Hanoi - Followers of an outlawed Buddhist group in Vietnam were permitted to pay their respects on Monday to their former leader who died over the weekend while under house arrest, according to Vietnamese authorities.

Members of the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam were allowed to enter the Nguyen Thieu Monastery in Tuy Phuoc since Monday morning.

The Most Venerable Thich Huyen Quang had been under house arrest since 2003 after he and his deputy Thich Quang Do, 79, attempted to hold a nationwide congress of the sect's monks.

Quang's funeral began Monday at the monastery where he died on Saturday at 87 years old. The official ceremony is planned for Friday, according to Binh Dinh provincial chairman Vu Hoang Ha.

Taipei - Taiwan's Formosa Plastics Corp has broken ground on a steel mill in Vietnam, which will become the world's sixth-largest when it launches full-scale operation, a newspaper said on Monday.

Hanoi - The Vietnamese government has urged domestic banks to provide loans for the country's energy industry to continue construction of electricity plants amid power shortages, local media said F

Hanoi - The Vietnamese government Thursday announced the results of its investigation into the collapse of a 343-million-dollar bridge last September that killed 54 construction workers and injured 80 others.

The probe concluded an imbalance in the foundation of a temporary buttress was the main cause of the collapse of a section of the 2.7-kilometer Can Tho Bridge spanning Hau River in Vietnam's southern Mekong Delta.

"The imbalanced subsidence of one of the buttresses, the main cause leading to the collapse of the bridge, was as an unforeseen circumstance in regular design," the government said.

Phnom Penh - Two people were jailed for four months each by a Cambodian court for harbouring Vietnamese Montagnards for a fee after they entered the country illegally and then cheating them, local

Hanoi - Vietnam may fail to realize its target of attracting 5 million foreign visitors this year due to high inflation, which has reached 25 per cent, an official said Thursday.