Tuoi Tre News briefs you on some of the leading stories published today in Vietnamese media:

Politics

-- Vietnam and China on Thursday clinched a cooperation agreement on establishing a border guard coordination mechanism in a meeting between Defense Minister Phung Quang Thanh and Chinese Public Security Minister Guo Shengkun following a memorandum of understanding signed by the two sides in January 2013.

-- A ceremony to repatriate two boxes of the alleged remains of U.S. servicemen who died during the war in Vietnam was organized at Da Nang International Airport in the central city of Da Nang on Thursday. The event was attended by representatives from the Board of Directors of Vietnam Office for Seeking Missing Personnel, Rena Bitter, U.S. Consul General in Ho Chi Minh City, and other U.S. agencies.

-- Norway’s Prime Minister Erna Solberg arrived in Hanoi on Thursday to start her three-day official visit to Vietnam as a guest of Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung in an attempt to raise bilateral cooperation across many fields, including economy, investment, climate change, water management, renewable energy, agriculture, maritime economy, oil and gas, and shipbuilding.

-- Vietnam has declared that the country has sufficient legal and historical evidence to affirm its sovereignty over the Hoang Sa (Paracel) and Truong Sa (Spratly) archipelagos, Foreign Ministry Spokesman Le Hai Binh said on Thursday in reply to reporters’ queries about Vietnam’s response to the April 9 speech by Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying about the expansion of underground reefs in Truong Sa. Each construction and expansion project by foreigners on reef islands in Hoang Sa and Truong Sa that is not explicitly permitted by the government of Vietnam is illegal and invalid, Binh added.

Society

-- A ceremony was organized in Hanoi on Thursday to announce the results of a US$2.13 million EU-funded project to support Vietnam in preparing human resources for the country’s nuclear power development plan and developing the capacity and effectiveness of the Vietnamese regulatory body, the Vietnam Agency for Radiation and Nuclear Safety.

-- Vietnamese Deputy Minister of Construction Bui Pham Khanh and Japanese Deputy Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Kazuhiko Aoki on Thursday signed a memorandum of understanding on developing human resources in the construction sector in Tokyo. According to the deal, Vietnam will be one of the three countries to receive $90,000 annually to improve the quality of technique training programs for Vietnamese construction workers.

Business

-- The central city of Da Nang topped Vietnam’s Provincial Competitiveness Index (PCI) for the 2nd time in a row in 2014 after losing the top spot in 2011 and 2012, according to an announcement of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) on Thursday. The central city scored 66.87 points, followed by southern Dong Thap Province (65.28 points), northern Lao Cai Province (64.67 points), and Ho Chi Minh City (62.73 points).

-- Lai Xuan Thanh, head of the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV), has said the agency is reviewing all the related security checking systems at Vietnam’s airports to figure out how gold can be brought through them without being detected. The CAAV’s move followed the Monday arrest of a pilot and a flight attendant of national flag carrier Vietnam Airlines for smuggling totally six kilograms of gold when entering Gimhae International Airport in Pusan City in South Korea last month.