News
Opinion: Did China close Mekong tap? Data matters for cooperation
Recent reports claim definitive proof that the 2019-20 Mekong drought was caused by China – researchers at the Australia Mekong Partnership for Environmental Resources and Energy Systems (AMPERES) disagree. Will the controversial analysis further polarise stakeholders, or could the crisis shift regional cooperation into more productive spaces? The ...
Tarek Ketelsen; Timo Räsänen; John Sawdon
Wildlife Alliance Seize Bushmeat & Turtles
On a raid this month, Wildlife Alliance’s WRRT seized 71kg of bushmeat, 10 live Asian leaf turtles, and more than 50kg of turtle carapaces and plastrons from a restaurant in Koh Kong province. The team released the turtles back into the wild and destroyed the wildlife ...
From drink bottles to tobacco sachets, UN study traces plastic pollution hot spots in the Mekong and Ganges
Municipal trash dumped at an open landfill in Thailand risks filling a nearby tributary of the Mekong river with plastic waste whenever it is rainy or windy. Along India’s Ganges river, small sachets that used to wrap chewing tobacco are abundant, but are difficult to collect ...
Tan Hui Yee
Dams on the Mekong are causing mayhem
The Mighty Mekong is one of the world’s most iconic rivers, but it is at grave risk of turning into a shadow of its former self. “Everywhere you look there are indications that this river, which has provided for so many, for so long, is at ...
Highway stretch collapses into Mekong river four days after cracking
A 40-meter section of National Highway 91 fell into the Hau River, a branch of the Mekong, on Wednesday morning. The highway and the soil beneath in Binh My Commune in An Giang Province’s Chau Phu District slipped into the river after a crack opened up ...
Cuu Long
Vietnam launches digital transformation campaign
The Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) launched a campaign in Hanoi on 22 May to step up digital transformation using cloud computing technology. At the launch ceremony, the MIC Minister, Nguyen Manh Hung, said that domestic telecom companies have mastered the technology and built basic platforms for distant learning, ...
Samaya Dharmaraj
Thailand’s unsung Covid-19 success story
When a Chinese tourist was diagnosed with the Covid-19 coronavirus on January 13, the first known infection outside of China before the disease made its fatal global sweep, Thailand would have seemed a likely locale for mass contagion and mortality. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese tourists ...
SHAWN W. CRISPIN
Threats against Cambodian Forest Defenders Escalate Amid COVID-19
It takes particularly cynical government officials to use the world’s focus on tackling COVID-19 to accelerate illegal logging of protected forests; simultaneously lining the pockets of business elites, attacking environmental activists, and sabotaging its own ability to fight the climate emergency. Yet this is exactly ...
Govt officials urged to expedite aid to the unemployed
Local labour authorities around the country need to quickly implement government measures to assist the unemployed and help cushion inevitable job losses in the months to come, according to a leading official. Director-General of the Department of Labour Skill Development at the Ministry of Labour and ...
Phetphoxay Sengpaseuth
Laos to Resume Domestic Flights, Schools, Other Restrictions Eased
Laos has announced it will resume domestic flights, begin to reopen schools, and ease other lockdown restrictions starting 18 May. The National Taskforce for Covid-19 Prevention and Control announced at a press conference held today nine measures that will be eased, and four restrictions that will ...
Francis Savankham