DAP: The breaking news in Cambodia: “U.S. senior defense official to visit Cambodia to boost ties” plus 9 more

PHNOM PENH, Aug. 26 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. Brigadier General Richard Simcock, Principal Director for South and Southeast Asia in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, will visit Cambodia on August 29-31 to boost Cambodia-U.S. defense relationship, according to a press release from the U.S. embassy in Phnom Penh on Friday.

During the visit, Simcock will have a series of meetings with the Cambodian Ministry of National Defense and representatives of the U.S. Embassy to discuss the growing U.S.-Cambodia bilateral defense relationship, it said.

Discussions will focus on opportunities for future cooperation in the areas of peacekeeping, maritime security, humanitarian assistance, defense reform and counter-terrorism.

During the trip, Simcock will underscore the Department of Defense's continued commitment to working with the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RCAF) to develop a professional force that contributes to regional and international peace and stability.

"The U.S. Department of Defense looks forward to assisting in building up the professional capacity of the RCAF while encouraging the RCAF to continue on a path of improved transparency and respect for human rights and the rule of law," stated Simcock in the press release.

He will also participate in a defense ministry's workshop in Sihanoukville to discuss the development of Cambodia's maritime security strategy.

In addition, he will visit sites that have benefitted from U.S.-Cambodian defense cooperation, e.g. the National Counter-Terrorism Special Force, Peacekeeping Training Center, and Maritime Security Operations Center.

TAMPA, the United States, Aug. 25 (Xinhua) -- Florida, one of the first U.S. states to have its economy crushed by the U.S. housing market recession, is now experiencing a rather happy surprise - its housing market is undergoing an upturn.

Despite an unemployment rate of 10.7 percent, which is higher than the national rate of slightly over 9 percent, enough people are buying houses in Florida, especially in the Miami area, so that the state's housing market is no longer considered an imminent problem by housing and regulatory agencies.

What makes this even more unique is the fact that the status of Florida's housing market seems to be in the opposite condition of the national housing market.

End of July statistics by the U.S. Department of Commerce show that total sales of newly built homes in the U.S. declined for the third consecutive month. Total sales in July fell almost one percent.

On another housing market matter, Standard and Poor's (S&P), the rating agency which created a global storm by downgrading U.S. credit rating in early August, is currently being investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice to see whether or not S&P mis-rated home mortgage securities. S&P declined to be interviewed by Xinhua for this story.

With all of the above fiscal-related problems negatively affecting the U.S. housing market, how are the Miami and Florida housing markets now having success? Todd Nordstrom, a realtor for Keller Williams Realty in Miami Beach, got the answers.

"The recent building boom has brought a tremendous increase in residents to the (Miami) downtown areas. At this time, approximately 85 percent of all condominiums built in the last boom are currently occupied, which is fueling new restaurant and entertainment options. Foreign nationals account for over 50 percent of all sales in the (Miami-Dade) county," said Nordstrom.

According to Nordstrom, "foreign nationals with cash due to rising currencies" were attracted to Florida by its lower home prices. They are mostly nationals from Brazil, one of a few countries that have witnessed rapid economic expansion in the past decade despite the recession that hit the U.S. and other major industrialized countries.

A spokesman for RealtyTrac, which publishes the monthly U.S. Foreclosure Market Report, also gave its explanations for the housing boom in Miami and Florida.

"We believe a slowdown in foreclosure activity, that started 10 months ago because of problems with foreclosure paperwork and documentation, is actually helping the Miami and Florida housing markets to experience this upturn," said Daren Blomquist of RealtyTrac.

Miami and Florida's good-fortune housing market environments have happened elsewhere in the U.S. - most notably in Phoenix, Arizona - and "prices have passed the tipping point where buyers are willing to jump in, and the temporary lull in the foreclosure activity has helped to boost buyer confidence as well," Blomquist said.

Yet there are two other possible reasons for Miami and Florida' s upturn in their respective housing, according to Brad Sullivan, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

"Florida/Miami has a relatively high concentration of retirees that may contribute to the demand for housing, relative to states/ metro areas with a higher share of unemployed persons. The Southeast in general was/is growing faster than many other parts of the country - the upper Midwest, for example," noted Sullivan.

