An activist and villagers yesterday said that sand dredging boats had been spotted off the coast of Koh Kong, prompting fears that they were set to begin operations, despite a standing ban on sand exports from companies operating in coastal areas. ...

An official in Stung Treng province said there was no way to grant a last-minute reprieve requested on Thursday by villagers whose homes could be flooded within days once testing of the Lower Sesan II hydropower dam begins on Saturday. ...

A large rock smashed through the side window of a car that had just dropped off members of the Independent Monk Network for Social Justice in Kandal province on Tuesday night, the group’s leader But Buntenh said on Wednesday. ...

State-owned Telecom Cambodia yesterday inaugurated its Greater Mekong Telecom Backbone Network Project, which includes the installation of a 467-kilometre fibre-optic cable connection between Sihanoukville and Kampong Cham, the Telecommunication Regulator of Cambodia said in a news release. ...

A newly leaked document attesting to a $15,000 deal between representatives of Ratanakkiri’s Samut Krom village and a timber trader to allow Vietnamese-backed logging in the community’s forest appears to add further weight to its critique. ...

Political fixture and former Co-Defence Minister Nhek Bun Chhay was officially charged yesterday with conspiracy to produce drugs and importing drug components after being linked to a decade-old bust by one of the men convicted in the original case. ...

The government has injected another $23 million through the Rural Development Bank (RDB) to provide loans to rice mills and exporters who lack working capital to buy rice from farmers in the up-coming harvest season and stabilise the rice price. ...

Two hundred juvenile specimens of the critically endangered Mekong giant catfish were released by the Preah Sihanouk Provincial Fisheries Administration into freshwater reservoirs on Sunday evening in an effort to help preserve the species – which can grow up to 300 kilograms. ...

Jailed opposition leader Kem Sokha was officially charged with treason this morning, about 36 hours after he was arrested from his Phnom Penh residence in a midnight raid by more than 100 police and sent to a Tbong Khmum prison. ...

Global Purify Power (GPP), a joint venture behind $400 million worth of solar powered projects, started groundbreaking work on Friday with more than $10 million worth of investment in Kampong Speu province. ...

United States Ambassador William Heidt yesterday said allegations of US interference in Cambodia’s internal affairs were “absurd” and made without a “shred of serious or credible evidence”, but stopped short of speculating on any potential repercussions from the superpower. ...

The state-run Rural Development Bank (RDB) received a total of 10 proposals from Cambodian agricultural firms expressing interest in developing rice storage and drying facilities across three provinces using government-backed low-interest loans, a bank official said yesterday. ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen announced yesterday that China will begin funding demining efforts, just days after the US said it would pull financial support for a removal project with the Cambodian Mine Action Centre in the eastern part of the country. ...

The Grassroots Democracy Party yesterday suggested taking a pin to Cambodia’s inflated bureaucracy, saying it would campaign on a proposal to reduce the number of ministries from 23 to just 15 in order to improve efficiency and cut wasteful spending. ...

A farmer preparing a plot of land for a vegetable garden found a cache of unexploded 60mm mortar rounds from the 1970s on the campus of a secondary school in Pursat province’s Kandieng district over the weekend. ...

In a response to a parliamentary inquiry, the German government on Wednesday laid out a number of measures it has quietly taken over recent months to pressure the Cambodian government following its crackdown on media outlets, NGOs and the political opposition. ...

A part of the new bamboo railway in Battambang province was blocked yesterday over of a dispute between the owner of the construction company that built the line and a man claiming the railway ran through his land near Banan mountain. ...

Structural testing of the third unit of a 700-megawatt coal-fired power plant under development in Preah Sihanouk province has begun, with the new unit expected to go online by the end of the quarter, a government official said yesterday. ...

Government officials say they are investigating the causes of two separate weekend fires in Mondolkiri province that reportedly burned through hundreds of high-value logs the government had sold to a businessman after confiscating them from a pair of rubber plantations. ...

Two hundred ethnic Phnong villagers in Mondulkiri’s Koh Nhek district launched a protest on Friday after the deputy district governor and an armed escort seized timber from their homes, before allegedly attempting to extort a bribe for its return. ...