American Buddhist Net

A 4 metre high stupa and 11 copper and brass statues of Buddha have recently been discovered in the Mekong River in Bokeo province.

Deputy Director General of the National Heritage Department of the Ministry of Information and Culture, Mr Viengkeo Souksavatdy, said he believes the relics may be from the 13th or 14th century, in the Lane Xang era. “But the area is so little studied it is hard to say at this stage,” he added.

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Lao authorities have admitted that Laos is facing increasing negative impacts from mining industry, especially on the environment, due to failure by the companies or investors to abide by the regulations and agreements they signed with the Lao government.

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‘Today is Better than Two Tomorrows’ tells the simple story of friendship between two eleven year old Buddhist boys who leave home to find a better life in Luang Prabang, in Laos South East Asia.

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While humans probably settled in Laos at least 20,000 years ago, centuries of geopolitical instability and remoteness have meant Laos has not been scientifically studied or culturally investigated to the same degree as its larger and more populous neighbours.

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Construction of the first Lao Buddhist University began on Sunday in Vientiane with a stone laying ceremony.

The University plans to provide a new hope for ethnic children and rural people, who lack educational opportunity.

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Farmers in Nathong village, in Laos' Vientiane province, are concerned by the deaths of their livestock for no apparent reason.

Local resident Bounthan Thaphabmixay said six of his buffalo and three cattle died after it rained at the beginning of this month.

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According to the Chinese law, it is illegal to operate casinos inside of mainland China. Any individual or organization operates gambling business constitutes criminal act. So in order to avoid the crackdown, criminals in mainland China opened casinos nearby outside of the Chinese border. For various reasons, many people from mainland China go to these casinos to gamble. Let’s take a look what happened there.

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Thailand is facing fierce international condemnation after announcing it plans to deport over 4000 Hmong refugees back to Laos.

The people are from Laos' ethnic minority Hmong community, who have made clear they face persecution in Communist Laos because members of their community fought on the side of the United States in the Vietnam War.

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A Chinese villager has been jailed for 12 years for shooting and eating the country's last known wild Indochinese tiger, China Daily reports.

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SOP RUAK, Thailand — Basket loads of fish, villagers bathing along the banks of the river, a farmer’s market selling jungle delicacies — these are Pornlert Prompanya’s boyhood memories of a wild and pristine Mekong River.

Mr. Pornlert — now 32 and the owner of a company that organizes speedboat outings for tourists in this village in northern Thailand, where Myanmar and Laos converge — peers across the Mekong today at a more modern picture: a newly constructed, gold-domed casino where high-rollers are chauffeured along the riverbanks in a Bentley and a stretch Cadillac limousine.

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A British woman appealing against a life sentence for smuggling heroin in Laos committed the crime under "extreme duress" after she was raped and threatened with murder, the high court heard today.

Samantha Orobator, from Peckham, south London, was accused of carrying 24oz (680g) of heroin when she was arrested at Wattay airport in the capital, Vientiane, in August 2008 as she tried to board a flight.

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The persecution, imprisonment and killing of minority Christians and independent Animist and Buddhist believers who seek to worship in freedom outside the control of the Lao Peoples Democratic Republic (LPDR) government’s control in Laos has intensified. Laos is slated to host the South East Asia Games ( SEA Games ) in December.

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"Multiple sources in Laos as well as their families in the Laotian Diaspora community have confirmed the arrest and imprisonment of 346 Laotian students and demonstrators in Vientiane and elsewhere in Laos by the LPDR secret police and military in what is clearly a major crackdown following the 10th anniversary of the student protest in Vientiane in 1999," said Philip Smith, of the CPPA in Washington, D.C.

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(CNN) -- Ketsana, downgraded from a typhoon to a tropical depression, is heading towards Laos Wednesday after leaving a trail of death and destruction across Southeast Asia.

By early Wednesday morning, the death toll from the storm's rage had crossed 293: at least 246 in the Philippines, 38 in Vietnam and nine in Cambodia.

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VIENTIANE, Laos — Hammer-and-sickle flags flutter above government offices in central Vientiane, and the entrance to the national museum is decorated with massive sculptures glorifying the workers’ revolutionary struggle.

Officially, this sparsely populated country is still communist — and has been since 1975. But these days, that really depends on whom you ask.

