Hanoi - Vietnam's industrial production fell 8.6 per cent in January from the month before, media reports said Thursday, as the global economic downturn hit the country's export-dependent economy.

The drop left industrial output 4.4 per cent lower than in January 2008, according to data from the Planning and Investment Ministry.

Exports, which account for 70 per cent of Vietnam's gross domestic product (GDP), were down 24.2 per cent from the same month last year.

The sharp drop in production and exports threatened to derail the government's prediction of 5 per cent GDP growth in 2009. Vietnam's economic growth already fell from 8.5 per cent in 2007 to 6.2 per cent last year.

Hanoi - Vietnam's rice exports in January and February will be almost double the same period last year, thanks to ample supplies and rising global demand, government officials said Tuesday.

Truong Thanh Phong, chairman of the Vietnam Food Association, said Vietnam would export 900,000 tons in the first two months of this year, compared to 459,000 tons in the same period in 2008.

Hanoi - Vietnam's stock market fell more than 5 per cent Monday on concerns about both international and domestic economic weakness.

The VN-Index closed down 5.69 points, or 1.87 percent, at 297.5, the lowest level since January 1.

"Traders are very reluctant to buy at this time, as global markets have not shown clear recovery signals," said Phan Hong Quan, director of Eurocapital Securities in Hanoi.

Hon Heo, Vietnam  - Before he settled on this rocky, jungle-covered peninsula in central Vietnam, Canadian Sylvio Lamarche did not much like monkeys.

But then Lamarche moved to Vietnam, got married, built a dozen bamboo huts on a beach and started a resort. Three years ago, a guest spotted some monkeys clambering on the cliffs on the far side of the road, and took a photo.

They turned out to be endangered Black-shanked Douc langurs. Today, Lamarche finds himself the unofficial guardian of a troupe of at least 100 primates that call the mountains behind his resort home.

Hanoi - More than 1,000 workers at a Taiwanese-owned garment factory in central Vietnam have gone on strike, trade union officials said Thursday.

Ngo Gia Linh, a trade union official in the central Vietnamese port city of Danang, said workers at the Valley View Vietnam garment company struck Wednesday to demand the company pay them their one-month-wage year-end bonuses before the start of Tet, the Vietnamese lunar New Year.

Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam), Jan. 22: Ho Chi Minh, the father of modern Vietnam, kept a mistress 40 years his junior who was murdered by his comrades, an author claims.

The Telegraph quotes Duong Thu Huong, 61, whose works are banned but widely admired in Vietnam, as saying that the man the Vietnamese worship as ''Uncle Ho'' kept a mistress 40 years his junior who was murdered by Communist Party bosses.