Here are today’s leading news stories:

Politics

-- Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh attended the ASEAN Leaders’ Meeting held at the ASEAN Secretariat’s headquarters in Jakarta, Indonesia on Saturday, the Vietnam News Agency reported.

-- The sixth Vietnam - China border defense friendship exchange took place in China’s Guangxi Province and Vietnam’s Quang Ninh Province on Saturday. The event was co-chaired by Vietnamese Minister of National Defense Phan Van Giang and his Chinese counterpart Wei Fenghe. 

COVID-19 Updates

-- Nearly 200,000 people in Vietnam have received COVID-19 vaccine shots since inoculation began in the country on March 8, according to the Ministry of Health. Vietnam has documented 2,833 COVID-19 cases as of Sunday morning, with 2,516 recoveries and 35 deaths.

Society

-- Torrential rains and thunderstorms are forecast to hit northern and north-central Vietnamese provinces on Sunday and Monday, posing high risks of flash floods, landslides, and inundation, according to the National Center for Hydro-meteorological Forecasting.

-- The north-to-south railway route was paralyzed for multiple hours on Saturday afternoon after a train derailed in the south-central province of Binh Thuan at around 12:47 pm.

-- A seven-year-old boy drowned in a swimming pool in a tourist area in the Central Highlands province of Dak Lak late on Saturday afternoon.

-- Two people were hospitalized with serious injuries after a pickup truck crashed into three automobiles and two motorbikes along a street in Hanoi on Saturday afternoon.

-- Police in the south-central province of Binh Thuan have launched an investigation after a burned body was found by local residents on a sand dune on Saturday morning.

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