Here are today’s leading news stories:

Politics

-- Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong met with Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh and State President Nguyen Xuan Phuc in Hanoi on Monday as part of her visit to Vietnam from June 26 to 28.

COVID-19 Updates

-- The Ministry of Health documented 637 COVID-19 cases on Monday, raising the national tally to 10,744,085, with 9,656,467 recoveries and 43,084 deaths.

-- Vietnam has recorded the appearance of the Omicron BA.5 subvariant, the General Department of Preventive Medicine under the health ministry confirmed on Monday.

Society

-- The People’s Court in the Mekong Delta province of Dong Thap on Monday sentenced a defendant to death and another to life in prison for transporting 77 kilograms of narcotics in early 2021.

-- The Hanoi People's Committee has decided to establish a specialist team to support the repair and renovation of Long Bien Bridge as the over 100-year-old structure has been seriously damaged.

-- The number of dengue fever cases in Ho Chi Minh City continues to rise, but hand, foot, and mouth disease cases have started to decline, the city’s Center for Disease Control said on Monday.

-- A worker was killed and another severely injured after being hit by a collapsing wall at a house construction site in Nha Trang City, located in south-central Khanh Hoa Province, on Monday morning.

-- A low-pressure zone currently situated in the Philippines is expected to enter the East Vietnam Sea on Tuesday night and later developed into a tropical depression or storm.

-- Authorities found the bodies of three eighth graders along a river in north-central Quang Binh Province early on Tuesday morning after they had gone missing since Monday afternoon.

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