To commemorate the inscription of Lakhon Khol, 280 artists gathered in Siem Reap on Thursday night for what a senior culture official said was the biggest ever performance of the traditional dance drama.

Muon Sopheap, the director of the Siem Reap provincial Department of Culture and Fine Arts, told The Post on Thursday that the event aimed to commemorate all the national heritage that had been listed on Unesco’s List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

The event was jointly organised by the ministries of Culture and Fine Arts and Tourism at the Elephant Terrace.

“Siem Reap province is abundant with widely revered world heritage, so we chose it to hold the ceremony. A similar event was also held at Svay Andet pagoda in Kandal province,” he said.

He said artists and participants observed a minute’s silence to pay respects to the late Princess Norodom Buppha Devi before an Apsara dance was performed, with an orchestra playing traditional musical instruments including the chapei dong veng, a Cambodian guitar.

Princess Buppha Devi, who was famous for her skill and key roles behind the Kingdom’s Royal Ballet, passed away on November 18 from an unspecified illness at a Thai hospital in Bangkok.

A symbol of the Kingdom’s Royal Ballet, Princess Buppha Devi was bestowed the title “Number One Dancer” and “Living Human Heritage of Cambodia” in 2013.

A large-scale Lakhon Khol dance drama based on the Khmer Ramayana was then performed by 280 artists to close the event.

“It is called a night of memory. It means that our Khmer heritage are recognised and inscribed in Unesco’s Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

“We commemorate the event again so that the public and younger generations will remember such heritages as the Cambodian Royal Ballet, Apsara dance, chapei Dong Veng and Lakhon Khol,” he said.

The Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts said the inscription had significantly boosted the Kingdom’s image on the international stage. It called on people to take part in preserving, protecting and upholding the value of the cultural heritage of humanity.

It said Cambodia had already registered three tangible cultural heritages with Unesco – Angkor Wat, Preah Vihear and Prasat Sambor Prei Kuk.

The UN body has also listed five Cambodian intangible cultural heritages including the Royal Ballet, Sbek Thom leather shadow puppets, Khmer tug-of-war, Champei Dong Veng and Lakhon Khol Wat Svay Andet.

Prak Sovannara, the director-general of the culture ministry’s Heritage Department, said Cambodia is hoping to have three tangible cultural heritages and seven intangible cultural heritage listed.

The former includes Khmer noodles, ancient Cambodian martial art l’bokator and silk-weaving. The latter are Kulen Mountain resort, Beng Mealea Temple, Banteay Chhmar Temple, Preah Khan Temple Kampong Svay, Nokor Borei Phnom Da, Banteay Prey Nokor, and Oudong Mountain resort.

“All of them are in our preparatory lists. As far as I know, the government is also considering having other heritages listed, including ambok [flattened rice] and long dragon boats”

Sovannara said Cambodia is rich in cultural heritages, with tangibles including thousands of temples, pagodas, ancient houses, and historical sites. Hundreds of ancient Khmer temples are also located in neighbouring countries.

Based on the GTI Vera Convergence Divergence Indicator, which measures up and down shifts, bitcoin entered a new buying trend, potentially signaling that it’s primed to retake the upper end of its trading range around $8,000. That’s a welcome sign for bulls who saw bitcoin’s price drop more than 15% in November.

November’s been volatile for cryptocurrencies, which traded lower for much of the month after China took steps to crack down on digital asset trading. The latest clampdown has already claimed its first casualties: at least five local exchanges have halted operations or announced they’d stop serving domestic users this month, Bloomberg News reported.

“It appears we have seen some profit taking on short positions, which has lifted prices,” said Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at Oanda. But, “there’s obviously been a lot of bearish sentiment recently and there’s nothing in the bounce that suggests a shift to me.”

Bitcoin gained as much as 4% on Friday to trade around $7,770 at 11:40 a.m. in New York. A rise to $8,000 would indicate a gain of about 3% from current levels. Peer coins, including Litecoin and XRP also gained, up as much as 4.5% and 2.8%, respectively.

But that assumption was metaphorically crushed in the gravity of a “monster” black hole that a group of Chinese-led international scientists discovered inside our own solar system. The hole has a mass 70 times greater than the sun, researchers said in their study published in the journal Nature – much larger than what astronomers previously thought could exist.

“No one has ever seen a 70-solar-mass stellar black hole anywhere,” Joel Bregman, one of the study authors and a professor of astronomy at the University of Michigan, said in an interview. “This is the first.”

