News

Journalist Taken to Court Over Report on Illegal Timber Factory

A video report alleging a Battambang timber factory was illegally processing luxury wood has landed a local journalist in court. Lim Phally, a reporter for Los Seng News, said he had asked for a delay for court questioning that was scheduled today. He was sued after a ...

Khut Sokun

OPINION: Thai agriculture needs reform from ground up

Thailand’s government badly wants the middle-income country to achieve advanced economy status. But it will fail unless it raises agricultural productivity and upskills rural workers for jobs in more productive sectors. This will demand hitherto unseen political commitment. For decades, political leaders have paid lip service ...

Craig Keating

Thai tourism elephants are ‘far better off’ in forests: Q&A with photographer Adam Oswell

An Asian elephant supports itself on one leg, completely submerged in garish electric-blue water, while a keeper tugs painfully at its ear. The photograph shows bubbles rising from its trunk as it offers a stick of sugarcane toward a crowd of onlookers on the other ...

Carolyn Cowan

Vietnam boosts satellite-based vessel monitoring to eradicate IUU fishing

Installing vessel monitoring systems (VMS) is one of the important measures the European Commission (EC) recommended for Vietnam to remove the EC’s “yellow card” warning against illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing. The Directorate of Fisheries has certified eight VMSs that meet the standards stipulated in the Government’s Decree No. ...

VNA

Chasing climate-ready glutinous rice for food security in Thailand and Laos

Origin of glutinous rice There are three groups of glutinous rice-based on grain sizes, small (japonica), medium (upland), and long slender (indica) grains. The origin of glutinous rice has become a hot topic for discussion by evolutionists who speculate that glutinous rice has two roots. Glutinous ...

Apichart Vanavichit

How hydropower dams impact the communities they're built in

Over the last two decades, almost 1,000 hydropower dams have been built around the globe. And while these dams provide many benefits to farmers, wildlife and the climate, the costs of their construction on local communities where they are built has largely been left out ...

Liz Schondelmayer, Michigan State University

Mekong Delta expressway construction to start in November

The Ministry of Transport has instructed five Mekong Delta localities to speed up land acquisition so that construction of the Can Tho – Ca Mau Expressway can begin in November. By that deadline it wants Can Tho City and the provinces of Hau Giang, Kien Giang, ...

Cuu Long

High-tech cleanup on the way for Mekong, Tonle Sap in Phnom Penh

The Ministry of Tourism and two NGOs – Everwave and River and Ocean Cleanup – plan to launch a campaign to clean up the Mekong, Tonle Sap and Tonle Bassac rivers in Phnom Penh by collecting rubbish from the water and along the river banks. ...

Opinion: A Convention Could Lock In China’s Mekong Cooperation

The success and survival of the Mekong River rests with China: the largest, wealthiest state in the region, positioned in the strategically important upstream. As the Mekong enters its fourth year of drought, certainty about China’s cooperation is no longer desirable — it is essential. No ...

Kenneth Stiller

Two dozen dead, 80 missing after jade mine landslide in Myanmar’s Hpakant

At least 23 people are dead and 80 are missing 11 days after a landslide at a jade mine in Myanmar’s Kachin state, but junta officials and the mine’s operators have yet to confirm the casualties and are seeking to keep the incident under wraps, ...

Reported by RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

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