The Mirror, Vol. 13, No. 630 - Monday, 14.9.2009
“About 200 Khmer politicians from the five parties that have seats in the National Assembly, government officials, many ambassadors in Phnom Penh, and also civil society representatives will meet at the National Assembly on Tuesday, 15 September 2009, for a serious discussion about democracy in Cambodia.
“This workshop is organized by the secretariat of the National Assembly with support from UNDP, with the assistance plan for legislative organization, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, and Inter-Parliamentary Union.
“The national activity plan aims at reducing the number of children between the ages of 5 and 17 who are doing work in Cambodia to only 10.6% in 2010, and to 8% in 2015. Also, the Royal Government of Cambodia has joined in some programs led by the USA to stop the most serious forms of child labor in different sectors, as stated by the US Department of Labor.
“The USA hopes that continued cooperation to solve this problem will totally eliminate child labor in Cambodia, and they hope that all forms of exploitation and human trafficking are being reduced.
The Mirror, Vol. 13, No. 629 - Monday, 7.9.2009
“Phnom Penh: On 1 September 2009, the Phnom Penh Court heard and sentenced three persons, who were hired to write football betting receipts and lottery papers, and to take care of game machines for children, to serve one year in prison each – the sentencing was accompanied with noisy crying from their relatives.
“A judge of the Phnom Penh Municipal Court, Ms. Sem Sakola, convicted Mr. Sok Vy – 28, Ms. Phat Linda – 23, and Ms. Suon Sreymuoy – 22, to serve one year in prison, starting from the day they were arrested on 29 August 2009, and ordered them to pay Riel 7 million [approx. US$1,700] each in fines under the accusation of being ‘gambling agents.’
The Mirror, Vol. 13, No. 628 - Saturday, 5.9.2009
“Though there have been some hostilities regarding border disputes, the Thai government has included Khmer language teaching into the state curriculum at many schools, following a request by the Khmer Language and Culture Association of Surin Province (LCASP).
The Irish keep talking about craic – but have a tough time defining it.
First things first: It’s pronounced “crack.”
“Let’s go have some craic” is the youthful cry each Saturday evening the length and breadth of the Emerald Isle.
“The craic was ninety on the Isle of Man,” warbles Christy Moore in a well-known ditty (ninety = mighty).
"What is this craic and why is everybody having it or looking for it?” visitors to Ireland often ask with raised eyebrows (their tone suggesting that the entire Irish population should get to a detox clinic as soon as possible).
“This transforms an 80-year-old man into an 18-year-old boy. When a husband drinks it, his wife will absolutely worship him. After drinking one small cup, you can have sex for a whole night without rest.” Hoa, a seller of medicinal wine shop says.
Both men and women prick their ears up to listen to conversations with friends or vendors of ‘medicinal’ wines. All men want to be heroes in bed, and the effects promised by these home-brewed herb or animal based wines offer some two million Vietnamese men suffering from erectile dysfunction hope, according to the country’s leading urologist, professor Tran Quan Anh.
"Not being able to live on your own land is like being denied the use of a part of your body” - Em Saoud Mashmoushi, shopkeeper and widowed mother of nine, Bsaba village
In 1977, Em Saoud Mashmoushi witnessed her husband being shot and killed outside their house in Bsaba village in the Chouf Mountains. Two months pregnant with the couple’s ninth child, she was also hit in the back by a bullet, but miraculously both she and the baby survived.
Throughout a person’s life, there are many chances and opportunities for an individual to secure fame.
It can be from an inherence of wealth, collective life experiences, or simply being in the right place at the right time. Needless to say, opportunities of generating such fame might also bring the influx of negative connotations, and the person either knows how to prepare for such incursion and turn a negative into an absolute positive, or just simply going with the vicious cycle of having to live through an inherited inner-bleeding of mental embarrassment.
On the outskirts of McLeod Ganj, India, in dark and moist, lay quarter of the Zilnon Kagyeling Nyingmapa Monastery stands an attached hut so small it looks like a dollhouse. You have to bow to enter.
A kitchen arranged in the corridor - which still keeps you bowing - and an ascetic small room containing wee bed and tiny bookcase filled with gods figurines, offering cups and tv pushed into a corner make in fact all the living space for an old, always smiling Tibetan man. You can't say if that was Nature on his birth or just old age, which gave him such a small posture.
Year of the Golden Pig, an exhibition of paintings, sculptures and prints, by Sasha Constable and Vincent Broustet opened Wednesday at Java Café and Gallery.