Hanoi- While the global financial crisis has driven investors around the world to buy dollars in a flight to quality, depositors in Vietnam have been doing the opposite recently, shifting money from dollars into Vietnamese dong, bank officers said Monday.

For years, Vietnamese have preferred to save money in dollar-denominated accounts as a hedge against inflation and declines in the value of the dong. But that has begun to change.

Beijing - Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung on Monday toured a "special economic zone" in the southern island province of Hainan as he began a six-day visit to China.

Members of the 70-strong Vietnamese business delegation travelling with Nguyen wanted to learn from China's experience in developing its special economic zones, the official Xinhua news agency reported from Hainan.

China developed the economic zones from the 1980s as insulated coastal areas designed to attract foreign capital and pilot the opening of the economy.

Nguyen visited Hainan's Yangpu economic zone on Monday and will attend a Sino-Vietnamese economic cooperation forum on Tuesday, the agency said.

Hanoi - Flash floods triggered by heavy rain killed at least 11 people and damaged thousands of homes in central Vietnam, disaster officials said Monday.

The central provinces saw heavy rain between October 15 and 19, with average daily accumulation between 300 and 470 millimeters.

"According to the latest figures on Monday morning, there have been 11 people killed and seven injured," said Phan Phu Chinh of the Central Steering Committee for Storm and Flood Control.

Hanoi - Vietnamese authorities have ordered the South Korean-owned Miwon condiment company to suspend operations at one of its production lines for discharging pollution into the Red River north of Hanoi, provincial officials said Friday.

Miwon Vietnam, which makes about 30,000 tons of soy sauce and other condiments per year, is the second foreign company punished by Vietnamese authorities for environmental violations in the past two months.

Hanoi- One of two journalists who went on trial Tuesday in connection with their reporting on a government corruption scandal pled guilty to "abusing democratic freedoms" in a case seen as a bellwether for press freedom in Vietnam.

Nguyen Van Hai said he considered accurate the government's indictment of him. "I have clearly specified that the information in my stories was wrong," he said.

Nguyen Viet Chien, however, denied breaking the law.

London, Oct. 14: The chief prison guard of a jail in North Vietnam where Navy pilot John McCain was detained for six years, has claimed that he was not tortured during his captivity, but treated fairly well.

In an interview with the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, Nguyen Tien Tran acknowledged that conditions in the prison were "tough, though not inhuman".

"We never tortured McCain. On the contrary, we saved his life, curing him with extremely valuable medicines that at times were not available to our own wounded," the Guardian quoted Tran, as saying.