News

How big were the world’s ancient cities? At its height, the world’s first city of Uruk may have had about 40,000 people about 5,000 years ago. In the medieval period, London may have had a population of about a quarter of a million people, growing to approximately 600,000 by ...

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has held talks with authorities in Mae Hong Son to find ways to help more than 2,000 Karen refugees who crossed the Salaween River into Thailand to flee fighting between the KNU (Karen National Union) and Myanmar ...

There has been a significant decline in the elephant population of Southern Thailand as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. In Phang Nga Province, which normally has more domesticated elephants than any other Southern Thailand province, the elephant population has dropped by a third of ...

The COVID-19 outbreak continues to strain healthcare providers physically and financially. As they have to cope with the increased workload associated with screening patients for the new coronavirus infection and treating them if they are infected, the extra work always come with extra costs. Even though, ...

Continuation of the existing tough measures to contain the coronavirus outbreak is essential, Prime Minister Phankham Viphavanh has said in a clear reference to the nationwide lockdown. The government has extended the lockdown for another 15 days until May 20. The Overall number of Covid-19 cases ...

Moody’s Investors Service has said Thursday that Cambodia was among three countries in the Asia-Pacific region most exposed to flood risks arising from climate change. In a statement received from Frankfurt, Moody’s said climate risks such as rising sea levels, droughts, floods and wildfires were particularly ...

For years, Ta Thi Thanh Thuy toiled on a sliver of land sandwiched between the Mekong River and the South China Sea, a region widely known as Vietnam’s rice bowl, to grow the prized grain. But Thuy, along with many of her neighbours, has over the ...

These photos document the construction of four dams – from north to south, Wunonglong, Lidi, Tuoba, and Huangdeng (see map below) – along a 200-kilometer stretch of the upper Mekong in Yunnan, China, and the transformation of the river from a free-flowing current to a ...

The following story was written by Tyler Roney for Third Pole, a “multilingual platform dedicated to promoting information and discussion about the Himalayan watershed and the rivers that originate there.” Just 50 metres from the Mekong, in the shadow of a discarded plastic cup, a lone chick sits ...

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) released their annual ranking of the global state of press freedom earlier this month and Countries in Southeast Asia did poorly—none of the 11 countries in the ASEAN bloc scored above RSF’s “difficult situation” designation. RSF ranks countries based on a questionnaire given to ...