Enjoy your breakfast while skimming these news items on Tuoi Tre News today, March 18:

Society

-- The Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee has proposed that the Prime Minister approve the handover of a plot where the Saigon-Ba Son complex is to be built to the city, which will select a competent investor to speed up the project. The proposal came as Ba Son Corporation, a Defense Ministry unit, has procrastinated in implementing the project though the company was given the plot in 2011.

-- According to the Ministry of Health, almost 100 dossiers have been submitted to three competent hospitals during the past three days, after the regulation on surrogate pregnancy took effect on Sunday, March 15. The National Hospital of Obstetrics and Gynecology has selected 10 eligible cases, which will become the country’s first 10 surrogate pregnancy cases.

-- Phan Nguyen Nhu Khue, director of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Culture and Sports, said on Tuesday that his department has instructed local cultural centers to list kite flying clubs and work on plans to raise safety awareness among kite flyers and spectators. The inspection was carried out after Van Minh Dat, a five-year-old boy, was accidently picked up by a huge kite and then dropped to his death from a height of 20 meters in a kite-flying area in Ho Chi Minh City’s outlying district of Hoc Mon on Sunday.  

Business

-- Dong Xuan Thang, director of PTSC Mechanical and Construction Services Co. Ltd. under PetroVietnam Technical Services Corporation, said on Tuesday that the company has completed building a 1,200-ton jacket structure for a rig called the Marahaja Lele South for Brunei. The rig, which cost over US$100 million, is invested by Brunei-based Total E&P Borneo B.V under Total Global, a French energy group.

-- The Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee has instructed the local police department and the Departments of Planning and Investment and Transport to work closely with each other and take drastic measures against Uber vehicles. Uber’s service in Ho Chi Minh City has been dealt a tough hand in the past few months and the company is working to complete necessary procedures to legalize its operations in Vietnam.

-- Yasuzumi Hirotaka, CEO of the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) in Ho Chi Minh City, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper at a Tuesday meeting that the percentage of Japanese firms purchasing Vietnamese goods rose to 14.4 percent last year from 12 percent in 2013 and continues to rise.

-- Canadian Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz led an agricultural trade mission and promoted the country’s beef from cows raised on cereals to the Vietnamese market at a Tuesday meeting in Ho Chi Minh City. Ritz said that his ministry had selected Vietnam as the first destination on their Asian beef promotion tour early this year. The Vietnamese market has welcomed quality beef from the U.S., Australia, and Japan in recent times. 

Education

-- The Ministry of Education and Training on Tuesday instructed education departments across the country that potential sixth graders be admitted to middle schools based on their elementary school performance, not by joining middle school entrance exams. The move is intended to halt private tutoring services widely used by fifth-graders.