Government

Prime Minister Hun Sen’s lawyer yesterday filed a lawsuit against former Deputy Prime Minister Lu Lay Sreng for defamation over comments made during a private phone conversation leaked to social media. ...

United States Senator Ted Cruz issued an ultimatum to Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday, pledging to work to ban top officials from travelling to the US unless jailed opposition leader Kem Sokha is released. ...

Military Police officials apprehended two suspects in Takeo province’s Angkor Borei district on Monday for attempting to transport around 1 tonne of wildlife, including turtles, birds and rare snakes, to Vietnam. ...

With trade and investment between Cambodia and China steadily increasing, Chinese currency-backed settlements for cross-border commerce have sharply taken off as the Kingdom continues to deepen its economic dependency on the northern giant, a central bank official said yesterday. ...

In the latest attempt to push its narrative of an impending “colour revolution”, the Press and Quick Reaction Unit released a sweeping, nearly hourlong video, broadcast on multiple television stations on Monday night, attempting to link the opposition’s activities to protest movements in the Middle ...

Defence Minister General Tea Banh yesterday told Asean member states and eight other countries how the recent government crackdown on media outlets and NGOs was legal and justified. ...

The Environment Ministry is to request the creation of six new protected areas to safeguard biodiversity and boost conservation in the country. Tim Sitha, deputy director of the general department of conservation, said the ministry has been studying the potential to establish the new areas.  ...

The government had reclassified four economic land concessions as state property, reclaiming almost 20,000 hectares earlier handed to private firms to use for rubber plantations. ...

The Constitutional Council yesterday approved four sets of controversial amendments to Cambodia’s election laws, greenlighting changes that will pave the way for the main opposition party’s parliamentary seats to be redistributed in the event of its dissolution. ...

The central bank officially held a soft launch last Friday for its central shared switch mechanism, which connects account records of three of the Kingdom’s leading financial institutions, allowing them to operate ATM and point-of-sale (POS) terminals in tandem. ...

​Former Deputy Prime Minister and ex-Funcinpec official Lu Lay Sreng left the country for Thailand yesterday morning, the day after the royalist party and Prime Minister Hun Sen vowed to file lawsuits against him for disparaging the King and accusing the government of bribing Funcinpec. ...

Villagers and NGOs have accused local authorities, including forestry and environmental officials, of accepting bribes from illegal loggers in exchange for unfettered logging expeditions in Preah Vihear province’s Preah Roka protected forest. ...

China will fund a restoration project, slated to start in mid-2018, at an ancient royal palace complex within the Angkor Thom archaeological site in Siem Reap province, officials said yesterday. Long Kosal, spokesman for the Apsara Authority, said the palace is centuries old, and while ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen has allocated about $40 million per year from next year after the garment and footwear industry workers’ minimum wage increased to $170 per month. ...

Nearly 3,000 cases have been detected in a crackdown on fisheries and forest crime in the first nine months of this year.​ The results were in a Ministry of Agriculture and Fishery report published on Friday. ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen has promised CNRP commune officials they can keep their positions once their party is dissolved, so long as they disavow their former party and join the ruling CPP. ...

The Ministry of Environment is asking Japan for help mapping Cambodia’s forests using satellite imagery, one week after it vehemently refuted a report of such imagery showing accelerating forest loss in the Kingdom. ...

A Swedish diplomat yesterday warned that the potential dissolution of the Cambodia National Rescue Party could lead the Scandinavian country to rethink its relationship with the Kingdom, though she didn’t detail which actions were on the table. ...

The Senate has approved four amendments to the election laws related to the redistribution of the seats of the CNRP and local councilors if the main opposition party is dissolved. ...

A senior Ministry of Defence official yesterday claimed that housing rights group Sahmakum Teang Tnaut (STT) had received close to half a million dollars a year from the United States to foment “colour revolution” among the land dispute groups it worked with – a claim ...

Workers from the Pou Yuen Cambodia garment factory in Sen Sok district yesterday protested outside the premises after the management decided to offer them only three-month contract extensions. ...

In a speech to some 15,000 garment workers in Phnom Penh yesterday, Prime Minister Hun Sen returned to the topic of the United States’ war legacy in Cambodia, pledging to build a health centre for people purportedly suffering the after-effects of American chemical weapons in Svay ...

A new agriculture scholarship and research grant were launched yesterday with the aim of nurturing local expertise by providing students opportunities to pursue graduate degrees and conduct research. ...

With the fate of the CNRP still in the Supreme Court’s hands, the National Assembly yesterday paved the way for all of the main opposition party’s seats to be handed over to a smattering of smaller parties and, at the local level, to the ruling ...