DAP: The breaking news in Cambodia: “58 died of flood in Cambodian” plus 9 more

Recently the flood in Cambodian has been taken 58 lives since level of the water continue third time in 2011, official said on Friday.
Keo Vy, Cabinet Director of the National Committee of Disaster Management´s information Bureau said that during the flood in Cambodian through from Mekong River, Bassac and Tonle Sap River to poor Cambodia it has killed 58 people died.
He added that there are 12 provinces affected from it such as Kampong Thom, Siem Reap, Prey Veng, Stung Treng, Kratie and Preah Vihear.
Prime Minister Hun Sen declared a press release immediately to order local authority to help residents to evacuate in safety.
On Thursday, more than 200 tourism were saved by escalator in Siem Reap while they were visited Banteay Srey temple.

SEOUL, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Five underperforming public universities in South Korea will have to undergo drastic reforms under government supervision, the education ministry said Friday.

The five state-funded four-year universities -- Kangwon National University, Chungbuk National University, Gangneung-Wonju National University, Kunsan National University and Busan National University of Education -- are required to draw up reform measures by January next year and have the government check the progress each quarter.

The uncompetitive schools are also expected to merge or shut down departments and invite external consultants for management advice, an attempt to save taxpayers' money as students protest high tuition fees at local universities.

The five universities will be subject to budget cuts and other penalties unless their restructuring plans show progress.

In a similar move, the education authorities said earlier this month they will reduce state funding for 43 low-ranked private universities starting next year.

The government here reportedly spends some 1.48 billion U.S. dollars annually in state subsidies to local higher-learning institutions.

More than 80 percent of South Korean high school graduates go to colleges.

BEIJING, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Wang Zhizhen, vice chairperson of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and vice president of the Chinese Association for International Understanding, on Friday met with a Philippine delegation of senators led by Francis P.N. Pangilinan, Chairman of the Committees on Agriculture and Food.

CANBERRA, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- The prosecution of the six Italian scientists for manslaughter over Italy's L'Aquila earthquake in 2009 is likely to silence experts from openly communicate with the public in the future, Australian experts warned on Friday.

Six leading Italian scientists and one government official are standing trial for manslaughter for alleged negligence that led to the deaths of over 300 people when a 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck the Italian city of L'Aquila in March 2009.

Dr Kevin McCue, a spokesperson for the Australian Earthquake Engineering Society, said the case does not make sense because it is not possible to predict earthquakes.

According to Professor Paul Somerville, Deputy Director of Risk Frontiers at Australia's Macquarie University, the prosecution of the scientists, especially if it is successful, is likely to imperil the very need that this incident has highlighted: for open and clear communication between the scientists and the public.

"In a further irony, no action has yet been taken against the engineers who designed modern buildings that collapsed and caused fatalities, or the government officials who were responsible for enforcing building code compliance," he told Xinhua in an email note.

"It has occurred to some observers that the local government officials may be scapegoating the scientists to avoid prosecution themselves."

The defendants in the Italian trial were members of a panel that had met six days before the April 6 quake, to assess risks after hundreds of tremors had shaken the medieval university city. At that meeting, a committee analyzed data from the low-magnitude tremors and determined that the activity was not a prelude to a major earthquake.

However, Professor Somerville defended the scientists saying that the government's objective in holding the meeting was to debunk unreliable but alarming earthquake predictions that were being made by L'Aquila resident Giampaolo Giuliani, who is not a seismologist.

"The scientists were distracted in this direction instead of focusing on information about earthquake risk that the citizens needed," he said.

"Further, it appears that the scientists found themselves answering questions (during the meeting) about deterministic prediction of earthquakes (which they acknowledge is not currently possible) instead of probabilistic forecasting of earthquakes ( which they can do)."

Dr McCue also pointed out that an Italian civil servant was sued in 1985 for advising people to leave their homes following a swarm of earthquake, and that fear of being sued could scare off seismologists from developing earthquake hazard maps and advising on building codes, unless they are indemnified by the government.

"Given the limited knowledge we do our best, but maybe that's not enough for the public. And if they are willing to sue us, then we won't be doing it at all," McCue said.

Following the announcement of the trial in May, Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) published a letter of support for the scientists, signed by over 5,000 researchers worldwide, including 77 Australians.

The letter said the scientific community involved in earthquake science urges the Italian government, local authorities and decision makers in general, to be proactive in establishing and carrying out local and national programs to support earthquake preparedness and risk mitigation, rather than prosecuting scientists for failing to do something they cannot do yet, as to predict earthquakes.

JERUSALEM, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Major Arab political parties in Israel criticized the United States' "blind support" for Israel, in the last moment leading up to the Palestinian statehood bid in the United Nations.

Despite heavy pressure from the West, Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas confirmed Friday that he will make an official request to the UN demanding full membership after his address to the General Assembly.

U.S. President Barack Obama has on several occasions stated his objection to the Palestinian move.