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FORT WORTH — Wat Lao Thepnimith looks like a postcard from Southeast Asia planted in a suburban patch of houses nestled in northwest Fort Worth.

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When you have no money and no opportunity to make any, you’ll do just about anything to survive. That can include risking your life for a few dollars a day. This is what many kids and adults do in the southeast Asian country of Laos. They trek into the forest to look for scrap metal they can sell for cash. The danger is that that scrap metal consists largely of bombs left over from the Vietnam War. And many of those bombs never exploded. Mary Stucky reports from Laos’ Boualapha Province on this deadly business.

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People of Laos suffer bomb legacy

The pregnant British woman who is serving a sentence in a London prison for smuggling heroin in Laos has launched an appeal against her conviction.

Samantha Orobator, from Peckham, south London, was given a life sentence in June after being found guilty of smuggling in the south-east Asian country.

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BANGKOK - THAILAND , Vietnam and Laos launched a scheme on Thursday allowing trucks to drive across the three countries without stopping, in a major boost for road trade in the region, the Asian Development Bank said.

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The pregnant British woman jailed for life in Laos for smuggling drugs has told the authorities that the man who saved her from the death sentence by fathering her baby is a fellow British prisoner, John Watson.

Diplomatic efforts are under way to fast-track the return of Watson, 47, who is also serving a life sentence for drug smuggling, and Samantha Orobator, 20, to serve out their sentences in UK jails.

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A pregnant British woman who was accused of drug trafficking and is being held in a jail in Laos will not face the death penalty because of her unborn baby, a spokesman for the South-east Asian country has revealed.

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A British woman held in a Laos prison for allegedly drug smuggling will not face the death penalty if convicted because she is pregnant, says the country's government.

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The Dublin-based mother of a pregnant British woman who faces death by firing squad if convicted of smuggling drugs in Laos has made an emotional appeal for her daughter's release.

Jane Orobator, who is originally from Nigeria but is a student at Trinity College, said she has no idea how her daughter Samantha came to have been allegedly found in possession of heroin at Wattay Airport.

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I don't know anything about this case, but some people get caught at airports because they agree to check a suitcase for someone who claims they are overweight. Sounds like a very stupid thing to do, which it is, but I did it myself once when I was more innocent than today. A good deal of crime draws on friendly feelings and our natural tendency to go along with people or help them out just because they have been nice to us for a few minutes. ABN

...On Saturday, Sourichanh Chanthyasack was one of the organizers of a celebration of Lao culture timed to the start of Lao New Year. The event at Civic Center, billed as the first International Lao New Year Festival, drew hundreds of people and dozens of performers.

"The Lao experience has been private and it has been painful," Chanthyasack said, standing behind the stage as Hmong dancers performed. "To escape Laos was horrifying. My father was an 18-year veteran of fighting against the communists. It was a story he really couldn't talk about."

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Police in Borikhamxay province, Laos, on 19 March destroyed a church building in Nonsomboon village while Christian residents attended a meeting called by district officials.

A member of the provincial religious affairs department, identified only as Bounlerm, has since claimed that police destroyed the worship facility because it was built without official approval.

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BANGKOK—Lao officials are expected to meet later this month to discuss how to address the theft of numerous sacred Buddhist artifacts from temples in the south of the country.

More than 200 Buddha statues were stolen over the last year from temples in the southern Lao province of Savannakhet for sale to collectors both inside the country and abroad, according to the deputy head of the Lao Ministry of Information and Culture, Khampong.

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The Department of Special Investigation has cracked a ring selling Thai ID cards to nearly 300 illegal Burmese and Lao migrants.

"The gang demands Bt100,000 per card," DSI deputy director-general Suchat Wong-ananchai said yesterday.

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Tourism is bringing economic benefits to the Laotian city of Luang Prabang, the spiritual, religious and cultural capital of Laos for centuries. But with commercialism on the rise, some are worried the town is losing its identity.

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Laos is rapidly developing as China and other Asian nations exploit its resources. One of the first casualties has been the wildlife, now being rapidly depleted by a thriving black-market trade, writes Rhett Butler

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...Discoveries on either side of the Lao border suggest Buddhism has been in Thailand far longer than thought.

"The boundary stones, Buddha images and other remnants date back to the late Dvaravati Period, around the 10th century."

Surely Buddhism hasn't been around that long in Thailand, but we're learning.

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