Enjoy your holiday and please spend some time reading what is in the news today!

Society

— On New Year’s Eve thousands of people flocked to downtown streets in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang City and elsewhere across the country to usher in 2021 and join a myriad of celebratory activities, including spectacular fireworks and light shows.

— Ho Chi Minh City held a ceremony on Thursday to announce the National Assembly Standing Committee’s resolution on organizing administrative units at the district and commune levels and establishing Thu Duc City.

— Border guards across Vietnam had detected 144 cases of illegal entry into the country on Thursday, as of 6:00 pm.

— Minister of Transport Nguyen Van The has requested the in-charge consultancy unit to study the feasibility of constructing the Can Tho – Ca Mau Expressway running parallel to National Highway 1 and keeping the distance of 5-7km to the centers of the Mekong Delta provinces of Soc Trang and Bac Lieu.

— The results of a survey carried out by the General Statistics Office (GSO) and National Institute of Nutrition in 2019-20 showed that the average Vietnamese man is 168.1cm tall and the average Vietnamese woman is 156.2cm tall — marking noticeable improvements from 2010 when the figures were 164.4cm and 153.6cm, respectively.

— The construction of the 22.97km My Thuan-Can Tho Expressway project with an investment of over VND4.82 trillion (US$ 209 million) is scheduled to begin on January 4, according to the Cuu Long Corporation for Investment, Development and Project Management of Infrastructure - the project operator.

— Police in the southern province of Ba Ria - Vung Tau on Thursday arrested a 25-year-old man from the neighboring province of Dong Nai to investigate his illegal sale and purchase of military weapons, seizing 34 rubber-bullet guns, ball-bullet guns and pen guns, 54 pepper sprays, and nearly 1,000 bullets.

Business

— Many hotels and accommodation businesses in Sa Pa have had their rooms fully occupied as tourists have flocked to the tourism hot spot in the northern province of Lao Cai during the New Year holiday to watch frost and expect snow fall.

— Total tax collection in 2020 is estimated at over VND1.26 quadrillion ($54.37 billion), equivalent to 100.6 percent of the estimation, deputy director of the General Department of Taxation Dang Ngoc Minh said on Thursday.

— Foreign direct investment (FDI) registered in Vietnam hit $28.53 billion in 2020, a year-on-year decline of 25 percent due to the significant impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, a report from the GSO revealed.

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