Vietnam hold a nationwide vote to choose a new five-year National Assembly, just two months after the ruling Communist Party confirmed its leadership at its national congress and reelected To Lam as general secretary.

An internal document reveals Vietnam's military is preparing for a possible American war of aggression, viewing the U.S. as a "belligerent" power.

Vietnam and the European Union have upgraded their relationship to a comprehensive strategic partnership, Vietnam’s highest diplomatic level.

Vietnam’s To Lam has been re-elected as the general secretary of its ruling Communist Party.

Vietnam’s Communist Party has opened a meeting to decide the country's top leadership and policies for the next five years.

A deep-sea search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has begun in the Indian Ocean, reviving efforts to solve one of aviation’s greatest mysteries.

Southeast Asia is embracing the embattled offshore wind industry as it reels from U.S. President Donald Trump’s rejection of renewable energy.

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has visited Vietnam to reaffirm a partnership focused on addressing the legacies of the Vietnam War.

Heavy rains have caused major flooding in central Vietnam, submerging homes, farmland, and tourist spots like Hue and Hoi An.

A report by an environmental group says millions of tons of discarded U.S. electronics are being shipped overseas each month.

Lingering heavy rains from a former typhoon caused more flooding and landslides in Vietnam, raising the death toll to at least 26, with more missing.

Vietnam has evacuated thousands from its central and northern provinces as Typhoon Bualoi approaches faster than expected.

Russia and Vietnam have developed a mechanism to conceal arms deal payments to avoid American and other Western sanctions, using profits from joint energy-sector ventures to pay for defense contracts, according to internal Vietnamese documents obtained by The Associated Press.

Vietnam marked its National Day with its largest military parade in decades.

Heavy rain has caused flooding and landslides in parts of Southeast Asia, where at least eight deaths were reported in the aftermath of a tropical storm.

Heavy rain has hit Southeast Asia after Typhoon Kajiki made landfall in Vietnam.

Vietnam has evacuated hundreds of thousands and closed schools and airports as Typhoon Kajiki, its strongest storm so far this year, nears landfall.

Tropical Storm Wipha made landfall in northern Vietnam Tuesday, bringing heavy rain and strong winds that knocked out power in parts of Hung Yen Province.

State media in Vietnam have reported that 34 people were killed after a boat carrying tourists capsized during a sudden thunderstorm.

Vietnam has lifted the death penalty for eight crimes in legal reforms that may spare the life of a real estate tycoon imprisoned in the country’s largest financial fraud case.

Vietnam has scrapped its long-standing two-child policy as birth rates fall and its population ages.

Vietnam is revising its energy plans to focus more on large solar farms and less on reliance on coal and natural gas.

The U.S. ambassador to Vietnam says U.S. arms manufacturers could help the southeast Asian country build up its armed forces.

Chinese online retailer Temu has been told to suspend operations in Vietnam after it failed to meet an end-of-November deadline to register with the country's Ministry of Industry and Trade.

A court in Vietnam has upheld the death sentence for real estate tycoon Truong My Lan but said it could be commuted to life if she reimburses some $11 billion.

The powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has vowed to boost the country’s nuclear war capability and take other steps to protest the recent arrival of a U.S. nuclear-powered submarine in South Korea.

Vietnamese state media say the second trial for real estate tycoon Truong My Lan — who was sentenced to death for financial fraud in April — started on Thursday.

Nearly 200 people have died in Vietnam in the aftermath of Typhoon Yagi and 128 are missing as flash floods and landslides take their toll.

A flash flood swept away a hamlet in northern Vietnam, killing 22 people and leaving dozens missing as deaths from a typhoon and its aftermath climbed to 155.

The death toll from Typhoon Yagi and its subsequent rain that triggered floods and landslides has climbed to 87 as 70 others remain missing and hundreds were injured, state media said.

Vietnamese state media say at least 14 people have died and 176 others injured after Typhoon Yagi slammed the country's north, as officials warned of heavy downpours despite its waning power.

Thousands of mourners gathered in Hanoi for the second day of the funeral of the man who dominated Vietnamese politics for over a decade, Communist Party general secretary Nguyen Phu Trong.

The powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is vowing to respond to what she calls a fresh South Korean civilian leafleting campaign.

The powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has called South Korea’s recent front-line live-fire drills “suicidal hysteria” as she threatened unspecified military steps if further provoked.

