New ‘support and training centre’ prompts concern in region but China says it is ‘not directed at any third party’
Satellite images show attack jets stationed at a new Chinese military facility in Laos, which opened last week and gives Beijing’s air force its first foothold in mainland south-east Asia.
Images provided by the commercial satellite provider Vantor show eight light attack aircraft positioned at Ban Keun airport alongside what appear to be more than a dozen military vehicles lined up in rows.
The Trump administration is sending back record numbers of Vietnamese, Laotians and Hmong. Many came to the United States as young war refugees and later committed crimes.
The Australian government has increased its travel alert level for Laos, advising travellers to “exercise a high degree of caution” due to the risk of methanol poisoning.
It comes as a distillery owner in Laos was charged after a mass methanol poisoning incident killed six foreign nationals, including the Australian backpackers Bianca Jones and Holly Morton-Bowles.
Australian government says it is ‘deeply frustrated’ and will continue to press for ‘real charges with teeth’ over deaths of Bianca Jones and Holly Morton-Bowles
The Australian government says it wants “real charges with teeth” over the fatal methanol poisoning of two teenage travellers in Laos, as authorities prepare to lay lesser charges that have been called “bitterly” disappointing.
Melbourne travellers Bianca Jones and Holly Morton-Bowles, both 19, were backpacking through the south-east Asian nation in late 2024 when they were fatally poisoned with methanol while drinking at Nana backpackers hostel in Vang Vieng.
Covert footage obtained by the Guardian shows how crime networks are using souvenir shops to hide a booming wildlife trade targeted at a new influx of Chinese tourists
The shop is dark and deserted. Though the door is open, there is clearly no expectation of any customers walking in off the street. Visits are likely by appointment and from a specific clientele. This shop is part of an organised crime network. What is being sold is highly illegal and incredibly unethical.
Anyone wandering in would see large bags of specialist tea, local coffee, trinkets and cigarettes on the shelves. But the photographs of wild animals adorning the walls offer a clue to what is truly for sale here.
Astens of thousands are freed, female survivors are increasingly reporting gender-based violence in the compounds, previously thought to hold mainly men
Late one evening in October 2023, Sarah* felt labour pains starting. It was 11pm, but at the cyberscam compound inside Laos’ Golden Triangle, workers were logging on for a long night shift, scamming Americans online.
Every night, workers sat at their computers until the early hours, building fake profiles of glamorous, jet-setting women on Facebook and Instagram. Sarah trawled the web to find older men to target with messages, where she fawned over their jobs, asked how their day had been and exchanged photos of luxury travel and beach trips. Each conversation she had was meticulously designed to follow a multi-day script, and monitored by bosses who walked up and down the long rows of desks.
Tagelang sind Goldsucher in einer überfluteten Höhle gefangen, eingeschlossen in beängstigender Enge. Gerade als Retter aufbrechen wollen, schaffen es vier der Männer aus eigener Kraft an die Oberfläche. Doch das Drama ist nicht vorbei.
Two still missing as divers make their way deeper into cave through muddy water and sharp rocks to find them
Four more miners who were trapped in a flooded cave in Laos for 10 days have been freed by divers, but two people are still missing as rescuers continue to crawl through narrow, deluged tunnels and sharp rocks to find them.
Man is ‘safe and sound’ after perilous operation, leaving four inside a small chamber and two still to be located
The first of seven men who have been trapped in a flooded cave in Laos for more than a week has been brought to safety by divers, in a perilous rescue mission that has required teams to crawl through narrow, deluged tunnels, navigating sharp rocks and collapse hazards.
Four men remain inside a chamber about 300 metres (980ft) from the cave entrance, where they were found crouched and huddled together on a rocky ledge by rescuers on Wednesday. Two men are yet to be located.
