Here are today’s leading news stories:

Society

-- Police in the south-central Vietnamese resort city of Nha Trang said Wednesday that 1,000 road safety cameras recently installed across the area are ready to be put into use to detect traffic violations.

-- Vietnamese border guard officers said on Wednesday that they seized fishing equipment on two Chinese fishing boats working illegally in Vietnam’s waters off the central province of Quang Tri and drove the vessels out of the country’s territory.

-- Two passengers hurled invective at and attempted to strike attendants on a domestic Vietjet flight on Wednesday when they were informed that the aircraft would reroute due to bad weather. Airport security staff forcibly removed them from the plane after it landed.

-- Police are hunting three inmates, one convicted of murder and two detained on drug trafficking counts, who escaped from a prison in the southern province of Kien Giang on Wednesday.

-- About two-thirds of Ho Chi Minh City's area is vulnerable to flooding, likely causing trouble for over three million urbanites, Le Van Thanh, head of a department at the municipal Institute for Development Studies, said at a workshop on Wednesday.

-- A former military captain in the southern province of Soc Trang is being detained on suspicion of transporting contraband goods, after he was caught carrying foreign tobacco boxes without stamps of government approval.

-- The body of a 22-year-old Vietnamese woman who was found dead in the Japanese city of Osaka on November 26 was carried to Vietnam on Tuesday, with Japanese police already arresting the primary suspect - the victim’s Vietnamese boyfriend.

Business

-- Peaches, used as a decoration at homes in northern Vietnam during the country’s most important holiday of Tet, started to be sold earlier than usual at VND50,000-200,000 ($2-9) at a market in Hanoi on Wednesday, two months before the traditional event.

-- Conglomerate Vingroup ranks first amongst Vietnam’s largest enterprises in 2018, becoming the only private company to lead state-run and foreign-invested corporations this year, according to a list by Vietnam Report.

Education

-- Four students at Nong Lam University in Ho Chi Minh City said they successfully created a robot able to automatically trim hedges at given speed.

-- The Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology and Education plans to open an interdisciplinary faculty to train students in the 4.0 technology this year. All students following the program will have tuition fees waived and be taught in English.

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