The Miami-Dade housing market has had 12 consecutive quarters of increased sales. Condominium and home sales in the Miami-Dade area rose almost 50 percent in the second quarter of 2011.

The Internet is another source for would-be home buyers to refer to if interested in buying a house in Florida. RealtyTrac. com and Foreclosure.com, which has monthly charges for customers who are given a grace period of seven days without fees, allows Internet users to examine Florida foreclosure records. Another website Equator.com does the same, but for no charge at all to customers.

While the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) is considering making tens of thousands of government-owned foreclosed homes into rental units, the medium price for a single-family home in the West Central Florida region dropped 3.2 percent from June to July. The medium price for such a home is now 125,000 U.S. dollars.

According to S&P's Case-Schiller home price index, from June of 2010 to June of 2011, Tampa had the largest decrease in the price of a single-family home than anywhere else in the U.S. In that time span, the price of a home in the region of Tampa declined by 9.5 percent.

When RealtyTrac released in late July its mid-year report of the 20 metropolitan areas in the U.S. which had the most foreclosures, only one Florida area - Cape Coral/Fort Myers, which rated at 12 - was listed. One year ago, Florida had nine areas and cities listed in the top 20 of RealtyTrac's listing.

But in Washington D.C., a number of federal agencies have churned out data and reports about the housing market that seems to conflict - and the upturn in the Miami and Florida housing markets is no exception.

On Wednesday, the FHFA issued a 83-page report about the status of housing markets all throughout the country, which stated that Florida's housing market was down 8 percent in the second quarter of 2011 compared with the same period of last year.

Yet Andrew Leventis, a senior economist for the FHFA, admitted that all is not glum for the Miami and Florida housing markets.

"The strength (of both housing markets) is that there are incredibly affordable price levels for houses and that interest rates are at historic lows. If you want to buy a house in Florida and you have good credit, there's a good chance that you can get a 30-year loan, which Americans love to do. There's a lot of inventory (i.e., unsold homes) out there," noted Leventis.

Miami-Dade County is not the only area of Florida's housing markets that is now experiencing robustness. In Orange and Seminole Counties, both located in the middle of Florida, realtors note that there is anywhere from four to five months of backlog inventory houses available - meaning that all types of homes, from single-family houses to mansions, are available to would-be buyers.

In Leon County, only 9 percent of all homes available for purchase were sold in 2010, yet 2011 figures showed that this statistics is on the rise.

DataQuick.com, a website which posts real estate news and custom data, reported that in the immediate Miami metropolitan area, the number of foreclosures decreased to it's lowest level since 2007.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 25 (Xinhua) -- Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will release a new memoir in November to give "a vivid and forthright account" of her roles under the Bush administration, the publisher Crown said Thursday.

The new book, titled "No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington", is set to be published Nov. 1, the publisher said in a statement. It will provide insights on her former roles as National Security Adviser and later Secretary of State under President George W. Bush.

"(The book) reveals new details about the contentious debates in the lead-up to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq," Crown said. It also "reveals the behind-the-scenes maneuvers that kept the world's relationships with Iran, North Korea, and Libya from collapsing into chaos."

It will be the second memoir of Rice, who now teaches at Stanford University. Her first, "Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family", was published last October.

JERUSALEM, Aug. 25 (Xinhua) -- A new legal opinion presented to the committee in charge of preparations ahead of the Palestinian's United Nations bid said that the move would have drastic consequences for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the Palestinian news agency Ma'an reported on Wednesday.

The report by Professor Guy Goodwin-Gill of Oxford University warned that the initiative to transfer Palestinian representation at the UN would result in PLO loss of its status as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people to the world body.

The PLO, of which Fatah is the largest faction, has held that position since 1975.

If the vote goes through and representation is transferred to the new state, it would not only affect the PLO's standing at the UN, but also at home, according to the report.

When the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) was established in 1994 after the Oslo accords between Israel and the PLO, Fatah under late president Yasser Arafat became the dominant force in the new administration.

However, in the 2006 elections Fatah lost control of the Palestinian parliament, the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), to its rival Hamas, which then formed a new government. The following year Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip by ousting forces loyal to Fatah, leading to a split between the two that still remains today.

