People and government

A Thai journalist sentenced to two years in prison for defaming the owner of a poultry farm via a tweet said Thursday the kingdom’s criminal libel laws are eviscerating media freedom. A court convicted Suchanee Cloitre in December for a tweet referencing a dispute over working ...

The Global Infrastructure Facility’s (GIF) Governing Council has approved $1.5m in funding to support the World Bank’s work with the government of Vietnam on a Solar Pilot Auction Program. The GIF, working with the World Bank’s Energy Global Practice, will help the government to design and ...

The Don Sahong hydropower dam in Laos has begun operations and this week connected its power grid to Cambodia, a Cambodian official said on Wednesday as the country steps up electricity imports after continued power outages last year. Don Sahong, which was designed for an installed ...

A former Vietnamese government minister and his deputy were sentenced on Saturday to a life term and 14 years in prison respectively in a case of corruption that is said to have cost the state budget almost U.S. $3 million, media sources said. Son Bac Nguyen, ...

The number of civilians displaced during the past year amid an uptick in armed conflict in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine state has reached more than 100,000, a regional relief organization said Monday, as authorities continue to limit area access to groups providing aid. The new figure based ...

Rapid technological development has given people more ways to access and share information on the internet. It has also created conditions for more sophisticated cyber-attacks. Like other countries, Vietnam has a cybersecurity law to safeguard information and protect national security. According to a recent press release, the country ...

The global toll of dengue fever is becoming well known, with rising temperatures contributing to severe outbreaks that made 2019 the worst year on record for the disease. In 1970 only nine countries faced severe dengue outbreaks. But the disease, which is spread by mosquitoes that ...

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has unveiled a database on Vietnamese land and people, which is set to serve research and studies. The database at  was built for two years as a joint effort of the ministry’s Library Department, public and private libraries, publishing houses, relevant agencies, and leading ...

The group says they have trained more than 300 teams and about 70 are in operation, helping injured civilians and delivering aid to those in need. The recruits say they are being persecuted by the country’s army. They have been conducting rescue and medical drills, but Myanmar‘s military ...

When the coterie of top generals that toppled Thailand’s government in 2014 announced the long-awaited elections that were held in March, they promised a speedy return to democracy after five years of military rule. Nine months on, the election those army men had sold as a ...