English Transcript

Cập nhật 08/10/2008 15:08:36

Thai riot police have used more tear gas and stun grenades during a day of street fighting in Bangkok with anti-government protesters in which two people were killed and nearly 400 injured.

Karen Percy reports from the Thai capital a young woman died in the clashes after she was caught in one of a series of tear gas attacks near the national parliament building.

Most of the injured were protesters struck by shrapnel from tear gas canisters. Last night the police continued to fire tear gas into the crowd in a bid to break up what seems to be an escalating anti-government movement.

Three unarmed military units from the Army, the Navy and the Air Force have been sent in to provide back up for the police.

One person was killed when a car exploded in the same area.
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Vietnam has criticised the European Union's continued anti-dumping tariffs on some shoes, saying they would hit 500,000 workers in the Southeast Asian country's footwear industry.

The European Commission has effectively continued two-year-old levies of 10 percent on leather-capped shoes from Vietnam, and 16.5 percent for such shoes from China, which had been due to expire Tuesday.

Vietnam's Deputy Industry and Trade Minister Nguyen Thanh Bien says the decisions has an adverse impact on Vietnamese shoemakers and European importers and customers.
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The Vietnam Automobile Manufacturers' Association reported its 16 member companies sold just over five-thousand units in September.

The drop-off follows strong sales growth earlier this year.

The second consecutive monthly drop comes as Vietnamese consumers battle double-digit inflation and other economic woes, and after the communist government hiked car registration fees in a bid to reduce urban traffic jams.
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Viet Nam and Cambodia have agreed to focus on co-operating in areas that the two countries are good at while continuing to speed up work on border markers.

The Vietnam news reports the two sides decided to give priority to developing human training, infrastructure construction, trade-investment, energy, transport, healthcare, mining, oil and gas, cash crops and seafood processing.
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Australia's first political assassination will be revisited in a Sydney court today, as an inquiry considers fresh questions about evidence used to convict the former Fairfield deputy mayor, Phuong Ngo of the crime.

On a September night in 1994, the anti-drug campaigner and Cabramatta MP John Newman was executed in his driveway. No one has ever been convicted of pulling the trigger.

After three trials, the Fairfield councillor Phuong Ngo was found guilty of organising the assassination.

Today, a retired district court judge will begin reviewing that evidence. The president of the Australian Vietnamese Community, Phong Nguyen says the inquiry's a chance to put the matter to rest. Ngo takes the stand today.