Vietnam exported 20,000 tonnes of pepper in July, taking the year-to-date volume to 82,000 tonnes and earnings to US$446 million. The volume was down from the same period last year, but the turnover was higher than the full-year figure of $421 million in 2010, the Vietnam Pepper Association said.

Pepper output for this year was estimated at around 100,000 tonnes, already 82,000 tonnes exported, 10 per cent lower than last year, the association said. Ngo So Minh, director of southern Binh Duong Province-based pepper exporter Ngo Gia Co Ltd, said the average export price for Vietnam this year has been $5,114 for a tonne of black pepper and $7,442 for white pepper.

Vietnam is supporting India for its bid on Thursday for BP Plc's energy assets in Vietnam, which is hit by crisis.

The Prime Minister of Vietnam, Nguyen Tan Dung had a meeting with India's Oil Minister Murli Deora wherein it was decided that the British firm's stake will be split between the two countries.

Transcripts of lawmakers' meetings during the Vietnam War offer useful lessons for the discussing the Afghanistan war, says U. S. Sen. John Kerry.

The Boston Globe reported on Thursday that Kerry said, "Some of the parallels are almost eerie," "and I think all of us can learn an enormous amount from the way our predecessors dealt with questions very similar to those we face today."

According to health officials, two dogs were found infected with cholera bacteria in Vietnam which has resulted in closing down of 60 dog meat restaurants and slaughter houses across the Vietnamese capital city of Hanoi.

Health officials also said that this close will continue for next two weeks as officials need to check the stock and need to be certain that no infected meat is being sold out in the city.

Hanoi, Jan 5 - Vietnam protested a Chinese proposal to begin tourist visits to the disputed Spratly and Paracel Islands in the South China Sea, local media reported Tuesday.

The Chinese State Council announced the proposal Thursday as part of a plan for development of the tourism industry in the Chinese island province of Hainan.

Vietnamese government spokeswoman Nguyen Phuong Nga denounced the Chinese proposal for the islands, which both countries claim, the official Vietnam News reported.

Hanoi, Dec 30 - Vietnam has protested a new Chinese law aimed at protecting the nation's islands, including the disputed Spratly and Paracel Islands in the South China Sea, local media reported Wednesday.

"Vietnam has time and again affirmed its sovereignty over the Paracel and Spratly archipelagos," Vietnam News quoted government spokeswoman Nguyen Phuong Nga as saying.

Hanoi, Dec 7 - A Hanoi restaurant owner has been detained for making medicinal paste from the bones of rare wild animals, including tigers and monkeys, police said Monday.

Tran Trong Binh, head of Hanoi's environmental police department, said police had detained two men Sunday evening at a Hanoi restaurant.

Officers found an 80-litre cooking vat containing monkey bones, as well as horns and antlers belonging to unidentified animals.

Hanoi, Dec 3 : Authorities have discovered a mass grave containing the remains of at least 25 Vietnamese soldiers killed in combat 41 years ago, an official said Thursday.

"They belonged to a commando company killed in 1968 while trying to liberate Quang Ngai prison," said Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Trong Luyen, commander of the military forces in Quang Ngai City. "We have not determined how many remains are there, but I think there will be more."

Hanoi, Nov 27 -Territorial disputes in the South China Sea are likely to drag on for decades, and mounting demand for resources could intensify them, experts said at a conference on the region that closes Friday.

The conference addressed one of the most sensitive political topics for Vietnam and other South-East Asian countries. Territorial disputes between China and several South-East Asian countries over the Spratly and Paracel Islands and wide areas of the ocean floor have led to diplomatic protests, seizures of fishing vessels and other conflicts.

Hanoi, Nov 27 - There are only 80 elephants left in the wild in Vietnam and they are in danger due to illegal hunting and deforestation, state media reported Friday.

The state-run newspaper Lao Dong quoted experts at a Vietnam Forest Management Agency workshop on elephant preservation as saying the population was dropping fast.

Vietnamese press have reported several cases of elephants attacking humans in recent years. Elephants become more aggressive when their territory shrinks.

Hanoi - At least nine people were killed and twenty were seriously injured after a train and a bus collided on the outskirts of Hanoi, police said Monday.

