Here’re today’s leading news stories

Politics

-- Pham Binh Minh, Vietnam’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, on Friday sent a message of condolences to Indian Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj over a terror attack in Pulwama District of Jammu and Kashmir State.

Society

-- Sporadic rain is in the forecast for the mountainous region in northern Vietnam while there may be heavy rains in places in north-eastern provinces for one or two days, starting from today, Feb 16.

-- A foreign woman died while her companions were rushed to hospital for emergency treatment after their motorbike collided with a trailer tractor in the central province of Quang Nam on Friday. The nationality of the group of foreign travelers was not identified.

-- The tourism department of the Central Highlands province of Lam Dong has ordered the management of the Bidoup - Nui Ba National Park to stop selling tickets to visitors to the ‘Lonely Pine Tree’, one of the most popular newly-emerged must-visit places in the locality’s capital city of Da Lat – which the park claimed as its property, saying the park doing so without its approval.

-- The result of an examination on the abnormal color changing of seawater at the coast of the central city of Da Nang, which was released on Friday, showed that two environmental parameters, namely Ammonium and Sulfide, exceeded the permissible limits.

-- A fuel truck was traveling on National Highway 22 through Trang Bang District in the southern province of Tay Ninh on Friday afternoon when it crashed into the media strip and burst into fire. Fortunately, the newly filled tank did not explode and the incident caused no casualties but a traffic congestion.

Business

-- The domestic air route connecting Vinh, the capital of the north-central Vietnamese province of Nghe An, and the central city of Da Nang was re-opened on Friday, with the frequency of seven flights per week, after it had been temporarily shut down due to low demand following its first launch in 2012.

-- The site expected to house a major iron and steel factory in the northern province of Thai Nguyen remains an area of rusty works after 12 years of constrution, despite an VND8.1-trillion (US$348.3 million) expansion, state inspectors have said as they announced results of an inspection into multiple wrongdoings at the project.

Education

-- Indonesian Ambassador to Vietnam Ibnu Hadi and Pham Quang Minh, Rector of the University of Social Sciences and Humanities (USSH) of the Vietnam National University-Hanoi, on Friday signed a Memorandum of Understanding on teaching the Indonesian language at the Vietnamese university.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!