Phnom Penh - Cambodian human rights group Licadho released 1,700 white balloons outside a prison in the capital Tuesday to draw attention to the plight of two men it said were wrongly convicted of the 2004 murder of a union leader.

The number of balloons represented the total days that Sok Sam Oeun and Born Samnang have served in jail for the January 2004 murder of Chea Vichea, after being sentenced to 20 years in prison in August 2005.

They were convicted despite having apparently watertight alibis. The police officer in charge of their prosecution, Heng Pov, has subsequently been sacked and is now himself in jail on charges including corruption, murder, attempted murder and kidnap.

Phnom Penh  - Cambodia has concerns that Thailand's turbulent internal political problems make it unable to effectively work as the new chair of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), Prime Minister Hun Sen said Monday.

Hun Sen told reporters after a meeting with US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte that ongoing political instability in Thailand was a negative and it should consider volunteering giving up the chair temporarily after taking over in July from Singapore.

Phnom Penh  - A jubilant Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen told reporters Monday that he had received a firm undertaking from visiting US Deputy Secretary of State John Negraponte that the US had agreed to fund a trial of former Khmer Rouge leaders.

The announcement ended the first full day of high-level meetings between Negraponte and Cambodian government officials.

"This official visit has strengthened bilateral relations ... I have been informed by the US government that it has agreed to provide assistance to the trial of former Khmer Rouge leaders, but the amount it has pledged will be revealed tomorrow," Hun Sen said.

Phnom Penh - Often armed with little more than a sprig of mistletoe and some magic words to ward off lightning, superstitious Cambodian farmers annually venture into flat, flooded rice paddies to work, and each year dozens get struck dead, officials said Monday.

The problem is so bad that for the past two years at least, lightning has killed far more Cambodians than landmines, despite it remaining one of the most heavily mined nations in the world.

Phnom Penh - Snips and snails and puppy dog tails used to be jokingly referred to as the stuff little boys were made of, but with inflation running at 22 per cent, some Cambodians say that for them, these are increasingly constituting the basics of a meal.

In fact the only animals which may find themselves somewhat safer are more traditional staples like cattle and buffalos, as farmers increasingly turn to them over petrol-fuelled machinery for field work.

Phnom Penh - Cambodian public and private schools have been advised by Prime Minister Hun Sen to allow Muslim students to wear headscarves if they so wish in an official decree published widely in national media Thursday.

"They can wear uniform according to school's internal regulation or their traditional Muslim clothes," the directive said.

Hun Sen's directive to allow Muslim students to wear the hijab, or headscarf, was in the national interest, it said.

Cambodia's Cham Muslim minority, which is estimated to number in the hundreds of thousands, is generally well integrated into the majority-Buddhist society and Cambodia has avoided religious tensions such as those in neighbouring Thailand's restive south.