Predictions of food crisis are getting direr, forcing countries to take extraordinary measures (see

High oil and food prices are a double blow no nation can dodge entirely. Even oil states like Iran are seeing food-price protests. But there's a small class of farm-and-gas exporters for whom the dual spike is more opportunity than threat. Canada, Brazil, Vietnam and Thailand are all enjoying the windfalls, and even war-tattered Cambodia is now reimagining its future.

Precisely when many in the developed bloc were frantically counting their money at the height of a surreal shock over subprime rate, the globalising world was jolted by a potential crisis of subsistence that would hit the poor and other vulnerable sections very hard. Is there a link, therefore, between the slippery subprime banking rate and the soaring prices of rice and other staples?

A wildlife conservation scheme in Cambodia staffed by poachers-turned-gamekeepers has led to a dramatic recovery of the endangered bird population on Tonle Sap lake. Seven species of water birds - the spot-billed pelican, milky stork, painted stork, lesser adjutant, greater adjutant, black-headed ibis and Oriental darter - increased up to 20-fold at Prek Toal at the edge of the lake, the region's largest freshwater reservoir which holds the largest - in some cases only - breeding populations of the large water birds.

The Asian Development Bank Monday launched a multi-million dollars project to restore Cambodia's devastated railways in a key step towards the creation of a regional rail system. Approximately 600 kilometres of track destroyed during Cambodia's protracted civil war will be rebuilt at a cost of 42 million dollars, the ADB said.

Human infections of bird flu have been entirely avian in origin and reflect strains circulating locally among poultry and wild birds.