What you need to know today:

Politics

-- Vietnam began two days of national mourning for former Party General Secretary Le Kha Phieu on Friday. Phieu was born on December 27, 1931 in Dong Khe Commune, Dong Son District, Thanh Hoa Province. He died at home of old age and illness at 2:52 am in Hanoi on August 7.

Society

-- Vietnam reported six local COVID-19 infections and one virus-related fatality on Friday morning, taking the tally to 911 and the death toll to 21, according to the Ministry of Health.

-- Over ten people were injured after a car ploughed into motorbikes at an intersection in Binh Thanh District, Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday night. The driver said she had mistakenly slammed on the gas pedal instead of the brakes, according to police.

-- Two hundred and thirty Vietnamese returnees from Malaysia were sent to a quarantine center in south-central Binh Thuan Province to prevent coronavirus spread on Thursday, local authorities said.

-- About 120,000 workers of 4,000 firms in Ho Chi Minh City are forecast to lose jobs from now to September because of the novel coronavirus crisis, according to Le Minh Tan, director of the local Department of Labor, War Invalids, and Social Affairs.

Business

-- An average of 30 million online shopping transactions are conducted in Vietnam on a daily basis, Visa said in its latest report.

-- Vietjet is scheduled to bring over 800 passengers stranded in Da Nang due to travel restrictions over COVID-19 back to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday and Friday.

Sports

-- RB Leipzig have advanced to the semis of the Champions League for the first time in their history after beating Atletico Madrid 2-1 in the quarters on Thursday.

World News

-- More than 21 million people have gone down with COVID-19 while almost 14 million patients have recovered from the disease, the Vietnamese health ministry said, adding that almost 753,000 have lost their lives to the virus.

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