Here’re today’s leading news stories.

Politics

-- During the ongoing seventh session of the 14th National Assembly, lawmakers on Wednesday discussed the draft amended Labor law, with the highlights including the increase of the retirement age to 62 for men and 60 for women.

Society

-- The market surveillance agency of the central province of Quang Nam is still searching for a batch of pigs infected with African swine fever transported in a truck that managed to pass several checkpoints to make it to local markets.

-- Sixteen less-populated wards in Ho Chi Minh City will be merged to bigger ones from now to 2021, under a government program seeking to rearrange district and commune administrative units nationwide.

-- The border guard station at Lao Bao International Border Gate in the central province of Quang Tri on Wednesday said that it had successfully coordinated with the provincial investigation police agency to arrest a Russian man, who is currently hunted by Interpol on the charge of illegal storage and use of narcotics.

-- Ho Chi Minh City will launch a mobile app allowing residents to check information of rain-caused flooding in the city’s inundating hotspots, director of the municipal Department of Construction Le Hoa Binh said on Wednesday.

Business

-- Lychee growers in the northern province of Bac Giang are happy as the delicious tropical fruit now sells at up to VND50,000 (US$2.15) per kg, doubling prices in the same period last year.

-- The General Statistics Office on Wednesday reported that Vietnam’s consumer price index (CPI) between January and May increased by 2.74 percent from the same period last year, the slowest five-month pace over the last three years.

 Education

-- As many as 2,000 middle schoolers in the southern province of Binh Phuoc decided to not register for the national high school entrance exam, which takes place in June every year, meaning they will either enroll at vocational school or stop pursuing education, the provincial Department of Education and Training reported on Wednesday.

Lifestyle

-- Cable News Network (CNN) has chosen a photo capturing Lady Buddha, the tallest Buddha statue in Vietnam, towering over the coastal central city of Da Nang on a bright March day, as one of 50 world's best travel photos in the first half of 2019.

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