Black holes form when a star runs out of fuel and collapses on itself, creating a strong gravitational pull that prevents anything – even light – from escaping. In the process, those stars lose much of their mass, producing black holes that reflect their diminished size.

The newly discovered black hole, named LB-1 by the team of researchers who published the study, is located 15,000 light-years from earth, according to a news release. And it is huge.

“Black holes of such mass should not even exist in our Galaxy, according to most of the current models of stellar evolution,” Liu Jifeng, a professor at the National Astronomical Observatory of China, said in a news release from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. “Now theorists will have to take up the challenge of explaining its formation.”

Previously, a two dozen black holes have been discovered and studied in our solar system using X-ray technology that detects a bright light emitted when a black hole eats a neighboring star. While successful, this process limited scientists’ ability to find more black holes because the vast majority of them in our galaxy are not actively consuming other stars.

LB-1 was discovered by China’s Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST), which has provided scientists with a new way to find the estimated 100 million black holes in the Milky Way. LAMOST enables researchers to detect black holes by first tracking stars that are orbiting something invisible to more than the naked eye, like a black hole.

When LAMOST identified a star orbiting LB-1, the team next used the world’s largest telescopes – from the United States and Spain – to take a closer look at the system. The results, according to the news release, were “nothing short of fantastic.”

There are two kinds of black holes. Stellar black holes, like LB-1, are made from the evolution and death of stars, which rarely exceed 150 times the mass of the sun when they are born, Bregman said. There are also supermassive black holes, which almost always live in the center of galaxies and range from a million to a few billion times the mass of the sun.

Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, has a supermassive black hole in the center that has a mass of approximately 4 million suns. How supermassives form is unclear, Bregman said, but it’s possible they are created when stellar black holes merge.

“Black holes are basically the most mysterious objects in the cosmos,” Shep Doeleman, the director of the global Event Horizon Telescope array, has previously told The Post. Even Albert Einstein almost didn’t believe they were real, he said, even though it was his theory of general relativity that helped predict them more than 100 years ago.

Black holes are “the most exotic animals in the cosmological zoo,” Doeleman said; scientists can learn a great deal about the universe by studying what they eat and how they behave.

Bregman said scientists are always trying to learn more about the birth and death of stars, and the discovery of one as large as LB-1 could inform that process.

“Is this object extremely unusual? Or is it more common than we thought?” Bregman said. “If we look at 20 [black holes] and find two of three of these things, that would be truly amazing. It would change ideas of how massive stars evolve and die.”

The study suggests some potential explanations, including the “exciting possibility” that LB-1 might actually consist of two black holes orbiting each other, though Bregman said that would be rare. The study also points to a phenomenon known as fallback supernova, which means that during the supernova stage of a star’s evolution – when it explodes – it only loses a fraction of its mass and the rest falls back into the black hole, increasing its size.

Another option, one Bregman thinks is most likely, is that a very large star did not shed its normal amount of matter as it evolved and before it became a black hole.

“This has big implications for the evolution, the final days, of massive stars,” Bregman said.

Police late Friday said the attacker was known to the authorities who had been previously convicted of terrorism charges.

Several victims were stabbed, two of them fatally, said Cressida Dick, commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, at a briefing at Scotland Yard late Friday.

“This is a very fast-moving, dynamic investigation,” she said.

The attacker, identified by police as Usman Khan, 28, was released from prison last year.

“This individual was known to authorities, having been convicted in 2012 for terrorism offenses,” Deputy Police Commissioner Neil Basu said in a statement late Friday, according to Reuters news agency. “He was released from prison in December 2018 on license and clearly, a key line of enquiry now is to establish how he came to carry out this attack.”

Police said the incident started at Fishmongers’ Hall, which stands beside the entrance to the London Bridge in the City of London. According to the Times of London, the attacker was a guest at a conference on prisoner rehabilitation that was being hosted at the hall by Cambridge University.

Dick said that police were working “full tilt to understand exactly what has happened and whether anyone else was involved.” Detectives would also work “around the clock to identify those who lost their lives,” she said.

Police said the assailant died at the scene. Witnesses described him as wearing a “suicide vest,” but police said it was a “hoax explosive device.”

Later Friday, Dutch police said that three people, all minors, had been wounded in a stabbing on a crowded shopping street in The Hague. Police said that they were searching for a suspect, whom they identified as a man in a jogging suit between 45 and 50 years old. They released no further information about the incident, including whether there was any connection to the attack in London.

