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Politics

-- Vietnam requested China and the Philippines to completely respect the codes of conduct at the East Vietnam Sea where they are both signatories, Vietnamese foreign affairs ministry spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang said Thursday in response to the latest conflict of China and the Philippines at Thi Tu Island of Vietnam’s Truong Sa Archipelago.

-- Vietnam was sorry that Malaysian prosecutors rejected at a court in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday an appeal to drop a murder charge against a Vietnamese woman accused of killing North Korean man Kim Jong Nam in 2017, the foreign ministry said the same day.

Society

-- Cases of African swine fever were confirmed in 17 cities and provinces across northern and northcentral Vietnam up until Thursday, causing at least 23,442 pigs to be destroyed since the disease was noticed in early February.

-- Events to commemorate the death of 64 soldiers who were killed defending the country’s Truong Sa (Spratly) archipelago against Chinese invaders in 1988 were held across the country Thursday.

-- A man of American nationality was arrested Thursday after his car crashed into multiple vehicles along the one-kilometer portion of a street in Da Lat. The man, still smilingly excited when his car slammed into a utility pole, seemed to be under the influence of meth, police said.

-- Two taxi drivers were Thursday fined VND1 million ($43) each for ‘causing environmental pollution’ by urinating at the wall along a street in Ho Chi Minh City’s neighboring province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau.

-- A man was found dead following a fire inside his rented room in the south-central city of Nha Trang in what some neighbors suspected as suicide behind the closed door. His wife escaped the fire.

-- A tenth grader was killed on the spot Thursday after a truck ran over her when she was riding a bicycle at a roundabout in the southern province of Binh Phuoc. 

-- A one-meter-long torpedo weighing nearly 100 kilograms, believed to be left from the war, was found Thursday in a lake in the central province of Quang Ngai while authorities were searching the body of water for other possible explosives.

Business

-- Vietnam’s total losses in pig sales caused by African swine fever since the contagious disease was first found in early February were estimated at VND4-5 trillion ($172-215 million) and counting, according to the country’s husbandry association. The disease also crippled Vietnam’s pig exports, said the director of De Heus Group in the Asia Pacific region.

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