednesday.

-- A delegation of senior Ho Chi Minh City officials concluded their nine-day visit to Vietnam’s Truong Sa (Spratly) archipelago in the East Vietnam Sea on Wednesday, during which they had handed out commodities worth VND15 billion ($669,000) to Vietnamese soldiers stationed on the group of islands.

Business

-- The developers of Ho Chi Minh City’s two ongoing mega-projects to build its first metro line and cleaning up its waterways have threatened to delay their execution due to slow allocation of official development assistance (ODA) from the central government.

-- Ho Chi Minh City’s first metro line connecting Ben Thanh Market and Suoi Tien Amusement Park will be lengthened to connect to the neighboring provinces of Binh Duong and Dong Nai, according to the latest plan agreed upon by the provincial administrations.

-- Le Thanh Dong, head of a committee responsible for economic and budget affairs of the People’s Council of Phu Yen Province in south-central Vietnam, has said that the province is willing to sacrifice its forests in exchange for the economic benefits of multiple projects, in an interview with Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper.

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