Eight minutes. That was how long it took Alibaba to hit $1 billion in sales today on Single's Day, China's Black Friday equivalent.
By midday, that amount had crossed US$9 billion, equalling Alibaba's take for the whole day last year. China's second largest e-commerce company, JD.com, has recorded 14 million orders thus far.
Single's Day is the biggest online shopping day in the world, with several billion dollars worth of e-commerce transactions taking place. The International Data Corporation (IDC) told CNET that this year's sales will surpass $14 billion, which equates to over AU$20 billion or £9 billion. To put that into perspective, last year Thanksgiving and Black Friday sales in the US amounted to a relatively paltry US$2.5 billion.
The origin of the day is something that is uniquely Chinese. It was invented in the 1990's as sort of an anti-Valentine's Day, encouraging single citizens to sooth their lonely hearts through retail therapy.
Alibaba chairman Jack Ma flagged off the event with a massive bash in Beijing that saw American Idol alum Adam Lambert perform and Kevin Spacey, in character as the President Frank Underwood from Netflix's House of Cards, deliver a personal message to Chinese shoppers.
The result of this insane day of shopping has been felt around the world, with companies like Bellamy's, an Australian producer of items like milk powder, running out of stock in its native country to feed the Chinese appetite for the product. Source by: CNET
Tuesday, November 10, 2015
Pailin is a province at the northern edge of the Cardamom Mountains in the west of Cambodia, 25km from the border of Thailand. This province is surrounded by Battambang Province, and was officially carved out of Battambang to become a separate administrative division after the surrender of the Khmer Rouge in 1996. Known also for the precious gem mining activities, this province offers beautiful sceneries of mountains, waterfall and lush bamboo forest.
Other interesting sites for tourists include Wat Rattanak Sorphon, a Burmese style pagoda more than 570 years of age. Beautiful Burmese characters are inscribed on the gates. This is evident of early Burmese settlement in this area. Indeed, the Burmese were the first people to discover the precious gems and Pailin became the largest mining center for sapphires and rubies in Indochina then. Source by: http://www.pailin.info/
Phnom Yat has a good number of places where visitors could still see the gem-mining activities today. Being a border town, there are also casinos in Pailin.
Leaders of Cambodia’s opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) on Tuesday called on aid donor Japan to deescalate tensions with the ruling Cambodian People’s Party following a brutal attack on two of their lawmakers outside of parliament in the capital Phnom Penh late last month.
On Oct. 26, CNRP lawmakers Nhay Chamreoun and Kong Sophea were dragged from their vehicles and assaulted by protesters after attending a meeting at parliament and the opposition has blamed the CPP for orchestrating the incident—an allegation that the ruling party denies.
CNRP Deputy President Kem Sokha, who is traveling with party chair Sam Rainsy in Japan this week, said they warned at a press conference in Tokyo that political tensions in Cambodia could threaten the country’s elections set for 2017 and 2018, and called on the Japanese government to intervene.
“We urged the international community—especially Japan—to reduce tensions related to the July 22, 2014 political deal in order to ensure free and fair democratic elections,” Kem Sokha wrote on his Facebook page, referring to a “culture of dialogue” established between the parties at the time.
The agreement ended an 11-month CNRP boycott of parliament over perceived irregularities in the country’s 2013 election. This year, the CPP and CNRP agreed to form a new electoral body, though relations between the parties have since broken down, in part over opposition criticism of the government’s handling of a border dispute with neighboring Vietnam.
Kem Sokha also demanded a fully transparent and independent investigation into the Oct. 26 attack on Nhay Chamreoun and Kong Sophea, who are currently recuperating from broken bones and facial lacerations in a hospital in Bangkok, Thailand.
While three suspects have been taken into custody in connection with the attack, the CNRP considers the arrests insufficient and said last week its lawmakers would boycott parliament until their safety could be guaranteed.
The CNRP has called the assault a repetition of past violent incidents against other party members and suggested it was organized by the CPP in response to an anti-Hun Sen demonstration by Cambodian expatriates in Paris, which infuriated the prime minister during his visit in late October.
Before his departure to France, Hun Sen had warned his detractors that if Cambodian opposition supporters were to hold their planned demonstration against him while he was in Paris, his supporters would attack and create trouble for Sam Rainsy's supporters back home.
Sam Rainsy and Kem Sokha have discussed political developments in Cambodia during meetings with lawmakers and officials from Japan’s ruling and opposition parties since their Nov. 9 arrival in the country, which has provided more than U.S. $2.25 billion in development aid to Phnom Penh since 1992.
Japan has promised to help Cambodia with electoral reform, and ahead of their visit Sam Rainsy told The Cambodia Daily the opposition leaders would discuss the assistance Tokyo had committed “and what our concerns are,” adding that “the only hope for Cambodia is to have credible elections.”
Anti-Vietnamese rhetoric
On Monday, president of local policy research group Future Forum Ou Virak appealed to Cambodia’s ruling and opposition parties to end the practice of using anti-Vietnam rhetoric for political gain, saying cross-border issues should be resolved diplomatically.