Hanoi traffic police said the collision occurred Sunday at an intersection in Hanoi's Thuong Tin district. The crossing signal at the intersection was broken.

The train threw the bus to one side, where it hit and killed a motorcyclist. Six passengers on the bus were killed immediately, and two more died later in hospital.

Bhubaneswar, Nov 20 - Orissa has verified to Goa the identity of 14 people, who had gone missing last week in Cyclone Phyan that hit the Arabian sea, an official said Friday. They were working as fishermen in Goa.

"On Wednesday, Goa's fishery department asked us to verify details of 16 people and if any of them have returned home," Sundergarh sub-collector Bimalendu Ray told IANS.

"We have collected information about 14 of them. They belong to different villages under Subdega and Balisankara block," he said.

Kuala Lumpur  - Malaysian police have detained six Vietnamese women believed to have been working as prostitutes since entering the country on tourist visas, reports said Friday.

Police from Penang state raided a hotel on Wednesday, resulting in the detention of the women, who were all in their 20s, the New Straits Times daily reported.

Two Malaysian men who were with the women during the raid were also detained.

Police are investigating whether the men were the women's pimps and members of a vice ring, the report added.

Hanoi - Prosecutors will ask for the death sentence for a college student who confessed to slitting her wealthy ex-boyfriend's throat with a fruit knife on Valentine's Day, state media reported Thursday.

The Hanoi People's Procuracy filed murder charges Wednesday against the student, 22-year-old Vu Kim Anh, and requested the maximum penalty of death, the state-run newspaper Lao Dong reported. The trial is due to begin next month.

Hanoi  - Employees at Vietnamese internet providers confirmed Thursday that the government had ordered their companies to block the social networking site Facebook.

Vietnamese Facebook users had complained of being unable to access the site for days, but officials refused to confirm it had been blocked. Deputy Minister of Information and Telecommunications Do Quy Doan said Tuesday his ministry had not blocked the site.

Vientiane, Laos  - Lao legislators are preparing to pass the country's first cigarette-control bill, in keeping with anti-smoking campaigns worldwide, media reports said Thursday.

Minister of Public Health Ponmek Dalaloy presented a draft law at the National Assembly Wednesday, sparking a lively debate among parliamentarians, the state-run KPL news agency reported.

The draft lays down rules on the control, management, inspection, import, distribution, advertisement and production of cigarettes.

Hanoi - Two people were killed and 15 injured when two buses collided on the main national highway in southern Vietnam's Ninh Thuan province, a traffic policeman said Thursday.

Officer Pham Van Bay of the Ninh Thuan provincial traffic police said a bus travelling from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi swerved to avoid a motorbike Wednesday evening and hit an oncoming bus. A passenger on the first bus was killed, and a motorcyclist was killed when the bus ran over him before plunging off the road into a rice field.

Fifteen passengers were being treated at Ninh Thuan Province's General Hospital.

Hanoi  - Four men were killed in the province of Tay Ninh while trying to remove the explosives from a Vietnam War-era bomb for use in fishing, a local policeman said Wednesday.

The men, two pairs of brothers in their mid-20s, were attempting to cut open the bomb when it exploded, said Phan Anh Tuan, deputy police chief of the commune of Hung Thuan, where the men lived.

Vientiane, Laos  - Typhoon Ketsana caused 94.2 million dollars worth of damage in southern Laos in late September, draining the communist country's reserve fund, state media reported Tuesday.

Finance Minister Somdy Douangdy told the National Assembly Monday that the storm had inflicted 800 billion kip (94.2 million dollars) in damages when it struck Attapeu, Saravan and Xekong provinces in September.

It caused extensive damage to roads, irrigation networks, schools, hospitals and government offices, the Vientiane Times reported.

Hanoi  - Vietnam has protested new moves by China to assert sovereignty over the disputed Spratly and Paracel Islands in the South China Sea, local media reported Tuesday.

China announced November 8 it had decided to establish local governing bodies known as hamlet committees on Woody Island, the largest of the Paracels.

"This act seriously infringes upon Vietnam's territorial sovereignty," said government spokeswoman Nguyen Phuong Nga said. It would harm the prospects for peaceful negotiations to determine the islands' permanent status.