Businesses and entrepreneurs from Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam to be honoured
According to the organizing board, the awards will be presented to successful businesses and entrepreneurs from Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam for their remarkable achievements in production, business, services and social welfare activities.
The awards will contribute to strengthening exchanges between enterprises to explore business opportunities in the three countries.
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Kasit rules out Thia ownership
A return to Thai ownership of the Preah Vihear Temple is not an option, new Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya said yesterday. But Thailand would maintain cooperation with Cambodia over the historic and controversial Hindu temple, he said.
The Preah Vihear case would be handled in line with the 1904 and 1907 Siam-Franco treaties, the 1962 International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling and the 2000 Memorandum of Understanding on boundary demarcation, he said.
The ICJ ruled in 1962 that the Preah Vihear belonged to Cambodia but the surrounding land - and access to it - have remained in dispute.
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Cambodian Gambling Remains a Concern
Civic groups in Cambodia working in social development are urging the authorities to immediately close gambling facilities, which are taking away the daily incomes of simple people and high-ranking officials alike.
Seng Theary, executive director of the Center for Social Development, called gambling a social virus that leads to theft, domestic violence and increased poverty.
“I suggest the authorities close down the gambling sites, as we have already seen that gambling is like a dangerous disease, in the family and in society,” she said.
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Hun Sen Mourns Passing of Scholar
Prime Minister Hun Sen on Monday expressed regret over the passing of Keng Vansak, the man who invented the Khmer typewriter and was hailed as a Cambodian scholar.
Keng Vansak died last week in a hospital in Paris of lung failure, at 84.
“There is much regret that he passed away,” Hun Sen told a group of students in Phnom Penh, adding he had been prepared to bring Keng Vansak back to Cambodia.
Keng Vansak left Cambodia in 1974 and had never returned.
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Overseas aid benefits whom?
PHNOM PENH CAMBODIA — Despite widespread awareness and censure of human rights violations, Japan, the United States and member nations of the European Union continue to give aid to governments that use the money to enrich themselves while ravaging ecosystems and brutalizing their own citizens. China is now a major donor, too, but China doesn’t claim to care about human rights.
It is particularly troubling that Japan, which has its own environmental and human-rights tragedies — such as the Minamata Disease mercury-poisonings and the ongoing World War II “comfort women” atrocity — effectively encourages similar abuses in other nations by giving loans and grants to governments that blithely commit crimes against nature and humanity.
In 2007, Japan distributed Overseas Development Aid (ODA) totaling more than $7.7 billion ($116.5 billion if loan repayments are not deducted), according to the OECD.
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Cambodia, Malaysia to sign anti-human trafficking MoU
PHNOM PENH, Dec. 23 (Xinhua) — Cambodia and Malaysia will sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for anti-human trafficking cooperation, a Cambodian governmental official said here on Tuesday.
“We are preparing the draft MoU for anti-human trafficking cooperation between the Cambodian an Malaysian governments and it will be inked soon,” Ith Rady, secretary of state for the Justice Ministry, said at a seminar on investigation skills against human-trafficking crime.
The issue of human trafficking is one of the primary concerns of the country and the Cambodian government has the goodwill to combat human-trafficking crime in conjunction with other countries, he said.
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ILO Assails Unsolved Union Murders
The International Labor Organization has renewed criticism of Cambodian authorities for their failure to solve the murders of union leaders, according to a report by an ILO committee obtained by VOA Khmer.
The report details the killing of union leaders Chea Vichea and Ros Sovannareth, who were killed in 2004, and Hy Vuthy, killed in 2007, among others.
The killings signified “a climate of violence” and a “serious obstacle to the exercise of trade union rights,” the ILO said.
The report also cited the prison sentences of Born Samnang and Sok Samoeun, two men held for the killing of Chea Vichea but widely believed innocent.
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Hun Sen Warns of Strict Helmet Policy
Prime Minister Hun Sen on Monday called on motorcycle riders to wear helmets “100 percent” to avoid the hundreds of traffic fatalities that occur each year.
“If you want to drive your motorcycle without a fine, you must wear your helmet from now on,” he said during a graduate student ceremony in Phnom Penh, “to protect your life and to avoid road accidents as well as property damage.”
More the 1,500 people were reported killed in traffic accidents in 2007, nearly double the number in 2003. An Asian Development Bank survey in 2003 counted 824 dead in road accidents, estimating a $116 million cost to the country.
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Thai cabinet line-up could anger Thaksin’s allies
Thailand’s king approved a new cabinet yesterday but political turmoil could persist as many of its members supported the protests that paralysed air transport and government.
The high-profile positions taken by protest backers could spur demonstrations by supporters of the administration ousted this month by the courts. Supporters of Thaksin Shinawatra, the former prime minister linked to that administration, demonstrated violently outside parliament last week when the new government, led by Abhisit Vejjajiva, was voted into power.
While Mr Abhisit offered support for the People’s Alliance for Democracy, the group that occupied the prime minister’s office in August and Bangkok’s two airports in November, Kasit Piromya, his new foreign minister, was more active. The PAD’s protests cost the economy at least $2.8bn.
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Cambodian opposition may unite against Hun Sen
Cambodia’s two main opposition parties are discussing a merger to contest the next general election.
The Phnom Penh Post reports that Human Rights Party has suggested to the Sam Rainsy Party that the two campaign together for the 2012 poll under the one banner.
President of the Human Rights Party, Kem Sokha, says the alliance has been struck at an opportune moment for rallying a growing number of people rejecting the ruling Cambodian People’s Party.
The Sam Rainsy Party, Cambodia’s main opposition for more than a decade, says it will take the idea to its leadership to decide.
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