Rescuers work at the traffic accident site on April 1, 2011 in Xi'an, Shaanxi province of China. A truck collided with a bus at a cross on Friday morning. As the truck headed for the sidewalk, it collided into a pedestrian and 6 vehicles which were stopped nearby. As a result 16 people were injuried, one currently has severe injuries. (Photo by ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images)

A CRH train is seen passing through Nanjing South Railway Station, which is part of the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway Line, on March 27, 2011 in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province of China. The High-Speed railway line is 1,318 kilometres long, running between Beijing and Shanghai. The line will open on June 10, 2011. (Photo by ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images)

Laos, officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic, is a landlocked country in Southeast Asia, bordered by Burma and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south, and Thailand to the west. Its population was estimated to be around 6.5 million in 2012. A third (33%) of the country's population lives below the international poverty line which means living on less than U.S. $1.25 per day.

A truck filled with 500 cats thought to be destined for restaurants was intercepted on Wednesday in Xuzhou, eastern China’s Jiangsu Province. Officer Sun Hai said he and a colleague pulled the vehicle over during a routine traffic check. The officer commented, “The driver said it was a full load of rabbit, but after we instructed him to uncover the load we were shocked to find a full load of living cats.

A monkey is led by its trainer Qi Defang during training for a circus in Suzhou, Anhui province, November 29, 2014. Suzhou is known as the hometown of circus troupes in China and has more than 300 circus troupes. (Photo by William Hong/Reuters)

This photo taken on July 13, 2023 shows a woman wearing traditional Uyghur attire posing for photos in the Old Kashgar tourist area in China's northwestern Xinjiang region. Chinese travellers throng the bazaars of old Kashgar, munching mutton kebabs and soaking up heavily commodified Uyghur culture – part of a government push to remould troubled Xinjiang into a tourism paradise. (Photo by Pedro Pardo/AFP Photo)

People wearing face masks to help curb the spread of the coronavirus enjoy a social dance at a public park in Beijing, Tuesday, January 12, 2021. Lockdowns have been expanded and a major political conference postponed in a province next to Beijing that is the scene of China's most serious recent COVID-19 outbreak. (Photo by Andy Wong/AP Photo)

A Tibetan living-in-exile in India attends a peace march during the 62nd Tibetan National Uprising Day in the suburb of McLeod Ganj, the seat of the Central Tibetan Administration in exile, near Dharamsala, India, 10 March 2021. Tibetan Uprising Day is held annually on 10 March and commemorates the Tibetan uprising against the presence of the People's Republic of China in Tibet in 1959. (Photo by Sanjay Baid/EPA/EFE)