Read what is in the news today, October 21.

Society

-- A 19-year-old Vietnamese man, Vo Van Quyen, brutally murdered an 84-year-old neighbor in the southern province of Binh Duong on Sunday before removing the victim’s eyes and body parts. The killer, who was allegedly high on meth, later died in hospital of a drug overdose.

-- Authorities in Ho Chi Minh City are hard at work to remove 150 metric tons of oil from a cargo ship which sank on the Long Tau River in Can Gio District on Saturday. The vessel was carrying 17 crewmen and 285 containers, heading from the VICT port in Ho Chi Minh City to the northern province of Hai Phong.

-- The third suspect who allegedly took part in the illegal dumping of waste oil into a stream in the northern province of Hoa Binh earlier this month, contaminating a major source of Hanoi’s tap water, turned himself in on Sunday after his two accomplices had been arrested two days earlier.

-- The eighth session of Vietnam’s 14th National Assembly commenced on Monday morning. Lawmakers will discuss current issues including the ongoing air pollution in major Vietnamese cities and the contamination of Hanoi’s tap water during the record-long sitting expected to last until November 27.

Business

-- More than 53,200 train tickets for January 2020 were sold on Sunday, the first day that sales opened for 287,000 train tickets available for the upcoming Lunar New Year holiday, when millions of Vietnamese are expected to travel from big cities back to their hometown in other provinces for family reunions.

-- A plan to build a 1,559-kilometer high-speed railway between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City at a cost of around US$58.7 billion is expected to be presented to the lawmaking National Assembly for approval at its next sitting in May 2020.

-- Amazon Global Selling, a program which allows sellers to list and sell their products on Amazon’s global marketplaces, has officially established a specialised team in Vietnam, facilitating international sales for Vietnamese vendors.

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