POLICE in Mondulkiri province yesterday questioned and released an ethnic Phnong woman accused of attacking a malaria patient who was nine months pregnant with boiling hot water, causing serious burns to the victim’s face and torso. So Sovan, the deputy provincial police chief, said investigators believed Tok Yob, 38, had carried out the attack, but that she was released because she has five young children to care for.

A KOREAN construction company is set to temporarily postpone work on the Vattanac Capital high-rise on Monivong Boulevard today following two days of protests by disgruntled workers, a union official said yesterday. Sok Sovandeith, president of the Building and Wood Workers Trade Union Federation of Cambodia and a representative of the construction workers, said yesterday that Doo Song Construction Company would halt work on the building in order to discuss the workers’ demands with the project’s key investors. Representatives of Doo Song could not be reached.

CAMBODIA continued to be a “repressive” environment for labour activists in 2009, despite the existence of relatively progressive legislation, according to a new report from United States-based watchdog Freedom House. In the report, released on Tuesday in Washington, the group said Cambodia had laws in place that guaranteed labour rights, but that implementation continued to be lacking.

THE Appeal Court will next month hear the case against opposition leader Sam Rainsy and two Svay Rieng villagers convicted of uprooting wooden demarcation posts on the border with Vietnam, the court said this week. In a citation issued Monday, court prosecutor Nget Sarath ordered the three defendants to appear on October 5, when the court will hear their appeal against a verdict handed down by Svay Rieng provincial court in January.

NATIONAL Assembly first deputy president Nguon Nhel said yesterday that Assembly President Heng Samrin had written a letter defending him against charges from the opposition that he employed an excessive number of advisers. Last week, a group of 13 lawmakers from the opposition Sam Rainsy Party wrote to Heng Samrin alleging that Nguon Nhel employed 71 advisers and asking for an investigation of this “irregularity”.

OVER the past eight months, Chork Teng has become an adept hunter of frogs and freshwater crab, stalking her prey at night in the rice fields near her ramshackle home in Kandal province’s Ponhea Leu district. But she laments the fact that she has been forced to adapt to this scavenger’s lifestyle. A former resident of the Dey Krahorm community in central Phnom Penh, hers was among the 144

A JUDGE and deputy prosecutor at Battambang provincial court requested US$13,000 to secure the release of nine people arrested in a raid on a guesthouse suspected of doubling as a brothel, the owner of the guesthouse said yesterday. Khan Socheat, owner of Cobra III Guesthouse and Restaurant in Battambang town, said he had filed a complaint to the Anticorruption Unit on Tuesday, alleging that Judge Phlong Visal and deputy prosecutor Long Hokmeng “extorted” the money from him in exchange for the release of nine workers.

PHNOM Penh Municipal Court yesterday found a 56-year-old Kandal province layman guilty of raping two women, one who was underage at the time, and sentenced him to 17 years in prison. Ros Sarin, a layman and director of construction at Sovan Thormareach pagoda in Ponhea Leu district, was arrested by military police last year and charged with raping and committing indecent acts against a 35-year-old woman and a 20-year-old woman. The latter woman was 14 when she was first assaulted.

OFFICIALS from the Ministry of Information met yesterday with their Thai counterparts in Phnom Penh, emphasising the need for media outlets to report accurately and avoid fanning the flames of the border dispute. The meeting came just weeks after Cambodia and Thailand returned their respective ambassadors and restored full diplomatic ties following the rift over Phnom Penh’s appointment of fugitive former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra as an economics adviser. Thaksin, wanted in Thailand on graft charges, resigned from the position last month.

LAWYERS for former Khmer Rouge Brother Number Two Nuon Chea have appealed a decision by judges at Cambodia’s war crimes tribunal not to investigate allegations of political interference by government officials. In a filing dated Wednesday, the lawyers said a decision from the court’s Office of the Co-Investigating Judges last month to reject their request was part of a pattern of placing “considerations of expediency above fair trial requirements”.