People and government
Thousands flee fighting near site of dam backed by Thailand
As many as 10,000 people in Kayin State in Myanmar have been displaced due to fighting over the Hat Gyi Dam construction site, as plans move forward to begin building on the Salween River. Activists have reported a human rights crisis in the area as more than 1,000 ...
Ministry skips meeting on rice-pledging crackdown
The initial meeting of state agencies intended to expedite cases related to the previous government’s rice-pledging scheme failed to proceed on October 10 after Finance Ministry staff did not show up. Justice Minister Paiboon Koomchaya, who was to chair the meeting, said he did not know why ...
Tourism sector ‘needs 200K new workers’
A Ministry of Tourism official announced on October 11 that the country would need an additional 200,000 trained tourism professionals if it was to fulfil its target of receiving 7 million international tourists a year by 2020. Try Chhiv, deputy director-general of the Ministry of Tourism, said ...
Gov’t, Vietnam exchange blame on logging
Cambodian conservation officials spoke publicly for the first time on October 10 about what they described as nearly three years of corrupt practices by their Vietnamese counterparts in facilitating the multibillion-dollar illicit trade in Siamese rosewood. But their complaint comes amid allegations from Hanoi that ...
PM Lee hails new partnership with old friend Australia in address to parliament
The Comprehensive Strategic Partnership agreement finalised in May this year will take the relationship between Singapore and Australia one step forward and will “cement our partnership for many years to come”, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong told the Australian parliament on October 12. Mr Lee ...
China downplays reports of sharing river waters with India
Playing down official media reports mooting a mechanism to share Brahmaputra river waters with India, China on October 10 said Beijing and New Delhi have “effective” cooperation to share data of the river flow and it is willing to continue it. “China and India have appropriate ...
Stakeholders hope capacity building continues once programme ends
Officials, experts and beneficiaries of a Norwegian assistance programme hope target communities continue the capacity development founded by the project once the support ends. They expressed this desire at the closure of support provided by Norwegian Church Aid, which has been implemented in 11 provinces of ...
US officially terminates sanctions order
After imposing economic sanctions on Myanmar for nearly two decades, the US formally abolished the blacklist on October 7. US President Barack Obama signed an executive order terminating the sanctions, following his pledge to do so made when State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi visited ...
KOICA to fund US$7 million maternal, child healthcare project
Experts from the Korea International Cooperation Agency last week conducted a preliminary study on improving access to maternal and child healthcare services in villages through mobile clinics, under the Korea Aid Project. Aligned with the strategies of the Lao government on public health and Korea’s Better ...
Scoring palm oil buyers on their sustainability commitments
2015 was supposed to be a big year for the palm oil industry — the year it proposed to reach a “tipping point” and begin predominantly producing and trading palm oil that was not responsible for the destruction of forests, abuses of human rights, and ...
