News
Prayut kills 'unnecessary' GMO bill
Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha on 15 December dropped a controversial bill regulating genetically modified organisms (GMOs), saying the bill currently was unnecessary. The legislation was initiated long ago and its consideration should stop as there was no pressing need for it, the prime minister said after the ...
Red-shirt arsonists' light jail terms upped to life sentences
The Supreme Court on 14 December handed a life sentence to the man who led red-shirt protestors to torch Ubon Ratchathani’s provincial hall in 2010, overruling a lower court’s sentence of only one year. The high court initially gave the death penalty to 60-year-old Pichet Thabutda, a ...
Vietnam state firms sit on mountain of foreign debt
A new report from the Vietnam government says power monopoly Electricity of Vietnam tops the list of entities with foreign debts with debts of VND162 trillion (US$7.2 billion) as of the end of 2014. Vietnam last year signed 41 agreements for $4.7 billion worth of official development ...
UN urges Myanmar to tackle causes of opium scourge
Opium production in Myanmar has “stabilised” at stubbornly high levels, the United Nations said on 14 December, adding the government must address poverty and end the conflicts which drive farmers to grow illicit poppies. Myanmar, the world’s second largest opium producer after Afghanistan, has struggled to ...
Vietnam falls short on forestry protection plan
Vietnam is facing a critical reduction in forest areas five years after it implemented the national forest protection and development programme, forest authority officials said. Deputy Director of Viet Nam Forestry Administration, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) Nguyen Ba Ngai said nearly 1.2 million ...
EU gives boost to nutrition, food security in Xekong
The European Union is assisting the Laos Partnerships for Poverty Reduction and Women’s Empowerment Project in Dakcheung district, Xekong province, with a view to ensuring that children have access to nutritious food. As with other EU funded nutrition and food security projects in many provinces across ...
UN: Poverty, conflict drive opium production in Myanmar-Laos
The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime’s latest opium survey for Myanmar and Laos, released 15 December, said poverty and conflict are the driving forces behind poppy cultivation, the second largest behind that of Afghanistan. In its latest production assessment, UNDOC said although Southeast Asia’s opium ...
More Montagnards opt to return home
More Montagnard asylum seekers are planning to return to home amid cuts in United Nations-provided food rations. Vivian Tan, regional spokesperson for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), said more than 10 indigenous Christian Montagnards had requested assistance in returning to Vietnam. She said the group had decided ...
Many jobs ‘vulnerable’: UN human development report
The persistence of dangerous and demeaning forms of work remains a major challenge for the Cambodia’s development, according to the UN’s annual Human Development Report (HDR) launched on 14 December by the United Nations Development Programme. Dubbed “Work for Human Development”, the 2015 report finds the Asia-Pacific region home ...
Organiser arrested over march
The organiser of a protest by community members who face eviction from their homes to make way for a railway project in Banteay Meanchey province was detained on 14 December after demonstrators burned an effigy and dragged its decapitated body through the streets. About 50 protesters marched ...
