Hun Sen’s Cabinet Approves $3.5B Draft Budget
Prime Minister Hun Sen’s new Cabinet on Friday approved a 2014 draft budget of $3.5 billion, a 13 percent increase over this year’s budget, but gave no details as to how the money would be spent. The CPP also said it will go ahead with a ...
Hul Reaksmey and Zsombor Peter
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/hun-sens-cabinet-approves-3-5b-draft-budget-45985/
Cambodians Regularly Face Pre-Trial Detention: Rights Group
Cambodian authorities frequently hold suspects, especially the young, in detention pending trial, even though the law could allow them to be released on bail while awaiting the completion of their judicial proceedings, according to a report released Wednesday. Minor crime suspects are also provided a “worryingly ...
Radio Free Asia
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-S_S3UzOzAY&list=PLNkBYj4uOY-igjoKtwu08dF2qKq1PmauL
After prison, Bopha undeterred
Shelving any thoughts that 14 months in prison had deterred her from protesting, Yorm Bopha rushed to the capital’s Borei Keila community yesterday morning to try to stop authorities from forcing evictees from an abandoned building. Bopha was one of about 10 Boeung Kak activists called ...
Phak Seangly, Khouth Sophak Chakrya and Shane Worrell
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/after-prison-bopha-undeterred
Cambodia’s tourism anchored to Angkor
More than 90% of tourists visiting Cambodia will end up at Siem Reap’s world heritage site Angkor Wat, despite efforts to open other areas of the country to tourism. Officials attending the Asean Tourism Forum admitted that efforts to convince tour operators to include trips to ...
TTR Weekly News Staff
http://www.ttrweekly.com/site/2014/01/cambodias-tourism-anchored-to-angkor/
City Hall wants World Bank, NGOs to compensate evicted families
Representatives of some of the 3,000 families evicted from Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak neighborhood in recent years said Thursday that municipal government officials, who were ultimately responsible for the mass evictions, told them they would be inviting the World Bank and NGOs to help compensate ...
A refined approach?
Hundreds of trucks hauling sugarcane queue up along the dusty roads that cut a path through a plantation in Kampong Speu province. Their destination: Cambodia’s most advanced sugar refinery. Its owners say the landmark project, run by the Phnom Penh Sugar Company and its president, ruling ...
Daniel de Carteret
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/refined-approach
EU Won’t Investigate Land Concessions—for Now
The trade commissioner and foreign affairs representative of the European Union (E.U.) have turned down a request from 13 members of the European Parliament that they immediately investigate Cambodia’s much criticized economic land concessions, but said they were monitoring the issue closely. In a March letter ...
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/eu-wont-investigate-land-concessions-for-now-25194/
Election Monitors Submit Request to Review NEC Documents
Independent election monitors and civil society groups submitted a request to the National Election Committee (NEC) on Friday asking to review post-election voter rolls and Identity Certificates for Elections (ICE) forms in seven provinces in which reports of election irregularities were widespread on July 28. The ...
The Cambodia Daily
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/elections/election-monitors-submit-request-to-review-nec-documents-38287/
CNRP’s Kem Sokha Refutes Claim That the Party Is Divided
CNRP vice president Kem Sokha on Monday denied claims made by Interior Minister Sar Kheng’s cabinet chief that leaders of the opposition party were making conflicting demands of the ruling CPP. The two parties have been locked in a political stalemate since July’s election, with the ...
Khy Sovuthy and Ben Woods
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/cnrps-kem-sokha-refutes-claim-that-the-party-is-divided-45109/
Education to Receive 20% Boost in 2014 Budget
The Education Ministry on Monday said it was in line for a near 20 percent hike from the government’s $3.52 billion draft budget for 2014, approved by Prime Minister Hun Sen’s Cabinet on Friday, though other details of how money was to be allocated remained ...
Zsombor Peter and Hul Reaksmey
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/education-to-receive-20-boost-in-2014-budget-46127/
Leprosy Hospital Expands as Cases Increase
About 20 leprosy patients have been treated at a rehabilitated and expanded wing of the Battambang Provincial Referral Hospital, the second hospital to offer professional treatment for leprosy patients in Cambodia. “We have two doctors and one nurse who specialize in leprosy treatment, and in the ...
Denise Hruby
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/leprosy-hospital-expands-as-cases-increase-46778/
Minister Says Set Phone Call Prices ‘Temporary’
The minister of posts and telecommunications on Monday insisted an edict ordering the country’s seven mobile phone operators to abide by a law that sets minimum prices for calls is only temporary. Prak Sokhon, the newly-appointed posts and telecommunications minister, said the order was necessary because ...
Joshua Wilwohl and Hul Reaksmey
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/business/minister-says-set-phone-call-prices-temporary-48975/
Chainsaws stayed busy in past year
The extent of the devastation of Cambodia’s forests was brought into sharp relief as 2013 drew to a close, with a series of detailed maps and satellite data released by NGOs showing the drastic depletion of the Kingdom’s woodland ecosystems. Images released by Open Development Cambodia ...
Daniel Pye
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/chainsaws-stayed-busy-past-year
Community Marks Fifth Anniversary of Violent Eviction
About 150 members of the former Dey Krahorm community in Phnom Penh’s Chamkar Mon district marked the fifth anniversary on Friday of the day mechanical excavators, security guards and authorities destroyed their homes to make room for a real estate project. Much like on past anniversaries, ...
Khuon Narim and Denise Hruby
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/community-marks-fifth-anniversary-of-violent-eviction-51017/
Students compete in counseling competition
About 30 law students on Friday participated in the seventh Client Counseling Competition to put their newly acquired professional skills into practice and compete for a trip to the international competition in Puerto Rico in April. “We created the case based on this year’s theme, ...
Denise Hruby
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/students-compete-in-counseling-competition-52970/
Addicts’ lifeline to go
Every morning, right about 8am, Vuthy* starts to feel out of sorts. On the way from his home in Meanchey district to the Khmer-Soviet Friendship Hospital, where he receives treatment, he breaks into a sweat. Vuthy is one of about 140 former heroin addicts who ...
Stuart White and Mom Kunthear
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/addicts%E2%80%99-lifeline-go
In Cambodia, Cyber Casinos Fall Into a Legal Gray Area
In 2010, the Ha Tien Vegas Entertainment Resort, a casino investment on Kampot province’s border with Vietnam that included luxury karaoke rooms and suites, launched with high hopes of attracting Vietnamese gamblers. At the end of December, Ha Tien Vegas closed down. To the north, in ...
Blueprint for a reformed NEC
In the week before the National Election Committee was formed in December 1997, Chheng Phon predicted he had a tough road ahead. “If you ask me personally, I must say I do not want this job,” the inaugural boss told the Post from the banks of a canal ...
Shane Worrell and Khouth Sophak Chakrya
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/blueprint-reformed-nec
Key donors endorse election
The governments of Australia and France have congratulated Prime Minister Hun Sen on his election victory, becoming the first key Western donors to do so since the official election results were released on September 8. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also offered his congratulations to Hun Sen ...
Kevin Ponniah
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/key-donors-endorse-election
Vattanac Capital preparing for eventful 2014
Phnom Penh’s growing importance as a business destination has brought with it many opportunities and infused the market with a growing sense of ambition. Few developments embody this new ambition better than Vattanac Capital Tower, which will throw open its doors this spring. “Cambodia’s seen nothing ...
Nalin Viboonchart
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/real-estate/vattanac-capital-preparing-eventful-2014