News

A fire ripped through Phnom Penh’s Phsar Chas, otherwise known as Old Market, on 24 November, destroying about 300 of its 914 stalls and causing an estimated $1.5 million in damages, authorities said, although no one was injured or killed. The blaze began at 7am and ...

Health officials were insisting last week a cholera outbreak in Yangon’s South Okkalapa township was under control, after hundreds of patients presented at an emergency clinic and Thingangyun Sanpa Hospital for treatment. The outbreak had originally been diagnosed as gastroenteritis but Dr Tin Thit Sa, an ...

Laos has announced that it will submit the proposed Don Sahong dam on the Mekong River for “prior consultation” within a regional mechanism but will not suspend development of the controversial project that has been criticized by its neighbors and environmentalists. Previously, Laos has refused to comply with a ...

China Power Investment Corporation (CPI), builder of the controversial Myitsone Dam in Myanmar’s Kachin State, has cut off food assistance to at least two families—among hundreds displaced by the project—after they backed protests against the dam. The two families were from Aungmyinthar village, one of two ...

In response to reports that China has prohibited state-owned companies from bidding on public projects in Vietnam, Transport Minister Dinh La Thang said the ban, if true, will have no effect on Vietnam. Thang, speaking to press on the sidelines of the National Assembly meeting, said that many Vietnamese ...

Hydropower dams in parts of Southeast Asia are being canceled or suspended as governments face stronger opposition, forcing them to take greater responsibility for environmental and social impact or look to other sources of energy. The resistance, in a region where vast hydropower potential remains untapped, ...

Japan’s official development assistance to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations has been an effective “investment in the future” for the 10-nation region and Japan, bolstering development and prosperity for both parties, according to a government paper released Friday. The ODA White Paper for 2013 calls ...

Efforts are being scaled up to stem a further spread of drug-resistant malaria in Southeast Asia. “The emergence of resistance threatens worldwide malaria control and treatment since there is no alternative to this drug if its efficacy decreases further and the resistance spreads outside the ...

Thailand, once the world’s biggest exporter, is short of funds to help growers under Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s 2011 program to buy the crop at above-market rates. After the government built record stockpiles big enough to meet about a third of global import demand, exports ...

Land-locked Laos is one of the poorest countries in the world, but it has one thing in abundance: access to the massive Mekong River. The country’s hydropower potential has earned it the nickname “the Battery of Asia” and made it a magnet for investment from ...