Fish sauce makers and food technology experts are voicing their scepticism and discontent towards an announcement on the high arsenic content in fish sauce, an essential element in Vietnamese cuisine.

The reason for the huge number of fish deaths in Chà Và river, in Bà Rịa-Vũng Tàu Province’s Long Sơn Commune, was prolonged heavy rain, the provincial People’s Committee said.

The National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology (NIHE) launched an Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) at a ceremony today in Hà Nội.

An unexploded bomb was discovered this morning in the area bordering Laos in central Quảng Trị Province.

A freight train transporting stones derailed last night in central Thừa Thiên-Huế Province, resulting in a halt in operations for several hours on the North-South railway service.

The scale of tobacco smuggling has fallen but the situation remains complicated, especially in ‘smuggling hubs’ like the Southern cities and provinces of HCM City, Long An, Tây Ninh, An Giang, and the Northern provinces of Hải Phòng, Quảng Ninh, Thái Bình, a conference on combating smuggling has heard.

The Bình Tiên Bridge and Road project will be built by four contractors with total investment of VNĐ3.508 trillion (US$157 million) to relieve traffic congestion, the city’s Transport Department has said.

Hastening the disbursement of official development assistance (ODA) and preferential loans remains a huge task for the remaining two months of this year in the context of increasing public debts and limited resources, said Deputy Prime Minister Phạm Bình Minh.

Experts have recommended that the Cửu Long (Mekong) Delta should expand “smart” rice cultivation to reduce production costs and increase profits.