Hanoi  - A Hanoi court Monday convicted eight parishioners of a Catholic church of damaging property and causing public disorder.

The eight parishioners, ranging in age from 21 to 63 years, took part in vigils over the past year at Hanoi's Thai Ha church, which is involved in a property dispute with the government.

Protestors erected crosses and shrines, and knocked down a brick wall on land belonging to a state-owned company adjacent to and previously owned by the church.

Washington  - Louisiana voters Saturday sent the first Vietnamese-American to Congress, Anh "Joseph" Cao, a Republican who defeated a nine-term incumbent African-American congressman, the Times Picayune reported Saturday.

Cao defeated William Jefferson, 61, a Democrat who is under indictment on charges of corruption, bribery and racketeering that involved US companies and countries across a wide swathe of Africa, including Ghana, Nigeria, and Botswana.

Cao, 41, a lawyer, emigrated to the United States at age 8 as Saigon fell to the communists.

Hanoi  - A Vietnamese official Friday cautiously welcomed Japan's decision to suspend new aid to the country owing to a major corruption scandal on a Japanese-funded infrastructure project.

On Thursday, Japanese Ambassador Mitsuo Sakaba told a meeting of international donors in Hanoi that his country would suspend new loans to Vietnam pending the investigation of the Pacific Consultants International case.

PCI, a Japanese consulting firm, allegedly paid millions of dollars in kickbacks to Vietnamese transportation officials while working on transit and water projects in Ho Chi Minh City in the early 2000s.

London, Dec 4 : Newly released memos and tape recordings from President Richard Nixon’s archives show that he wanted to “decimate” North Vietnam and viewed university professors as “enemies”.

The tapes were recorded between November and December 1972, shortly after his re-election and just as the Watergate scandal began to unfold.

Hanoi - If Vietnam's farmers are unhappy that their bumper harvests are driving down the price of rice, they should direct their complaints to plant scientist Dr Bui Chi Buu, who won the a prestigious international rice science award on Wednesday.

Buu's work on improving rice strains helped turn Vietnam from an impoverished rice importer to the world's second-largest rice exporter - from basket case to breadbasket.

"Dr Buu has seen the country grow from one of the world's largest rice importers in the 1970s to one of the largest exporters now," said plant breeder David Mackill of the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines. "There is no doubt that his work has played a large part in Vietnam's rice success."

Hanoi  - The Vietnamese government has announced a fiscal stimulus package to compensate for the effects of the global economic recession, Vietnamese media reported Wednesday, but analysts said it remained unclear how large the package was and whether it would be spent in an effective manner.

The package includes an order to the Finance Ministry to make 1 billion dollars worth of foreign currency reserves available to high-priority development projects, many of which have been delayed by financing problems in recent months as foreign credit has dried up.