Breakfast @ Tuoi Tre News – May 13

Read what is in the news in Vietnam today:

Politics

-- Vietnamese Prime Minister Le Minh Hung received Chinese Ambassador to Vietnam He Wei in Hanoi on Tuesday.

-- Vietnamese General Secretary and State President To Lam on Tuesday received a visiting delegation from Laos’ Vientiane Capital, led by Athsaphangthong Siphandone, member of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party Central Committee, Secretary of the Vientiane Party Committee, and Chairman of the municipal People’s Council.

Society

-- Police in Khanh Hoa Province, south-central Vietnam said on Tuesday they arrested a man for allegedly stealing a bag containing an iPhone 11 Pro and other belongings from a Ukrainian tourist who was swimming at Nha Trang beach. Officers later returned the items to the owner.

-- Vietnam’s electricity demand rose about 7.5 percent in the first four months of 2026 amid extreme heatwaves across many localities, forcing coal-fired power plants to supply about 52.8 percent of their total output as authorities warned of mounting pressure on the national grid and renewed calls for power conservation.

-- Vietnam records about 250,000 cosmetic surgery procedures each year, including 25,000-35,000 complication cases, highlighting rising safety risks in the beauty industry, experts said at a seminar on safe cosmetic practices in Ho Chi Minh City on Tuesday.

-- Vietnam remains among the world’s shortest-stature populations, ranking in the bottom 30 percent globally, with the average height at age 19 placing Vietnamese men 154th and women 146th among 201 countries and territories, according to research data.

-- Twenty Edwards’s pheasants, a Vietnam-endemic species believed extinct in the wild, are being flown from Germany to Vietnam this week in an international conservation effort to reintroduce the birds to central Vietnamese forests, a spokesperson for Berlin Zoological Garden confirmed on Tuesday.

Ho Chi Minh City

-- Police in Ho Chi Minh City on Tuesday detained a 20-year-old man for alleged property destruction after authorities said he and two French nationals vandalized and slashed advertising panels surrounding the under-construction Saigon River pedestrian bridge. The two foreigners had already left Vietnam.

Economy

-- Property consultancy Savills said in its Q1-2026 market report that average apartment prices in Hanoi had risen to about VND100 million (US$3,797) per square meter of usable area, roughly 10 percent higher than the average level in Ho Chi Minh City.

-- Vietnam’s auto sales fell 17 percent in April from the previous month to 31,937 vehicles despite heavy promotional campaigns by carmakers and dealers, although sales were still up eight percent from a year earlier, data released by the Vietnam Automobile Manufacturers’ Association showed on Tuesday.