News

Southeast Asian foreign ministers acknowledged Thursday that their efforts to bring peace to Myanmar haven’t succeeded and agreed to increase their determination to end violence in the country, where a military takeover last year set off a crisis that threatens to destabilize the region. Recent events ...

With the publication of the ASEAN Digital Masterplan 2025 (ADM 2025), member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have endeavored to promote the digitalization of the region. In this digital transformation process, data is essential because every interaction in the digital world produces and relies on ...

Since its adoption of a market economy in the last 1980s, Vietnam has become what some have referred to as a new “Asian Tiger.” Over the last 25 years, Vietnam’s economy has enjoyed an average annual growth rate of more than 6 percent. Between 1994 and 2014, ...

The closure of Myanmar’s biggest mines due to the post-coup conflict has contributed to an 80 percent plummet in export earnings from the sector over the last two years. Monthly earnings from Myanmar’s mining exports have shrunk from more than US$150 million to only $30 million ...

Rights groups say the long-awaited rules Thailand’s government approved this month for screening foreigners seeking refuge from persecution in their home countries are likely to leave many worthy applicants in the lurch. The United Nations refugee agency says Thailand currently hosts about 5,000 “urban refugees and ...

The unchecked growth of freewheeling business enclaves and casinos in and around Laos is opening new money laundering and drug trafficking options for crime networks using the country to push spiraling volumes of narcotics across Asia, the United Nations warns. As China and Thailand tighten their ...

In recent days, many petrol filling stations in the Mekong Delta region have closed and stopped selling, partly because of losses, and partly because of supply shortages, leading to the prospect of large-scale disruptions in the region. Along the Nam Song Hau route from the Mekong Delta City ...

From cries of “fake news” in the United States and Brazil to the Marcos family’s return to power in the Philippines, the growing role of misinformation and disinformation in the global political landscape is a very real concern. The spread of deliberately deceitful and unintentionally ...

Houa* sat on the doorstep of her bamboo house helping her grandmother pluck a chicken. She is not even ten years old, but she is learning how to become a ‘good wife.’ As the Covid pandemic and economic crisis hit the family hard, Houa dropped out ...

In mid September, a 25-year-old trans person, Jatuporn “New” Sae-Ung, was sentenced to three years in prison for wearing a Thai traditional dress and performing a mock fashion walk at a political protest in Bangkok back in October 2020. She was charged with royal defamation, ...