Hanoi - A Vietnam Airlines co-pilot was arrested Wednesday in Tokyo on suspicion of fencing stolen Japanese goods in Vietnam, an airline official said.

Dang Xuan Hop, 33, was arrested by Japanese police after his flight from Hanoi landed at Tokyo's Narita International Airport. Police accuse him of being part of a ring that smuggled items stolen by a Vietnamese gang in Japan to customers in Vietnam.

"We deeply regret this case because it has badly affected Vietnam Airlines' image and confidence," said airline spokesman Trinh Ngoc Thanh. "We have decided to suspend him from flying."

Hanoi - Vietnamese police arrested three people on charges of running counterfeit money from China to Vietnam, a police official said Wednesday.

The three were arrested Wednesday morning in Hanoi's Tay Ho district. Police found 300 million dong (17,000 dollars) in counterfeit 500,000 dong bills hidden in their clothes.

"It took us about one month to break the ring," said Colonel Nguyen Ba Hung, director of Tay Ho's police department.

Hanoi  - Bui Hien Dung says she doesn't know why her husband demanded she have an abortion, why he forced her to pay his gambling debts and why he beat her so often that she finally took their son and fled to a shelter for battered women.

But what really confuses her, she said, is why the shelter staff told her husband where she was staying and pressured her to reconcile with him even after he threatened to kill her.

Hanoi - An exchange of gunfire Monday between two gangs killed six and left several people wounded in the northern port town of Ha Long City, police said.

Vietnamese media reported the killings had occurred at about 5 am (22:00 GMT Sunday) as the gunmen, driving cars and motorbikes, exchanged fire while chasing each other at high speed.

Officer Nguyen The Hung of the Ha Long City police department said police had arrived at the crime scene shortly afterwards and had gathered evidence until noon. He declined to release further details until the investigation is complete.

Hanoi  - On May 28, a currency analyst at Morgan Stanley released a report that hit Vietnam's financial community like a smack in the face.

With Vietnam's inflation and trade deficit soaring, the analyst wrote, its currency was under threat. Twelve-month futures on the Vietnam dong had "gapped" to 23,000 to the dollar, a 50 per cent premium on Hanoi's official rate of 16,600. If Vietnam did not allow rapid depreciation, the dong would likely collapse by year's end.

The Morgan Stanley report was just one of a rash of gloomy mid- year Vietnam reports. Deutsche Bank predicted a 30 per cent fall in the dong. Merrill Lynch said Vietnam was experiencing an "inflation shock" that could prompt massive capital flight.

Hanoi - The Vietnamese Communist Party has suspended an official accused of taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from a Japanese company while in charge of Ho Chi Minh City's largest infrastructure project, a party official said Friday.

The accused official, Huynh Ngoc Si, had already been relieved in late November from his government posts as director of Ho Chi Minh City's East-West Highway Project and deputy director of the city's Department of Transportation.

On Thursday, Si was suspended from his Communist Party posts as well.