Senior Lieutenant General Mai Quang Phan, Deputy Director of the Vietnam People’s Army’s General Department of Politics, hosted a reception in Hanoi on January 26 for a visiting delegation of relatives of the Cuban martyrs who sacrificed their lives for the Cuban independence.

Vietnam imported medicines worth US$2 billion last year, reflecting a year-on-year increase of 8.3%, chinhphu.vn website reports.

A movie on Nguyen Ai Quoc's life in Thailand will be premiered to launch a nationwide film week to celebrate the 85th anniversary of the Vietnam Communist Party.

A programme to promote attractive destinations in Tokyo was held in Hanoi on January 26 as part of Japan’s efforts to attract more Vietnamese tourists to its capital.

Cat Ba National Park in the northern port city of Hai Phong has been a safe haven for thousands of creatures, including many rare animals.

Developers of infrastructure for industrial parks (IP) and export processing zones (EPZ) in HCMC are piloting schemes to construct multi-storey workshop buildings for small and medium manufacturers, according to The Saigon Times Daily.

Vietnam earned an estimated US$1.95 billion from exports of agro-forestry-fishery products in January, a year-on-year decline of 13.8%, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

A US$12 million coffee processing plant was officially launched by the German group Neumann Gruppe on January 26 in the An Phuoc Industrial Zone, Long Thanh district, southern Dong Nai province.

Advising the Government on specific support policies for regional localities to maximise their strength should be one of the key tasks of the Steering Committee for Central Highlands in 2015, said Head of the Committee, General Tran Dai Quang. 

Vietnam is rapidly urbanising, both spatially and demographically; despite a large amount of urban expansion, its cities are becoming denser, said a report released by the World Bank (WB) on January 26.