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Five Alive, 300 Meters to Go
Divers reached five of the seven men who have been trapped since May 19 in a flooded Xaisomboun cave, and found them alive on a rock in the dark about 300 meters from the exit. Getting them out is not going to be easy. Some tunnels are as narrow as 60 centimeters, floodwater has cut visibility to zero, and Thai rescuers are publicly asking for donated oxygen tanks. Finnish diver Mikko Paasi, who worked the 2018 Thailand boys' rescue, said the environment is "extremely remote and hostile.” The two other missing men have not been found. The cave is about 120 kilometers north of Vientiane, and requires a four-kilometer jungle hike to get to. In addition to everything else, rain has hampered the operation since the beginning. Sobering.
Read more: AP News (survivor condition), The Guardian (extraction challenges)
Thongloun Goes Shopping in Hangzhou
Lao President Thongloun Sisoulith got to Hangzhou on Tuesday and spent his first afternoon on a factory floor, watching robots run and somersault at a Deep Robotics facility before going to Alibaba HQ to review the company's global data center and cross-border e-commerce setup. A robot gave him a small plush toy; he thanked it in Chinese. The five-day visit will last through June 6, and is happening during the occasion of the 65th anniversary of China-Laos diplomatic ties.
Read more: Global Times (railway passenger volume), Xinhua (bilateral trade)
Thakhek to the Sea
The Lao National Assembly has approved a rail extension that will connect Thakhek to Vietnam's Vung Ang seaport. The new spur adds to a network that currently delivers Chinese-made electric vehicles to Vientiane from Chongqing in as few as five days, down from the (up to) 30 that it used to require when they were getting sent by sea and road. Cross-border trade on the Laos-China Railway was nearly a billion USD in Q1 2026, still climbing at a robust 62ish% clip year-on-year. Cross-border services have risen from two trains a day at launch to 23 today. The train gets a lot of ink in the Mekong Memo, but it’s truly been a game changer for Laos.
Read more: The Southeast Asia Desk
The Zoo That Wasn't
Authorities and Free the Bears have rescued 27 Asiatic black bears from a Lao bile farm, the largest rescue in Southeast Asia. Authorities say the operation had been registered as a zoo to dodge regulatory scrutiny. The facility, run by a Chinese national, was designed to an industrial scale and built to keep up to 200 bears. Fortunately for our ursine friends, the capacity was never reached. The rescued animals, all aged one to three, are believed to have been poached as cubs and will join more than 150 other bears that the NGO has collected over nearly a quarter century at its Luang Prabang Wildlife Sanctuary. Laos has closed the legal loopholes that once protected older farms, making all commercial trade in moon bears illegal.
Read more: Mongabay
The Mekong’s New Extension Cord
A 100-megawatt stream of Lao hydropower is now running south through Thailand and Malaysia to Singapore, and the city-state's energy regulator says the grid could eventually go all the way north to southern China. Puah Kok Keong, chief executive of Singapore's Energy Market Authority, said the prospect was "very real." Companies in Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia have signed agreements over the past year to further develop renewable projects together and improve cross-border trade in low-carbon power.
Read more: SCMP
Brussels Remembers that Laos Exists
A three-member European Parliament delegation led by Wouter Beke held an EU-Lao Inter-Parliamentary Meeting in Vientiane on May 25. It’s the 7th such meeting, and the first session since 2017. Cybercrime and human trafficking were on the formal agenda along with trade, climate, and ASEAN integration.
Read more: EEAS
Flour Power
A three-year partnership between Dongguan Technician College and the Lao Women's Union Training Center has put 52 Lao women through courses in tailoring, baking, and Cantonese cuisine. Graduates say they’re able to earn monthly incomes up 50 to 70 percent higher as a result. One of ladies, Khanpovan Phanthadasomchith, is a 37-year-old cooking instructor who returned from a May study trip to Guangdong fixated on meat floss sponge cake and now says that she hopes to open her own bakery in Vientiane.
Read more: China Daily
That's all for this week, thanks for reading. Your voice matters to us. Feel we're missing something? Have additional sources to suggest? Don't hold back- hit reply and tell us what you think.
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