Read what's in the news today, October 22, 2018.

Politics

-- The 14th National Assembly of Vietnam on Monday convened its sixth plenum, during which the lawmaking body is expected to cast a vote to confirm Party chief Nguyen Phu Trong as Vietnam’s next president following the death of former State President Tran Dai Quang in September.

-- Pope Francis has thanked the Vietnamese government and authorities at all levels for facilitating activities of the Catholic Church in Vietnam as he received Deputy Prime Minister Truong Hoa Binh over the weekend during the latter’s working trip to Vatican.

-- Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc on Sunday held talks with his Danish counterpart Lars Løkke Rasmussen and witnessed the signing of agreements between the countries in Copenhagen on the final leg of his Europe tour.

Society

-- Police in the south-central city of Nha Trang on Sunday arrested a Vietnamese couple, who are alleged members of a drug ring responsible for smuggling narcotics from Cambodia into Vietnam, and confiscated 2.86 kilograms of crystal meth, the largest ever seized by the local police force.

-- Two health ministry-developed hospitals in the northern province of Ha Nam, around 60 kilometers south of Hanoi, welcomed their first patients on Sunday and are expected to go into full operation in March, helping to reduce the workload at top hospitals in Hanoi.

-- Southern Vietnam will experience less rain but more severe tidal flooding this week, as weather forecasts warn a peak flood level of up to 1.6 meters will be observed from Tuesday in provinces and cities in the Mekong Delta region.

Business

-- Over 77,000 enterprises in 16 Vietnamese provinces and cities that contribute to the national budget have unpaid tax debts that amount to more than VND33.7 trillion (US$1.45 billion), according to a report compiled by the General Department of Taxation.

-- State-owned carrier Vietnam Airlines has announced it would adopt a new strategy from November that involves reducing business-class seats on its planes while increasing the number of economy seats, sparking rumors the airline will soon offer low-cost options on its otherwise full-service flights.

-- A plastic company in the south-central province of Phu Yen has been fined VND400 million ($17,200) for importing more than 3,300 metric tons of scraps from foreign suppliers and recycle them into plastic resins.

-- Vietnamese hospitality company Muong Thanh has finished removing the top three floors of a hotel it built in the south-central province of Khanh Hoa after the building was in August found to be exceeding the height limit.

-- Vietnam’s Ministry of Information and Communications has announced it may start allowing mobile network operators to use a separate radio frequency band for their 4G services, instead of the same frequency band as 2G, from November, significantly boosting data speed in the country.

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