American Vietnam war veterans have helped locate the mass grave of 81 North Vietnamese troops killed in battle more than 40 years ago.

Richard Holbrooke, a long-time US diplomat who was the architect of the 1995 Bosnia peace plan and served as President Barack Obama's special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, has died at the age of 69, an administration official said.

US president Barack Obama said today he was praying for critically-ill diplomat Richard Holbrooke, calling him “a towering figure in American foreign policy”.

A mass grave was found containing the remains of 47 communist commandos killed during the Vietnam War, an official said today.

A joint US-Vietnamese action plan today put a $300m (€244m) price tag on the most contentious legacy still tainting relations between the two countries – Agent Orange.

Shamed former glam rock star Gary Glitter will be free to travel anywhere in the world after he is released from prison tomorrow, his lawyer said today.

DOCTORS have removed a bullet from the heart of a Vietnamese soldier nearly four decades after he was shot by US troops during the Vietnam War, doctors said yesterday.

BACK in the first week in January four prominent American political figures raised the need for the abolition of nuclear weapons. The issue was followed up this week in an article by Mikhail Gorbachev calling for urgent action.

EVEN after Richard Nixon's secret war in Cambodia became known, the president persisted in deception, according to newly-declassified US government documents.

GENERAL William Westmoreland, who commanded US troops in the Vietnam War, has died aged 91.

Vietnam celebrated the communist victory over a US-backed government today, parading troops on the same boulevard used by tanks on their way to smashing the Presidential Palace of South Vietnam 30 years ago.

Preparations for the anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War wound up in a flurry of activity today in the former capital of South Vietnam, with red flags lining the broad boulevard where Communist tanks rolled into the city 30 years ago.

A US passenger jet landed in Vietnam yesterday, the first since the Vietnam War ended nearly 30 years ago, United Airlines Flight 869, from San Francisco, arrived in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, at shortly after 10pm (3pm Irish time).

For the first time since the war ended nearly 30 years ago, a US passenger jet landed in Vietnam today.

WITH the American presidential election campaign about to start officially on Monday, the nightmare of Vietnam looms ever larger.

AS a former US Marine living in Ireland I was saddened to learn of Bob Hope’s passing.