Read what is in the news today, July 5!

Society

-- An Internet connection failure which started at the General Department of Vietnam Customs’ headquarters in Hanoi on Tuesday afternoon paralyzed on a national scale private entities’ goods declaration and the use of Vietnam Customs Intelligence Information System, which manages risk and observe customs officials’ work. The issue was only fixed after 5:00 pm on Wednesday.

-- A court in the southern province of Ben Tre ruled Tuesday that Tran Huu Kien, a local lawyer, will stay 12 years in jail and have to pay VND1.2 billion ($51,600) in compensation to one of his clients for abusing her trust to illegally appropriate her VND1.3 billion ($55,900) worth of inheritance.

-- A driver filmed using a leg to drive a coach on a Vietnamese expressway has been fined VND7.5 million ($323) and will forfeit his driving license for three months.

-- Police in Thanh Hoa Province, north-central Vietnam, said Wednesday that they had nabbed two local men, who are alleged collectors of debt for some loan sharks, for illegally carrying two guns.   

Business

-- The U.S.’s Kraig Biocraft Laboratories told the administration in central Vietnamese province of Quang Nam on Wednesday that it wished to invest $50 million into building mulberry laboratories and a mulberry silk production complex on a 50-hectare piece of land in the region. Quang Nam is famous for its keeping of silk worms.

-- The time span for a business to pay tax in Vietnam was 498 hours, which was three times that of Cambodia, 7.7 times of Singapore and 2.5 times of Asia, Mark Gillin, head of a tax and customs group, said Wednesday at the Vietnam Business Forum in Hanoi, adding that this made it difficult for enterprises to focus on their business.

-- Ho Chi Minh City is installing automatic air quality observation stations in an effort to control air pollution caused by an overloading volume of traffic on its roads. Motorized vehicles are responsible for the metropolis’ air and noise pollution, which exceeds the standard allowable value by three to eight times, according to research on the city’s air quality.

-- The government in Hoi An, a tourist city of Quang Nam Province, said Wednesday that it rejected a proposal by a Vietnamese conglomerate to build a VND2,100 billion ($90.3 million) cable car system linking the city and a local district. The authorities said a chief reason was that multiple rice paddies by farmers would have to be