European Council President Antonio Costa (left) and Vietnamese President Luong Cuong shake hands in Hanoi, Vietnam, on January 29, 2026.
| Photo Credit: AP

People wade through floodwaters near inundated vehicles in Nha Trang, Vietnam’s coastal Province of Khanh Hoa, on November 20, 2025.
| Photo Credit: AFP

A British woman and her South African finance who were found dead at a villa in Vietnam last month were killed after consuming a contaminated drink. According to People, Greta Marie Otteson, 33, and Arno Quinto Els, 36, were found dead in December last year. Their bodies were found in separate rooms at the Hoi An Silverbell Villa in Hoi An. The Vietnamese police now confirmed that the two died from methanol poisoning from contaminated alcohol after consuming tainted “homemade” limoncello. 

According to People, Mr Els and Ms Otteson, who moved to Vietnam in February 2024, had gotten engaged three weeks before their deaths. On Christmas Eve, they ordered two bottles of limoncello from a restaurant and the next day they woke up with the “worst hangover ever”. They tried to “sleep it off”. Ms Otteson also contacted her parents via WhatsApp on Christmas Day to tell them about her hangover and that she was seeing “black spots” in her vision. 

A “fantastic friend” called the couple and wanted to take them to hospital but they refused, according to Global News. “Sadly I think it was too late by then. Police forensics established the limoncello, which had been delivered, was the source,” a source told the outlet.

Authorities said they collected several empty liquor bottles from the scene. They also stated that initial findings “showed no signs of scratches or external force on the bodies”. 

“The Vietnamese police have now confirmed that the cause of death was methanol poisoning, as verified by the autopsy results,” Ms Otteson’s parents said.

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“Both Greta and Arno were experienced worldwide travellers. They found their perfect home and were incredibly happy with their life in Vietnam, planning for the future,” her parents’ statement continued. 

“They were a loving couple with their life ahead of them. The tributes we have had from around the world are unbelievable. Our aim is to bring the people who supplied the alcohol and killed Greta and Arno to justice,” it added. 

Ms Otteson’s father said they were “so happy” that she picked Els. “He was such a lovely boy. Arno was a great musician, composer and lyricist,” he said. 

The name of the restaurant where the limoncello was purchased has not been revealed. No arrests have been made in the case.

Vietnamese officials accused of corruption over repatriation flights during their trial at the Hanoi People’s Court on Tuesday.
| Photo Credit: AFP

More than a dozen Vietnamese officials went on trial in Hanoi on Tuesday for alleged corruption over repatriation flights during the COVID-19 pandemic, a scandal that saw 54 people jailed last year.

The case is part of a major anti-graft drive that has led to the resignation of a President and two deputy Prime Ministers in a country where political changes are usually carefully orchestrated.

Last year, 54 officials and businesspeople were found guilty of receiving, offering, or acting as the go-between for bribes that state media said totalled $9.5 million.

They included four former senior officials at the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Health, and Public Security, who were handed life sentences. Among the 17 facing court on Tuesday on charges of bribery, power abuse, and hiding of criminals are Transport Ministry and provincial officials, as well as travel company employees.

Tran Tung, a former official for northern Thai Nguyen province, told the court he had accepted around $3,00,000 in bribes and commission for organising quarantine facilities.

“I did it as I saw a chance to earn money and benefit myself,” he told the court, according to the state-run Vietnam Law newspaper.

The trial is expected to last about a week.

Cash for seats

At the height of the pandemic in early 2020 — when Vietnam had closed its borders to almost everyone bar returning citizens — the defendants allegedly gave or took bribes to help people get seats on repatriation flights.

At the time, returnees faced complicated entry procedures, expensive flights, and quarantine costs.

Last year, a Hanoi mother said how she had spent over $10,000 to get her teenage daughter back to Vietnam from a boarding school in Europe at the peak of the pandemic.

A Vietnamese father uncovered a long-buried truth after noticing his daughter’s appearance bore no resemblance to either parent, according to the South China Morning Post. A DNA test revealed he was not her biological father. This revelation led to a journey uncovering a hospital mix-up, with the truth emerging when the daughter met another girl born on the same date at a new school.

