Environment and natural resources

A Ratanakkiri provincial court has charged a married couple with premeditated murder in the grisly killing of Vorakchun Khmer newspaper reporter Hang Serei Oudom, whose body was found axed to death in the back of a car last week. The suspects, An Bunheng and his wife, ...

A forestry officer and a reporter from a little-known newspaper were arrested Friday on allegations of attempted extortion and assaulting a man they caught illegally transporting luxury timber, but were released on Saturday, military police officials said yesterday. Seng Chandaron, the chief of Sandan commune Forestry ...

A local journalist and a forestry official were arrested by military police in Kratie province’s Sambo district on Friday night for allegedly discharging a weapon into the air and beating a man with a boat oar in an extortion bid gone awry. According to district military ...

Villagers living in raised houses on the capital’s Boeung Tumpun lake fear their eviction is on the horizon as sand pumping increases at the site, they said yesterday. In recent months, heavy machinery has been at work at the Boeung Tumpun site. Sand pumping has ...

Employee at timber company Angkor Flywood in Kampong Cham province will return to work today after their bosses agreed yesterday to all but one of their demands: an increase in wages. Sok Kin, vice president of the Building and Word Workers Trade Union Federation of Cambodia ...

The Ratanakkiri Provincial Court yesterday charged a military police captain and his wife with the murder of journalist Hang Serei Odom, officials said. Hang Serei Odom, who worked for the Virakchun Khmer Daily newspaper, was found dead in the trunk of his car on Tuesday. He ...

Heavy machinery is pumping millions of tonnes of sand from the river into the Boeung Tumpun lake in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The area is home to some 2000 families and rumours suggest they will be evicted to develop the land once the lake is filled. The ...

Laos’ energy minister announced last week that the country will sell energy supplied by the controversial Xayaburi Dam to Cambodia. It is already planning to sell power to Thailand, where last month a lawsuit was lodged to stop the country from buying electricity produced at ...

Once a majority ethnic minority province where Tampoun, Jarai and Kreung speakers outnumbered the Khmer, Ratanakkiri is now one of the country’s fastest growing provinces where inhabitants of lowland provinces, particularly Kompong Cham, Svay Rieng and Prey Veng, are flocking in search of a better ...

Amid flooding caused by heavy rain in Thailand, Banteay Meanchey provincial officials have commissioned the construction of a steel bridge over an inundated section of road on the outskirts of Poipet City, officials said yesterday. Flooding in Preah Vihear province, which started last week following heavy ...

Cambodian Minister of Industry, Mines and Energy on Thursday hailed Chinese companies for hugely investing in the country’s energy sector, which is a key element to support the sustainable social and economic development. Suy Sem’s appreciation was made during a bilateral meeting with Wu Yin, ...

Police investigating the murder of a journalist whose battered body was discovered in Ratanakkiri province on Tuesday have unearthed key clues to who may have carried out the killing, an official said yesterday. Hang Serei Odom, 42-who had written exposes on the involvement of powerful people in forest ...

Singapore and Cambodia have agreed to strengthen bilateral cooperation in energy. As a first step, a delegation led by a Secretary of State of the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy of Cambodia will conduct a study visit to Singapore from 21 to 24 October. The ...

A local newspaper stringer who had written about illegal logging was found dead in the back of a car yesterday in Rattanakiri province’s O’Chum district. Hang Serei Oudom, 44, was a stringer for Vorakchun Khmer, or Khmer Hero, newspaper. Police said his body was covered in blood ...

There has been an ioncrease in fishing activity in the dolphin conservation zones along the Mekong River in Kratie and Stung Treng provinces, putting pressure on the critically endangered Mekong dolphin population, the chairman of the Commission for Mekong River Dolphin Conservation and Eco-tourism Development said yesterday. Touch ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court questioned a district governor from Kampong Thom province yesterday over his involvement  in clearing protected flooed forest in the province in July. Prim Rottha, Stong district governor, is one of about 20 officials who received court summonses in July over their suspected ...

Approximately 400 people from 10 villages in Kandal province’s Ang Snuol district stopped a truck on Monday that had been hired to fill in a pond in preparation for the reported building of a military police base, officials said. Thuon Nging, a representative of the ...

A Cambodian journalist, who reported on forest crimes in Ratanakkiri province for a little-known newspaper, was found murdered in the trunk of his car yesterday, police said. Hang Serei Odom, 42, a journalist at the Khmer-language Virakchun Khmer Daily, had been missing since Sunday, when he ...

After experiencing decades of floods, Cambodia’s microfinance institutions say they no longer have problems disbursing loans during the rainy season, according to the head of Cambodia’s Microfinance Association (CMA). A survey issued early this year by a coterie of international aid organisations, including Oxfam, Care, PACT ...

High-profile Phnom Penh businesswoman Chhin Sokountheary has called on Prime Minister Hun Sen to return 33 hectares of prime land in Phnom Penh’s Sen Sok district to her company, which lost the rights to it when the government claimed the land in July. Sokountheary said she ...

ASEAN senior officials on energy gathered here on Monday to discuss and prepare documents for the 30th ASEAN Ministers on Energy Meeting and related meetings to be held on Sept. 12. The two-day preparatory meeting, under the theme “ASEAN Green Connectivity”, was chaired by Tun ...

Sri Lanka’s Touchwood Investments PLC has acquired 11,138 hectares of land in Cambodia to set up an agricultural project to plant rubber and other crops. Chairman of the firm, Roscoe A. Maloney, says the acquisition done in the previous financial year is aimed at exploring the ...

Villagers in Kratie province have long feared the proposed Sambor hydroelectric dam and the impact it could have on their subsistence fishing and riverbank agriculture. According to Resilience on the Mekong: A Vulnerability and Adaptation Assessment in North-East Cambodia, a report released by the World Wildlife ...

Angkor Gold Corp has acquired a new economic land concession as it gains full control of its other concessions with the purchase of another mining company, according to officials. According to a statement released last week, Angkor Gold has purchased Liberty Mining International Pty Ltd (Liberty), ...