VIETNAM TODAY

Beijing's claim to almost the whole of the South China Sea is "problematic" and the Asian giant's actions have raised tensions, a senior US official said Tuesday on the eve of high-stakes talks.

Electricity officials in Vietnam have called on households to keep a close watch on their electricity meters following recent complaints about sudden rises in bills.

Several elephants that were used to serve tourists in central highlands Dak Lak Province have died for unknown reasons while grazing in the forest.

A fisherman from Danang has spent VND11 billion to build a steel-clad fishing boat, the first of its kind in the city.

Vietnamese Ambassador to Thailand Nguyen Tat Thanh on July 7 wrote an article on the country’s daily Matichon, opposing the wrongful view of Chinese Ambassador to Thailand Ning Fukui on the East Sea published earlier on the same newspaper.

More drastic, efficient measures should be done to better balance Hanoi’s sex ratio at birth and ensure gender equality, said a Health Ministry official.

The Ministry of Transport has made several adjustments to key positions in the railway sector in order to improve services.

A 12-km stretch of road, running from Noi Bai International Airport to Nhat Tan Bridge in Hanoi, is to be named after General Vo Nguyen Giap.

Small and medium-sized enterprises are still not prepared for the Vietnam – EU Free Trade Agreement that is expected to be signed this October, officials warned.

Vietnam will host the first International Fashion Week in HCM City this December with leading Vietnamese designers presenting their collections with their Asian and international counterparts.

A powerful typhoon forced Japanese authorities to cancel flights and urge more than 100,000 people to evacuate their homes on Tuesday as the storm threatened to bring torrential rain and high winds to Japan's southern islands.

The International Grapes and Wine Festival 2014 will take place in Phan Rang-Thap Cham city, central Ninh Thuan province from July 17-19.

This morning, July 8, the strongest earthquake of the year, at a magnitude of 3.6, hit the area of Song Tranh Hydropower Plant.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declared Tuesday his determination to pursue peace in Asia, as he signalled closer defence ties with Australia and prepared to rubber-stamp an ambitious free-trade agreement.

The trade sector has worked out a number of solutions aiming to boost exports and produce a trade surplus of US$500 million by the end of the year, the Ministry of Industry and Trade reports.

The bad debt rate of Vietnamese banks had surpassed 4% of total outstanding loans by the end of April this year.

Representatives of dozens of foreign media agencies in Vietnam will attend a press conference in Hanoi and start a trans-Vietnam journey to explore the country’s tourism potential.

An extra 100 million Indians have been classed as poor by an expert panel that has redefined the country's poverty benchmark after a storm of protest, reports said Monday.

The HCM City People's Committee has asked the Department of Education and Training to re-evaluate its pilot Cambridge programme and not to replace it with an unapproved integrated English teaching curriculum.