Canadian firm Manulife Financial plans to set up one of Cambodia’s first life-insurance operations, the company said yesterday. The Ministry of Economy and Finance had approved “in principle” the investment, which a spokesperson from the company said would be at least US$7 million ...

More than one million cubic metres of illegal timber has flowed unhindered from protected areas in Cambodia’s northeast provinces to Vietnam as the latter continues its role as a serial illegal timber trade offender, according to a report issued by the Environmental Investigation Agency. ...

The UN Human Rights Council’s (UNHRC) Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Cambodia, Rhona Smith, is to land in the Kingdom on Monday, in her first official visit since questioning the “genuineness” of the July 29 national elections, polls she claimed were “one-sided”. ...

Chungyuen Plastic Manufacture Co Ltd has returned 14 containers of plastic waste found at the Sihanoukville Autonomous Port last month to their countries of origin. It also paid a one billion riel ($250,000) fine, the General Department of Customs and Excise said on Friday. ...

Vietnamese rice has lower quality compared to rice of Thailand and Cambodia because Vietnamese farmers are using short day varieties, while Thai and Cambodian farmers mainly plant only one rice crop/year, with higher quality, safety and more competitive prices. ...

Cambodia has performed poorly in the 2016 edition of a recent environmental report, ranking a dismal 146 out of 180 countries.The Kingdom returned one of the lowest Environmental Performance Index (EPI) scores in the region, narrowly edging ahead of Myanmar and Laos. ...

About 70 residents from a village in Siem Reap’s Ampil commune yesterday submitted a petition to provincial officials requesting that they not be switched to the authority of neighbouring Nokor Thom commune, though at least one local official claimed the matter was long decided. ...

As one of 10 Asean foreign ministers, Cambodian Foreign Affairs Minister Prak Sokhon will travel to China for a two-day meeting between Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and the foreign ministers of Asean, according to a statement from the Foreign Ministry released on Saturday. ...

Vendors along O’Chheuteal Beach yesterday protested against a new Preah Sihanouk provincial project that requires them to build new stalls – set back from their current ones – before the Sea Festival starts on December 17, in order to expand the beach area for tourists. ...

For many Southeast Asian countries, Japanese developmental aid may be synonymous with building bridges, roads and public facilities. But besides its infrastructure-building capacity, Japan is also boosting one of the strategic tools of diplomacy at its disposal: human resource development. ...

Cambodia is ranked one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change. Many of its people rely on agriculture, and the changes to the country’s climate, whether more droughts or more floods, makes them particularly vulnerable. ...

The Interior Ministry yesterday called for Beijing’s cooperation in tackling a ring of Chinese methamphetamine traffickers operating in Cambodia, one day after an annual Interior Ministry report announced that the number of drug busts in 2015 had more than doubled compared to 2014. ...

Two defrocked monks were handed prison sentences at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Friday, with one of them found guilty of drug possession and making a death threat and the other of using fake documents and improperly wearing monks’ robes.   ...

As the opposition marked the 41st anniversary of the fall of Phnom Penh to the Khmer Rouge, one of its senior officials yesterday lashed out at the imprisonment of a CNRP lawmaker for criticising the government’s handling of the Vietnamese border issue. ...

Cambodia’s credit bureau is looking to leverage the resources and experience of US-based Equifax, one of the three biggest American credit report agencies, to expand its credit analysis capabilities and introduce new products to the local market, its chief executive officer said yesterday. ...

Concerns are mounting among the human rights community, particularly in the wake of political analyst Kem Ley’s murder, that UN Special Rapporteur to Cambodia Rhona Smith is failing to fulfil her mandate in a time of what one observer termed “fear and confusion”. ...

Unions meeting on Friday arrived at an estimated cost-of-living salary for garment workers ahead of minimum wage talks, one remarkably similar to the monthly wage they’ve demanded two years running, though suggested the final number they push for will be higher. ...

Recent satellite images from NASA have captured a high number of fires blazing across Cambodia this season, illustrating what one forestry official called a chronic inability to deal with the Kingdom’s numerous illegally set fires, a problem exacerbated by especially dry El Niño conditions. ...

State-owned Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority (PPWSA), one of three companies listed on the stock exchange, will pay out more than $3 million in dividends for 2015 on April 18, a 50 percent increase on 2014, reflecting its improved performance, company officials said. ...

The ministry yesterday used National Dengue Campaign Day to announce that there were 1,133 reported dengue cases in the first 24 weeks of this year and just one fatality, compared with 2,447 dengue cases and five deaths in the same period last year. ...