Rescuers say extraction efforts complicated by low oxygen supplies, dark and narrow spaces, plus more rain
After five of seven people trapped in a flooded cave in Laos were found, footage showed one of the men putting his head in his hands in gratitude at his rescuer’s appearance after a week of uncertainty in the dark chamber.
The mission to find them was itself fraught, but so too will be the extraction.
Video appears to show divers discovering group sitting on a rock surrounded by flood water
Rescuers have reached five of seven people who have been trapped for a week in a flooded, remote cave in Laos, after days spent navigating narrow, inundated passageways amid persistent rain.
Video footage shared on social media by rescue divers showed the five men crouched together on a rocky ledge in a dark cave chamber, surrounded by muddy water. “There’s no need to cry,” one of the rescue team told the men, who first entered the cave on Wednesday. Two men remain unaccounted for.
Group have been stuck in flooded cave in central Laos for five days after heavy rain caused landslides
Divers who helped in the dramatic rescue of a young Thai football team in 2018 have joined efforts to free seven people who have been trapped for five days inside a remote, flooded cave in central Laos.
The group entered the cave in Xaysomboun province on Wednesday to hunt for wildlife and search for gold, reports suggest. Heavy rain led to landslides, which blocked the cave entrance.
Fathers of Bianca Jones and Holly Morton-Bowles, both 19, who died after a night out at the Nana backpackers hostel in 2024, say court decision is ‘absolute injustice’
The families of two Melbourne teenagers who died after drinking methanol-laced alcohol in Laos say they have been blindsided by news the workers responsible for serving the drinks received fines of just $185.
Bianca Jones and Holly Morton-Bowles, both 19, were killed by methanol poisoning along with four other tourists after a night out at the Nana backpackers hostel in Vang Vieng, a popular tourist destination in Laos, in November 2024.
Through static compositions and observational detail, the documentary explores how Laos’s visitors and residents inhabit the same spaces in very different ways
Shot in Laos, Kimi Takesue’s idiosyncratic documentary gazes upon sights and vistas that would not be out of place on travel postcards. Minimal in its camera movements, the film looks at glimmering golden temples, waterfalls cascading down silver rocks, and processions of monks moving through lush landscapes. It also shows what is absent from glossy brochures, namely the intrusion of tourists. The disruption to the local rhythm of life is at once visual and aural: we see throngs of wandering visitors, their casual clothes of shorts and T-shirts a stark contrast to the ancient architecture. Their occasionally rowdy leisure activities are intercut with more mundane moments from the locals’ everyday lives, like schoolchildren heading to class or laywomen offering alms to monks by the roadside.
There’s a sense of tension between the static camera and the movements that occur within the frame. Scenes of tourists being loaded on to buses bring to mind Jacques Tati’s 1967 classic Playtime, which gently pokes fun at the idea of an authentic cultural experience attained via consumerist means. The point of view in Takesue’s film, however, is on shakier grounds. Some of the visual juxtapositions veer towards reiterating well-worn binaries between the east and west, the regional and the global. For instance, most of the tourists seen in Onlookers are white; in truth, visitors to Laos largely come from neighbouring Asian countries. Likewise, the Laotian population is also far from homogeneous: one sequence shows middle-aged men playing a game of catch, with the caption telling us they are “arguing in Lao” – yet some of them are speaking Vietnamese.
Methanol, a cheap relative of ethanol, is entering the supply chain, causing thousands of deaths around the world
For Bethany Clarke, poison tasted like nothing. There was no bitter aftertaste, no astringent sting at the back of the tongue. If anything, she thought in passing, the free shots she and her friends were drinking at a hostel bar in Laos had probably been watered down – she wasn’t detecting a strong vodka flavour through the veil of Sprite she had mixed it with.
All in all, Clarke remembers drinking about five of those shots, sitting with her best friend, Simone White, and a crowd of others at the hostel’s happy hour. CCTV footage shows the group laughing in the warm air of the open bar in the town of Vang Vieng, green and red lights dancing over their shoulders.
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