People and government

Billions of dong have been poured into clean water supply facilities in the central highlands province of Dak Lak, but locals don’t see any clean water pouring out of their faucets. According to the Dak Lak Rural and Agricultura Development Department, the province has 133 concentrated ...

Hanoi will spend VND1.35 trillion (US$60 million) on an environmental campaign to fight pollution in 80 of its craft villages through 2030, the capital city’s Department of Trade and Industry said on 7 October. Water samples taken from 40 craft villages in Hanoi raised red flags ...

Yangon will need around 75,000 new apartments to be built each year to accommodate the city’s growing population, but contractors are struggling to come anywhere close to this target. More than 330,000 people migrate to Yangon each year from elsewhere in the country, but formidable challenges ...

The strapping 23-year-old Rohingya Muslim was matter of fact as he described being forced onto a boat in Myanmar for a tortuous two-month-long journey, beaten and kicked by traffickers as he watched scores die of starvation and thirst along the way. He said he was abandoned in ...

A top negotiator in Myanmar’s peace talks with ethnic rebels has accused neighboring China of derailing a nationwide ceasefire deal last week that would have brought Japan and Western nations in as observers to monitor an end to decades of conflict. Beijing has denied the accusation but ...

The wife of a jailed Polish citizen of Lao heritage has asked Poland’s justice ministry to request the Lao government to transfer her husband from a detention center in the Southwestern Asian nation to one in his European home country. Barbara Paklak-Thammavong told RFA’s Laos Service ...

Fishermen who had been enslaved and abused onboard illicit trawlers plying far-flung Indonesian islands will soon be headed back to the nation where they were held captive for up to a decade. This time they’re after justice, and will take part in a lawsuit against one ...

Twenty-four Montagnards are set to return to Vietnam on 8 October, becoming the first group to volunteer for repatriation since the government last month ordered the asylum seekers to leave of their own volition or be forcibly expelled, officials said. Keep reading ...

Some 30,000 real estate transactions were recorded in the first nine months of 2015, which was tantamount to the combined figures from last year, as heard at a seminar on housing development in the Mekong Delta city of Can Tho on 7 October.   According to Chairman ...

A prominent Areng Valley activist joined three other environmentalists in jail on 7 October in Koh Kong after being questioned at the provincial court about alleged “forest crimes”. Ven Vorn, 36, a community representative and commune councillor with the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, was arrested at the ...