Tuoitrenews briefs some of the leading stories published today in Vietnamese media:

Politics:

-- Norwegian Crown Prince Haakon Magnus and Crown Princess Mette Marit has left Ho Chi Minh City, successfully concluding their four-day visit to Vietnam at the invitation of Vietnamese Vice President Nguyen Thi Doan.

-- Vietnamese and Italian parliaments have reached an agreement to establish a strategic partnership, thus creating new cooperation opportunities for both countries, said Nguyen Sinh Hung, Vietnamese National Assembly Chairman at a Saturday meeting with Marina Sereni, Vice President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, in Rome.

-- President Truong Tan Sang on Saturday hosted a reception for Secretary General of the Russia National Energy Commission and Rosneft Chairman Igor Sechin in Hanoi, reconfirming that oil cooperation is one of the most effective elements of the bilateral partnership between the Vietnam and Russia.

Society:

-- Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan's biggest newspaper, has reported that the president of Japan Transportation Consultants, Inc. (JTC) had confessed his company paid a total of about 130 million Japanese yen ($1,271,790) as brides to foreign civil servants in return for orders the company received to conduct infrastructure projects funded by Japanese official development assistance in Vietnam, Uzbekistan and Indonesia.

-- A poverty reduction program conducted in Ho Chi Minh City during the 2009-2015 period has turned out to be a success story, as the city’s poor rate was 0.8 percent in 2013, dropping 7.6 percent from the 2009 rate. Under the national standard, poor households are categorized as those with an average income of VND4.8 million (US$225) and VND6 million ($282 ) per person per year in rural areas and urban areas, respectively. The city now has no poor households in accordance with this standard.

-- A woman in Ho Chi Minh City's Tan Binh District who purchases and selles scrap metal for a living found 5 million Japanese Yen (equivalent to more than VND1 billion) on Friday in a scraped radio doubling as a loudspeaker after dismantling it for metal. She has handed over the money to the local police.

-- Nguyen Minh Giam, deputy director of the Southern Hydro-Meteorological Station, said after a few days of cooling down, the weather in southern Vietnam will be hit by a fresh heat spell early next week with the highest temperature expected to rise up to 39-40 degrees Celsius.

 Business:

-- Co To Island District in northern Quang Ninh Province looks set to become a fishery logistics hub for the entire Tonkin gulf, said Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan, a Politburo member and Vice Chairwoman of the National Assembly, at a ceremony to celebrate 20 years of the establishment of the island district on Saturday.

-- Travel companies from 22 countries and territories, including Japan, China, Russia and France, have registered to join the second Vietnam International Travel Mart which will be held from April 3 to 6 in Hanoi. The participants will showcase tourism products and services across 499 stands, including 150 reserved for foreign travel companies.

-- Local livestock farmers suffered a VND27 trillion ($1.27 billion) loss due to rising input costs and decreasing prices of their produce in 2012-2013, according to the Vietnam Livestock Association.