Here are what you need to know to start your day!

Politics

-- Hanoi opposes China’s recent live-fire drills in Vietnam’s Hoang Sa (Paracel) archipelago and Beijing’s plans to transform three islands there into cities and strategic military outposts, a Vietnamese foreign ministry spokeswoman said at a press conference on Thursday.

-- Vietnam is taking every citizen protection measure possible to ensure the fair trial and freedom of Doan Thi Huong, a Vietnamese woman who will be on trial for the 2017 killing of North Korean citizen Kim Jong Nam in Malaysia on April 1, the foreign ministry announced on Thursday.

Society

-- Locals in the Mekong Delta province of An Giang uprooted multiple decades-old jambolans, a common plant in the locality that offers environment and scenery benefits, to sell as ornamental trees for VND6-50 million (US$259-2,157), raising concerns from authorities.

-- Vietnam police on Thursday urgently ordered the arrest of Wu He Shan, a Chinese man supposed to be the kingpin of a cross-border drug trafficking ring, after 11 men allegedly working for him were taken into police custody in Ho Chi Minh City on March 20 for illegally transporting about 300 kilograms of crystal methamphetamine.

-- Law enforcement officers in the northern province of Vinh Phuc decided on Thursday to launch legal proceedings for a case in which a passenger bus slammed into a group of funeral goers walking on a road, claiming six lives on Wednesday.

-- Police in the central city of Da Nang seized on Thursday around 9.1 metric tons of suspected tusks – the largest haul in Vietnam in years – hidden inside the wooden pieces of a ship container transported from Africa.

Business

-- E-commerce purchases by an average Vietnamese hovered around $208 last year and are expected to reach $350 by 2020, an official from the industry and trade ministry said, adding Vietnam earned only $8.06 billion from e-commerce in 2018.

-- North Korea wants to receive 3,000 Vietnamese tourists in 2019, a ten-fold increase from last year’s figure, the director of the North Korean International Travel Company said during a tourism event in Hanoi on Thursday.

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