Here are today's leading news stories:

Society

-- A Vietnamese man living in Hanoi has been asked by his bank to pay a credit card debt of VND196 overdue for nearly 1,000 days. (US$1 = VND23,199)

-- A 25-year-old woman in the northern province of Phu Tho has died four days after performing stomach liposuction at a private hospital in Hanoi.

-- Police on Friday arrested a 28-year-old man in Ho Chi Minh City’s District 5 for the investigation of his alleged raping and sexually assaulting two little girls at a park in the neighborhood.

-- A serial traffic accident happened between a bus, a seven-seat car, a truck and an ambulance in the Hai Van Tunnel in the central Vietnamese province of Thue Thien-Hue, on Friday afternoon, injuring three people and causing a one-hour congestion in the tunnel.

-- Permanent Deputy Prime Minister Truong Hoa Binh has asked the Ministry of Public Security and Hanoi’s People’s Committee to instruct relevant agencies to clarify the cause of the blaze that ravaged workshops in the Vietnamese capital city and killed eight people on Friday morning.

Business

-- Malaysian budget carrier AirAsia on Friday launched a nonstop service between the central Vietnamese city of Da Nang and Thailand’s Chiangmai, while Vietnam’s low-cost airline Vietjet also opened ticket sale for its new direct route connecting Ho Chi Minh City and Indonesia’s Bali.

Lifestyle

-- More than 100 different kinds of Vietnamese traditional cakes are being offered to visitors at the Vietnamese Traditional Cakes Festival held in the Mekong Delta City of Can Tho from April 12 to 16.

-- My Mr. Wife, a drama/comedy by Charlie Nguyen, beat 14 other contenders to win the Golden Kite award for feature film, the top prize of the 2019 Kite Awards, on Friday evening.

-- A fatherless teenage girl from the Mekong Delta province of Tra Vinh, who has been living in Ho Chi Minh City for only nine months, was on Friday announced winner of the top prize worth VND190 million ($8,170) of the “Vietnam - Where I live” design competition, which is organized by the Hanoi-based London College for Design and Fashion (LCDF).

-- The reading rate amongst Vietnamese poorly remains at 0.8 book per person per year, according to statistics announced at a press conference held in Hanoi on Friday to introduce activities to celebrate the fifth Vietnam Book Day (April 21).

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