Onlookers in London said members of the public wrestled with the assailant and were fighting with him as police arrived. Three members of the public remain hospitalized.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan hailed the bravery of ordinary people.

“What’s remarkable about the images we have seen is the breathtaking heroism of members of the public who literally ran towards danger, not knowing what confronted them,” he said.

Khan noted that people would not have known at the time that the device worn by the attacker was fake. “They really are the best of us, another example of the bravery and heroism of ordinary Londoners,” Khan said.

Police did not offer any details about the attacker’s religion or nationality, or a possible motive.

Basu appealed to the public to supply any video or photographs they might have of the scene.

The bridge across the River Thames in central London is a major artery – and was the scene in June 2017 of a terrorist attack in which assailants identified as sympathizers of the Islamic State rammed pedestrians with a van, then sought out victims to stab. In that attack, the three assailants also wore fake explosive vests and were fatally shot after killing eight people and wounding 48.

A BBC reporter, John McManus, said Friday that he saw “a group of men involved in a fight on the bridge.”

“There appeared to be a fight going on on the other side of the bridge, with several men attacking one man. … Police then arrived, and shots were fired,” he said, according to the broadcaster.

President Donald Trump, who is headed to London next week for a meeting of NATO leaders, was briefed on the attack and was “monitoring the situation,” the White House said in a statement. “The United States strongly condemns all horrific acts of violence on innocent people, and we pledge our full support to our ally, the United Kingdom,” the statement said.

Amateur video showed crowds running away from London Bridge, as others leaped from their stopped automobiles into the roadway. Another clip showed police dragging a man away from another on the ground.

Amanda Hunter, an American living in London who was on a bus about to cross London Bridge, told the BBC that when she looked out the window, “I just saw these three police officers going over to a man. I believe he was carrying, maybe, it seemed like there was something in his hand. I’m not 100% sure, but then one of the police officers shot him.”

From his offices at No. 10 Downing St., Prime Minister Boris Johnson vowed, “Anybody involved in this crime and these attacks will be hunted down and will be brought to justice.” It was unclear whether Johnson was suggesting that the attacker had accomplices or assistance.

Johnson said Britain would “never be cowed or divided or intimidated by this sort of attack, and our British values will prevail.”

Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Party leader and Johnson’s challenger in upcoming December elections, said earlier: “Shocking reports from London Bridge. My thoughts are with those caught up in the incident.”

Britain is in the middle of a general election, and voters go to the polls in two weeks’ time. It’s unclear whether or how the latest attack might affect the race. Both Johnson and Corbyn said they would briefly suspend campaigning.

During the last general election in 2017, the campaign was interrupted by two terrorist attacks, which both of the main political parties attempted to capitalize on. Labour attacked the Conservatives for cutting police numbers, and the Conservatives attacked Labour leadership for what they said were sympathies for anti-Western militants.

London Metropolitan Police said they responded to reports of a stabbing at London Bridge around 2 p.m. local time, noting that they believed “a number of people have been injured.” They said that police officers had confronted the suspect five minutes after the attack started.

At that exact time, Amir Eden, 26, a lawyer, was heading to his home in Borough Market, a trendy shopping and dining area near London Bridge, when “I heard loud bangs, I didn’t realize what it was at first, there was a lot of screaming and shouting. I had a feeling it was a major dangerous thing, I was saying in my head, ‘Let it please, please, please not be the same as in June 2017.’ ”

It was not just fear he felt – it was a feeling of deja vu.

On June 3, 2017, he was walking along London Bridge when a white van smashed into railings on the bridge. “I was walking back home on my own, and I walked up and that’s when the van smashed into the railings and it was all chaos,” he said in an interview. He said that “the feeling” in the air today was “very much the same.”

“We were always told that these things happen once, they don’t happen again. I feel like, of all the incidents that have happened in the world, this is the only place that’s happened twice.”

Earlier this month, the government announced that the United Kingdom’s terrorist threat level had been reduced from “severe,” meaning that an attack is highly likely, to “substantial,” a lower rating but one that still means an attack is likely. It was unclear whether the current threat level, the lowest since 2014, would be raised after Friday’s attack.

Dozens of anti-capitalist/environmental campaigners protested outside the headquarters in Clichy, northwest of Paris, and temporarily blocked two logistics depots in Northern France and Lyon, before being dislodged by the police. They blame Amazon as a symbol of the advent of Black Friday in France, a push for consumerism that they say contributes to hurting the planet.

