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Human rights group Adhoc yesterday criticized a commune official in Pursat province’s Veal Veng district for accusing one of its staff of incitement and spreading disinformation after villagers traveled to Phnom Penh in March to protest over a land dispute with well known businessman Try ...

Countries in the Greater Mekong Sub-region can save US$14 billion over the next 20 years if they integrate their power transmission systems, according to a senior official from the Asian Development Bank. A regional power grid connection would enable countries with hydro-power plants to export energy ...

Fourteen Phnom Penh families claimed yesterday that government maps showing their houses in the path of a road-widening project were inaccurate and would condemn them to eviction without adequate compensation. Ek Malin, 57, a representative of the community on Street 347 in Tuol Kork district’s Boeung ...

More than 40 hectares of protected forest in Rattanakiri’s O’Yadav district was razed by a Vietnamese company over the course of six days before they were stopped yesterday by villagers and investigators from rights group Adhoc, a local official said. Sav Hlin, a village chief in ...

A rights worker and forestry official yesterday contradicted a local newspaper report claiming that more than $100 million worth of timber had been illegally extracted from Ratanakirri province’s Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary. Adhoc’s provincial coordinator for Ratanakirri, Chhay Thy, denied having said a total of 16,000 ...

A rubber company that has been repeatedly accused of encroaching on communal land belonging to an ethnic minority in Ratanakkiri province has cleared 150 hectares of forest outside of its economic land concession (ELC) in the past month, according to the senior investigator for local ...

More than a week after the World Bank blacklisted a Canadian construction firm over bribes allegedly paid in Cambodia and Bangladesh, it was still unclear Thursday whether the government, or the national anticorruption body, are investigating the allegations. SNC-Lavalin Inc. was banned from World Bank contracts ...

A commune official in Pursat province’s Veal Veng district has filed a lawsuit accusing a human rights worker of incitement and disinformation after villagers the NGO staffer spoke to traveled to Phnom Penh to protest over a land dispute involving a well-known businessman Try Pheap. Pursat ...

Farmers can expect better rice paddy yields this year compared to last year after the Ministry of Water Resources and Meteorology yesterday predicted that the rainy season would run from mid-May until November with only a short dry spell. Chhomg Sopal, agriculture development ...

Cambodians, particularly young adults, are more often turning to banks to help them buy their homes, according to figures obtained from the National Bank of Cambodia (NBC) yesterday. From $179 million in 2008, the total sum lent out to those buyers fell to $94.5 million ...

Farmers in Kompong Chhnang province locked in a land dispute with a local businesswoman are waiting for the government to make a decision on who owns the property after student volunteers measured the area earlier this month as part of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s nationwide ...

More than 25 families living on the site of the long-disused airfield in Preah Vihear province have been ordered to move off the land, a district official said yesterday. “The authorities are forcing residents to leave without compensation and this eviction is illegal because they ...

Four of Cambodia’s independent and opposition-aligned unions have informed the Phnom Penh municipality that they plan to gather 20,000 people on May 1 to march from Olympic Stadium to the National Assembly. ...

New York-based organization Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has released some remarkable footage of wild Asian elephants in Mondolkiri’s Seima district that offers a rare view of the endangered species in its natural habitat. ...

Cambodia’s construction sector is facing a massive labor shortage due to a recent boom in construction projects throughout the country and workers migrating en masse to Thailand in search of higher wages. In 2012, the construction sector expanded rapidly with the total value of approved projects ...

More than 100 villagers living on a 20-hectare swath of a rubber plantation in Ratanakkirri province gathered outside O’Chum commune hall yesterday to protest their eviction at the hands of a Chinese company, local officials and rights activists said. About 120 families from Trang Churng Village ...

Cambodia had granted operating licenses to 606 new companies in the first quarter of this year, a 33 percent decrease compared with the 904 firms at the same period last year, the Commerce Ministry’s report showed Tuesday. Yim Rom, an official at the ministry’s statistics ...

In order to boost the Kingdom’s trade performance and improve the quality of lives of farmers along the Thai-Cambodia border, Thailand has agreed to remove import restrictions on Cambodian cassava and maize. Speaking to reporters after the forth meeting of the Joint Trade Committee between Cambodia ...

Authorities in Ratanakkiri province arrested and charged two men with illegal logging after discovering about 4,000 pieces of luxury wood on an economic land concession held by a Vietnamese rubber company, officials said. [Deputy Provincial Forestry Administration Chief Phan Phoeun] said that although the wood ...

Hundreds of indigenous minorities in Ratanakkiri province are being made worse off by Prime Minister Hun Sen’s land-titling scheme which, rather than securing their property rights, is contributing to the loss of their ancestral lands, according to a new report. The report supports complaints aired since ...

Canada-based life insurance company Manulife has launched a product intended to provide parents with security for their children’s education, and officials at the firm say they are optimistic about its prospects. Manulife’s research found that even families who were financially struggling would take advantage of ...

The commerce affairs office in northeastern Surin has reported robust trade along the Thai-Cambodian border despite unresolved Phra Viharn [Preah Vihear] temple dispute. Mr. Sitthiporn Bangkeaw from the Office of Commerce Affairs Surin revealed that even though the International Court of Justice (ICJ)’s public hearings in ...

Officials in Ratanakkiri province are investigating the provincial coordinator for rights group Adhoc for incitement after he helped villagers organize a demonstration, ultimately canceled, against a Vietnamese rubber company in O’Yadaw district. Mr. [Chhay] Thy, [Adhoc’s Provincial Investigator] said yesterday that he met with about ...

Despite steady economic growth in recent years, Cambodia remains one of the least-developed countries in the Asia-Pacific region and faces the challenge of diversifying its economy and moving up the production value chain, the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) ...