People and government

Toru Kubota landed in Japan Friday morning after he was freed from prison and deported by Myanmar’s junta on Thursday.   The 26-year-old filmmaker and video journalist arrived in Tokyo on a scheduled flight from Yangon via Bangkok. Kubota said upon landing that he wanted to express his gratitude ...

Federal prosecutors have charged eight people with smuggling endangered monkeys, including a Cambodian wildlife official who was arrested in the US while travelling to a conference on protecting endangered species. The official plus a colleague in that country’s wildlife agency and six people connected to a ...

According to the report issued on the website of the Office of the Supreme People’s Prosecutor of Laos, the second meeting of the Golden Triangle Prosecutors Network on “Cooperation to Counter Narcotics Trafficking in the Region” was held in northern Laos’ Luang Prabang province. The meeting ...

U.S Vice President Kamala Harris announced $20 million in new funding for clean energy projects in the Mekong region, during the last day of her tour of Thailand on Sunday following a regional summit. She spoke to civil society and business leaders in Bangkok after the ...

Myanmar’s military-controlled government announced Thursday it was releasing nearly 6,000 prisoners under a broad amnesty. Major General Zaw Min Tun, Myanmar junta’s spokesperson, confirmed to VOA Burmese the release of artists, activists, one minister, a top election commission official and one minister chief from the ousted ...

Pacific Rim leaders were striving to find common ground on the war in Ukraine and other dire threats to humankind in an annual meeting that began Friday at a heavily guarded venue in Thailand’s capital. The annual summit of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum is ...

Vietnamese President Nguyen Xuan Phuc’s upcoming official visit to Thailand marks a new milestone in the relationship between the two countries, according to an article published on ThaiPBSWorld, an English news website by the Thai Public Broadcasting Service (Thai PBS). President Phuc, his spouse, and a high-ranking ...

The world’s largest refugee camp is no haven for women and girls. Previously viewed as a safe place of refuge from persecution in Myanmar, Rohingya women and girls face daily risks of violence and abuse.  The Rohingya camps braced for, were hit, and have largely recovered ...

One afternoon at the end of 2017, officials in Dakrong district in Central Vietnam’s Quang Tri province visited Ho Thi Nieng’s house. They claimed she and her husband had “burned the protected forest to do farming.” “We had been cultivating that land for a long time ...

Myanmar’s junta has passed a law that grants it sweeping powers over aid delivery, prompting warnings of a “catastrophic” effect on services to those in need in the crisis-hit nation. Sources inside aid agencies in Yangon, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Guardian that the ...