Hanoi - A senior Vietnamese government official arrested last week after allegedly taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks on a Japanese development aid project is being charged with an unrelated lesser crime, police officials said Wednesday.
Hanoi - Vietnamese government officials have met with a representative from the Vatican to discuss establishing diplomatic relations with the papal city-state, Vietnamese press reports said Wednesday.
The Vatican's deputy minister of foreign affairs, Monsignor Pietro Parolin, met with his Vietnamese counterpart, Nguyen Quoc Cuong, Monday and Tuesday, the Vietnamese newspaper Tuoi Tre (Youth) reported. The two sides discussed formalizing relations and agreed to a future meeting at an unspecified date.
Hanoi - Police will prosecute the poachers who killed two rare langurs in central Vietnam last month, officials said Tuesday.
On January 21, forest wardens stopped a man transporting animal carcasses out of the forested Hon Heo Peninsula in central Khanh Hoa province. Mixed in among several goat carcasses were those of two rare black-shanked Douc langurs.
Hanoi - Construction workers building a luxury hotel in downtown Hanoi had to halt their work temporarily when they uncovered two unexploded bombs dropped by the US Air Force during the Vietnam War, a military official said Monday.
The bombs were discovered Friday by workers digging the foundations for a four-star hotel across the street from Hanoi's main railway station, which was heavily targeted by US bombers.
"We moved the bombs out of the construction site on Saturday," said Lieutenant Colonel Tran Dinh Oai, commanding officer of the local Army Steering Committee.
Hanoi - Vietnamese police plan to soon shut down a popular website run by a Vietnamese-American entrepreneur for violating rules on copyright and political content, a police official said Wednesday.
"The leaders of the company have admitted their wrongdoing," said Dinh Huu Tan, deputy head of the Hanoi Police Department for Ideological and Cultural Security.
The search portal, timnhanh. com, belongs to VON, a company owned by Paul Nguyen Hung.
Hanoi - Engineers have discovered two new cracks in the body of a 130-metre-high dam under construction in the province of Son La, Vietnamese media reported Wednesday.
The newspaper Thanh Nien (Youth) reported the cracks were in addition to another one discovered in September 2008. The largest is 31.5 metres long and 1 millimetre wide, and runs 6 metres deep into the body of the dam.
The paper reported Nguyen Kim Toi, director of the construction project, said the cracks could be due to shrinkage following temperature changes when the concrete encountered rain.
Hanoi - A senior Vietnamese government official arrested last week after allegedly taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks on a Japanese development aid project is being charged with an unrelated lesser crime, police officials said Wednesday.
Hanoi - Police will prosecute the poachers who killed two rare langurs in central Vietnam last month, officials said Tuesday.
Hanoi - Construction workers building a luxury hotel in downtown Hanoi had to halt their work temporarily when they uncovered two unexploded bombs dropped by the US Air Force during the Vietnam War, a military official said Monday.
