Social development

Xepon district in Savannakhet province and Toumlan district in Xekong province are the poorest districts in Laos with people living in extreme poverty, while pockets of poverty also exist in urban centres, according to a new report. At a seminar taking place in Vientiane from June ...

Three great rivers rush through parallel canyons in the mountains of southwest China on their way to the coastal plains of Asia. At least 10 dams have been built on two of them, the Mekong and the Yangtze. The third remains wild: the remote, raging ...

Thailand has a special spot on the global malaria map: It has always been the first territory to develop drug resistant new types of the disease. Resistance to the anti-malarial drug chloroquine first emerged in Trat’s Bo Rai district and Chanthaburi’s Pong Nam Ron and Soi ...

The Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications is concentrating its’ efforts on a campaign of the law on preventing and combating cyber crime to government officials. Cyber crime is any computer-related offence causing damages to the state, persons, legal entities, organisations, and overall society in accordance with ...

The Ministry of Health this week called for closer oversight of contract employees and acknowledged “inappropriate phenomena” in paperwork filed by mid-level officials, an admission that comes just over a month after evidence came to light of widespread graft in Cambodia’s National Malaria Centre. The letter, ...

Despite a veil of secrecy, details are beginning to emerge about Cambodia’s burgeoning commercial surrogacy industry. In an article on the website Gays With Kids, a British-Polish couple has revealed how they became parents of one of the first surrogate babies born in Cambodia earlier this ...

Vietnam’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment has suspended the titan exploitation at Nam Suui Nhum mine for three months due to a reservoir collapse. The 3,000-cubic-metre reservoir of Tan Quang Cuong Ltd. in the Ham Thuan Nam District of Binh Thuan collapsed on June 16, ...

After a record dengue fever outbreak nationally and regionally last year, health officials say the number of cases so far this year have dipped. Yangon Region admitted the most patients, at 390, while Tanintharyi Region came in second, with 227 cases. Rounding out the top three ...

The repatriation of more than 100,000 Myanmar refugees, who have been sheltered in nine camps in four border provinces from Mae Hong Son in the North to Ratchaburi province for decades, will be discussed when Aung San Suu Kyi meets Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha on ...

Myanmar government peace delegation led by Dr. Tin Myo Win has told three ethnic armed groups of the Arakan, Palaung and Kokang ethnicities not to attack the Myanmar Army and to disarm so that they will be invited to join the upcoming peace conference, sources say. The ...