DUBLIN-based specialist tour operator Croatia Tours is one of the few Irish travel companies that can claim to be experiencing an increase in demand for the 2010 summer holiday season.

A tropical storm heading to Vietnam has lost force before striking the country’s central coast, bringing rain but not the heavy damage disaster officials had feared.

FLOOD water from southern China pushed up river levels in northern Vietnam yesterday, worsening inundations across a wide region that have killed at least 120 people on both sides of the border.

A temporary pillar set on an uneven foundation was responsible for the collapse last year of a bridge under construction in southern Vietnam that killed 54 workers, state-controlled media reported today.

At least 34 workers were killed and dozens of others trapped or injured today when a bridge under construction in southern Vietnam collapsed, officials said.

A bridge under construction in southern Vietnam collapsed today, killing at least 12 workers and leaving dozens more missing or injured, officials said.

Bird flu has killed again in Indonesia and is picking up speed elsewhere in Asia, with fresh outbreaks in Vietnam and a new human case reported in China, officials said today.

Health and animal experts warned bird flu could trigger the next global pandemic as they opened a three-day conference today in Vietnam on how to control what has been deemed the world’s biggest health risk.

Ho Binh Minh, Hanoi

A SIX-YEAR-OLD boy from southern Vietnam has died of bird flu, a doctor said yesterday, in the second report this week of a death from the virus.

EVER since he was a young student, John Kerry wanted to follow in the footsteps of his hero, John F Kennedy.

IT IS hard to understand how anybody in his or her right mind could ever try to justify what happened in Beslan last week.

President George Bush might try to dodge one of three live TV debates with election challenger John Kerry, it emerged today.

LAWYERS for presidential hopeful John Kerry yesterday attacked "false and libellous" political adverts by former Vietnam veterans who claim the senator shot a fleeing teenager during the war and lied to win medals.

Lawyers for presidential hopeful John Kerry today attacked “false and libellous” political adverts by former Vietnam veterans who claim the senator shot a fleeing teenager during the war and lied to win medals.

The number of dead people from the floods in Vietnam has reached 380, including at least 260 children.

Seasonal flooding in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta has left at least 222 people, including 182 children, dead, according to officials in the south-east Asian country.

More than 230,000 people are in need of emergency food aid after floods in Vietnam's southern Mekong Delta that killed 56 people.