What you need to know today in Vietnam:

Politics

-- Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc congratulated outgoing New Zealand Ambassador to Vietnam Wendy Matthews on her successful tenure in Vietnam during a meeting with her in Hanoi on Thursday, according to the Vienam News Agency.

Society

-- Former Hanoi chairman Nguyen Duc Chung stands his trial on Friday for stealing state secrets.

-- Authorities in Da Nang have prosecuted five Chinese and one Vietnamese for luring children into shooting porn videos last year, a source told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on Thursday.

-- A three-year-old boy survived a free fall from the eighth floor of an apartment building in the northern Vietnamese province of Thai Binh on Thursday, doctors at a local hospital confirmed the same day.

-- Vietnam's National Assembly this week voted to established new Thu Duc City, consisting of District 2, District 9, and Thu Duc District, in Ho Chi Minh City. 

Business

-- Vietnam and the UK are set to sign an agreement to conclude their negotiations on a free trade pact on Friday, according to the Vietnamese Ministry of Industry and Trade. 

-- The Asian Development Bank has changed its forecast for Vietnam’s economic growth to 2.3 percent from 1.8 percent in 2020, according to a regular supplement to the Asian Development Outlook (ADO) 2020 Update issued on Thursday.

Sports

-- Southeast Asia's football championship was rescheduled to December 5, 2021 - January 1, 2022, the ASEAN Football Federation said this week. 

World News

-- European Union leaders unblocked on Thursday a 1.8 trillion euro financial package to help the economy recover from the pandemic-induced recession after reaching a compromise with Poland and Hungary, Reuters quoted the chairman of EU leaders Charles Michel as saying.

-- "A panel of outside advisers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday voted overwhelmingly to endorse emergency use of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine, paving the way for the agency to authorize the shot for a nation that has lost more than 285,000 lives to COVID-19," Reuters reported.