European retailers have followed the U.S. tradition of making Black Friday — the day after U.S. Thanksgiving — the kickoff to the holiday shopping season. The trend first reached the U.K. around the start of the decade when local chains responded to Amazon’s post-Thanksgiving discounts, and then moved to continental Europe. French and German retailers have stepped up their participation over the past few years.

Julie Valette, a spokeswoman for Amazon France, said that calm had returned at the sites by lunchtime on Friday.

“There was no impact for our clients,” she said.

Valette said Amazon has announced a Climate Pledge, aiming to meet a target of being net zero carbon 10 years early in 2040. The Seattle retail giant has also ordered 100,000 electric delivery vehicles and has committed to 100% renewable power by 2030, she said.

Videos circulated on Twitter by activists show police forcefully removing protesters from the Amazon depot near Lyon.

London Bridge was locked down and armed police evacuated the area. Several people were injured, and police said they shot one man. Officials are treating it as terror-related, “as a precaution.”

The U.K. is set to hold a general election on Dec. 12 and the last election campaign in 2017 was interrupted by attacks.

Armed police burst into restaurants in the Borough Market area at London Bridge and urged diners to leave as fast as possible. They shouted “Out, out, out,” to diners at the Black and Blue bar. Diners walked out of the bar with their hands on their heads. Nearby, police shouted to pedestrians to “run.”

Metropolitan Police said they’d been called to a stabbing and had detained a man at a premises near London Bridge. Armed officers closed off the famous landmark and evacuated passers-by from the surrounding area.

The Met said they’d detained a man at a premises near to London Bridge. Armed officers closed off the famous landmark and evacuated passers-by from the surrounding area.

“We believe a number of people have been injured. Further info to follow,” according to a statement posted on the Met’s Twitter feed. Sky reported five casualties in the incident, citing police sources.

On the north bank of the River Thames, police officers shouted to pedestrians to move back from the bridge 100 meters, and then urged them to take shelter in any nearby building, shouting: “Move inside for your own safety.”

The same area of London was the scene of a terrorist attack just a few days before the general election in June 2017 in which eight people were killed and 48 injured. Three Islamist terrorists drove a van at pedestrians on the bridge before arming themselves with knives and running into Borough Market, where they stabbed people in restaurants and pubs. Armed police responded and killed the attackers.

Johnson said he was being kept updated on the incident, in a post on the the Twitter feed of his office. “I’m being kept updated on the incident at London Bridge and want to thank the police and all emergency services for their immediate response,” the post said.

It will be their third successive triumph in the regional event.

Only teams from Thailand, Singapore, and hosts the Philippines are taking part. The three teams play each other twice under the home-away system. The team with the highest score will receive the gold medal, while the runner-up team will receive the silver medal.

In the recent game, the Thais beat the Singaporeans comprehensively 6-1 in the first quarter, 11-1 in the second, and 16-2 in the third. Also, in the last quarter, the Thai polo players hit only 4 scores, resulting in a 20-2 vuctory.

This victory meant that Thailand will receive the gold medal although there was a game with Philippines on December 1, when the medal ceremony will be held.

Hundreds gathered in Hong Kong’s Central financial district on Thursday night to celebrate the signing of a bill in the United States that supports the city’s pro-democracy protesters.

Some participants waved American flags while the crowd shouted slogans like “fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong”.

Prominent activist Joshua Wong, who lobbied for the new US laws, said it was a “remarkable achievement” that human rights triumphed over crucial US-China trade talks.

He said he hoped more countries would set up similar mechanisms to sanction Hong Kong officials who undermine the city’s freedoms. “Now is the time for the Western world to stand with Hong Kong,” he said.

But Hong Kong’s former leader Leung Chun Ying said whoever initiated the bill did not have the interests of the city in mind.

“It’s a proxy thing. I don’t think they have Hong Kong’s freedoms, democracy, and Hong Kong’s human rights in mind. It’s all about China,” he said when asked at a panel session at the Foreign Correspondents Club in Hong Kong.

The pro-establishment camp in the city is angry about the move, saying that it undermines Hong Kong interests and that the business community now wants to cut investments in the US.

The Hong Kong government called the US action unwarranted and unreasonable, saying it would send the wrong message to protesters and not help ease tensions.

A furious Beijing summoned the US ambassador on Thursday to demand that Washington stop interfering in its domestic affairs, warning that there will be repercussions that the US will have to shoulder after President Donald Trump signed the Hong Kong democracy Act into law.