A senior U.S. diplomat has held talks in Vietnam and said that the trust between the two countries is at an “all-time high,” just days after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s state visit to Hanoi.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a series of deals with his Vietnamese counterpart during a state visit that comes as Moscow is seeking to bolster ties in Asia to offset its growing international isolation over its military actions in Ukraine.

An overnight fire in an apartment building on a narrow alley in Vietnam’s capital has killed 14 people and injured six others.

Vietnamese state media outlet VN Express reports that the head of Vietnam’s Parliament, Vuong Dinh Hue, has resigned.

In abandoning his country’s decades-old aspirational goal of reconciliation with South Korea, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un could be revealing significant changes to the way he sees the world, as he navigates growing tensions with neighbors and exploits broader geopolitical shifts to gain leverage.

Vietnamese automaker VinFast plans to spend up to $2 billion to build an electric vehicle factory in India, the world's third-largest auto market by sales.

Police in Vietnam say that 10 children are among the 56 people killed in a blaze in a Hanoi high-rise.

A fire in a nine-story apartment building in Vietnam’s capital killed at least 56 people, including four children, and injured dozens.

President Joe Biden has wrapped up a five-day diplomatic sprint through Vietnam and India that put a spotlight on complicated relationships he believes will be crucial for global stability.

President Joe Biden says his visit to Vietnam to showcase stronger ties with Hanoi isn't about trying to start a “cold war” with China.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has told top Vietnamese officials that Washington considers building strong economic and security ties with Vietnam a priority.

A human rights advocacy group says it found allegations of dozens of labor and environmental abuses by Chinese-invested companies involved in mining or processing minerals used in renewable energy.

The influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has vowed again to push for a second launch of a spy satellite.

The United States and Vietnam are pledging to boost relations as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visits Hanoi as part of the Biden administration's push to counter China's increasing assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific.

State media say Vietnam's health minister and the mayor of the capital Hanoi have been arrested in an investigation into massive price gouging of COVID-19 tests.

The AP's Hau Dinh set off from Hanoi for the seaside resort of Vung Tau in southern Vietnam for a long weekend in mid-July.

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris’ trip from Singapore to Vietnam was delayed several hours Tuesday by an investigation into two possible cases in Hanoi of the so-called Havana Syndrome in Hanoi.

Vietnam’s government says it is sending troops to Ho Chi Minh City to help deliver food and aid to households as it further tightens restrictions on people’s movements amid a worsening surge of the coronavirus.

South Korea says it’ll keep pushing to improve ties and resume talks with rival North Korea, despite the North’s threat to rekindle animosities if Seoul continues with its upcoming military drills with the United States.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has met his Vietnamese counterpart to deepen cooperation in security and pandemic recovery, after Washington vowed support for Southeast Asian nations embroiled in territorial rifts with China.

The U.S. Department of Education approved Georgia’s plans to use $1.4 billion in federal coronavirus relief money.

Vietnam has announced a 15-day lockdown in the capital Hanoi as a coronavirus surge spread from the southern Mekong Delta region.

Vietnam says it has discovered a new coronavirus variant that’s a hybrid of strains first found in India and the U.K. The Vietnamese health minister made the announcement Saturday.

A health worker injects a doctor with a dose of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine at Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Hanoi, Vietnam Monday, March 8, 2021. (AP Photo/Hau Dinh)HANOI – Vietnam administered its first COVID-19 doses Monday to the front-line workers who made the nation's relative success in controlling the pandemic possible — health workers, contact tracers and security forces who handled quarantine duties. Thousands of doctors, nurses and technicians working at hospitals designated to treat COVID-19 patients lined up in the morning and received the first jabs of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Separately, Vietnam expects to secure another 30 million doses of the same vaccine through COVAX, a U.N.-backed initiative created to ensure vaccine access to low- and middle-income countries. It is also negotiating with Pfizer for another 30 million doses, according to the health ministry.

The human rights group said Wednesday that Amnesty Tech's Security Lab found evidence of the hacking attempts in phishing emails sent to two dissidents, one in the Philippines and one in Germany. Cybersecurity firms earlier identified hacking attempts by Ocean Lotus targeting dissidents, governments and companies across Southeast Asia. The Amnesty report also said the hacking efforts involved emails pretending to share an important document with a link to download a file. An analysis of the phishing emails indicated they were generated by Ocean Lotus, based on the tools and techniques they used, it said. According to the cybersecurity company Volexity, OceanLotus was identified as a Vietnam-based hacking group in 2015.