Mohammad Zeidan, chairman of the High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel, described the expected veto as a total bias and blind American action behind Israeli policy.

If the U.S. wielded the veto, "it will be in fact voting against Obama's own declaration (to advance Israeli-Palestinian peace)," Zeidan told Xinhua.

According to Abed Elhakim Mofid, a representative of the Committee's northern branch, "Both American and Israeli opposition to the Palestinian bid will lead to chaos and violence in the region, making the possibility of peace more distant, if not impossible."

Abbas' efforts to seek UN recognition have been supported by main Israeli Arab political parties, most of whom have previously backed the Oslo Accord. The factions, after seeing no tangible outcome from the peace talks that have lasted for almost two decades, concluded that the room for peace negotiations is becoming more and more limited.

The UN bid is an opportunity for the Palestinian leadership to take a stand and send a message to its people, as well as the U.S. and Israel. Although many Arab leaders are not sure whether the move will bear fruits, they believe that it will promote the solidarity among the Palestinians, and further marginalize the U.S. foreign policy in the region.

"It's the Israeli unilateralism that has driven the Palestinians to take a unilateral path to the UN," Zeidan said.

"Obama, who may reject any recognition of a Palestinian state, should keep in mind that the Palestinian appeal to the international community could very well be the last chance to save the two-state solution," Zeidan added.

KABUL, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Gun shots were heard at the burial ceremony of ex-Afghan president Burhanudin Rabbani in a Kabul hilltop where people gathered to bury his coffin on Friday.

"Some mourners hurled stone at the vehicles of officials who attended the burial ceremony and security guards opened fire into the air to control the situation," an eyewitness, Mohammad Karim, told Xinhua.

The ex-president and chairman of the government High Council for Peace was assassinated by a suicide bomber at his home in Kabul on Tuesday.

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Barack Obama's Westside campaign office was vandalized Thursday night, Los Angeles police said.

Someone shot BB gun pellets and threw an object into the office located at 6700 block of South Centinela Avenue in Los Angeles. The incident happened just four days before Obama's scheduled visit to the city on Monday.

No staffers were in the office at the time of the shooting, the police said. But it was not disclosed whether the shooting was captured on surveillance video.

An investigation involving several law enforcement agencies has been initiated.

The White House announced earlier that Obama is due to visit Los Angeles Monday to raise money for what is expected to be a bruising 2012 re-election campaign.

He was supposed to stay overnight in Los Angeles and depart on Tuesday morning.

The White House did not say whether the president will change his schedule.

ISLAMABAD, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- At least two people were killed and a dozen others buried under the debris as a multi-storied building collapsed in Lahore city of eastern Pakistan on Friday morning, reported local Urdu TV channel Geo.

According to the local media reports, the collapsed building is a 4-storied commercial plaza in Johar town of southern Lahore.

The building collapsed during an operation launched by the local law enforcement to tear down the illegal extended part of the building, said the local reports.

About ten people were injured in the accident and a dozen others were trapped inside the collapsed building, said the reports.

All the injured people have been shifted to a nearby hospital.

Rescue of the people trapped inside the collapsed building is still underway.

MANILA, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- The Philippine government welcomes foreign tourists who are seeking "good, clean fun and excitement" and not for "darker reasons," a senior government official said on Friday.

This was in response to the statement made by United States Ambassador Harry Thomas Jr. who earlier said that up to "40 percent" of foreign male tourists come to the Philippines for sex.

"The statistics the good ambassador cited are not what our official statistics reflect," Department of Tourism (DOT) Secretary Ramon Jimenez Jr. said.

He said DOT's data showed that shopping and sightseeing are the dominant activities for both male and female tourists visiting the country.

"Our message to all tourists is simple: you are welcome to the Philippines anytime for good, clean fun and excitement. If you are coming for darker reasons, we don't need your business," he said.

SEOUL, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's foreign minister will ask his Japanese counterpart to hold talks over compensating Korean women who were exploited as sex slaves under Japan's colonial rule, local media reported Friday.

Kim Sung-hwan plans to raise the issue at a scheduled meeting Saturday with his Japanese counterpart Koichiro Gemba on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, the Yonhap News Agency said, citing an unspecified diplomatic source.

The move comes after the Constitutional Court in Seoul said the South Korean government violated fundamental rights of the so- called "comfort women" by making no conspicuous efforts to push Japan to compensate them.

Korean wartime sex slaves, whose number the government in the 1990s said stood at 234, were among some 100,000 to 200,000 Asian women forced to provide sexual service to the Imperial Japanese Army.

The foreign ministry called in deputy chief of Japanese embassy in Seoul earlier this month and urged Japan to take "more active and sincere" measures to address the issue, but Japan has yet to officially respond.

Japan claimed that the 1965 Treaty of Basic Relations with South Korea, which formally normalized their ties, already addressed all legal issues concerning the comfort women.