Hamas claims that PLC speaker Abdel Aziz Dweik, a Hamas member, is the legitimate president of the PNA, as the term of Fatah's Mahmoud Abbas ended in 2009 and has since been extended unilaterally.

Should the PLO relinquish its status at the UN, it would also mean that the Palestinians living outside of the West Bank and Gaza would no longer have a representative at the UN, according to the report.

"A change in status would severely disenfranchise the right of refugees to return to their homes and properties from which they were displaced," according to Ma'an.

The so-called "rights of return" of the Palestinian refugees that fled or left when Israel was established in 1948 is one of the central questions in the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.

The Palestinians argue that all refugees should be allowed to the return to their former places of residence with Israel, and not just in the West Bank and Gaza. However, Israel opposes such a move, saying it would threaten the country's Jewish majority, effectively ending Israel's raison d'etre: a Jewish homeland.

Local analysts said that the Palestinians have to be very careful in their approach to the legal implication of the UN bid, since the rights of Palestinian refugees is a fundamental question and as the report points out, a resolution won't lead to a formal state as the Israeli occupation will continue.

Hanna Siniora, the co-CEO of the Israel Palestine Center for Research and Information, told Xinhua that it would be "very grave if the PLO would lose its representation for a virtual future Palestinian state."

However, he added that the top leadership of the PLO is aware of the conclusions of the legal opinion.

Siniora argued that the PLO's current intention is to go to the UN Security Council (UNSC), in order to achieve full representation and a seat at the UN.

However, the United States has already signaled that it would use its veto should there be a vote. Were that to happen, Siniora said that the Palestinian might seek a UNSC resolution that defines the border of a future Palestinian state along the cease- fire lines that existed prior to the 1967 war. It was the idea raised by U.S. President Barack Obama earlier this year, and hence harder to block at the UN.

Nevertheless, the most important aspect of the UN bid isn't the gesture itself, according to Siniora, who argued that the Palestinians are now being proactive and putting forward new initiatives instead of just waiting for Israel to present new policies.

Dr. Hussein Ibish, a senior research fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine, said that the opinion suggests that there are numerous important legal implications to the ambitious UN statehood initiative that have not been fully considered, particularly by the Palestinian general public.

One such implication raised by the report is that the PNA was established as a temporary administrative body, and as such it " has limited legislative and executive competence, limited territorial jurisdiction, and limited personal jurisdiction over Palestinians not present in the areas."

Ibish argued that the "Palestinians should be very careful about any action that might prove a symbolic victory but carry serious political, diplomatic and legal consequences."

"A confrontation is not in the interests of any of the parties, " Ibish said.

BEIJING, Aug.26 (Xinhuanet) --Reports of China's losses in Libya are inaccurate, said Shen Danyang, spokesman of the Ministry of Commerce, on Wednesday. China does not have direct investments in Libya, only contract projects, he said.

"Any government in any county will consider the market demands and the economy benefits. Chinese enterprises have competitiveness around the world in trades and investments," said Shen when asked about the investment prospects of China's crude oil enterprises in Libya.

Shen expressed hope to see Libya return to a stable condition, and to further cooperate in business and trade with the country. China, along with the global community, will contribute actively to Libya's rehabilitation.

Earlier this year, Zhong Manying, director of the department of West Asia and Africa under the Ministry of Commerce, said 26 Chinese enterprises were involved in businesses in Libya. Their businesses, valuing more than $20 billion, were in property, railway, crude oil service, and telecommunication.

BEIJING, Aug.26 (Xinhuanet) --Reports of China's losses in Libya are inaccurate, said Shen Danyang, spokesman of the Ministry of Commerce, on Wednesday. China does not have direct investments in Libya, only contract projects, he said.

"Any government in any county will consider the market demands and the economy benefits. Chinese enterprises have competitiveness around the world in trades and investments," said Shen when asked about the investment prospects of China's crude oil enterprises in Libya.

Shen expressed hope to see Libya return to a stable condition, and to further cooperate in business and trade with the country. China, along with the global community, will contribute actively to Libya's rehabilitation.

Earlier this year, Zhong Manying, director of the department of West Asia and Africa under the Ministry of Commerce, said 26 Chinese enterprises were involved in businesses in Libya. Their businesses, valuing more than $20 billion, were in property, railway, crude oil service, and telecommunication.