People wearing face masks wait for boarding at the Noi Bai airport in Hanoi, Vietnam, Friday, Feb.12, 2020. Fresh COVID-19 outbreak in Vietnam has slowed down business and travel during the popular lunar new year festival. “These declines appear to be due to countries implementing public health measures more stringently,” Tedros said. But he said it was possible the virus could still be present in samples that haven't yet been analyzed. “Of course, the best way to prevent long COVID is to prevent COVID-19 in the first place.”

Vietnam has reported 84 new cases of local transmission after nearly two months. Vietnam has reported 82 new COVID-19 cases in two clusters, hours after counting its first new local cases in nearly two months. (AP Photo/Hau Dinh)HANOI – Vietnam reported 82 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, hours after confirming the first two infections in nearly two months. The company with over 2,200 workers was closed for disinfection and the provincial authority locked down surrounding communities to curb the outbreak. Meanwhile, in neighboring Quang Ninh province, 10 people tested positive after a man working at Van Don International Airport was confirmed to be infected.

(AP Photo/Andy Wong)HANOI – Vietnamese authorities are conducting intensive contact tracing after discovering the country's first confirmed local transmission of the coronavirus in 89 days. The new case ended Vietnam’s streak of 89 days without any known local transmission of the virus. Lam asked citizens to “refrain from social gatherings” and said that people, in particular the elderly, should remain at home. — Coronavirus quarantine restrictions will continue in the Philippine capital during the Christmas season in Asia’s largest Roman Catholic nation. "Why would it not increase when everybody is going out?” The Philippines has reported more than 431,600 coronavirus infections, the second-highest in Southeast Asia, and at least 8,392 deaths.

It is not expected to go as far as the European Union in integrating member economies but does build on existing free trade arrangements. The agreement is expected to help China, Japan and South Korea finally reach a trilateral free trade deal after years of struggling to bridge their differences. Critics of free trade agreements say they tend to encourage companies to move manufacturing jobs overseas. The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, the retooled version of the North American Free Trade Agreement under Trump, covers slightly less economic activity but less than a tenth of the world's population. The EU and Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership, the revised version of the deal Trump rejected, also are smaller.

HANOI – The U.S. energy firm AES and PetroVietnam plan to soon sign an agreement on a $2.8 billion liquefied natural gas project, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Wednesday. Pompeo made the comments in pre-recorded remarks to a business conference hosted both online and in person in Hanoi, the Vietnamese capital. Later Wednesday, the State Department announced that Pompeo had added a stop in Vietnam to his Asia tour this week. Pompeo said Vietnam has approved the project, and that it would “open the door to billions of dollars per year in U.S. LNG exports to Vietnam. Delta Offshore Energy and a consortium that includes Bechtel Infrastructure, GE Power and other companies also recently announced plans for a $4 billion LNG to power project in southern Vietnam's Bac Lieu province.

Broken tree branches caused by strong winds from typhoon Molave lie on a deserted street in Da Nang, Vietnam Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2020. Another man was pinned to death by a fallen tree in the coastal province, the official Vietnam News Agency reported. Vietnam is still recovering from severe flooding and landslides that killed 136 people and left dozens missing in three provinces. The relentless storms and flooding are taking a devastating human toll,” Vietnam Red Cross Society president Nguyen Thi Xuan Thu said in a statement. The typhoon left at least nine people dead in the Philippines before blowing toward Vietnam.

People move fishing boats to save place ahead of Typhoon Molave in Danang, Vietnam on Monday, Oct. 26, 2020. National agency forecasts the typhoon to hit Vietnam on Wednesday morning in the central region where 1.3 people could face evacuation. Typhoon Molave is forecast to slam into Vietnam’s south central coast with sustained winds of up to 135 kilometers (84 miles) per hour on Wednesday morning, according to the official Vietnam News Agency. The typhoon left at least 3 people dead and 13 missing and displaced more than 120,000 villagers in the Philippines before blowing toward Vietnam. Torrential rains are expected in the still-flooded and isolated region, Vietnam News said.

(AP Photo/Firdia Lisnawati)HANOI – Vietnam will resume international commercial flights connecting the country to several Asian destinations starting Friday, after a monthslong shutdown to curb the coronavirus outbreak. Flights connecting the cities with Cambodia and Laos will resume next week. The flights, however, are reserved for Vietnamese nationals, diplomats, experts, managers, skilled workers, investors and their families. Vietnam shut down international flights on April 1. Vietnam has reported 1,059 cases of the coronavirus.

