News
Hardships await fishermen lured to Indonesia
Thai and migrant crewmen risk life and limb for little or no pay. Tunlin is among some 2,900 fishermen who have been rescued and repatriated by the Labour Rights Promotion Network Foundation. The operation, started in 2014, continues to help both Thais and migrants mostly from ...
Phuket removes encroaching shops on Surin beach
Authorities on 20 April demolished 36 shops illegally occupying parts of popular Surin beach as part of a campaign to regulate businesses on 50 beaches in this island province. Most proprietors had cooperated before officers moved in, but not all. Keep reading ...
Myanmar celebrates first Pulitzer prize-winning female journalist
Esther Htusan, 29, is one of four AP journalists who worked on an investigation into severe labor abuses within the Southeast Asian fishing industry, a sector which supplies seafood to supermarkets and restaurants abroad. The team’s reporting contributed to the freeing of approximately 2,000 slaves; ...
Chinese-invested giant sugar mill starts operations in Cambodia
Chinese agro firm Rui Feng International Company began operations at its 360-million-U.S.-dollar sugar production factory here on 19 April after spending nearly two years for construction. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and Chinese Ambassador to Cambodia Bu Jianguo jointly inaugurated the factory, along with a 43,422-hectare sugarcane ...
Suu Kyi vows to amend Junta-era constitution
Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi vowed on 18 April to push for constitutional amendments to build a true democracy in the Southeast Asian country as it emerges from decades of military control. “Our policies and principles are to ensure national reconciliation, internal peace, the ...
Mekong water crisis compounded by rice-killing drought
The 3.6 hectares in southern Vietnam that double as rice paddy and shrimp pond for farmer Nguyen Thi Tam have become a wasteland. After the worst drought in 90 years, almost nothing grows. It’s not that easy to switch, said Nguyen Trung Kien, vice chairman of ...
Avian Flu strikes poultry farms in Sagaing division
Surveillance of the poultry trade in Sagaing Division’s Monywa Township has been ramped up after an avian flu outbreak over the past several weeks. Local authorities have since killed over 20,000 chickens and restricted poultry trade from farms in the area.“With the help of the police ...
Banana exports increase tenfold to US$40m
Exports of Lao bananas have grown tenfold from more than 30.8 billion kip in 2011-12 to more than 324.8 billion kip in 2014-15, a recent report revealed. According to preliminary research findings by the National Agriculture and Forestry Research Institute on the commercial production of bananas ...
Turning crisis into opportunity
“We need to restructure the agricultural sector since we can no longer rely on the current four major farm products — rice, rubber, tapioca and sugar cane– as the government must always subsidise these product because their prices fluctuate,” Finance Minister Apisak Tantivorawong has said. Keep ...
Gov’t thanks Chinese for keeping dam open
“The discharge of water into the Mekong River proves again the good cooperation on water resource management between the Mekong countries and China,” the Cambodia’s Foreign Affairs and Water Resources ministries said in a joint statement. Keep reading ...
