Angkor, one of the most significant archaeological sites in Southeast Asia, was a thriving metropolis at the center of the Khmer Empire in the 13th century. Then its inhabitants suddenly left town.

When it comes to the quest for luxury and splendour, nothing fires the imagination as quickly as royalty. In our feudal past, the ruling houses of empires and kingdoms all displayed a penchant for rich living via the monumental statements that marked their reign.

Climate change is forcing Cambodian farmers off their lands and into the clutches of a predatory brickmaking industry where a lifetime of debt bondage awaits them and their children, according to a study released today. Researchers from Royal Holloway at the University of London have for the first time drawn a clear link between climate change and modern slavery in Cambodia's brickmaking industry, where indebted former-farmers are putting their families' lives on the line to make so-called "blood bricks" that feed the country's construction boom.

Chanmony has spent the last 17 years making bricks used to build luxury condos and office spaces mushrooming across this Southeast Asian nation's rising cities. economies in the region, the 42-year-old mother of four has never enjoyed the bounties of the construction boom that has transformed the skyline of the capital, Phnom Penh, where she works at a brick kiln.

Cambodia's construction boom is built in part with "blood bricks" manufactured by modern-day slaves, including children, researchers said on Tuesday. Poverty fuelled partly by climate change has pushed tens of thousands of Cambodian families into bonded labour in the booming capital, according to a report by Britain's government and the Economic and Social Research Council.

JULY 02: Handlers train rats to detect different types of mines and unexploded ordnance on July 2, 2015 in Siem Reap, Cambodia. The Cambodian Mine Action Center working with the Belgian NGO APOPO has recently begun testing the feasibility of using large mine detection rats from Tanzania to help clear fields of mines and unexploded ordnance in one of the most bombed and mined countries in the world.

Dramatic U.S. navy pictures recently showed a Chinese navy ship maneuvering within 45 yards of the USS Decatur . The U.S. destroyer was conducting a FONOPs, or freedom of navigation operation, in the South China Sea near reefs that China has converted into artificial islands.

The number of Chinese tourists to Cambodia during the first eight months of 2018 had exceeded the full-year 2017's record, said a Cambodian Tourism Ministry's report released on Monday. More than 1.27 million Chinese tourists had visited Cambodia during the January-August period this year, up 72 percent over the same period last year, the report said, adding that China is the biggest source of foreign tourists to Cambodia, accounting for 32.4 percent of the international arrivals to the kingdom.

Cambodia has agreed to resume a search effort with the United States for the remains of Americans killed in the Vietnam War, the Foreign Ministry said on Sunday, after suspending the program a year ago as tension rose between the two countries. Prime Minister Hun Sen suspended the POW/MIA program when Washington stopped issuing some visas after Cambodia refused to accept citizens deported from the United States following their convictions for crimes there.

Google Maps enthusiast Ian Wilson, from London, will scour the terrain next week after claiming to have found MH370 on the app. He is adamant he'll find the Boeing 777-200, despite claims from some experts his sighting is simply a plane in flight.

Cambodia's prime minister says he has agreed to the resumption of U.S. military-led missions to search for the remains of Americans missing in action during the Vietnam War, following an appeal from two U.S. state lawmakers. The long-running program was suspended a year ago after the U.S. government stopped issuing visas to senior Cambodian Foreign Ministry officials and their families.

The worldwide hunt for the missing MH370 jet has intensified after a plane believed to be the Boeing 777 was spotted on Google Maps in the Cambodian jungle. In pictures shown to us, the outline of what could be a tail can be seen lying inn the jungle northwest of Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh.

Journey's end: Peter Harris at the outskirts of Santiago and )left) with Liz Sayers who also completed the walk. An Ely-based education consultant certainly went the extra mile to raise for an orphanage in Cambodia - and he got the blisters to prove it.

ANZ will consider whether to compensate hundreds of Cambodian families who were forcibly evicted from their farms to make way for a sugar plantation and refinery partially financed by the bank, chief executive Shayne Elliott has told a parliamentary committee. Rights groups said Phnom Penh Sugar, which received a $40 million loan from ANZ joint venture ANZ Royal Bank in 2011, forced hundreds of families off their farming land to make way for a sugar plantation and refinery in Cambodia's Kampong Speu province, and employed child labourers in dangerous conditions.

It is impossible to overstate the importance of the Mekong River to Southeast Asia. Originating in the Tibetan Plateau, it traverses six countries - China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam - before it empties, over 4,300 km away, in the Pacific Ocean.

Southeast Asian leaders pose for family photo during ASEAN Leaders Gathering ont the sidelines of International Monetary Fund and World Bank Annual Meeting 2018 in Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia, Thursday, Oct. 11, 2018. From left, Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen, Brunei Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, Thailand's Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, Indonesia's President Joko Widodo, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde, Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte.

About 65 kids are enrolled at the school, where classroom walls are made of painted car tyres and the entrance adorned with a mural of the Cambodian flag made entirely from colourful bottle caps Sitting in a building made from used tyres, plastic bottles and old trainers, Cambodian student Roeun Bunthon jots down notes during an English lesson at the "Rubbish School" where tuition is paid for with trash instead of cash. In return, needy kids like Bunthon, a former street beggar, can take computer, mathematics and language classes - and learn the value of reducing waste in a notoriously polluted country where recycling is nearly non-existent.