People wait in line for COVID-19 test in Hanoi, Vietnam, Friday, July 31, 2020. Vietnam reported on Friday the country's first ever death of a person with the coronavirus as it struggles with a renewed outbreak after 99 days without any cases. (AP Photo/Hau Dinh)HANOI Vietnam reported more than three dozen new cases of the coronavirus on Saturday, while a third person died of COVID-19 complications a day after the country reported its first-ever death from the disease. Da Nang is Vietnams most popular beach destination, and thousands of visitors were in the city for summer vacation. Of the 40 new cases reported Saturday, 32 are from Da Nang hospitals and six are from local community transmissions in the city.

All three died in a hospital in Da Nang, a hot spot with more than 100 cases in the past week, more than half of them patients. Da Nang is Vietnams most popular beach destination, and thousands of visitors were in the city for summer vacation. On Saturday morning, the Health Ministry confirmed 12 more cases, all linked to the hospital. But a week ago an outbreak began at Da Nang Hospital. It is for me and for the community," said Pham Thuy Hoa, a banking official who recently went to Da Nang for a family vacation.

People wait in line for COVID-19 test in Hanoi, Vietnam, Friday, July 31, 2020. Vietnam reported on Friday the country's first ever death of a person with the coronavirus as it struggles with a renewed outbreak after 99 days without any cases. Da Nang is Vietnams most popular beach destination, and thousands of visitors were in the city for summer vacation. But a week ago an outbreak began at Da Nang Hospital. Da Nang was put under lockdown on Tuesday and testing and business restrictions increased in other areas.

A woman walks past a row of T-shirts printed with Vietnamese flags in Hanoi, Vietnam on Thursday, Jul.30, 2020. Then health workers found three other infections in Da Nang over the weekend. All of those were other patients or health workers at the Da Nang Hospital, where the man remains in critical condition. They're also planning to test 21,000 people in the capital who recently returned from Da Nang. When you havent heard about new virus cases for a while, you begin to forget very quickly and you return to normal life, Choisy said.

A health worker disinfects arriving Vietnamese COVID-19 patients at the national hospital of tropical diseases in Hanoi, Vietnam on Wednesday, July 29, 2020. The 129 patients who were working in Equatorial Guinea were brought home in a repatriation flight for treatment of the coronavirus. For more than three months until recently, all confirmed coronavirus cases in Vietnam have come from overseas, like the Vietnamese repatriated from Africa. But the virus has recently resumed spreading within Vietnam, starting from a hospital in the popular beach city of Da Nang. Prior to the patients' arrival, the hospital cleared out its 500 beds to treat the new cases, state broadcaster VTV said.

Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc delivers a speech at the opening ceremony of the 36th ASEAN Summit in Hanoi, Vietnam Friday, June 26, 2020. Leaders from the Southeast Asian ten-nation bloc hold the bi-annual summit via online video conference to discuss regional issues. (AP Photo/Hau Dinh)HANOI Southeast Asian leaders are holding an annual summit Friday by video to show unity and discuss a regional emergency fund to tame the immense crisis wrought by the coronavirus pandemic. The long-divisive South China Sea conflicts are also in the spotlight. Vietnam, the current ASEAN chair, had planned face-to-face meetings, but most member states assessed it was still too risky for leaders to travel.

U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper, center, and Vietnamese Defense Minister Ngo Xuan Lich review an honor guard in Hanoi, Vietnam Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2019. Esper is on a visit to Vietnam to strengthen the military relations with the Southeast Asian nation. (AP Photo/Hau Dinh)HANOI – U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Wednesday accused China of using coercion and intimidation against smaller Asian nations to impose its will in the South China Sea. “We will not accept attempts to assert unlawful maritime claims at the expense of law-abiding nations,” Esper said in a speech to the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam, a government university. Vietnam is one of the region’s most vocal critics of China’s sweeping territorial claims in the South China Sea and has accused Beijing of encroaching into its waters.

Pham sent text messages to her mother, according Hoa Nghiem, a coordinator with Hanoi's Human Rights Space, who has been in touch with a family representative. They declined to comment when asked by CNN whether Vietnamese nationals were among the victims. "On Oct 3, my sister headed from Ha Tinh province to Hanoi to work on procedures to fly to China, some days later she flew to France then to UK," Pham Manh Cuong wrote. "Some days ago she was captured by British police and police sent her back to France, and she came back to UK. A man and a woman, both 38 and from Warrington in northern England, were arrested on suspicion of trafficking and manslaughter, according to Essex Police.