ART

After six months of intensive work, an Indian-led team of experts have completed the first phase of restoration of the fabled but crumbling ruins of Angkor Wat, the 12th-Century temple in northwestern Cambodia. The nearly one-mile square Angkor Wat is a multi-tiered Hindu temple that is portrayed on the flags of both the current government installed in Phnom Penh after a 1978 Vietnamese invasion and the resistance coalition that is seeking to oust it. Angkor Wat was the highest architectural achievement of a powerful Cambodian empire that flourished between the 10th and 12th centuries.