Voice of America (VOA)

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 ...

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. ...

Japan has delivered to Vietnam another two ships that will be refurbished into patrol boats in disputed waters of the South China Sea.The ships, which arrived Tuesday in the port city of Da Nang, are the second delivery of a 2014 deal for Tokyo to ...

Cambodians are expecting a ‘seamless transition’ when the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) is launched in two months and hopefully heralds a second investment wave, capable of transforming this country’s pool of unskilled labor into a manufacturing hub. ...

Two more refugees detained on the South Pacific island of Nauru are expected to arrive in Cambodia soon as part of a controversial resettlement deal with Australia. ...

Rights advocates in Cambodia allege government violations of the country’s constitution are largely responsible for land disputes harming tens of thousands of families. ...

Cambodian land concessions granted to companies last year affected nearly 80,000 people, displacing many of them and increasing poverty, the NGO Forum on Cambodia says in a new report. ...

A pilot project in Cambodia to register new voters, set to begin in November, will meet difficulties because many villagers lack simple identification cards, officials say. ...

Cambodia’s political parties say they are preparing to monitor a voter registration pilot project which will be held in November ahead of future local and national polls. Cambodia’s last election in 2013 was marred by disputes over the results. The opposition alleged widespread voter fraud, ...

For English speakers, it’s easy to take for granted opening a web browser and typing in a URL. But what do people do when their languages have Chinese characters or Vietnamese tone markers? Such needs are greatest in the developing world, where English is less ...

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is getting mixed reviews for its communique on the South China Sea issue. Many in the region view any communique as better than none at all, which happened in 2012 when Cambodia was ASEAN chair. ...

Land reclamation in the South China Sea has “increased tensions” in the region, according to Southeast Asian foreign ministers, who wrangled for days about how to word their annual communique.​ ...

Scientists say the Southeast Asia’s rapid development is driving deforestation in the vital Mekong Subregion, and threatening scores of species in one of the world’s most biodiverse ecosystems. Trafficking in plant and animal wildlife is accelerating the trend, and governments are being pressed to do ...

The oldest public school in Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, is in a small courtyard downtown. The Tuan Hoa school has a Chinese temple and Mandarin language classes for its 2,000 students. But in Phnom Penh, Chinese usage is still behind English. This is true although ...

Four asylum seekers arrived in Cambodia on Wednesday. They are the first asylum seekers from an Australian-operated camp on the Pacific island of Nauru. The refugees are an Iranian man and his wife, a second man, also from Iran, and an ethnic Rohingya man from ...

The United Nations Children’s Fund is voicing concern about the decision by Australia to transfer asylum seekers detained on the Pacific island of Nauru to Cambodia, possibly as early as Monday. UNICEF’s concerns come amid growing refugee protests in Nauru and protests over transfers of ...

Cambodia has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in Southeast Asia. The number of women dying during pregnancy or childbirth has dropped in recent years. But it is still far short of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals. The Cambodian government accepted those goals ...

Kem Sokha, the vice president of the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party, has been summoned to appear in Phnom Penh Municipal Court a week after being threatened with a lawsuit by Prime Minister Hun Sen. ...

Cambodia’s leader has publicly endorsed China’s position that territorial disputes in the South China Sea cannot be solved through the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). In Phnom Penh, Prime Minister Hun Sen said Wednesday the issue should be solved by the countries directly affected by ...

Former Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew has died early Monday. He was 91 years old. Lee was Singapore’s leader from 1959 until 1990, but remained a highly influential figure and a strategist on the city state’s economy. ...

Thirteen Vietnamese Montagnards have been recommended for refugee status by Cambodian authorities, pending approval by the Minister of the Interior. Spokesman Khieu Sopheak added that the refugee status for the remaining 13 now will be considered for official confirmation. ...

In Cambodia, three women have been recognized for work that combines technology with efforts to combat violence against women, a major problem in the Southeast Asian country. Winning the inaugural VXW Award means the women will get assistance to further promote their efforts on smartphones ...

Cambodia’s Grade 12 students took their final test in August 2014. Only 26% of them passed. The new Minister of Education had ordered extra security around the testing places. Students taking the test in 2015 know they will have to study hard in order to ...

Cambodia’s Grade 12 students took their final test in August 2014. Only 26% of them passed. The new Minister of Education had ordered extra security around the testing places. Students taking the test in 2015 know they will have to study hard in order to ...