Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Politics

-- Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Russia always supports its oil and gas firms to engage in projects in Vietnam’s waters in a phone conversation with his Vietnamese counterpart Nguyen Xuan Phuc on Tuesday.

Society

-- The People’s Committee of Ho Chi Minh City has submitted to Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc a proposed zoning plan for a 380-hectare industrial park in Binh Chanh District.

-- A Vietnamese man who allegedly traveled 1,700 kilometers from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi by motorbike in under 20 hours last week has admitted to breaking the speed limit multiple times during the trip when he was summoned for questioning by officers in the southern metropolis on Tuesday.

-- The operator of bus number 54 connecting the Eastern Bus Terminal with the Cho Lon neighborhood in Ho Chi Minh City has announced its plan to shut the route down, citing cumulative losses of VND8.5 billion (US$367,000) despite receiving a subsidy from the government.

-- Storm Phanfone is traveling across the central Philippines on Wednesday morning and is heading for the East Vietnam Sea, packing winds at 100-115 kilometers per hour.

Business

-- Low-cost carrier Vietjet on Tuesday launched a new route connecting Ho Chi Minh City and Thailand’s famous coastal destination of Pattaya via U-Tapao International Airport, providing one return flight weekly taking off from Ho Chi Minh City at 1:25 pm and from U-tapao at 11:25 am, with a flight duration of one hour and 30 minutes each leg.

-- Bamboo Airways is offering its shares to strategic foreign investors for a minimum of VND160,000 ($6.90) per share as its chairman Trinh Van Quyet was cited as saying that the airline is already in talks with a foreign investor.

-- The number of tourists to Hanoi is estimated to reach nearly 29 million, including over seven million foreigners, in 2019, up ten percent from the previous year, according to the municipal Department of Tourism.

Sports

-- The Vietnamese national women’s football team stand a good chance of making their historic Olympic Games debut at Tokyo 2020 after North Korea announced their withdrawal from the third qualifying round scheduled to take place in South Korea in February 2020, leaving only South Korea and Myanmar as the Golden Girls’ rivals in Group A.

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