Good morning from Vietnam!
Politics
-- Head of Vietnam’s Central Commission for Propaganda and Education Vo Van Thuong met his Lao counterpart Kikeo Khaykhamphithoun in Vientiane on Thursday, where they both vowed enhanced cooperation in the field.
Society
-- Fireworks displays will not light up the skies of Ho Chi Minh City and Can Tho City this New Year in answer to a recent directive by Vietnam’s Party Secretariat requesting local administrations to abstain from the activity and use the money to care for the country’s poor instead.
-- Ten million international tourists visited Vietnam in 2016, most of whom coming from Northeast Asian countries such as China and South Korea, according to statistics by Vietnam National Administration of Tourism.
-- A one-month scientific study of Vietnam’s seas from Quang Tri Province to Binh Thuan Province has been conducted by Vietnamese scientists and their Russian counterparts who arrived on the Akademik Oparin ship last month.
Lifestyle
-- A charity concert held by Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper in Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday evening has raised over VND1 billion (US$44,643) from ticket and merchandise sales to fund a campaign aimed at helping local child cancer patients.
Business
-- The origin of pork sold in Ho Chi Minh City can now be traced via a smartphone application that scans a QR code on the pork’s packaging, according to a recently launched project by the city’s Department of Industry and Trade.
-- About 15 million SIM cards by local mobile network providers will have been blocked or withdrawn by the end of 2016 in an unprecedented campaign to crack down on the countries’ unregistered SIM card, according to numbers provided by the Ministry of Information and Communications.
Sports
-- Vietnam’s table tennis teams made history on Thursday after winning the country’s first regional gold medals at the 10th Southeast Asia table tennis tournament in Indonesia by acing in both men’s and women’s double categories.
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