Khmer translated by ODC

As countries that share a border (and the Mekong River), the Southeast Asian nations of Cambodia and Laos possess traits in common. Amongst them, relatively small populations that are predominantly young and Buddhist. ...

Local innovations have catapulted Cambodia, which has long had dire toilet use numbers, to be a leader in sanitation. On World Toilet Day, the country gears up to attain ambitious new targets, Joanna Mayhew reports. ...

President Barack Obama said bold measures should be taken to try to ease growing strains over the South China Sea, where six governments including the Philippines have overlapping claims. ...

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Tuesday that an arrest warrant issued against Cambodia’s opposition leader Sam Rainsy was a worrisome development and called for dialogue. He called for dialogue and encouraged all political players to “refrain from violence, intimidation and harassment.” ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen on Tuesday promoted Ke Leng, who recently won her second world championship in petanque, from the rank of captain to major in the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces and promised her $40,000 for her victory. ...

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has once again reaffirmed that no replica of Angkor Wat will be built in India, following swift condemnation of the idea by the government. ...

The United Kingdom sees Cambodia as a strategic location at the heart of a transportation network through Thailand, Vietnam and Laos to reach China and other countries in the region and the world, a senior UK trade official said yesterday. ...

Amid rising tensions, authorities in Tbong Khmum province yesterday pledged to intervene in a long-running land conflict between Dambe district residents and a Chinese company by demarcating the disputed area with wooden posts. ...

With the government placing tourism at the center of efforts to diversify and grow the country’s economy, a French development organization launched a project on Tuesday to encourage companies operating in the sector to comply with labor laws. ...

Authorities have bolstered security across Cambodia in response to last week’s coordinated terror attacks in Paris that left 129 people dead, according to a statement posted to the National Police’s website on Tuesday. ...

Cambodia recorded 85 landmine and unexploded ordnance (UXO) casualties in the first nine months of this year, a 37-percent decrease compared with 135 casualties over the same period last year, according to a report yesterday. ...

Cambodia fared dismally in the 2014 budget transparency index compiled by the US-based International Budget Partnership, scoring only eight out of 100 and coming in near the bottom of the 102 countries surveyed, at 94. ...

Rubber and palm oil giant the Socfin Group has committed to a global “zero-deforestation policy” across Africa and Asia amid a legal dispute with ethnic Bunong communities in Mondulkiri province’s Bousraa commune. ...

Cambodia’s Ministry of Health is warning the public to beware many skin whitening creams, which have been found to have high levels of mercury in them. Whitening is a common practice in Cambodia, for both men and women, in a culture where lighter skin is ...

Conservation experts and residents in Kratie province say they are concerned for the wellbeing of the Mekong River dolphin, especially if a major hydropower project is built upstream. Only about 80 Mekong dolphins are estimated to now live in Cambodia, down from 200 in 1997. ...

President Barack Obama pledged Tuesday to help Asia-Pacific allies boost their maritime security as part of talks with leaders in the Philippine capital, Manila. The White House announced a package of up to $259 million in new aid over the course of two years, including ...

For the second time in three weeks the United Nations has expressed concern over increasing tensions between Cambodia’s Government and opposition, with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today calling the arrest warrant issued against opposition leader Sam Rainsy “worrisome.” ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen will lead a high-level ministerial delegation to Malaysia over the weekend, to attend a number of Asean and Asian regional summits. ...

Beijing says it will oppose attempts to make its island-building activities in the South China Sea the focus of this week’s leaders’ summit in the Malaysian capital. ...

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. ...

The victory of Aung San Suu Kyi’s movement in Burma after years of military rule and repression is already starting to unnerve autocrats nearby. Last week, Sam Rainsy, an opposition leader in Cambodia, declared that the democrats’ “resounding” victory “has created panic among the last ...

Benny Widyono, a former UN official in Cambodia during its transition period in the 1990s, says the country’s mass killings were in part a result of the Cold War. ...

The Cambodia Rice Federation (CRF) and the Association for SMEs of Cambodia will jointly hold the fifth Cambodia Rice Forum to discuss the future of the country’s rice industry with major stakeholders. ...

Cambodia must work to close the skills gap between its labor force and the domestic job market in order to maintain its economic growth, according to a report released on Monday by the Asian Development Bank and the International Labor Organization. ...