Read what is in the news today:

Politics

— The 14th National Assembly of Vietnam convened its 9th session on Wednesday morning with deputies tuning in remotely from 63 provinces and cities for the first time in history. They are expected to meet online from May 20 to 29 before assembling in Hanoi between June 8 and 18 for an offline sitting.

— Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc on Tuesday attended and spoke at the 73rd World Health Assembly, which was held in the form of a videoconference, at the invitation of Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Society

— Vietnam logged no new cases of novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) on Wednesday morning, the 34th day of no community transmission. The national tally remains at 324, with 264 recoveries and no deaths.

— Nearly 340 Vietnamese citizens stranded in India — including Buddhists who were on a religious journey in the South Asian country when the COVID-19 pandemic hit — were brought home on a flight that landed at Can Tho International Airport in the namesake city in the Mekong Delta on Wednesday morning.

— The Airports Corporation of Vietnam (ACV) has been made the developer of a VND11 trillion (US$471.15 million) project to build a third terminal, T3, at Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Ho Chi Minh City, according to a prime minister decision approving the project issued on Tuesday.

— Around 20-30 percent of the lungs of a British pilot who is the most severe case of COVID-19 infection in Vietnam to date are functioning, up from ten percent as reported last week, according to Vietnamese doctors who attended a videoconference — the third one in ten days — to discuss his treatment on Tuesday evening.

Lifestyle

— Authorities in the central province of Thua Thien-Hue are struggling to fix a one-kilometer section of a moat surrounding the historical Imperial City of Hue after the structure — originally built by placing rocks on top of one another without any binding paste — had been wrongly 'restored' using modern materials held together by mortar.

Business

— The investigative police agency under the Ministry of Public Security has launched a criminal investigation into the case of “fraudulent appropriation of assets” at Horizon Property Group Co., Ltd., which is run by businessman Huy Nhat — the owner of the Mon Hue restaurant chain which abruptly shut down in October last year — after the group had been accused by four foreign companies of appropriating $25 million in investment capital in relation to a resort project in Thua Thien-Hue.

— Vietnam’s gross domestic product (GDP) can grow by 4.4 to 5.2 percent, or up to 5.4 percent in the best-case scenario, in 2020, Planning and Investment Minister Nguyen Chi Dung told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on Tuesday. He admitted, however, that GDP growth may fall in the range of 3.6 to 4.4 percent in more difficult circumstances.

World news

— The novel coronavirus has infected over 4.98 million people and killed more than 324,800 around the globe as of Wednesday morning, according to statistics. More than 1.96 million patients have recovered from COVID-19.

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