Breakfast @ Tuoi Tre News — February 14

Check out the latest news in Vietnam today:

Politics

-- Party General Secretary To Lam received visiting U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Michael DeSombre in Hanoi on Friday.

Society

-- Traffic police on Friday recorded nearly 100 sleeper buses speeding on the expressway from Ho Chi Minh City to Khanh Hoa Province, south-central Vietnam, and issued post-violation fines.

-- Police in Da Nang City are investigating a case of illegal cross-border currency transportation, involving transactions totaling up to VND10 trillion (US$385 million).

Economy

-- In the days leading up to the Lunar New Year festival, many streets such as Chua Boc, Dang Van Ngu, Ba Trieu, Nguyen Trai, and Bach Mai in Hanoi are packed with shoppers, while numerous clothing and cosmetics stores operate at full capacity until midnight.

-- Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust, a foundation associated with Bill Gates, currently holds more than 825,000 shares in Vietnam’s leading mobile retailer The Gioi Di Dong (Mobile World).

-- Chinese automaker Chery's subsidiary, Omoda & Jaecoo, recorded nearly 600 cars sold in Vietnam in January, planning to sell 10,000 units in the Vietnamese market this year.

-- Square-shaped and gold-bar-shaped watermelons are selling like hot cakes for the Lunar New Year holiday in the Mekong Delta region.

Ho Chi Minh City

-- Many gateway areas of Ho Chi Minh City were relatively clear and did not experience serious traffic congestion on Friday afternoon, even though crowds of people were leaving the city to return to their hometowns for the Lunar New Year celebration.

World News

-- The space race between U.S. billionaires is heating up, with Elon Musk's SpaceX planning to build a lunar base and Jeff Bezos pushing Blue Origin's ambitions as both companies aim to return humans to the moon ahead of a planned mission by China in 2030, Reuters reported.