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Two men were arrested Monday in Kompong Thom province for illegally transporting nearly half a cubic meter of valuable rosewood, said a forestry official ...

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) met yesterday with the representatives of families evicted or facing eviction to make way for an ADB-funded railway project, and defended itself against complaints that the project was pushing some of them deeper into poverty. The ADB has billed the $142 ...

Cambodia’s Ministry of Environment told a Japanese oil company yesterday to better define the location of its initial onshore operations given the potential impact on the local population and environment. The Ministry of Environment has required Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation to specify where ...

A Ratanakkiri Provincial Court prosecutor yesterday summoned an ethnic minority Jarai man in O’Yadav district to explain to the court his allegations that local authorities had threatened to kill him for exposing a land-sale corruption racket. Romas Chhvang, 45, filed a complaint to the court at ...

More than 45,000 hectares of land in Preah Vihear province were granted to five companies for rubber plantations on July 6 after the government reclassified the land from state public to state private land on the same day, according to the five sub-decrees signed by ...

A representative of environmental group International Rivers said yesterday that if the Laos government were to move forward with a controversial dam project, it would violate the 1995 Mekong Agreement. “Moving forward with the dam would be against international law,” said Ame Trandem, Sountheast Asia program ...

Adding to a spate of similar incidents since October, Thai soldiers fired on a group of Cambodians who had illegally entered Thailand from Oddar Meanchey province on Saturday looking to log valuable rosewood trees and shot one in the hand, a provincial official said yesterday ...

A consulting firm commissioned by the Lao government to prepare a report on the controversial US$3.8 billion Xayaburi dam project has rejected claims by environmentalists that their assessment was “biased” due partly to existing ties with a project backer. On Wednesday, conservation group International Rivers claimed ...

The US firm marketing what will likely be the first forest-based carbon trading scheme in Cambodia has bought $900,000 worth of political risk insurance to back the project, according to a media report. ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen on Monday ordered Agriculture Minister Chan Sarun to explain irregularities that have taken place in the bidding process for licenses to operate fishing lots around the Tonle Sap lake. The order was carried out after Mr Hun Sen received a report from ...

After walking and camping in the jungle for more than a week, Tha Sros and hundreds of other villagers finally reached the winding red dirt road that lead to the rubber plantation of Vietnamese-owned CRCK company, which has cleared a vast 6,000-hectare swathe out of ...

Eight Cambodian suspected of illegally logging along the Thai-Cambodian border have been shot dead by Thai soldiers, and three others have been wounded in the month of October alone, human rights workers and officials said Friday. The latest figure brings the death toll so far this ...

The Ministry of Finance has warned Phnom Penh’s wealthiest property owners that they will be harshly penalized if they fail to pay property tax due by the end of the month. According to a notice issued by the ministry on October 27, the window for tax ...

Angered by the clearing of parts of Prey Long forest, several hundred indigenous minority villagers marched on a rubber plantation here in northern Kompong Thom province yesterday night and breached its gate in order to demand that the company stop cutting down trees in the ...

JAPAN Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation has started preliminary surveying as the sole operator in Cambodia’s Block 17 onshore oil field, a 6,500 square-kilometre area of hilly forest in Kampong Thom, Preah Vihear and Siem Reap provinces, according to an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) ...

Military police in Ratanakiri province arrested an RCAF officer Monday evening for shooting a 20-year-old villager who was riding his motorcycle across land at the center of a long-running land dispute between ethnic minority villagers and rubber company DM Group, officials said yesterday. RCAF second lieutenant ...

An environmental group yesterday refuted the validity of a report commissioned by Laos in September claiming that construction of its controversial Xayaburi dam would not have a significant impact on the Mekong River. The report, completed for the Lao government by Swiss engineer Poyry Energy AG, ...

After several days of grassroots campaigning by local villagers to save Prey Long forest, tension in this part of northern Kompong Thom province is rising. The 300-strong group of campaigners seemed to be heading for a confrontation with provincial authorities, as officials warned yesterday that ...

A strike this morning at a garment factory located near the bend of a dirt road in Bonal Sa-ith village in Sen Sok district underscores the need for enhanced enforcement of labour legislation, the president of the Free Trade Union said yesterday. Chea Mony also said ...

Cambodia does not have enough productive or high-quality jobs available and most employment is informal, which will prevent Cambodians from rising out of poverty, the International Labor Organization (ILO) said Monday at a workshop in Phnom Penh. To help solve the issues affecting the labor market, ...

For the several hundred villagers who have been camping and patrolling in a remote part of the jungle in northern Kompong Thom for several days as part of their campaign to save Prey Long forest, the strain is starting to show. Human rights workers say that ...

Mitsui Oil Exploration Co (Moeco), a Japanese petroleum firm that specializes in natural gas, wants to start conducting seismic operations testing for oil and gas north of the Tonle Sap lake by February 2012 and wrap up the tests by May, according to excerpts of ...

As hundreds of villagers belonging to the Prey Long People’s Network began a week-long campaign to save Prey Long forest, Kompong Thom province military police intervened Sunday and prevented a group of about 80 villagers from joining the campaign, an environmental activist said yesterday. Chut Wutty, ...

The number of flood-related insurance claims has been fewer than expected despite the Kingdom’s worst flooding in a decade, industry insiders say. Although the floods, which began in late August, had affected large sections of the country, few claims had been made, Infinity Insurance chief executive ...