News
From India’s highs to Thailand’s lows, Asia’s weather is hitting extremes
The final days of April saw further unbearable temperatures recorded in India and Pakistan. Temperatures peaked at 49C in Jacobabad, Pakistan on 30 April, with a high of 47.2C observed in Banda, India. The Indian Meteorological Department confirmed that average temperatures in April were the highest ...
Matt Andrews (Metdesk)
Future Remains Cloudy for Exiled Myanmar Journalists in Thailand
It has been more than a year since Myanmar’s military seized power in a putsch that sent thousands fleeing the country. Among them were scores of media professionals who took up refuge here in Thailand. Some have since moved on or resettled elsewhere, but others stayed ...
Teeranai Charuvastra
Saving the Mekong delta from drowning
Southeast Asia’s most productive agricultural region and home to 17 million people could be mostly underwater within a lifetime. Saving the Mekong River Delta requires urgent, concerted action among countries in the region to lessen the impact of upstream dams and better manage water and ...
ROB JORDAN | Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment
Cambodia hosts meeting on humanitarian assistance to Myanmar
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations convened a meeting Friday in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, in a fresh effort to organize humanitarian assistance for strife-torn Myanmar. The hybrid meeting, which some participants joined by video, is being attended by high-level representatives from Myanmar and the ...
SOPHENG CHEANG/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Room for ASEAN rice exports to grow: MoIT
ASEAN’s 700-million market has a lot in common with Việt Nam in terms of culture, habits and preferences, according to the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT), and there is still room to grow for Vietnamese exports in ASEAN markets, including Vietnamese rice, a major ...
Vietnam Economy News
Vietnam coffee farmers turn to avocados and durians as Ukraine war pushes up fertiliser costs
Coffee growers in top producer Vietnam are planting more profitable crops like avocados, black pepper and durians, which is helping them cope with the soaring fertiliser and fuel costs caused by the war in Ukraine. Even with the extra income from these additional crops, farmers are still ...
Bloomberg
Laos Pushes Forward With Seventh Mekong River Dam Project
Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported this week that officials in Laos will soon take an important step forward on a new hydropower project, the seventh large-scale dam project to be undertaken on the mainstream of the Mekong River. The report cited an unnamed government official as saying that ...
Sebastian Strangio
China-Laos low-carbon demonstration zone unveiled in Vientiane
The inauguration ceremony of the Vientiane Saysettha Low-Carbon Demonstration Zone jointly built by China and Laos was held via video conferencing on Friday. The event indicates construction of the demonstration zone has entered a new phase, opening a new chapter for China-Laos cooperation to address climate ...
Xinhua
Environment ignored as Myanmar struggles with coup
When Myanmar’s military staged a coup more than one year ago and seized power from a democratically-elected civilian government, not only did it undo a decade of opening up the country that brought a degree of freedom and prosperity to ordinary citizens, it also condemned ...
Thin Lei Win
Officials worried about low number of Irrawadday dolphins in Thailand
Thai officials are worried about the low number of dolphins of a particular breed in Thailand. Despite campaigns in past years to preserve Irrawaddy dolphins, only 14 of them were found in Songkhla Lake, and 89 in the Mekong River, according to a 2020 survey. Natural ...
Tara Abhasakun