Phnom Penh - Documents showed 177 prisoners were released from the Khmer Rouge's notorious S-21 torture centre, the Documentation Centre of Cambodia
(DC-Cam) told local media Thursday in a dramatic turnaround from previous statements that only seven people had survived.

DC-Cam previously maintained only a handful of people had survived the torture centre by the time the Khmer Rouge fell in 1979 and up to 16,000 had died there. DC-Cam is credited with archiving thousands of documents left by the 1975-79 Democratic Kampuchea regime and being the foremost documentary authority on it.

DC-Cam has supplied the bulk of documentary evidence to the joint UN-Cambodian court set up to try former leaders of the Khmer Rouge.

Phnom Penh - Cambodia is now officially home to the most dangerous roads in the 10-member Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), officials said Thursday.

Cambodian drivers are infamous for their blithe disregard for traffic laws, let alone the laws of physics, and as roads improve rapidly this combination resulted in an average of 4.5 people dying on the country's roads every day, new statistics said - up from 3.7 in 2006.

Phnom Penh - Cambodia has welcomed an initial application by the Bank of India to open in Phnom Penh, local media reported Tuesday.

The Cambodia Daily newspaper quoted Finance Ministry director of investment Chan Sothy as saying the nationalized Indian bank, which has a presence in all the major trade centres of the world, applied to open in April.

The paper quoted Sothy as saying he and Finance Minister Keat Chhon met with outgoing Indian ambassador Aloke Sen Friday and "welcomed the Bank of India to open a branch in Cambodia."

Phnom Penh - The resolution of an ongoing corruption scandal at a joint Cambodian-UN court set up to try former Khmer Rouge leaders was the only barrier to direct US funding of the court, the outgoing US ambassador said at a press conference Monday.

Ambassador Joseph Mussomeli, ending a three-year mission in Cambodia, told reporters at the US embassy that he was convinced the tribunal was on the right track.

"The Khmer Rouge tribunal is making slow progress but it is going in the right direction," he said.

"We want to support and fund the Khmer Rouge tribunal directly, but we cannot until we are convinced it is a real tribunal ... and will give Cambodian people a real chance at justice."