Read what’s in the news today, January 17!

Society

-- A musical performance was held on Wednesday for fishermen who spend all year round working in the waters around the Hoang Sa (Paracel) archipelago off Vietnam’s central coast, as an early celebration of the upcoming Lunar New Year holiday.

-- Members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) should build a digital database on the region’s tourism to promote the industry, Le Quang Tung, Vietnam’s Deputy Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism, said at a meeting for the ten-country bloc in the northern Vietnamese province of Quang Ninh on Wednesday.

-- Fishermen in the southern province of Kien Giang found a 150-kilogram leatherback turtle, belonging to the largest living turtle species on Earth, dead in their trawler net, an official said Wednesday.

-- The Vietnamese government inspectorate stated Wednesday they had found economic violations associated with VND34 trillion ($1.46 billion) and nearly 34,000 hectares of land nationwide last year.

-- A petrol station in Dong Nai Province, next to Ho Chi Minh City, was caught alight after a fuel truck entered the place and suddenly burst into flames on Wednesday night. No human casualties have been reported.

-- A former director of Vietnam Pharma Company has been arrested on Wednesday on charges of producing and trading counterfeit medicine.

-- A 44-year-old man in Tra Vinh Province, Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, was sentenced to death on Wednesday after he robbed a woman and killed her earlier last year.

Business

-- A firm in the northern province of Hai Duong, near Hanoi, agreed to buy its employees with excellent performances 45 cars and 25 motorbikes as reward for the Lunar New Year holiday, according to the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs. 

-- Several flower farmers have spent around a billion dong ($43,000) building decorative structures and buying more exotic flowers to attract tourists to their farms in Sa Dec, a city in the southern province of Dong Thap, famous nationwide for its long-standing flower growing.

-- Samsung Electronics Vietnam topped the list of the largest enterprises in Vietnam for the second consecutive time in 2018r, followed by state-owned companies, according a report by Vietnam Report.

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