News

Warmer oceans bringing more severe tropical cyclones to land

Human-caused climate change has made certain typhoons more frequent and severe. Tropical cyclones can cause devastating and lethal damage to East and Southeast Asian countries. But accurately tracking changes in the frequency and intensity of typhoons is challenging in part because the data on these storms hasn’t ...

Life of the Salween highlights Southeast Asia's dam concerns

To reach this village, you leave Mae Sariang in northwestern Thailand and drive a couple of hours along winding roads carved into the sides of valleys before reaching a landing on the wide, fast flowing Salween river. You take the steps down a muddy bank to ...

Indonesia to crack down on palm-oil companies burning land

Indonesia’s Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar has warned that palm-oil companies found responsible for clearing land through illegal burning – cloaking much of Southeast Asia in noxious haze each year – will be prosecuted. “If we let this carry on and don’t resolve it, ...

Southeast Asia issues a non-rebuke to China

A summit of Southeast Asian countries issued a mild rebuke of China on September 7 over its expansionist activities in the disputed South China Sea, and indirectly urged it to show restraint and not raise tensions. In a victory for Beijing’s diplomatic, economic and military clout, the ...

Banks pump billions into deforestation-linked firms in Southeast Asia: study

Banks have financed companies responsible for rainforest destruction in Southeast Asia to the tune of billions of dollars, a study showed on September 6, and called on lenders to stop “fuelling forest crime”. Southeast Asia is home to some of the world’s most diverse rainforests, but ...

So long to the Asian sweatshop

For 30 years, the word “sweatshop” has conjured up a very specific image: low-wage Asian workers making branded clothes in crowded, unsafe factories for consumers overseas. The power of that image has launched human rights campaigns, altered how major companies source their products and informed ...

Survey: EU businesses planning to expand in ASEAN

Majority of European businesses are planning to expand their investment and operations in ASEAN, including the Philippines, as the region grows in global importance and increasing profits, but they also said that trade barriers in the region hamper their ability to reach maximum economic potential, ...

More than half of south Asia's groundwater too contaminated to use – study

Salinity and arsenic affect 60% of underground supply across vast Indo-Gangetic Basin, according to research published in Nature Geoscience. Sixty per cent of the groundwater in a river basin supporting more than 750 million people in Pakistan, India, Nepal and Bangladesh is not drinkable or usable ...

Yunnan: China's bridge to South and Southeast Asia

China is revisiting its periphery with a new, localized approach to regional multilateralism. China is revisiting the importance of its peripheries for engaging with its neighbors according to its ambitious economic plans. Beijing’s new approach is a top-down regulatory regionalism in exploring economic engagement with the neighborhood, particularly Southeast ...

Myanmar transportation, infrastructure weakest in Southeast Asia: World Bank

Myanmar has the weakest transportation and infrastructure in Southeast Asia, according to a report by the World Bank Group. Myanmar ranked 137 among 160 countries in the transportation index in 2014, giving it the lowest position among Southeast Asian countries. Moreover, only 33 per cent of households ...

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