☕️ Afternoon briefing on February 22

Hanoi (VNA) – The following is a brief review of the day’s events as reported by the Vietnam News Agency.

- Jean-Pierre Lacroix, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Peace Operations, has thanked Vietnam for its strong support for as well as personnel contributions to UN peacekeeping operations.

He said Vietnam has sent personnel to the UN peacekeeping forces since 2014 and continually made active contributions in this regard. It deployed a Level-2 field hospital to the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) for the first time in October 2018. So far, it has sent 75 officers, including 16 females, to the peacekeeping force, ranking 62nd among the UN member states. It has also pledged to soon deploy personnel to the UN Interim Security Force for Abyei, a disputed area between Sudan and South Sudan. Read full story

- The Ministry of Industry and Trade and Samsung Vietnam on February 22 signed a Memorandum of Understanding on cooperation in smart factory development.

The two sides have studied and built a cooperation project to develop Smart Factory in Vietnam with the goal of training 100 Vietnamese experts and assisting in consulting and improving 50 businesses to apply Smart Factory in two years in order to improve the expertise of the team of consultants, improve the production operation capacity on the information technology platform of the enterprise. Read full story

- Vietnam has so far reopened air routes to 20 countries and territories, compared to 28 in the 2019 winter flight schedule before the COVID-19 pandemic broke out.

Eight others to which air routes haven’t been resumed consist of Brunei, India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Macao (China), Finland, Italy, and Switzerland, heard a press meeting on February 22. Read full story

- In order to help customers feel secure during each trip, national flag carrier Vietnam Airlines, in cooperation with Post and Telecommunication Joint Stock Insurance Corporation (PTI), has launched flight delay/cancellation insurance FLY PRO.

Passengers participating in the insurance programme will receive maximum benefits when their flight schedule is changed, in cases such as flight delayed for 120 minutes or more, flight returning to the place of departure, flight landing at another airport, flight cancellation, or passenger missing the next flight, including that of other airlines. Ready full story

- The export of phones, which contribute annually over 50 billion USD in the last three years, is expected to help Vietnam expand its total export turnover by 6-8 percent in 2022.

Phones and components, exported to 50 countries and territories worldwide, reported the largest export value the first months of 2022 with 4 billion USD, accounting for 13.8 percent of the country’s total. Read full story

- More than 3,000 social insurance books and nearly 8,900 health insurance cards worth 17.2 billion VND (753,400 USD) will be granted to disadvantaged people across 18 provinces and cities in the first quarter of this year as part of the Vietnam Social Security (VSS)’s  programme. Read full story

- The National Assembly (NA)’s committees for culture-education, justice, and social affairs on February 22 convened a session to discuss and put forth solutions for violence against children that shocked the public recently. Read full story

- A new cold spell is forecast to hit the northern and north-central regions on February 22 night, causing chilly weather until February 24. The mercury will drop to 8-11 degree Celsius at the lowest, even 3-6 or lower in mountainous areas where rains with snow may appear. Read full story/.