To avoid the US’ $200 billion tariff slapped on Chinese goods, smartphone giant Apple’s manufacturers are looking to shift business from China to Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries.

 Lawmakers have decided to raise the environmental tax on a number of commodities from January 1, 2019.

 The Ministry of Finance has asked the Ministry of Transport not to grant business licences to shipping lines that transport scrap that includes waste and pollutants to Viet Nam.

 The 8th International Science Film Festival in Vietnam, themed “Food Revolution”, is underway in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, the Goethe Institute announced at a press conference held in the capital city on October 22.

Within the framework of the Prime Minister’s working visit to Europe from October 14 – 18, VNPT signed many important collaboration agreements with its Belgian and Austrian partners.

 As Vietnamese smartphone producers are launching new products and Chinese giants are stepping up their game, Samsung and Apple’s hold on the market seems more fragile than ever before.

 In the chart of the Map of E-commerce in Vietnam, Lazada has fallen from the first to the third position.

 Nha Trang Bay is facing serious pollution caused by a drain from a surrounding residential area.

 While wastewater is threatening the environment in Hanoi, a wastewater treatment facility has been abandoned for a decade in Thanh Tri District.

 Vietnam is forecast to collect approximately 2.5 trillion VND (106.4 million USD) from payments of forest environmental services in 2018, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Ha Cong Tuan has said.

 A range of decades-old trees in a forest managed by the two central provinces of Quang Tri and Thua Thien-Hue have been illegally logged. 

 The Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee and the Finnish Embassy in Vietnam launched the Ho Chi Minh City Innovation, Startup, and Entrepreneurship Week 2018.

 The 10th Vietnam-US Joint Committee Meeting on Scientific and Technological Cooperation (JCM10) took place in Washington DC from October 15-17.

 The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and development partners launched the project “For a World Without Waste” in Hanoi on October 17. 

 The government of the central province of Thua Thien-Hue on October 13 held a conference to gather opinions on a zoning plan to construct the Bach Ma ecological resort complex, coupled with two cable-car systems on the Bach Ma Range.

22-year-old Ngo Van Det, student from the Technology Department of Pham Van Dong University successfully developed a low cost ‘robotic hand’ for handicapped people.

Japan’s Nikken Sekkei Civil Engineering Ltd. (NSC) won the first prize at an international contest for the planning design with a scale of 1/5000 in Can Gio district.

Forty Vietnamese IT students will head to Japan this month to work for two or three years and will be the fifth group of excellent students selected and trained by Japanese technology corporation Framgia in association with Vietnamese universities.

 Vietnam’s Ministry of Science and Technology and Finland’s Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on cooperation in science, technology, and innovation in Hanoi on October 16.

 Vietnam has for the first time won a gold medal at the 18th annual Asia Pacific Information Communication Technology Awards (APICTA) held recently in China.