What you need to know today in Vietnam:

Politics

-- "Japan's Crown Prince Akishino and Crown Princess Kiko will make an official trip to Vietnam in September to commemorate the 50th anniversary this year of diplomatic relations between the two countries," NHK cited sources as saying on Thursday.

Society

-- The New Zealand Consulate General in Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday gave 2.7 tonnes of apples, 25 boxes of kiwis, and 420 liters of milk to the underprivileged at Maison Chance in Binh Tan District, Ho Chi Minh City.

-- Construction of the passenger terminal at the Long Thanh International Airport project in Dong Nai Province, neighboring Ho Chi Minh City, is expected to commence in August this year, Nguyen Tien Viet, deputy general director of Airports Corporation of Vietnam, said on Thursday.

-- The Ho Chi Minh City Department of Natural Resources and Environment has proposed a plan to increase the number of public toilets and improve their service quality to the municipal People's Committee.

-- Land subsidence sank four houses into a river in Ca Mau Province, southern Vietnam on Thursday, causing damage of VND200 million (US$8,434) and no casualties.

Business

-- VNSKY debuted on Friday, becoming the fifth mobile virtual network operator to be licensed in Vietnam.

-- Vietnam enjoyed a trade surplus of $12.25 billion in January-June, according to data from the General Statistics Office.

Sports

-- Vietnam had the first training session in New Zealand on Thursday in preparation for their campaign at the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, scheduled to take place in Australia and New Zealand from July 20 to August 20. They are scheduled to play two friendly matches against New Zealand on July 10 and Spain on July 14. At the World Cup, Vietnam encounter the U.S. on July 22 at 1:00 pm (local time) in Auckland before taking on Portugal in Hamilton at 2:30 pm on July 27 and the Netherlands in Dunedin at 2:00 pm on August 1. 

World News

-- "Twitter has threatened to sue Meta Platforms over its new Threads platform in a letter sent to the Facebook parent's CEO Mark Zuckerberg by Twitter's lawyer Alex Spiro," Reuters reported.

-- "Japanese officials are worried that China, the biggest buyer of its seafood exports, may halt purchases of those items after Tokyo begins releasing treated radioactive water from its crippled Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea," according to Reuters.

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