HANOI, April 8 (Reuters) - U.S.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken will visit Vietnam next week, Senator Jeff Merkley told a news conference in Hanoi on Saturday, as part of Washington's efforts to move diplomatic relations with Hanoi on to a higher level this year.

The man, currently at HMP Woodhill in Milton Keynes and dubbed 'the most violent prisoner in Britain', also expressed his disgust at claims that serial killer Levi Bellfield had been caught groping a female visitor.
A statement released by the regulator on Friday said: 'We consider the volume and potentially serious nature of the issues raised within such a short period to be of great concern - especially given RT's compliance history, which has seen the channel fined £200,000 for previous due impartiality breaches.
The TV watchdog said RT's licensee, ANO TV Novosti, is 'not fit and proper' to hold a licence amid 29 ongoing investigations into the 'due impartiality of the news and current affairs coverage of Russia's invasion of Ukraine'.
The underage accused are all between 14 and 17, and are suspected of murder or conspiracy to murder. They were remanded in a young persons' detention facility for one month pending further investigations.
Bronson, who has changed his name to Salvador in honour of the artist Salvador Dalí, was first locked up for armed robbery in 1974, but during his time inside he has taken hostages in 10 prison sieges, attacked at least 20 prison officers and caused £500,000 in damage in rooftop protests.
The network, which has been described as Vladimir Putin's 'personal propaganda tool', was previously fined £200,000 for 'serious and repeated' breaches of impartiality rules over a string of 2018 broadcasts on the Salisbury poisonings and the Syrian war.
Law enforcement suspect that the daughter and boy then conspired to order two other teenagers to kill her mother for 350,000 roubles (£3,650) which the girl intended to obtain from Anastasia's savings.
Merlion is owned by three Russian oligarchs who appear in Forbes' list of 200 wealthiest Russians with a combined net worth of £1.6 billion. Two of them have been sanctioned by Ukraine for ‘material or financial support' for the war.
They show that a large volume of high-end microchips, telecoms equipment and servers, which have the potential to support Russian infrastructure, have been shipped through other countries, largely China, avoiding sanctions.
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Financial records appear to show shipments of laptops, mobile phones and sylvan learning online tutoring microchips have been repeatedly sent from a business registered at the unassuming property in Enfield, North London, since Vladimir Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine began last year.
'He was supposed to sit in a chair six feet away but apparently he walked into the room before I got there and said, "No way, I'm not having that" and dragged a chair from across the room. It was amazing. I thought it was quite a comfortable, cosy setting.'