What you need to know in Vietnam today:

Politics

-- Iceland’s President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson and his wife on Tuesday began their three-day visit to Vietnam at the invitation of Vietnamese State President Truong Tan Sang.

Society

-- A lawyer representing Ha Linh Co., a Vietnamese tea company whose 45-year-old director was found dead for an unknown cause in China in late September, has said the Chinese government has been procrastinating in providing the firm with necessary papers to have her body sent home.

-- Hanoi police said they are looking into two lawyers’ claims that they had been assaulted in Chuong My District. The lawyers wrote on their Facebook pages that they were attacked on Tuesday afternoon after leaving the home of a defendant who had been beaten to death by his cellmate.

-- The Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee has urged that the Ministry of Planning and Investment and competent agencies give their opinions on the cost overrun for the 48km Ben Thanh-Tham Luong subway route, the second of the city’s first-ever subway system. The new projected cost is US$2.07 billion, instead of $1.34 billion as originally estimated.

-- Between 500 and 600 people are slated to partake in a requiem for deceased victims in traffic accidents on Sunday at a monastery in the northern province of Nam Dinh. The event is a local observance of the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims, November 15.

-- Since late last year, streets leading to Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Ho Chi Minh City have undergone serious traffic congestion, particularly following downpours, resulting in departure delays that bother both passengers and airlines.

Business

-- A Vietnam-Japan cultural and trade exchange program, slated to run in the Mekong Delta city of Can Tho from November 19 to 21, is meant to better promote the delta’s potential, particularly in agriculture, to Japanese enterprises, the organizers said at a press meeting on Tuesday.

-- At a meeting with Ho Chi Minh City leaders and representatives of relevant agencies held on Tuesday, enterprises of the European Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam (EuroCham) expressed their profound interest in how the city has coped with its major headaches and improved the corporate environment.

-- Delegates told a meeting organized on Tuesday to relieve difficulties facing tea businesses based in the Central Highlands province of Lam Dong that excessive dependence on the Taiwanese market has taken a heavy toll on the Vietnamese tea industry. -- The Ho Chi Minh City Tax Department has decided to collect tax arrears totaling VND6.3 billion ($280,334) from 26 local artists as of October 31.Sports -- The Vietnamese Ministry of Information and Communications has asked local television stations and pay TV companies not to monopolize the telecast rights of the English Premier League.