Read what is in the news today:

Society

— Vietnam logged two new cases of novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) on Sunday evening — both are Vietnamese returnees from Russia who were quarantined upon arrival — and no new infections on Monday morning. The national tally is now 320, with 260 recoveries and no deaths.

— Vietnam Navy’s court-martial on Monday morning opened the trial of Nguyen Van Hien, a former vice-minister of national defense, and seven other defendants for violations in relation to a ‘prime’ land lot on Ton Duc Thang Street in downtown Ho Chi Minh City.

— Officials in Ho Chi Minh City on Monday morning held a flag salute ceremony on Nguyen Hue Pedestrian Street in District 1, in front of a statue of late President Ho Chi Minh, to mark the 130th anniversary of his birth (May 19).

— A heatwave lasting until May 20 or 21 is forecast to continue scorching central Vietnam, with temperatures averaging 34-37 degrees Celsius, while southern Vietnam will start to experience occasional rain in the afternoons, cooling down the region and lowering mercury to 32-35 degrees Celsius.

— Doctors at Cho Ray Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City on May 13 successfully performed a heart transplant on a woman using the heart of a brain-dead donor from Viet Duc University Hospital in Hanoi.

— Two Vietnamese nationals were confirmed to catch COVID-19 in South Korea on Sunday. One of them visited a bar in the Itaewon neighborhood in Seoul on May 1 while the other is a colleague of the first patient.

Business

— Chinese nationals are the de facto ‘owners’ of over 160,000 hectares of coastal land in Vietnam — some in locations vital to national defense — by taking advantage of loopholes in Vietnam’s 2014 Law on Investment to establish consortia with Chinese-Vietnamese people in the country and pump money for the latter group to acquire land.

— Vietnam Electricity (EVN) reported a pre-tax profit of VND12.5 trillion (US$535 million) against a net revenue of VND394.9 trillion ($16.92 billion) in 2019, up 38 percent and 17 percent year-on-year, respectively, according to its consolidated financial statements recently released.

Education

— Grade school teachers in Ho Chi Minh City are complaining that their first-grade students have forgotten how to read and write and fail to remember basic math after three months of school interruption owing to COVID-19.

World news

— The novel coronavirus has infected over 4.8 million people and killed more than 316,600 around the globe as of Monday morning, according to statistics. More than 1.85 million patients have recovered from COVID-19.

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