Here are the leading news stories about Vietnam you should not miss today, November 8:

Politics

-- Vietnam is playing an increasingly important role in the Asia-Pacific region and therefore a country Ireland wishes to foster cooperation with, visiting Irish President Michael D. Higgins said during talks with President Tran Dai Quang in Hanoi on Monday

-- A delegation of Hanoi officials, led by the municipal chairman Nguyen Duc Chung, on Monday laid a basket of flowers at the statue of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known by the alias Lenin, in the capital city’s Chi Lang Park to mark the 99^th anniversary of the Russian October Revolution (November 7, 1917).

Society

-- Vietnam should consider a better way to treat drug users instead of putting them in crowded, poor-condition rehab centers, Bui Sy Loi, deputy chairman of the Social Affairs Committee of the National Assembly, said on Monday, in the wake of the breakout of 160 junkies from a center in the southern province of Dong Nai last week.

-- Twelve news websites and two online magazines have been fined for a false report on the suicide of a 11-year-old boy in the Central Highlands province of Gia Lai. These media outlets said the boy killed himself because he did not have new shirts to go to school, while it has been confirmed that family conflicts were behind the suicide.

-- Only 918 chief officials of state bodies have been sanctioned for corruption in the last ten years, a former state inspector revealed at a meeting in Ho Chi Minh City on Monday.

-- Fifty-nine percent of Vietnamese women experienced psychological violence at some point in their life, according to a 2014-15 report by the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, also known as UN Women, whose results were released at a conference in Hanoi on Monday.

Business

-- Vietnam aims to post a GDP growth rate of about 6.7 percent in 2017, slightly higher than last year's 6.68 percent, according to a resolution on the socio-economic development plan adopted Monday by the lawmaking National Assembly.

-- Vietnamese enterprises should focus on building their corporate culture, as it all makes up the image of the country, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said at a ceremony to kick-start a corporate culture building drive on Monday.

Sports

-- Vietnam will play Indonesia in a friendly game in Hanoi at 7:00 pm tonight, November 8, as both sides are preparing for the upcoming 2016 AFF Cup, Southeast Asia’s top football competition.

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