World

The United States and Taiwan launched talks on Wednesday aimed at deepening their trade ties, in a clear challenge to Beijing. The process, labeled the U.S.-Taiwan Initiative on 21st-Century Trade, follows an agreement President Joe Biden announced last week with 12 Asian economies, which excluded Taiwan. Like that effort, the …

Coastal erosion in the southernmost province Ca Mau is washing away up to 400 ha of protective forests each year and threatening 120,000 ha of agricultural land. A report by the province’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development said 189 km out of the province’s 254 km of coast is …

Vietnam has become the first country to produce a vaccine for African swine fever, the agriculture ministry said. Phung Duc Tien, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, said on Wednesday his ministry would make an official announcement on Friday and approve the vaccine for distribution. The vaccine is called …

A near doubling in benchmark cotton futures to 11-year highs, hard on the heels of a spike in freight and fuel prices, is clobbering Asian apparel makers while their global retail customers are reluctant to soak up the extra costs. Losses have mounted for garment makers in Asia, among the …

The World Health Organization lamented Wednesday that it had no access to data about North Korea’s Covid-19 outbreak, but assumed the crisis was deepening, contrary to Pyongyang’s reports of “progress”. North Korea, which announced its first ever coronavirus cases on May 12, said last week its Covid outbreak had been …

Actor Johnny Depp won more than $10 million in damages on Wednesday, achieving a near-total victory in a defamation suit against ex-wife Amber Heard to cap a six-week trial featuring graphic testimony about the stars’ soured relationship. A seven-person jury in Virginia also ruled for Heard on one counterclaim against …

The Quach Thi Trang Roundabout in front of the Ben Thanh Market is set to return five years after it was cleared to build a metro station. The reestablishment of the roundabout, which was first built in 1914, has been assigned to the municipal Department of Planning and Architecture. The …

Nguyen Thi Lien Hang, the first director of Vietnamese Studies at Columbia University in the U.S., wishes she can build bridges between the diaspora and Vietnam. Hang left Saigon just before Reunification in 1975 as a five-month-old child. Her father, like many others working for South Vietnam government, decided his …

A man armed with a rifle and handgun opened fire on Wednesday inside a medical building in Tulsa, Oklahoma, killing four people, police said, in the latest of a series of mass shootings in the United States. The shooter also died, apparently of a self-inflicted wound, Tulsa’s deputy police chief …

The Mekong Delta has lacked expressways for decades partly because construction here costs 30-50 percent more than elsewhere, according to the Ministry of Transport. Home to 17.5 million people, or 18 percent of Vietnam’s population, the delta spreads over almost four million hectares. It is the country’s biggest agricultural hub …