What you need to know today in Vietnam:

Politics

-- A United Nations staff officer training course kicked off at the Vietnam Department of Peacekeeping Operations in Hanoi on Monday within the framework of Canada's Military Training and Cooperation Program.

Society

-- Only five students are living in a 3,000-square-meter dormitory which carries a price tag of VND35 billion (US$1.4 million) of Tay Nguyen University in Vietnam’ Central Highlands.

-- Thousands of trees in a natural mangrove swamp in Quang Nam Province in central Vietnam have been withered gradually over the past few years with the cause remaining unknown.

-- High tide inundated many streets and houses in My Tho City of Tien Giang Province in southern Vietnam on Monday, causing immense challenges for local residents.

-- The People’s Court in Phu Yen Province in south-central Vietnam on Monday handed down a nine-year jail term to a 29-year-old man who beat a car driver to death with a baseball bat after the car driver attacked him with the baseball bat following a traffic accident in May last year.

-- The driver of an overloaded container truck on Monday refused to stop following an order of traffic police officers in Thanh Hoa Province, located in north-central Vietnam, and drove erratically before slamming into the back of a police car instead.

-- Ho Chi Minh City-based Military Hospital 175 is cooperating with the U.S.’s Operation Walk Chicago to conduct hip replacement surgeries at no charge for 50 disadvantaged patients between Thursday last week and Wednesday this week, while the University Medical Center Ho Chi Minh City is offering free surgeries from Saturday last week to Thursday this week for underprivileged children born with cleft lip and cleft palate.

World News

-- “At least 50 people were hurt when a Boeing 787 operated by LATAM Airlines dropped abruptly mid-flight from Sydney to Auckland on Monday,” Reuters reported, citing the airline and a New Zealand health service organization that treated the injured.

-- “Helicopters were combing an area near the Matterhorn mountain in Switzerland on Monday with hope fading of finding a missing skier after five other members of the party were found dead after freezing to death in ‘catastrophic’ conditions,” according to Reuters.

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