Hanoi  - One construction worker was killed and another seriously injured in Ho Chi Minh City when a span of the bridge they were building collapsed, a doctor said Wednesday.

The accident occurred Tuesday at the 500-meter-long Cho Dem Bridge on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City.

Tran Van Thanh, 26, suffered badly broken legs and died of blood loss in hospital.

"We mobilized all our forces, but we could not save his life," said Dr Pham Van Nghiem, a senior official in the Ho Chi Minh City Health Department.

Hanoi - Vietnamese police have arrested a woman accused of trafficking young women to brothels in Malaysia, a police official said Tuesday.

Police arrested Nguyen Anh Dung, 43, at Ho Chi Minh City's international airport Sunday as she was helping three women in their 20s check in for a flight to Malaysia.

Dung and two accomplices, one living in Malaysia, reportedly recruited the women in the rural province of Tay Ninh by claiming to have found Malaysian husbands for them.

Hanoi  - Police will bring attempted murder charges against a man who shot two Ho Chi Minh City jewelry shop employees and posed as a police officer while trying to steal 480 ounces of gold, a police official said Monday.

Mai Van Tan, director of Ho Chi Minh City's Department of Social Order Crime Investigations, said would-be thief Huynh Huu Nhan would also be prosecuted for robbery and for illegal possession and use of military weapons.

Nhan shot the two jewelry-shop employees Saturday, trying to pull off a heist that took months of preparation.

Hanoi  - Authorities were investigating a case in which four reporters were assaulted by police while researching corruption in the distribution of government New Year's subsidies for the poor, a government official said Friday.

The Vietnamese newspaper Nhan Dan (The People) reported the four journalists were interviewing residents Wednesday in the commune of Hoang Thanh in the northern province of Thanh Hoa when a village policeman and a woman asked for their press cards. When they produced their cards, the two reportedly assaulted them and tried to grab their camera.

Hanoi - Some 100 war invalids faced off against police and soldiers Friday in central Hanoi to prevent their collective's land from being seized by a state-owned parking lot company.

Members of the July 27 Invalids Collective said they had been granted use of the 300-square-metre plot in 1996 to park the three-wheeled vehicles invalids in Vietnam typically drive, and to earn money washing and repairing motorbikes.

The Hanoi Parking Exploitation Company, which runs a parking lot next to the lot, was awarded the plot in 2005. An appeal by the invalid group was rejected by district authorities in January, and scores of police and soldiers arrived Friday to enforce the order.

Hanoi  - Vietnamese police have arrested a woman for procuring call girls who masqueraded as university students, a police official said Thursday.

Police in Ho Chi Minh City arrested Le Thi Anh Tuyet, 29, on Wednesday after surprising four couples engaged in liaisons she arranged at a hotel.

Mai Van Tan, director of Ho Chi Minh City's Department of Social Order Crime Investigation, said Tuyet, a former sex worker herself, had advertised that the 20 call girls in her employ were university students to attract customers.