Vice-Foreign Minister Le Yucheng called US Ambassador Terry Branstad in, after the ministry issued a strongly worded statement chastising the US for its “naked hegemonic act” and for supporting violent protesters who broke the law.

“The nature of this is extremely abominable, and harbours sinister intentions,” said the statement issued hours after the signing.

China has warned of countermeasures should Trump approve the law, which receives wide support from Congress. “The motive is clearly to destroy Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability, the ‘one country, two systems’ practice, and undermine the Chinese nation’s endeavour to realise great rejuvenation,” said the statement.

When asked at a regular news briefing on Thursday what countermeasures Beijing would take, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang would only say: “What should come will come sooner or later.”

In a tweet, nationalistic tabloid Global Times’ editor-in-chief, Hu Xijin, said China is considering putting “the drafters of the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act on the no-entry list”, which would bar them from entering mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau.

The Hong Kong Liaison Office issued a similarly stern statement expressing its outrage and condemnation of the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which permits the US to impose sanctions on officials for human rights violations in Hong Kong.

“Any tricks that attempt to undermine Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability and hinder China’s development will never work,” said the statement.

The new law mandates a yearly review of whether Hong Kong is autonomous enough to keep its special trading status with the US. A second Bill signed by Mr Trump bans the sale of tear gas and rubber bullets to the Hong Kong police.

The US has a substantial economic stake in Hong Kong, and any policy change would affect bilateral relations and the US’ own interest, said a spokesman for the Hong Kong government.

Adding to the flurry of statements were those from the Office of the Commissioner of the Foreign Affairs Ministry in Hong Kong and the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, with the latter labelling the US as “the most culpable black hand to create havoc in Hong Kong”.

The US law is seen as another win for the pro-democracy movement in the city, coming days after pan-democrats scored a landslide victory in the district elections.

China scholar Adam Ni said the Chinese perception is that the US is leveraging the Hong Kong unrest as part of its larger effort to contain the rising superpower.

Concrete countermeasures by Beijing are unlikely at this point, given how precarious bilateral ties are and trade talks are still ongoing.

“I think this adds to the atmosphere of confrontation and distrust between China and the US,” said the visiting scholar at the Institute of International Relations at National Chengchi University and co-editor of China-focused newsletter China Neican.

Trade talks are unlikely to be scuppered as both sides have a high stake in reaching a deal of some sort.

“I think the trade deal is too big of a deal for China to jeopardise for the sake of retaliating in relation to the US’ latest move on Hong Kong,” said Ni.

The company will sell its semiconductor development and manufacturing subsidiary Panasonic Semiconductor Solutions Co in Nagaokakyo, Kyoto Prefecture, to Taiwan’s Nuvoton Technology Corp.

Panasonic’s chip business has suffered a persistent deficit and the company has judged it difficult to restore the business, according to sources.

Panasonic also intends to sell TowerJazz Panasonic Semiconductor Co, a joint venture with Israeli chipmaking company TowerJazz. Panasonic holds a 49 per cent stake in the venture based in Uozu, Toyama Prefecture.

In 1952, Panasonic forerunner Matsushita Electric Industrial Co established a joint venture with Royal Philips of the Netherlands to enter the semiconductor business. Since the 1990s, the venture has grown to become Panasonic’s major business in the manufacture of semiconductors for home appliances such as televisions.

In recent years, however, Panasonic’s profitability has been eroded by the rise of South Korean and Taiwanese companies, which have become more competitive through large-scale investment. The decline in demand due to US-China trade friction is an additional factor in its lessening profitability.

Panasonic Semiconductor Solutions posted a net loss of ¥18 billion (Bt5 billion) on sales of ¥92.2 billion for the business year that ended in March. Panasonic decided to sell the subsidiary due to uncertainties over whether the business will turn positive for the business year ending March 2020.

On November 22, Panasonic chief executive officer Kazuhiro Tsuga said at a press conference, “We will eliminate our unprofitable businesses by fiscal 2021,” expressing its policy of accelerating structural reform such as by withdrawing from or selling off deficit-ridden or unprofitable businesses. On November 21, Panasonic also announced its withdrawal from the liquid crystal panel business.

There was a time when Japanese companies dominated the global semiconductor market. According to US research company Gartner Inc, six of the top 10 companies in terms of global market share in 1990 were Japanese firms such as NEC Corp, Toshiba Corp and Matsushita (now Panasonic), but they have been replaced by US and South Korean companies.