Hanoi’s notorious traffic was its usual bedlam Wednesday morning, as swirling eddies of motorbikes and taxis raced past harried commuters with psychotic abandon.

But away from the orderly anarchy, one man in the sprawling Vietnamese capital was waking up to unparalleled control: Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, who was confirmed by the Southeast Asian nation’s rubberstamp parliament as also its new President late Tuesday, making him the first person to hold both titles since founding father Ho Chi Minh in the 1960s.

“Many heavy tasks and duties are waiting ahead of us,” Trong told his confirmation hearing, vowing to be “absolutely loyal to the nation, people and the constitution.”

The 74-year-old Trong’s ascent — confirmed by 99.8% of lawmakers, with only one token dissenter — follows the death last month of President Tran Dai Quang and adds to the recent resurgence of strongman politics across the globe. It also undercuts Vietnam’s convention of consensus leaders..

(RIYADH, Saudi Arabia) — Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was to address an international investment summit in Riyadh on Wednesday, his first such comments since the killing earlier this month of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

Prince Mohammed’s anticipated remarks alongside other Arab leaders at the Future Investment Initiative summit in Riyadh come as the event, which was created by the royal, has been overshadowed by Khashoggi’s slaying and the international outrage over it.

International business leaders, officials and others have pulled out of the summit, and the event’s first day saw several speakers acknowledge the killing of the Saudi writer whose columns criticized the prince’s campaign of arrests and governance.

Turkish officials say Khashoggi was killed Oct. 2 by a 15-man Saudi hit squad that included a member of Prince Mohammed’s entourage on overseas trips. Saudi Arabia has suggested, without offering evidence, that th..

(MAZATLAN) — The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Wednesday that Hurricane Willa has weakened to a tropical storm but torrential rains will continue in west-central Mexico.

The meteorologists said that Willa was moving toward the northeast at speeds near 20 mph, movement expected to continue during the next 12 hours. The Hurricane Center added that the government of Mexico has discontinued all coastal tropical cyclone warnings for the country.

“Continued rapid weakening is forecast during the next 12 hours, and Willa is expected to dissipate by this afternoon,” the Hurricane Center said.

Willa began losing power overnight after roaring over a stretch of beach towns, fishing villages and farms on the Pacific coast of Mexico’s Sinaloa state as a Category 3 storm.

Damage assessments were scanty during the night because of darkness and poor communications, but federal officials said power had been knocked out in some spots and there were early reports of flimsy structures with tin r..