What you need to know today in Vietnam:

Politics

-- Secretary of the Ho Chi Minh City Party Nguyen Van Nen met with Sandeep Aryam, Indian Ambassador to Vietnam, on Thursday. Arya took office as ambassador three months ago. 

-- A tree-planting ceremony was held on Thursday in Israel’s Ashdod City to mark the 30th anniversary of the Vietnam-Israel diplomatic relations, according to the Vietnam News Agency.

Society

-- Police offficers in Dong Thap Province, southern Vietnam raided a household business on Thursday, finding four tonnes of frozen dead cats and 480 live felines. The owner admitted to having the live cats sent to Ho Chi Minh City for consumption and the frozen felines delivered to the northern region to make bone glues.

-- Residents burned garbage and dry grass in Bien Hoa City under Dong Nai Province, close to Ho Chi Minh City, on Thursday, leading to a utility pole catching fire and thus a power outage affecting 260 households.

-- Local authorities detected many people illegally mining sand from the Dong Nai River in the namesake province on Wednesday and Thursday.

Business

-- HSBC reiterated its commitment, announced in January, to arranging up to US$12 billion of direct and indirect sustainable financing for Vietnam and the corporate sector in the country by 2030, in support of the Vietnamese government’s aspiring climate goals and COP26 commitment to become a net zero economy by 2050, during a meeting between Surendra Rosha, Co-CEO of HSBC Asia Pacific, and Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister Tran Hong Ha in Hanoi on Thursday. 

World News

-- "President Joe Biden said on Thursday he expects to speak with China's president, Xi Jinping, about what the United States says was a Chinese spy balloon that a U.S. fighter jet shot down early this month after it transited the United States," Reuters reported.

-- "Recovery efforts continue in hard-hit areas of New Zealand on Friday after Cylcone Gabrielle caused chaos leaving at least seven people dead, displacing 10,000 people in the country's most damaging storm in decades," according to Reuters.

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