People and government
Vietnam PM receives senior Laos army official
Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung hosted Lieutenant General Suvon Luongbunmi, Chief-of-the-General Staff of the Lao People’s Army and Deputy Minister of Lao Defence Ministry, in Hanoi on the same day. Keep reading ...
Media calls on drafting panel to ensure freedom from interference
Four media organisations have called for the media to be free from political interference, in an open letter to the Constitution Drafting Commission. In the letter submitted on 19 October, the organisations called for an assurance of limitless freedom of expression for the media including speech, ...
Net widens in probe of ThaiHealth
Authorities have vowed to investigate the recipients of the Thai Health Promotion Foundation’s (ThaiHealth) funding after checks found the foundation’s budget had been misspent. The findings were based on scrutiny by the monitoring and auditing committee on fiscal expenditure and the Office of the Auditor-General, Justice Minister ...
Human trafficking on the rise in Vietnam: police
Many people are smuggled from Vietnam to Cambodia and China to work as prostitutes and forced labor at mines, Ho Sy Tien, director of the Crime Branch Police Department, said. “Human trafficking has been on the rise and become more sophisticated, with smugglers employing new tricks, ...
Polio death draws 500,000 vaccine dose response in Laos
Half a million doses of the oral polio vaccine (OPV) will be distributed to at risk groups in Laos as health authorities respond to the dangers posed by the virus. The virus is responsible for the death of an eight-year-old boy in the province of Borikhamxay ...
Vietnam, Laos enhance military cooperation
High-ranking military officers of Vietnam and Laos have reviewed the implementation of cooperation programmes between the two countries’ armies at talks in Hanoi on 17 October. Keep reading ...
Hun Sen talks poverty
Prime Minister Hun Sen has outlined Cambodia’s strategy for tackling poverty in a keynote speech to a United Nations forum in Beijing marking the 2015 International Day for Eradication of Poverty. The premier lauded the 1 billion people brought out of poverty worldwide since 1990, noting ...
Reconstruction promises exchanged for votes
In landslide-ravaged Chin State, displaced residents say the election has fallen to the bottom of their priority list, causing some parties to fear opportunist electioneering may be in the works. “I have to vote for whoever will give me a house to live in,” said Pu Lung ...
In Laos, an invisible minority is finding its voice
If there is one word to describe the LGBT community in Laos, the landlocked nation sandwiched between Thailand and Vietnam, it might just be “invisible.” This is the ninth part of a 10-part series on LGBT rights in Southeast Asia, which uncovers the challenges facing the LGBT ...
Laos to adopt public-private partnership in poverty reduction
Officials from the Laos government and autonomous organizations have pledged to involve the private sector in poverty reduction programs to ensure its effectiveness and efficiency. The officials were speaking at the 4th ASEAN Forum on Rural Development and Poverty Reduction, which began on 15 October in ...
