VIETNAM TODAY

Two more people died and hundreds were arrested as the biggest uprising against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule widened, prompting Washington to prod its long-time ally on democratic reforms.

Students in Hanoi, Danang and Ho Chi Minh City will be provided with free bus tickets to return home on Tet festival.

Party General Secretary and National Assembly Chairman Nguyen Phu Trong visited and extended his best wishes to staff of the NA Office on Jan. 26 on the occasion of the Lunar New Year festival.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange resembles a character from a detective novel and is "elusive, manipulative and volatile," the executive editor of The New York Times says in an upcoming book.

According to the United States Geological Survey’s Earthquake Hazards Program, an earthquake measuring 4.8 on the Richter scale occurred offshore Vietnam.

The number of Internet users worldwide has reached two billion, said head of the UN's telecommunications agency.

The 17th Council Meeting and the 15th session of the Consultative Group for the International Mekong River Commission were held in HCM City on January 26.

Meeting minutes within the scope of the fourth Vietnam-United Kingdom Joint Economic and Trade Committee Meeting was signed on January 26 in Hanoi.

President Barack Obama bluntly told America to reinvent itself and unite to survive in a fast-changing global economy powered by rising giants like India and China.

Epidemics of blue-ear in pigs and bird flu are under control but foot-and-mouth disease was still a problem, an official from the agricultural ministry said yesterday.

South Korea called Wednesday for preliminary military talks with North Korea next month, in what would be their first dialogue since the North's deadly shelling of a border island two months ago.

The State Audit of Vietnam plans to audit some large corporations this year to ensure efficiency.

Even though Tet will not be here for another week, every street in Nha Trang is decorated in striking colours.

Illegal money lending syndicates in Singapore are hiring more foreign thugs, most of them from Taiwan and Vietnam, to harass delinquent borrowers into paying up, police said.

As of Jan. 25, nearly 26,500 farm animals in Vietnam, equivalent to USD6.5 million, have died from the severe cold.

Vietnam introduced to the public for the first time a book detailing its land border with China in Hanoi on Jan. 25.

More than half of some 57,000 foreign laborers in Vietnam are working illegally without permits, announced a ministry report at a Monday conference on employment and job trend in Vietnam in 2010.

Hezbollah-backed billionaire Najib Mikati has been named Lebanon's prime minister-designate, giving the Shiite militant group increased clout in the deeply divided nation and sparking angry protests.

After being ranked as the most optimistic nation in the world by a Gallup poll, Vietnam is now rated the world’s 61st happiest nation according to the latest Prosperity Index recently released by a UK think tank.