Good morning from Vietnam!

Politics

-- U.S. President Barack Obama arrived in Vietnam on Sunday night for a three-day official visit.

Society

-- About 98.7 percent of Vietnamese citizens cast their vote during the national election on Sunday, Nguyen Hanh Phuc, chief of the National Election Council Office, affirmed the same night.

-- Police in Hanoi said on Sunday afternoon that they had broken up an illegal ring that trafficked 80,000 packs of cigarettes, worth an estimated VND2.3 billion (US$103,063). This is the largest case of tobacco dealing in the city since 2012, according to officers.

-- A six-year-old boy died on Sunday morning after falling off a cliff at the Ngu Hanh Son tourist site in the central city of Da Nang. He was visiting the venue with his parents and lost track of them before the incident happened.

-- Vietnam’s first tropical depression in 2016 is forecast to form on Tuesday off the south-central region, affecting weather conditions in the coastal localities till the end of the week, said Le Thi Xuan Lan, a weather pundit based in Ho Chi Minh City.

-- Colonel Vuong Tien Dung, chief of the police bureau in Ha Dong District, Hanoi, has announced that a suspect had been detained for stealing an automobile that was carrying 480 grams of gold.

-- Competent authorities have officially stated that 12 people were killed and 40 others injured in a fatal accident happening in the south-central province of Binh Thuan on Sunday morning. One of the deceased is a driver while the other 11 are being identified as their bodies were severely burnt, officers said.

Business

-- According to the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Planning and Investment, a total of 276 foreign direct investment (FDI) projects, with their capital estimated at $481.22 million, have been established in the first five months of this year. Nearly 50 percent of the investment has been channeled into real estate, the department added.

-- Nguyen Hoang Minh, deputy director of the southern branch of the State Bank of Vietnam, said that the combined value of inbound remittances to Ho Chi Minh City was recorded at over $1.3 billion in the first four months of 2016, a two percent year-on-year rise.

-- Vietnam has disbursed $27.8 billion worth of official development assistance (ODA) in the past five years, meaning that about $22 billion has not been paid out, according to a report by the Department of Debt Management and External Finance under the Ministry of Finance.