People and government

Cambodia’s Ministry of Post and Telecommunications has defended the controversial new Telecommunications Law following a biting legal analysis by rights group Licadho, which says the legislation is a veiled tool to silence critics and potentially criminalize private expression. Keep reading ...

Some 80 delegates from 11 countries in the East Asia-Pacific region gathered in Viet Nam yesterday to discuss gender integration in rural transportation. The World Bank (WB) workshop, hosted in Ha Noi, is part of a regional Gender Capacity Programme for Rural Transport projects, including exchange ...

The Office of the Ombudsman lodged a complaint with the Administrative Court Monday demanding PTT Plc return all gas pipelines to the state. The Ombudsman accused PTT Plc, and 10 other defendants, of not returning offshore natural gas pipelines to the state after the Supreme ...

The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has signed agreements with Viet Nam to provide Official Development Assistance loans worth a total of 95.17 billion yen (US$847.39 million) to develop four projects. The ODA loans are expected to enhance the country’s competitiveness and promote environmental improvements. Keep reading ...

A draft law that would create a key pivotal post in government specifically designed for Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar is to be debated in the upper house on 1 April, although a senior MP denied that she would in effect become prime ...

The first general election in two years will definitely take place next year regardless of the referendum’s outcome although it may not be in July as planned earlier, according to Thailand’s Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam.  Keep reading ...

Many local farmers in Laos’s Phongsaly province are shifting to plant cardamom, after earning lucrative income from growing this crop and selling it to Chinese traders. Some families earned as much as 40 million kip per year from growing cardamom, which enabled them to send their ...

Khammuan provincial authorities has given three months for illegal foreign workers who failed to meet the necessary conditions to apply to work legally in Laos to clear up all their things and leave the country, a senior provincial official has said. The decision was part of ...

Ethnic Shan communities in northern Shan State have called for an end to four planned hydropower dams on the Namtu River, an Irrawaddy tributary, citing irreparable damage to the environment. More than 100 people gathered in Hsipaw Township to hold a prayer service on the bank ...

The government has granted itself pervasive snooping powers to effectively monitor all electronic communication and punish anything deemed to have caused “national insecurity”, a legal analysis of the recently passed telecommunications law has warned. In a briefing paper released on 31 March, rights group Licadho ...