Hanoi - Vietnamese government officials said Wednesday they would punish anyone spreading rumours of upcoming gas price hikes, after such hearsay caused panic buying at Ho Chi Minh City gas stations on Tuesday.

Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Nguyen Thanh Bien said his ministry had asked city authorities to investigate what organizations or individuals had started the rumours.

Word that retail gasoline price would rise from 19,000 dong (1.10 dollars) to 25,000 dong per litre started at about 4 pm in Ho Chi Minh City's Binh Tan district and quickly spread to the rest of the city, according to city vice chairwoman Nguyen Thi Hong.

Tokyo - A former executive of a Japanese construction consultancy company was arrested on suspicion of bribing a Vietnamese official with about 300 million yen (2.78 million dollars), media reports

Hanoi - Police in Vietnam arrested four people for smuggling weapons into the country from Cambodia, an official said Tuesday.

Nguyen Thi Xuan Tram, 21, was arrested in the Mekong delta province of An Giang Saturday, carrying two Russian-model K59 handguns and 15 bullets, according to Bui Be Nam, the province's head of the Social Crime Investigation Department.

Tram confessed she had bought the guns and bullets in Cambodia for 2,100 dollars, the official said.

Nam said three other members of the ring, Le Minh Quang, To Viet Hung and To Thanh Hung, were arrested the following day after Tram told police they were involved.

Singapore - Singapore's leaders exchanged congratulatory messages with their Vietnamese counterparts to commemorate 35 years of diplomatic relations on Friday.

City-state President SR Nathan noted that Singapore is one of Vietnam's largest investors and top trading partners.

"Our cooperation in the fields of education, defence, law and culture have also expanded," he said.

Relations have continued to strengthen since the establishment of diplomatic ties, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said. Both countries belong to the 
10-member Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN).

"Within ASEAN, we have worked together to advance our integration efforts," Lee said.

Hanoi - Police in Vietnam have seized more than 800,000 methamphetamine tablets illegally brought into the country from Laos, local media said Friday.

The pink tablets, weighing nearly 54 kilograms, were seized Tuesday when anti-narcotics forces in Quang Binh province, 488 kilometres south of Hanoi, found four people illegally crossing the border between Vietnam and Laos, the newspaper Nhan Dan reported.

Police arrested Tran Khanh Toan while the other three people escaped through thick mist into Laos, leaving three large bags of methamphetamine pills behind, the newspaper said.

Hanoi - Sony plans to close its television picture tube factory in Vietnam after 14 years of operations, a company official said Friday.

Sony Vietnam, a joint venture between Japan's Sony Group and Vietnam's Viettronics Tan Binh Co, is to close its factory in Ho Chi Minh City at the end of September, company spokeswoman Pham Xuan Anh Thy said.