What you need to know today:

Politics

-- Vietnam's Party General Secretary and State President Nguyen Phu Trong and Prime Minister Hun Sen, who is also President of the Cambodian People’s Party, discussed issues regarding their two nations' relations over the phone on Thursday, the Vietnam News Agency reported.

Society

-- Vietnam sent a plane to take 346 citizens from the U.S. back home on Wednesday and Thursday, according to the Vietnam News Agency. 

-- About 4.7 million people aged two months or above in the Central Highlands region will be vaccinated against diphtheria, Nguyen Thanh Long, acting Minister of Health, said on Thursday.

-- Only 17 people still test positive for COVID-19 at the momment, the health ministry said on Thursday evening.

Business

-- Vietnam's economic expansion is seen decelerating to 3-4 percent this year from 7.02 percent last year due to the coronavirus pandemic, Reuters quoted government economic advisors as saying on Thursday.

-- Japan is the second-largest FDI investor in Vietnam, with a registered capital of over US$60 billion, the Vietnamese Ministry of Investment and Planning said during an investment promotion teleconference on Thursday.

-- Vietnam organized an online conference on Thursday to support local businesses in exporting consumer goods to China and looking for cooperation with their peers in the Chinese province of Zhejiang.

World News

-- Almost 12.4 million people have gone down with COVID-19 and more than 557,000 have lost their lives to the disease around the world, according to the Vietnamese Ministry of Health's statistics.