Here are today’s leading news stories:

Society

-- Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan chaired a teleconference with authorities of provinces and cities on Monday to discuss urgent measures to tackle African swine fever outbreaks that have affected seven localities.

-- A total of 44 students of an elementary school in the northern province of Hai Duong were hospitalized on Monday after they ate toilet cleaning powder that a teacher had left under the stairs within the school, apparently believing that the product was a kind of food.

-- Police in the northern province of Bac Giang confirmed on Monday they had summoned a local elementary school teacher for investigation after he was accused of molesting multiple fifth-grade schoolgirls.

-- The villa of a former military official in the Mekong Delta city of Can Tho has been found encroaching on the land plot that was previously zoned for the construction of roads and sidewalks.

-- Two people in a family were killed while two others were injured after being attacked by a knife-wielding man, who works as a Feng Shui practitioner, in the northern province of Nam Dinh on Monday. The attacker tried to commit suicide at his home following the incident and is now being treated at the hospital for his serious self-inflicted wounds.

-- Officers in the central city of Da Nang confirmed on Monday they had apprehended two South Korean men for stealing VND150 million (US$6,450) from a Vietnamese man at a local hotel on March 1.

-- A 79-year-old woman in the north-central province of Thanh Hoa has been probed for storing about 153 kilograms of explosives and 2,300 detonators at her home.

Business

-- The Vietnam Electricity (EVN), in coordination with Singapore’s Sembcorp Group, has announced their $3 billion investment in the construction of the Dung Quat power center in the namesake economic zone in the central province of Quang Ngai.

Education

-- The Kovalevskaia awards ceremony was held in Hanoi on Monday to honor outstanding female scientists in Vietnam.

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