Read what is in the news today, April 1!

Society

-- Vietnamese national Doan Thi Huong, who is held in Malaysia for her suspected role in the 2017 murder of North Korean man Kim Jong Nam, appeared at a court in Kuala Lumpur on Monday where a second petition to free her will be considered after the first one was dismissed last month.

-- Over 5,000 Vietnamese naval officers and infantrymen are taking part in an ocean clean-up campaign that kicked off in the south-central city of Cam Ranh on Sunday, when more than ten metric tons of garbage was collected from 30 kilometers of beaches in Cam Ranh and the Truong Sa (Spratly) Islands.

-- Vietnam expects to save over VND1.3 trillion (US$56.3 million) each year by implementing an online system where official documents can be sent between government agencies and bodies of all levels at an instant, cutting down costs associated with postal services, printing papers and ink, and time consumption.

-- Vietnam today launches a once-every-ten-years national population and housing census with the participation of more than 122,000 pollsters who will be surveying each and every household in Vietnam for the next 25 days to collect data on such parameters as population growth, migration, marriage, birth and death rates, labor and employment, and housing.

-- The first ten days of April will bring occasional rains to southern Vietnam although the unseasonal downpours will unlikely be enough to squash the extreme heat wave that has hit the region since early March, bringing temperatures to nearly 40 degrees Celsius.

-- Police officers in the northern province of Phu Tho announced on Sunday they had identified Vi Van Toan, 37, as the true mastermind behind the rape and murder of a local female college student in February after a thorough investigation that has led to the arrest of nine suspects.

Business

-- Eight real estate projects by Vietnamese developer Muong Thanh are under police investigation for non-obligation with height restrictions and urban planning, and serious violations in the transfer and acquisition of the projects.

-- Over 10,000 households in the south-central province of Phu Yen are making huge profits from selling sugarcanes as fuel for a local biomass power plant, which buys sugarcanes at prices that are more than VND100,000 ($4.31) per metric ton higher than market prices.

-- Domestic and international tour packages offered by Vietnamese tour operators will be on discount by 20-30 percent for the upcoming Reunification Day and Labor Day holidays, which will last from April 27 to May 1 this year.

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