Enjoy your breakfast while perusing these brief news items on Tuoi Tre News today, April 1.

Politics

-- Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong on Tuesday received a delegation from the U.S. House of Representatives, which was led by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. The delegates are in Vietnam to attend the 132nd Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), which will wrap up on Wednesday in Hanoi.

-- Swedish Parliament Speaker Urban Ahlin and other parliament members were carried on motorbikes on Tuesday morning from the Swedish Embassy to the Vietnamese Ministry of Transport’s office in Hanoi in a move to promote public use of standard safety helmets.

Society

-- Representatives of gas companies in Ho Chi Minh City said on Tuesday that retail prices will drop by VND4,000-4,500 (US$0.2) per cylinder this month. The prices will thereby fluctuate between VND300,000 and 309,000 ($14.4) per cylinder.

-- The Ho Chi Minh City Traffic Safety Board has proposed Bloomberg Philanthropies provide 200 cameras which will be fixed on traffic police’s helmets to enhance their surveillance and performance, according to Nguyen Ngoc Tuong, deputy head of the board. -- Vietnam has yet to find any plane crash in its waters following a tip-off about it from local fishermen on Tuesday, Lai Xuan Thanh, chief of the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam said the same day.   

-- The station offering the Ho Chi Minh City-Vung Tau hydrofoil service was moved to 5 Nguyen Tat Thanh Street, District 4, some hundreds of meters from the original location, on Tuesday morning.

-- Leaders of the Da Nang City People’s Committee on Tuesday worked with Deo Ca Co. on a proposed project to expand Hai Van Tunnel’s emergency lane into a main tunnel. According to Ho Minh Hoang, general director of Deo Ca Co., the project costs VND6,234 billion ($290.52 million) and is expected to be complete after 36 months. Hai Van Pass, one of the country’s most spectacular, meanders along parts of Thua Thien-Hue Province and Da Nang in the central region.

Business

-- Bui Quang Vinh, Minister of Planning and Investment, and Japanese Ambassador to Vietnam Hiroshi Fukada on Tuesday signed a diplomatic note regarding Japan’s provision of an official development assistance grant worth around $1 billion to the Southeast Asian country. The sum will be disbursed from this year.

-- According to the Foreign Investment Office under the Ministry of Planning and Investment, the inflow of foreign direct investment in the first quarter of this year reached $1.8 billion. Ho Chi Minh City took the lead with $540 million.