Read what’s in the news today, January 18!

Society

-- A Japanese rocket that carried the Vietnam-made 50-kilogram satellite MicroDragon as a secondary payload lifted off at Japan’s Uchinoura Space Center at 9:51 am on Friday (local time).

-- Police said Thursday they are verifying whether a company that pretended to be a licensed driving schools ‘vanished’ after it had received training fees from learners in the Central Highlands province of Dak Lak with a claim to guarantee driving test passes.

-- Police in Quang Nam, central Vietnam, said Thursday they are ascertaining whether a Vietnamese woman was cheated into traveling to China in a human trafficking scheme, following her family’s report a day earlier.

-- A teenage was missing after the truck where he and his driver father were sitting suddenly moved out of a traveling ferry into a river in An Giang Province, southwestern Vietnam, local police said Thursday.

-- Authorities in Quang Tri, central Vietnam, have been found failing over the past eight years to enforce the punishment on man sentenced to two years’ imprisonment.

-- A woman in the Central Highlands of Kon Tum was fined VND250 million ($10,750) for trading five big-headed turtles, which Vietnam lists as the endangered species, a local government lead said Thursday.

-- The tourism department in the famous tourist city of Nha Trang published a list of 11 hotels and one resort facility that violated regulations on fire safety, security and food safety.

Business

-- The Ho Chi Minh City administration has agreed to send Vietnamese people to South Korea for seasonal employment in a pilot program approved by the metropolis and South Korean provinces.

-- Over a hundred yellow-pomelo trees are being displayed for sale in the Vinh Hai Market in the resort city of Nha Trang as the Lunar New Year holiday is just around the corner. They fetch VND4-5 million ($172-215) apiece.

-- Vietnamese deputy Prime Minister Vuong Dinh Hue asked relevant departments to keep the 2019 inflation rate varying between 3.3 and 3.9 percent, during a meeting on Thursday.

-- State-owned Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Group (VNPT) has brand equity of $1.3 billion, becoming one of the three Vietnamese companies with the largest brand value, according to Brand Finance, a business valuation consultancy.

Education

-- Up to 53.8 percent of students surveyed did not have motivations for their studies, according to a study the Ho Chi Minh City education department conducted at 150 local educational institutions ranging from kindergartens to colleges.

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