In a letter sent to Hun Sen and the leaders of the CNRP, he said the two parties should establish a joint foreign affairs policy towards Vietnam and implement it accordingly, he said, adding that they should refrain from instigating any violence and discrimination as a priority.
His suggestion was rejected, however, by officials from both the ruling and opposition parties.
CPP spokesman Sok Eysan told RFA there is nothing controversial about relations between Cambodia and Vietnam, and slammed the opposition for calling Hun Sen’s administration a Vietnamese puppet government.
“If the government worked for Vietnam’s interests, it would not have delayed demarcation of the [controversial] border line up to this point,” he said.
“There have also been a lot of standoffs [between the two countries on the border issue]. So this shows the government will not allow Cambodia to be a subordinate state to any country.”
Pol Ham, acting chief of the CNRP in Sam Rainsy and Kem Sokha’s absence claimed he had not seen Ou Virak’s letter, but said the opposition had a right to criticize the government’s current approach to relations with Vietnam.
“[Cambodia’s] international relationship [priority] with its neighbors is to make sure we have good relations and mutual respects [between countries] and no one country would take advantage of the other,” he said.
In July, Cambodia requested maps from France, the United States and the United Kingdom to verify its border demarcations, following accusations by the CNRP alleging that Hun Sen’s government had ceded land to Vietnam at various spots along the border, based on its own set of incorrect charts.
Cambodian activists claim that Vietnamese authorities and villagers have threatened to “kill them” on several occasions while they monitored suspected encroachment in disputed areas along the border, which spans some 1,270 kilometers (789 miles) between the two countries.
Other issues, such as a perceived increase in Vietnamese immigration to Cambodia, have also made many Cambodians wary of Vietnam’s influence over their country’s affairs.
An estimated 1.7 million people, or one in four Cambodians, died in what came to be called the “Killing Fields” after the ultra-Communist Khmer Rouge took power in 1975. The regime was unseated when Vietnam invaded the country four years later.
Lawmakers demand compensation
Ou Virak’s appeal came as Nhay Chamreoun and Kong Sophea filed two separate complaints with the Phnom Penh Municipal Court Tuesday demanding 100 million riel (U.S. $24,700) each in compensation from the perpetrators of the attack that targeted them.
Choung Choungy, the lawyer who filed the complaints on their behalf, told RFA’s Khmer Service that the court had accepted the documents and said he expects the authorities “to arrest the perpetrators and bring them for prosecution.”
The three suspects who were arrested last week have been accused of causing violence and damaging property. Interior Ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak has said authorities are continuing their efforts to find other suspects thought to be involved in the incident.
Over the weekend, Hun Sen’s son and CPP lawmaker Hun Many took to Facebook to threaten legal action against any individuals linking him to the incident—ostensibly in response to images circulating online showing him alongside suspected assailants of the two CNRP lawmakers, The Phnom Penh Post reported.
Many has stated that he was present at the Oct. 26 demonstration, he claims it was only in his capacity as a lawmaker to receive a petition from the protesters demanding the resignation of Kem Sokha from his position as vice president of the National Assembly, or parliament. Kem Sokha was ousted by a one-party parliamentary vote on Oct. 30. Source by: rfa.org/english/news/cambodia
Independence Day celebrated as parties bicker Leaders take to Facebook to share political messages
Cambodia celebrated its 62nd year of independence from France yesterday, an opportunity that leading figures from both of the country’s political parties quickly took to promote their own agendas.
During the official ceremony, attended by thousands of students, members of the armed forces and others, King Norodom Sihamoni, accompanied by Prime Minister Hun Sen and other top officials, laid a wreath and ignited a torch at the Independence Monument in Phnom Penh.
According to tradition, the “Flame of Victory” will burn for three days to commemorate the Kingdom’s independence from France on November 9, 1953.
Although the event was largely apolitical, a post on Hun Sen’s official Facebook page heralding Independence Day was less neutral. In the post, Hun Sen – who has repeatedly warned of civil war should the opposition prevail – reappropriated the opposition’s mantra of “change”, saying Cambodia’s history showed regime change to be a road to genocide.
“On March 18, 1970, Lon Nol made a coup against the former King [Sihanouk] and plunged [the country] into the killing fields, a lesson which shows [the effects of] ‘change’ caused by toppling the head of state in order to take power, and now Cambodia has to move from that very dangerous road,” the post read.
“The Cambodian People’s Party, of which I am the president and prime minister, is determined to protect the constitution and the King and ensure peace for Cambodia.”
The prime minister did not, however, mention his own role as a military commander in the Khmer Rouge revolution that ushered in the so-called killing fields.
Meanwhile, Kem Sokha, vice president of the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party, also took to Facebook to congratulate Cambodia on its independence – and to make an implied critique of the ruling CPP. “I would like to appeal to all Khmer politicians to be independent from foreign countries and fully ensure [Cambodia’s] sovereignty,” Sokha wrote.
