Here are the leading news stories about Vietnam you should not miss today, November 19

Politics

-- Vietnam's State President Tran Dai Quang arrived Friday in Lima, Peru for the 24th High-level Week of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Forum from November 17-20.

Society

-- Vietnam’s southern region will see rainfall decrease in the 2016-2017 dry season, from December 2016 to February 2017, but rainfall is expected to be 15 – 30 percent higher than the average in previous years, thereby reducing saline intrusion into the Mekong Delta,the National Centre for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting has said .

-- Thousands of people took part in an annual requiem conducted in Hanoi on Friday to commemorate road accident victims in Vietnam.

-- Many Vietnamese still open sidewalk stalls, selling various of things and offering numerous services, next to the power substations built across streets in Hanoi, putting themselves at risk. A substation exploded outside Hanoi on Thursday, killing one and injuring four others.

- The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Vietnam Red Cross Society have inked an agreement for a relief program worth a total of $125,000, which help some 30,000 people access clean water in localities hit by drought and salinity.

-- A truck carrying some 800 ducks was traveling on a street in Long An Province on Friday when it overturned, killing most of the poultries. However, locals rushed out to help collect the ducks and even bought the dead ones to share the misery with the truck driver.

Business

-- The fish deaths caused by wastewater from the steel mill of Taiwan’s Formosa Plastics Group in the north-central province of Quang Binh have slowed the province’s GDP growth in 2016 to only 4.2 percent, way behind the target of 8 percent and last year’s growth of 7.5 percent.

Education

-- The number of Vietnamese students studying in Japan has increased nearly ten times in the last four years, spiking from 4,033 in 2011 to 38,882 last year, it was revealed at a Vietnam-Japan education cooperation conference in Ho Chi Minh City on Friday.

Lifestyle

-- Vietnam's lawmaking National Assembly passed Friday a Law on Belief and Religion, which stipulates that everyone has the right to freedom of belief and religion, following or not following any religions.

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