Sri Lankan, Philippine and Cambodian telecommunications engineers were among 29 people killed in a hotel fire in northern Iraq, the chairman of their company told AFP on Friday.

“We lost four engineers from our company, one of them a woman from the Philippines, and three of them men from Sri Lanka, Cambodia and Iraq,” said Faruk Mula Mustafa, chairman of telecoms operator Asiacell.

The Soma Hotel in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah went up in flames Thursday night, reportedly killing dozens. AP has more.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and three other Cabinet ministers have contracted swine flu and the premier is recovering after several days of medical care, the health ministry said.

Hun Sen, 59, required “urgent treatment” after Friday’s weekly Cabinet meeting, the Public Health Ministry said in a brief statement released late Tuesday.

“After receiving treatment from medical specialists, the health of Prime Minister Hun Sen is back to normal,” the statement said.

The story does not say how or where the prime minister contracted the virus.

A study in 2007 jointly conducted by the human rights organization (Licado) and World Vision Fund estimated that there were about 21,000 children working in Phnom Penh, Kg. Cham, Battambang and Siem Reap. But, the real figures about the number of children could many times be higher than the above-said number.

According to another joint study conducted by the National Institute of Statistics and the International Labor Organization in 2003, nearly 28,000 children are working in Phnom Penh alone.

According to a study conducted by IOM, about 51 per cent of the sex workers are former children who worked as child servants.

Deftly blending horror and compassion, hope and futility, REDLIGHT is the second film in a trilogy that is changing the dynamics of child trafficking globally. Filmmaker Guy Jacobson has mastered the emotional edge of sexual slavery and manages to bring it to us in our sterile lives so that we get it – and want to stop it. The photography of the film is superb, with the breathtaking beauty of Cambodia juxtaposed with the squalid conditions of the children forced into the country’s unspeakable brothels.

Redlight unfolds through the perspective of two Cambodian women, Somaly Mam and Mu Sochua. Jacobson, in addition to making films, works to end child trafficking in other ways.

The REDLIGHT Children Campaign originally aimed at pressuring governments to enact or amend legislation to address this issue more effectively and allocate more resources towards enforcement of laws. This has proven to be difficult. Now, in addition to the original strategy, Guy wants to make it more difficult and costly for perpetrators to sexually abuse children. REDLIGHT Children has partnered with its sponsor LexisNexis to create both an international case law database for trafficking, and a trafficking offenders’ database to assist lawmakers and prosecutors.

THE pumping of sand into Boeung Kak lake has impaired local drainage systems, leading to the flooding of about 50 houses since June 10, a representative of families living in the area said Monday.

Duong Sim, deputy chief of Village 3 in Srah Chak commune, said homes there had never flooded before a private company began pumping sand into the lake, which is slated for a massive development project.

… Representatives of the company, headed by Cambodian People’s Party Senator Lao Meng Khin, could not be reached for comment on Monday.

Villager Chea Siphana, 42, said she was concerned that the flooding could pose a health hazard.

“We are very worried, because snakes and centipedes have crawled into our house,” she said. “We are facing diseases such as dengue fever, malaria and other health issues, and there are many mosquitoes.”

Do you think Senator Lao Meng Khin’s house floods?

Japan signed an agreement to provide a $131 million grant to Cambodia to build what will be the longest bridge across the Mekong River and a major link in a regional transport network.

… Construction of the bridge over the Mekong, at the town of Neak Leoung, southeast of the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, is expected to begin soon and should be completed by 2015.

… Travellers now have to use a ferry to cross the river at Neak Leoung, a major bottleneck on the main road between Phnom Penh and Vietnam.

For decades, Neak Leoung and its gang of snack sellers gave outsiders arriving from Vietnam their first stationary glimpse of  Cambodia: Khmer girls with bright smiles and basketfulls of crazy fried creepy crawlies; the gentle river current; and cool afternoon breeze all an incongruent backdrop to the country’s ferociously wicked history.

No more. In a few short years, travelers will whiz past a once great Cambodian outpost at 100 kilometers per hour. No more ferry. No more boiled eggs or deep-fried crickets, either. Or sellers.

Such is progress.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen called a United Nations rights official disrespectful on Monday and said in future they would meet just once a year rather than three times.

Surya Subedi, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for human rights in Cambodia, criticised the country’s judiciary last week for its lack of independence and regretted being unable to meet Hun Sen during a 10-day visit as the prime minister had been unwell.

Talking to hundreds of disabled former soldiers in Phnom Penh, the outspoken prime minister said Subedi had shown disrespect by saying he was “disappointed” about his illness.

“Every time he’s come here, I’ve met him,” Hun Sen said. “From now on, I’ll see him just once a year.”

“I hope he will hear this: I’m ill, I don’t need to report to you,” Hun Sen added, accusing Subedi of wanting to “colonise” his country.

Testy, testy. You’d think someone threatened to burn his house down.