Sokha did not elaborate on which countries he was referring to, but the opposition has long accused the CPP of being backed by Vietnam, a country some of its members also accuse of encroaching on Cambodian territory at the border.With relations strained following the beating of two opposition lawmakers on October 26, political analyst Chea Vannath said the fact that both of Cambodia’s main political parties were implicitly attacking each other on Independence Day showcased the Kingdom’s enduring divisions.
“In Cambodia, the divisions between the political parties is much more acute,” she said, noting that independence day celebrations in other countries were typically occasions for national unity.
“It means that the maturity of democracy [in Cambodia] is still at a very early stage.”
A cheerier message about Cambodia’s national day came from United States President Barack Obama, who highlighted his wife Michelle’s visit to the Kingdom in March in an official message from the White House delivered late last week.
“I hope that Cambodians, both home and abroad, have a healthy and happy Independence Day celebration,” the letter read.
Source by: phnompenhpost
Ke Leng, the heroine of Cambodian petanque, scooped a gold medal at the 2015 Women’s Petanque World Championships in Bangkok at the weekend.
Ke Leng, coming off the back of a gold medal at the previous world championship, quickly qualified for the quarter finals with a six point victory.
She faced Canada’s Maryse Bergeron in the last eight of a competition that is in its 15th year and features over 100 entrants, winning 41-21, before progressing to an easy win over Audrey Bandiera of France, the birthplace of petanque, with a score of 28 to Bandiera’s 9.
Ke Leng faced strong rival Mouna Beji of Tunisia in the final, which she won 33-24, securing her gold medal and her defence of the world championship in the process.
Ke Leng celebrated her second win at the world championships by waving the Cambodian flag.
Ke Leng also competed in the team event, alongside her countrywomen Um Chanthrea, Uk Sreymom and Un Sreiya, but with less success.
While the team topped the group stages, they lost in the quarter-final to defending world champions Thailand.
Alongside her gold medal, Leng can expect a 120 million riel ($30,000) award from the government.
The celebrations which greeted Ke and the rest of Cambodia’s medal-winners at Phnom Penh airport were somewhat subdued, with only representatives from the National Olympic Committee, the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport, and the Cambodian Boules and Petanque Federation there to welcome her.
However, NOCC General Secretary Vath Chamroeun told the Post before he departed to welcome Ke Leng at the airport that “by winning a gold medal . . . Ke Leng brings a great honour to our country,” and that her win “also salvages our country’s image after we failed to win any gold medals at the SEA Games in Singapore.’’
He also added that: “According to Prime Minister Hun Sen’s recommendations, we will organise an official reception party event for her in the coming days.” Source by: phnompenhpost
Three Cambodian fighters get the chance to show off their powers in mixed martial arts when they enter the cage at Full Metal Dojo 4 in Bangkok on Saturday.
The MMA event will the have the home fans in a frenzy when the headline fight between veteran Thai fighter Jomhod Kiatadisak and Cambodian kickboxing champion Vorn Viva in the 77.7kg category gets under way.
Chan Heng and Thai Rithy, who are training at the A Fighter gym in Phnom Penh alongside Viva for the MMA event in Thailand, will also be seeking wins for the Kingdom.
Chan Heng will face home fighter Detchadin Srosirisuphathin at bantamweight level, while his young teammate Thai Rithy will face Swedish featherweight Fabian Pettersson.
Although vastly experienced in their disciplines, Viva and Jomhod are to make their debuts in the MMA cage, and although Viva has only been training in the sport for a relatively short time, club coach Chan Reach said he is a natural fighter and a fast learner.
“He has been training in MMA for a while now, but he has not been doing so in the past few weeks due to his busy schedule. However, I feel he is prepared for this fight because he is a well-trained fighter who is in great shape,” Reach said.
Viva has a lot of experience in kickboxing, especially Kun Khmer, and has beaten Thai boxers consecutively in previous fights at home.
Experienced home favourite Jomhod, 44, nicknamed the “King of the Ring”, is the holder of many world titles in Muay Thai at different weights, but this is also his first foray into MMA. He has an impressive record in Muay Thai, with 276 wins, 24 losses and three no contests, with 80 of his wins coming by knockout.
Heng, 36, holds an MMA record of 12 wins and two losses. “He is one of my most experienced fighters and one of my best students – he is a good grappler who usually wins by the third round. He fought on Bayon TV on Saturday as well, so he is always active,” Reach said.
His opponent Detchadin is a relative newcomer to the sport with an MMA record of two wins and one loss.
Thai Rithy, 21, another A Fighter martial artist, will be expected to show his power when he faces debutant Pettersson, 25 and fighting out of the Legacy Gym in Thailand, in a featherweight clash.
Reach said: “I expect all of my students to do well. I am bringing three top Khmer fighters to fight in Thailand to represent Cambodia.
“I feel confident in my students but anything can happen. We cannot underestimate our opponents.
“We must respect each other as sportsmen and fight hard to win for our country, and also to create friendship between Cambodians and Thais through combat sport.”