However, as Lan grew into a teenager and became increasingly beautiful, he noticed she bore no resemblance to either him or his wife. Suspicion prompted him to conduct a DNA test, which confirmed that Lan was not his biological daughter.

The revelation led him to grow distant and cold towards his wife and daughter, and he often came home drunk.One night, after getting drunk, he confronted his wife with the DNA results and accused her of infidelity, reported SCMP. However, Hong denied the allegations and eventually moved to the northern capital city of Hanoi with her daughter. The move forced Lan to transfer schools, a move that unexpectedly revealed the truth.

At a birthday party, a mother noticed Lan’s striking resemblance to herself, suspecting a hospital mix-up. DNA tests confirmed Lan and her friend were switched at birth. The families now regularly spend time together and plan to reveal the truth to the girls, with legal action remaining undecided.

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Strong beverage: A barista prepares coffee at a cafe in Hanoi.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Ditching a lucrative career in finance, Vu Dinh Tu opened a coffee shop without telling his parents and joined a wave of young Vietnamese entrepreneurs using espressos to challenge family expectations around work.

Traditionally taken black, sometimes with condensed milk, or even egg, coffee has long been an integral part of Vietnamese culture.

But starting a cafe is not a career that many of Vietnam’s growing group of ambitious middle-class parents would choose for their children. “At first my family did not know much about it,” Mr. Tu, 32, said.

“Gradually they found out — and they were not very supportive.”

Mr. Tu’s parents repeatedly tried to convince him to stay in his well-paid investment banking job. But he persevered and opened four branches of his shop, Refined, over four years in Hanoi. Each is packed from morning till night with coffee lovers enjoying Vietnamese robusta beans — in surroundings more like a cocktail bar than a cafe. His parents “saw the hard work involved in running a business — handling everything from finances to staffing, and they did not want me to struggle”, explained Mr. Tu.

Vietnam was desperately poor until the early 2000s, pulling itself up with a boom in manufacturing, but many parents want to see their children climb the social ladder by moving into steady, lucrative professions such as medicine and law.

Creative drink

Coffee, on the other hand, has become a byword for creativity and self-expression. In Vietnam, “cafes have become a way to break norms around family pressure to do well in school, go to college, get a degree… work in something that is familiar and financially stable”, according to Sarah Grant, an associate professor at California State University.

“They have also become spaces of possibility where you can bring together creative people in a community, whether graphic designers… musicians, or other kinds of do-it-yourself type people,” said Ms. Grant, an anthropologist specialising in Vietnam.

Coffee first arrived in Vietnam in the 1850s during French colonial rule, but a shift in the 1990s and early 2000s to large-scale production of robusta — usually found in instant brews — made the country a coffee production powerhouse and the world’s second largest exporter. A passion for the coffee business is often linked to that history, Ms. Grant said.

Coffee entrepreneurs are “really proud that Vietnam is this coffee-producing country and has a lot of power in the global market”, she added.

Vietnam’s coffee shop industry is worth $400 million and is growing up to eight percent a year, according to branding consultancy Mibrand.

Ahead of brands

But global brands have struggled to gain a foothold and Starbucks accounted for just two per cent of the market in 2022, according to Euromonitor International.

Down a tiny alley in the heart of the capital, 29-year-old Nguyen Thi Hue is mixing a lychee matcha cold brew in her new glass-fronted shop — a one-woman ‘Slow Bar’ coffee business.

“When making coffee, it is almost like being an artist,” said Ms. Hue, who had her first cup as a young child thanks to a neighbour who roasted his own.

But coffee is also hugely trendy, and there is money to be made if a cafe appeals to selfie-loving Generation Z. “No-one dresses poorly to go to a cafe,” noted Ms. Hue, herself decked out in stylish bright-blue-rimmed glasses and matching neck-tie.

Relaxing at a rival shop nearby, Dang Le Nhu Quynh, a 21-year-old university student, is typical of the new generation of customer — she said the cafe’s style is what counts for her more than the brews. “I do not like coffee that much,” she admitted.

Vietnam condemned China on Thursday while saying that Chinese law enforcement personnel assaulted 10 Vietnamese fishermen, damaged their fishing gear and seized about 4 tons of fish catch near the disputed Paracel Islands in the South China Sea.

