Hanoi  - Inspectors acknowledged eight previously unreported cracks in a 130-metre-high dam under construction in the province of Son La, Vietnamese media reported Friday.

Inspectors from the Vietnam Electricity Corporation (EVN), the main investor in the Son La dam, reportedly found five major cracks and three small ones in addition to two that had been previously reported. The cracks were discovered between September and December.

The half-millimetre-wide cracks range from 8 metres to almost 100 metres in length, and run up to 6 metres into the body of the dam.

Hanoi  - Police in Hanoi have arrested a man found transporting a butchered tiger carcass, a police official said Thursday.

Nguyen Van Thanh, deputy chief of police in Hanoi's Dong Da District, said officers from his department and from Hanoi's Environmental Police arrested a 30-year-old man Wednesday as he was driving his car.

Inside the car, police found a trunk containing most of the carcass of an 80-kilogram tiger. One of the tiger's flanks was missing.

Hanoi  - Germany would maintain or raise its level of aid to Vietnam despite the global economic downturn, a visiting senior German diplomat told Vietnamese officials Thursday.

"At the moment, the world economy is in financial and economic crisis, but not only are we not reducing ODA [official development assistance] for Vietnam, but we also strengthen the cooperation between the two countries in development," said State Secretary of Foreign Affairs Peter Ammon, one of the top six officials in Germany's Foreign Ministry.

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.

Washington, Feb 18 : A new market analysis released by TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade-monitoring network, has determined that the few surviving elephants in Indo-China are under increasing threat from booming illegal ivory prices in Vietnam.

An assessment of the illegal ivory trade in Viet Nam said Vietnamese illegal ivory prices could be the highest in the world, with reports of tusks selling for up to 1500 dollars per kg and small, cut pieces selling for up to 1863 dollars per kg.

Most of the raw ivory was said to originate from the Lao Peoples' Democratic Republic, with small amounts from Viet Nam and Cambodia.

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.