Politics

-- Lao Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith will lead a delegation to Vietnam to attend and co-chair the 41st meeting of the Vietnam-Laos Inter-Governmental Committee from January 5 to 6.

Society

-- Storm Pabuk, the first to hit Vietnam in 2019, was 460 kilometers off southern Vietnam as of 4:00 am on Wednesday, packing winds of up to 75 kilometers per hour and heading toward Chumphon Province in Thailand.

-- A four-year-old boy in the northern Vietnamese province of Phu Tho who died in a road accident on his birthday in late 2018 has brought better lives to two others as his family decided to donate his corneas for medical transplantation.

-- The first nine Vietnamese tourists among those injured in a terrorist bombing in Cairo, Egypt last week arrived in Ho Chi Minh City on Tuesday, as Vietnam looks to repatriate the bodies of three citizens who died in the attack on Wednesday.

-- Multiple roads leading to Ho Chi Minh City were congested on Tuesday as hundreds of thousands returned to the city after a four-day New Year holiday, during which 110 people died in 147 road accidents nationwide.

Business

-- The prices of black pepper in Vietnam have hit the lowest in ten years, selling for only VND49,000-51,000 (US$2.11-2.20) per kilogram as growers report selling their crops at a big loss.

-- The tax department of Ho Chi Minh City has refuted a claim by Thai-run brewer Sabeco that its bank accounts had been coercively debited VND3.15 trillion ($135.77 million) as payment of fines for its alleged economic violations, insisting that the taxman only froze the company’s accounts without meddling with their balance.

-- The government of Vietnam is targeting a gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of 6.8 percent in 2019 while managing the growth of consumer price index (CPI) to under four percent this year.

-- The Mekong Delta province of Long An last year issued licenses to 90 new foreign direct investment (FDI) projects with a combined capital of $450 million, thus maintaining its leading position in FDI attraction in the region, according to local authorities.

-- A cruise ship carrying 2,000 passengers arrived in Da Nang on Tuesday, bringing the first foreign visitors to the central Vietnamese city in 2019 as it reports having welcomed 2.87 million foreign tourists in 2018, up 15.5 percent year-on-year.