The fishermen first reported the assault near the Chinese-controlled islands by radio on Sunday but did not identify the attackers.

Three of the fishermen suffered broken limbs and the rest sustained other injuries, according to Vietnamese state media. Some were taken on stretchers to a hospital after they returned to Quang Ngai province late Monday.

Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs blamed Chinese law enforcement personnel on Thursday for the high-seas attack, saying it had “seriously violated Vietnam’s sovereignty in the Paracel Islands,” international law and an agreement by the leaders of the rival claimant countries to better manage their territorial disputes.

Chinese officials did not immediately issue a reaction.

Vietnam conveyed its protest and alarm over the attack to the Chinese ambassador in the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi.

Vietnam demanded that Beijing respect its sovereignty in the Paracel Islands, launch an investigation and provide Hanoi with information about the attack, Vietnamese spokesperson Pham Thu Hang said in a statement posted on the Foreign Ministry’s website.

China has become increasingly aggressive in asserting its claims in virtually the entire South China Sea, through which about $5 trillion in global trade transits each year. The busy sea passage is also believed to be sitting atop vast undersea deposits of oil and gas.

Aside from China and the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan also have overlapping claims in the strategic waterway.

The United States has no claims in the disputed waters, but it has deployed Navy ships and Air Force fighter jets to patrol the waterway and promote freedom of navigation and overflight. China has warned the U.S. not to meddle in what it says is a purely Asian dispute.

The Vietnamese newspaper Tien Phong cited one of the fishermen, Tran Tien Cong, as saying that two foreign boats approached them from the rear and that personnel from those vessels boarded their boat and started beating the fishermen with a meter-long (three-foot-long) stick, apparently made of iron.

The Vietnamese fishermen panicked and did not fight back because they were overwhelmed by an estimated 40 attackers. Another fisherman, Nguyen Thuong, was cited as saying that the attackers, who spoke through a translator, ordered them to sail back to Vietnam. The assailants then seized their fishing gear and fish catch.

After being beaten, the Vietnamese fishermen were forced to kneel and were covered with plastic sheets before the attackers left.

The Paracel Islands lie about 400 kilometers (250 miles) off Vietnam’s eastern coast and about the same distance from China’s southernmost province of Hainan. Both countries, along with the self-governing island of Taiwan, claim the islands.

The islands have been under the de facto control of China since 1974, when Beijing seized them from Vietnam in a brief but violent naval conflict.

Last year, satellite photos showed that China appeared to be building an airstrip on Triton Island in the Paracel group. At the time, it appeared the airstrip would be big enough to accommodate turboprop aircraft and drones but not fighter jets or bombers.

China has also had a small harbor and buildings on the island for years, along with a helipad and radar arrays.

China has refused to provide details of its island construction work other than to say it is aimed at promoting global navigation safety.

It has rejected accusations, including by the U.S., that it is militarizing the sea passage.

President To Lam. Vietnam will free nearly 3,800 prisoners in the country’s latest amnesty, the government said on Monday (September 30, 2024).
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

Vietnam will free nearly 3,800 prisoners including foreigners in the country’s latest amnesty, the government said on Monday (September 30, 2024).

Vietnam has announced nine special amnesties since 2009, freeing more than 92,000 prisoners ahead of their expected release dates but always excluding political activists.

Those convicted for “attempting to overthrow” the communist government or “terrorism” are not eligible for release, according to Monday’s official amnesty announcement.

This year, 3,765 detainees will be released including around 20 foreigners from Cambodia, China, Iceland, India, Laos, South Africa and the United States.

They are expected to be released on Tuesday (October 1) in a belated move following Vietnam’s September 2 National Day.

The amnesty comes after the early release in mid-September of two high-profile detainees, as the country’s top leader To Lam headed to the U.S.

Environmental activist Hoang Thi Minh Hong was serving a three-year jail term for tax evasion offences related to her environmental campaign group CHANGE.

Political dissident Tran Huynh Duy Thuc was an internet entrepreneur sentenced to 16 years in jail in 2010 for allegedly trying to overthrow the regime.

Officials on Monday refused to reveal the total number of prisoners currently in detention.

In August, authorities said around 643 foreigners are serving jail terms in Vietnam.

Human Rights Watch says more than 160 political prisoners are behind bars.