Showing 1 - 10 of 21
Kabul's traffickers are in for the long haul
Spectrum, Luke Hunt, Published on 17/11/2013
» Kabul's black market for illegal travel is still doing a brisk trade despite the crackdown from Australia's newly installed government on people smuggling. However, the logistics required to circumvent the authorities and ensure a safe trip have become more complex and smugglers are under pressure to maximise profits. Fake passports, forged visas, tickets to Southeast Asia, sometimes via the Middle East, and boats to Australia and elsewhere are often available for about US$25,000 (788,000 baht) a head, more than double the costs the smugglers first charged when they began plying the Kangaroo Route in the late 1990s.
Pot heads of the surfing gods
Spectrum, Luke Hunt, Published on 29/12/2013
» For some, it was the time of their lives. Chasing double overhead barrels along the exotic surf beaches of Bali, where a few dollars would buy an abundance of marijuana and a lifestyle that was the stuff of big wave legends.
Pol Pot's henchmen damned by evidence
Spectrum, Luke Hunt, Published on 27/10/2013
» For more than two years, the latest instalment of the Khmer Rouge tribunal has provided a blow-by-blow account of Pol Pot's bloody reign of terror and the inner workings of the political machine blamed for the deaths of between 1.7 million and 2.2 million people.
Youthful daring challenges the status quo and dirty tricks
Spectrum, Luke Hunt, Published on 28/07/2013
» Throughout Cambodia's election campaign the politically outgunned opposition has put in an astonishing performance. Fuelled by youthful exuberance, flash mobs of up to 3,000 form and trumpet the virtues of change as supporters ride in twos, threes and fours, through the capital on motorbikes.
Savvy former PM looks set to stir up the hornet's nest
Spectrum, Luke Hunt, Published on 25/08/2013
» After decades in the political wilderness, former Cambodian prime minister Pen Sovann will make his political comeback in late September when the National Assembly sits. He'll be seated opposite politicians he once worked with and some who deserted and betrayed him.
Asean hazed by self-Interest
Spectrum, Luke Hunt, Published on 08/09/2013
» The dreaded haze has made an unwanted return across large swathes of Southeast Asia and for the second time this season politicians have been found desperately wanting in their inability to find a solution to the horrible haze which is costing the region billions of dollars.
Gambling with Kampot's colonial charm
Spectrum, Luke Hunt, Published on 05/05/2013
» Hidden in the clouds on a mountain overlooking the provincial capital of Kampot in Cambodia's south sits a relic of a long-gone French colonial era. For decades a Catholic church, possibly the oldest in the country, remained abandoned here as wars were waged for decades on the flat lands below.
The great Cambodia land grab
Spectrum, Luke Hunt, Published on 19/05/2013
» Ask Sreap Samoen where are the communal grazing lands? Where can local villagers fish and grow crops? The 50-year-old woman with a weather-beaten face points into the distance and says: "It's all gone. The company has it now."
Truth seeking's terrible toll: Seventies war reporters remembered
Spectrum, Luke Hunt, Published on 17/02/2013
» The thinning ranks of war correspondents who covered the Indochinese conflicts prior to the communist takeovers of 1975, have rounded out a rare pilgrimage to Cambodia through a series of reunions and twin dedications to the fallen.
Fracks in the system
Spectrum, Luke Hunt, Published on 24/02/2013
» Impoverished countries hoping to strike it rich by developing their limited oil and gas reserves are being urged to move quickly or risk having their expectations clipped by fracking, which is depressing market prices while adding life to old fields once thought to be exhausted.