Reuters

Fields were inundated and water levels in rivers remained high on Friday (October 23), local media reported.

The Cambodian government has repeatedly denied reports that China had reached a secret deal to let it place forces at Ream Naval Base.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) will set up an office at Cambodia’s national police headquarters to help track down American criminals, at a time when Washington is seeking to repair strained relations with a close ally of China.

Centre for Strategic and International Studies think tank publishes images it says shows building at Ream Naval Base was torn down.

At least 1.76 million jobs in the nation of about 16 million people are at risk due to COVID-19, while the poverty rate could double, to about one-in-four people, the World Bank said in May. Cambodian human rights groups have this year called for a freeze on loan repayments due to the virus and for lenders to return more than one million land titles held as collateral.

The United States has blacklisted a Chinese real estate development company building a port, airport and resort complex in Cambodia, which Washington said was built on land seized from local people, and suggested could be turned into a military base.

A Cambodian activist has been imprisoned for five years on a charge of plotting to overthrow the government, a court said on Thursday, bringing to 17 the number of Prime Minister Hun Sen's opponents detained or convicted since late July.

A deputy national police chief Pen Vibol, who led the investigation, said Kosal had been sacked and would be demoted to the rank of colonel. But he said the female officers had chosen to not press criminal charges of sexual assault, which is punishable by up to three years jail, prompting calls for the government to do so.

The notorious commander who oversaw the mass murder of at least 14,000 Cambodians died on Wednesday at the age of 77.

The Khmer Rouge commander known as ‘Comrade Duch’, Pol Pot’s premier executioner and security chief who oversaw the mass murder of at least 14,000 Cambodians at the notorious Tuol Sleng prison, died on Wednesday. He was 77.

By the end of October each year, the trucks would begin rolling into Tmatboey in the remote northern plains of Cambodia, marking the final sprint among Nhem Siphan and hundreds of rice farmers harvesting their annual cash crop.

A Mekong River advisory body urged China on Tuesday to work with its experts in sharing year-round data on the lifeline waterway for the first time, rather than Beijing keeping a separate platform under its own new Mekong organisation.

China is ready to share data on water flows into the Mekong River, a longstanding request of downstream Southeast Asian countries, a Thai foreign ministry official said on Friday.

The European Union on Wednesday withdrew preferential market access to Cambodian products such as garments and footwear, hitting about a fifth of the country’s exports to the bloc over “serious and systematic concerns related to human rights”.

Scores of activist groups in Cambodia urged the government on Monday to release and drop charges against a prominent union leader, who was arrested last week and accused of falsely claiming that land had been ceded to neighbouring Vietnam.

A Bangkok court on Friday agreed to grant class action status to more than 700 Cambodian families suing a Thai sugar firm for evicting them from their homes, a lawsuit that human rights experts see as a test case for transboundary disputes.

Developments - including the ING City township - will reduce the Tompoun wetlands to less than a tenth of its 1,500 hectares (5.8 sq miles), and lead to the eviction of more than 1,000 families who live on its edge, activists said in a report.

Crucial water flows to the Tonle Sap, Southeast Asia’s largest lake, have been delayed for a second consecutive year according to river experts, severely disrupting fishing and threatening the food supply of more than a million people.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said on Monday his ruling party would be a dominant force in politics for as long as a century, telling the opposition it should wait until the next life if it wants to take power.

Protesters in the Thai capital held a small rally outside the prime minister’s offices on Friday urging authorities to investigate the suspected kidnapping of an exiled activist by unknown gunmen last week in Cambodia.