Social development

An 89-year-old woman who was among the more than 240 villagers to test positive for HIV in Battambang province’s Roka commune died Monday, bringing the total number of deaths since the outbreak was first detected in December to eight. ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Monday convicted a British national of purchasing child prostitution and committing indecent acts against minors, sentencing him to eight years in prison and ordering him to pay a total of $5,000 in fines and compensation. ...

Government authorities in a southwest Cambodian province are planning a coordinated campaign to round up residents suffering from mental illness and take them to Buddhist temples where they will be cared for by monks, a provincial official said. ...

About 3,000 union representatives, teachers and senior officials from the ruling Cambodian People’s Party gathered at a ceremony on Koh Pich yesterday to mark the 129th International Labour Day – as well as to bolster support for the ruling party, one official noted. ...

Police and military officials in Kompong Speu province are searching for a soldier with six wives who shot and killed his sister-in-law and mother-in-law on Saturday morning after berating his second wife for talking to another man the day before, local officials said Sunday. ...

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says Australia is violating the rights of children being sent from Nauru to Cambodia under the refugee transfer agreement. In the coming week, possibly as early as Monday, a charter plane is expected to fly out from Nauru with ...

The United Nations Children’s Fund is voicing concern about the decision by Australia to transfer asylum seekers detained on the Pacific island of Nauru to Cambodia, possibly as early as Monday. UNICEF’s concerns come amid growing refugee protests in Nauru and protests over transfers of ...

Thong Sarath, a senior Defense Ministry official wanted for the November murder of tycoon Ung Meng Chue, was arrested by Vietnamese police Thursday after months on the run, the head of Cambodia’s Interpol office said on Friday. ...

A police officer was arrested on Tuesday night for firing his state-issued K-59 pistol into the air after getting into a fight at a Khmer New Year party in Phnom Penh, but he was released without charge the same night, police said. ...

The son of a wealthy property developer and police general was arrested Monday evening after attacking another rich, young businessman inside a Phnom Penh tattoo parlor, military police said Tuesday. ...

A Guinness World Records judge kicked this year’s Angkor Sankranta festival into action Monday by officially declaring a 4-ton sticky rice cake produced for the Khmer New Year celebration to be the largest ever made. ...

Sixteen Cambodian students studying in war-torn Yemen were scheduled to fly out of Oman’s capital, Muscat, late Monday night and were expected to arrive in Phnom Penh at 3 p.m. Tuesday. ...

Five months behind bars has done nothing to deter Phnom Penh’s Boeung Kak activists from taking their demands to the streets. Just one day after their release from the capital’s Prey Sar prison, the female activists – often at the helm of Phnom Penh demonstrations – ...

The Mondolkiri Provincial Court on Saturday charged a man with having sex with an underage girl, but a rights worker and the girl’s father said Sunday that the allegations were fabricated in retaliation for the man’s involvement in recent protests against a Vietnamese rubber plantation. ...

Less than a week into the role, Preah Sihanouk’s new police chief, Chuon Narin, has announced the early results of a crackdown on crimes involving foreigners, calling them the “main problem” facing the coastal city.  ...

The Our Home center in Phnom Penh’s Meanchey district has reopened under interim management after its director, Hang Vibol, was jailed last month and charged with abusing boys at the organization’s orphanage, which housed more than 50 children but was shuttered and will remain closed. ...

Police in Preah Sihanouk province yesterday arrested a British national in a guesthouse for alleged drug possession. ...

An education campaign launched by Cambodia’s National Immunization Program (NIP) in the aftermath of last year’s HIV outbreak in Battambang has been effective in dispelling the concerns of parents hesitant to get their children vaccinated, government health bodies and the World Health Organization have said. ...

Dengue fever cases in the Kingdom have increased by nearly 80 per cent compared with the same period last year, and the Cambodia National Malaria Center (CNM) said yesterday that it expects a continued surge throughout 2015. ...

The body of what villagers had suspected was a Montagnard asylum seeker, found partially buried in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadaw district earlier this week, was determined to be the remains of a local teenager who had drowned in a river, a villager said Thursday. ...

The US Institute of Peace on Wednesday announced the completion of a program – conducted by the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam) – to train an additional 600 educators to teach Khmer Rouge history in the Kingdom’s secondary schools. ...

A woman was arrested on Wednesday in Banteay Meanchey province for allegedly smuggling 12 methamphetamine pills into the provincial prison by slashing open green beans and tucking the pills inside, local police said Thursday. ...

Police in Siem Reap City said Thursday that they arrested six people on Wednesday for questioning over an arson attack on a decorative gateway built for the Angkor Sangkranta festival. ...

Cambodia has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in Southeast Asia. The number of women dying during pregnancy or childbirth has dropped in recent years. But it is still far short of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals. The Cambodian government accepted those goals ...