Here are today’s leading news stories:

Politics

-- The two-day 19th plenary session of the Vietnamese National Assembly’s Committee for Social Affairs was opened in central Da Nang City on Monday.

-- An exhibition on the Communist Party of Vietnam opened at the Vietnam Exhibition Centre for Culture and Arts in Hanoi on Monday to mark the Party’s 91st founding anniversary (February 3, 1930) and welcome the upcoming 13th National Party Congress. The event will run until January 24.

Society

-- The first-instance trial of former Minister of Industry and Trade Vu Huy Hoang and nine accomplices, which was scheduled for Monday, was postponed again due to the absence of many people with related interests and obligations.

-- Firefighting police were able to rescue a woman, who is about 25 years old, after she climbed out of the balcony on the 15th floor of an apartment building in Thu Duc City and attempted to commit suicide on Monday afternoon.

-- A former director of the Department of Foreign Affairs in south-central Khanh Hoa Province was sentenced to seven years in prison for “abuse of positions and powers while on duty” following his trial on Monday.

-- Police in Ung Hoa District, Hanoi are investigating a case where a woman was hospitalized after being attacked by two strange men at her house on Friday evening. The assault was caught on CCTV and the footage was previously posted on Facebook.

Business

-- The Vietnam Travel Aviation Company Limited (Vietravel Airlines), Vietnam’s sixth carrier, opened ticket sales for commercial flights from 1:00 am on Monday. Travelers can purchase tickets at the airline’s website: www.vietravelairlines.com.

-- Vietnam’s largest petroleum retailer Petrolimex earned nearly VND1.27 trillion (US$55 million) in pre-tax profit in 2020. The firm failed to hit its profit target for the year and recorded the lowest annual profit figure since 2015.

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