The Phnom Penh Post

High school students are increasingly using methamphetamines and other stimulants to relax or help them study, according to the UN. A spike in trafficking of amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS) across the borders with Thailand and Laos over the past two years has gone hand-in-hand with a rise ...

The value of Cambodia’s overall trade volume for 2013 is expected to reach $16 billion, according to the former Minister of Economy and Finance, Keat Chhon. The figure comes to a 14.4 per cent rise from last year. ...

In its switch to a strategy of nonstop demonstrations calling for a new election, the opposition party has made a calculated decision to go “all-in” and toughen its stance in a bid to ramp up domestic pressure on the ruling party, political analysts said yesterday. Since ...

A house in Ratanakkiri owned by a provincial deputy police chief was raided on Saturday, yielding seven cubic metres of luxury timber. Ratanakkiri Provincial Court and Forestry Administration officials carried out the raid on the property where the deputy police chief is the landlord, but he ...

Malaysian-owned company VW Win Holdings Plc launched lottery operation Camloto in the Kingdom this week, making it the second to go live in as many months. Camloto CEO Jimmy Kong unveiled the new start-up, which will draw its first ball tonight on all major TV stations, ...

In a letter to three government ministries, a local domestic worker rights group last week demanded wage increases and limitations on work hours. Von Samphous, president of the fledgling Cambodian Domestic Worker Network (CDWN), sent the letter to the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and the Ministry ...

The Ministry of Justice yesterday held the first of what it said would be regular forums soliciting the input of civil society on judicial reforms, and promised a new measure that it maintained would streamline the courts’ workflow. Citing widespread frustration among citizens, Justice Minister Ang ...

Land certificates handed out by Prime Minister Hun Sen’s youth volunteers have been seized by local authorities in some parts of the country and sold on to companies, a forum on land rights was told yesterday, amid reports of rising numbers of land conflicts. Speaking at ...

The Vietnamese embassy fired back yesterday at opposition party leader Sam Rainsy’s claim that Vietnamese companies granted economic land concessions in Prey Lang forest are turning the area into a Vietnamese “colony”. On Wednesday, Rainsy visited the forest and claimed that CRCK, a Vietnamese firm granted ...

Since 2011, an estimated 3,000 resin trees have been illegally razed by rogue loggers and a land concessionaire operating in Mondulkiri’s Sen Monorom district, villagers claimed yesterday. Resin trees are a vital source of income for the Phnong ethnic community in Sokdom commune, according to Thleuk ...

Kimseang spent much of his childhood enduring harassment and verbal abuse, with teachers and other children dismissing him because of a visual and physical impairment. While the kingdom has seen overall access to education improve from a 69 per cent net enrollment rate in 1991 ...

Credit Suisse, a financial services firm based in Switzerland, has been accused of aiding land grabbing in Cambodia by becoming a major shareholder in Vietnamese rubber giant Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAGL) Group. In a statement released today, Global Witness (GW), an NGO based in England, ...

Thirty people locked in a land dispute with ruling party senator and sugar tycoon Ly Yong Phat received summonses yesterday to appear in Kampong Speu provincial court. Although the summonses don’t list a complainant, some of those called to appear in court next Tuesday said they ...

Kandal provincial authorities and officials from multiple ministries are investigating the apparent theft of historical artefacts from a stupa at Oudong Mountain said to contain some remains of Buddha himself. Relevant authorities were tight-lipped yesterday about which objects were missing, but a local news outlet reported ...

A day after authorities carted away 11 protesters intending to camp out in front of the United States embassy, a similarly ad hoc group of citizens struggled to deliver petitions to three embassies in the capital yesterday. The group of about 50 were blocked by police ...

Opposition leader Sam Rainsy has landed in hot water with women’s rights activists after publicly questioning whether Prime Minister Hun Sen was being “weaker than a woman” by not calling for a new election like Thai leader Yingluck Shinawatra in the face of popular protests. Speaking ...

The west end of Street 110, also known as Russian Boulevard, is attracting increasing interest from investors and retailers because of its vital role connecting Phnom Penh International Airport with the city centre. Local real estate experts estimate that land prices along the thoroughfare have risen ...

Senior government ministers yesterday rejected the Cambodia National Rescue Party’s call for Cambodia to follow the lead of Thailand and take the country back to the polls. Interior Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Sar Kheng said yesterday that there was no chance a new election would ...

A man facing defamation charges was questioned in Kandal Provincial Court yesterday following his comments in a report that alleged tycoon Try Pheap was illegally logging. San Sen was quoted in a Cambodian Human Rights Task Force (CHRTF) report last month that implicated the tycoon in ...

Cambodia hopes to legalise undercover investigative techniques – like covert surveillance and officers posing as criminals, which until now have fallen into a murky legal grey area – by next year. At a workshop in the capital yesterday, law enforcement officials and representatives of human rights ...

Phnom Penh’s growing importance as a business destination has brought with it many opportunities and infused the market with a growing sense of ambition. Few developments embody this new ambition better than Vattanac Capital Tower, which will throw open its doors this spring. “Cambodia’s seen nothing ...

Low electrification rates and over-dependence on fossil fuel imports have contributed to Cambodia’s abysmally low ranking in the new World Economic Forum’s Global Energy Architecture Performance Index Report for 2014. Cambodia ranked 120 out of 124 nations, with a so-called Energy Architecture Performance Index (EAPI) score ...

The percentage of Cambodia covered in forest has fallen from about 72 per cent in 1973 to only about 46 per cent in 2013, satellite image data released yesterday shows. A series of animated maps that Open Development Cambodia (ODC) produced from NASA satellite images detail ...

A day of peaceful demonstrations gave way to an evening of unrest last night as a handful of protesters were removed from a small patch of land across from the United States embassy and a grup of uninvolved people threw Molotov cocktails towards riot police ...