Cambodia last year recorded around 900,000 Chinese tourist arrivals and the kingdom is on track by 2020 to host about seven million foreign tourists, with two million of them coming from mainland China, according to the Tourism Ministry yesterday. ...

If it wasn’t already clear, Prime Minister Hun Sen on Friday let an audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos know how he really felt about former U.S. President Barack Obama and his administration’s “pivot” to Asia. ...

Members of the opposition CNRP have decided to boycott the National Assembly’s (NA) plenary session today, saying amendments to the law on political parties which are being debated today will lead to national disunity and run contrary to democratic principles. ...

Sathapana Bank has pre-emptively removed its signature golden lion logo from all 162 branches nationwide as the private bank aims to deflect government criticism and avoid confusion as being identified as a state-owned institution, a bank executive said yesterday. ...

The National Election Committee (NEC) has begun randomly selecting the order candidates from each political party will appear on the ballot for upcoming commune elections, with the two main parties calling on citizens and supporters to not confuse the numbers. ...

Dozens of Laotian soldiers started building a post on a disputed tract of land along the border on Thursday, breaking a deal made just a day earlier between Laos and Cambodia to withdraw forces until after the Khmer New Year. ...

Twenty-nine bus companies have agreed not to raise ticket prices on the eve of the upcoming Khmer New Year holiday after a meeting with officials from the Ministry of Public Works and Transport yesterday morning. ...

Although the official results will not be released until June 25, the closely watched vote for Cambodia’s commune council elections showed the opposition’s growing strength and suggest that the national elections in 2018 will be a race between two parties. ...

With the National Election Committee (NEC) having released preliminary commune election results, parties have begun registering requests for recounts to the body, with one commune each in Svay Rieng and Battambang provinces appearing to have already flipped sides as of yesterday. ...

CNRP President Kem Sokha on Monday urged supporters of minority political parties not to “waste” votes and instead to join his party as the only credible challenger to the CPP, words dismissed as a false choice by one minor party leader. ...

Hundreds of riverside families in Tbong Khmum province were on Monday evacuated away from the flooding Mekong River, even as the provinces hit hardest by tropical storm ‘Sonca’ last week returned to normalcy and evacuees shuffled back to their homes. ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen’s middle son, Hun Manith, was among 28 officers to receive high-level promotions in the military, with the now three-star general continuing his rise through the ranks of the armed forces and ruling party. ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen approved the establishment of a new interministerial task force yesterday that will work to develop and manage community-based ecotourism locations in a bid to find sustainable ways to draw tourists to destinations across the Kingdom. ...

About 60 Cambodian trainees will be recruited to study and work in Inuyama town in Japan by the Inuyama Chamber of Commerce in Japan, a decision made after the minister of labour met with the chairman of the chamber yesterday. ...

A global corruption perceptions index has ranked Cambodia 161st out of 180 countries, with the report specifically pointing to weak press freedoms and NGO protections as facilitators of graft – issues that commentators have repeatedly raised as concerns in the Kingdom. ...

The leaders of seven major unions and labor confederations announced yesterday in a joint statement that they will form an inter-union committee to rally the government on raising the country’s minimum wage of $61, with the unions believe is too low. ...

The families of two maids working in Malaysia asked Preah Vihear’s anti-human trafficking office and the human rights group Adhoc yesterday to intervene on behalf of their daughters, whom they haven’t seen or heard from since last year, officials said. ...

Elections in Cambodia are just three days away and the inevitability of Hun Sen’s return to power has been reinforced by the official refusal to allow Sam Rainsy to stand against the Prime Minister after the opposition leader’s return from self-imposed exile. ...

Leaders of the National Election Committee (NEC) who break the law will be removed from their posts by the National Assembly, officials said yesterday. The comments came after a meeting between Cambodian People’s Party and Cambodia National Rescue Party working groups. ...

Cambodia has improved overall in protecting children from abuse and exploitation, the United Nations’ first Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) found in a report released yesterday, but the Kingdom has to take greater strides to further safeguard children’s rights. ...