Disasters and emergency response

Thailand will allow some domestic flights to and from Bangkok and other high risk areas for COVID-19 to resume from Sep 1, the country’s aviation authority said on Sunday (Aug 29), to help boost economic activity. The announcement follows the easing of tough restrictions in 29 ...

Many localities in the Mekong Delta are currently undergoing social distancing according to Directive No.16 of the Prime Minister, so trade activities of seafood products encounter difficulties, dragging prices down, causing many fishing boats to operate ineffectively. Besides, the fishing grounds are increasingly depleted, and ...

In early July 2021, Chinese dams began restricting the flow of the Upper Mekong. Researchers and activists say the consequences downstream are unknown and potentially severe. As China celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party on 1 July, the Jinghong dam in Yunnan Province began restricting ...

The Lower Sesan 2 hydroelectric scheme was completed in northeast Cambodia in 2018. The reservoir flooded 300 square kilometers (116 square miles) upstream of the confluence of the Sesan and Srepok rivers, two tributaries of the Mekong. Villages, places of worship, ancestral burial grounds and ...

Asean countries confirmed 95,081 new cases, higher than Wednesday’s 82,265, while deaths rose to 2,786 from the previous day’s 2,300. The number of Covid-19 cases crossed 9.04 million across the region with 198,480 deaths Philippines reported 14,895 new cases and 258 deaths on Thursday, bringing cumulative cases ...

Thailand has launched a pilot program to test, vaccinate and isolate factory workers to limit Covid-related disruptions to its export-driven manufacturing industry, one of the few bright spots in an economy crushed by the virus.  The “Factory Sandbox” initiative aims to protect 3 million jobs and ...

China is trying to wean its massive economy off coal and fossil fuels to meet its ambitious goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2060. So why is it trying to shut down as many as 40,000 hydropower plants? The answer lies deep in the nation’s troubled ...

Southeast Asian nations have suffered “unprecedented” employment losses due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the International Labor Organization (ILO) said today, suggesting that the region faces a long road out of its current Delta-variant maelstrom. While the year 2020 marked the high-water mark of the COVID-19 pandemic ...

HCMC has scrapped a requirement for people to make a travel declaration at Covid-19 checkpoints just two days after introducing it. On Saturday it had said everyone out on the streets has to fill in a travel declaration form at suckhoe.dancuquocgia.gov.vn. Created by the Ministry of Public ...

When Thai Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul met with Pfizer company representatives in Bangkok in late 2020, the businessman-cum-politician declined to place a Covid-19 vaccine order because in his words the shot was not yet proven effective on “yellow-skinned people”, according to government sources familiar ...