Here are today’s leading news stories:

Politics

-- Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh engaged in a phone talk with his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi on Saturday, during which the two government leaders discussed measures to further boost their countries’ comprehensive strategic partnership, the Vietnam News Agency reported.

COVID-19 Updates

-- The Ministry of Health documented 607 local COVID-19 cases, including 443 infections in Ho Chi Minh City, on Sunday morning, raising the national tally to 28,470, with 9,204 recoveries and 112 deaths.

-- The health ministry has allocated 1.5 million COVID-19 vaccine doses, part of nearly 3.2 million AstraZeneca and Moderna vaccine shots that arrived in the country on Friday and Saturday, to southern provinces and cities.

-- The Ho Chi Minh City Department of Health has issued an urgent document asserting that local hospitals must not refuse to provide emergency treatment for residents during the ongoing pandemic.

-- Police and district-level administrations in Ho Chi Minh City issued more than VND1.2 billion (US$52,200) worth of fines for violations of social distancing regulations on Friday and Saturday, the first two days of a 15-day extensive social distancing period in the city.

Society

-- Officers in the north-central province of Ha Tinh confirmed on Saturday they had broken up an online football betting ring and arrested 11 suspects.

-- Police in the Mekong Delta province of An Giang said on Saturday they had apprehended a 52-year-old woman and her seven subordinates for their roles in the smuggling of 51 kilograms of gold from Cambodia that was detected in late October last year.

-- A 43-year-old man from the northern province of Bac Ninh was electrocuted to death as he was trying to steal power cables from a substation on Saturday morning.

Business

-- Vietnam raked in $157.63 billion from exports in the first six months of the year, a year-on-year surge of 28.4 percent, according to the General Statistics Office.

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