[Channel News Asia] Institute in Bangkok seeks non-conventional ways to tackle poverty
[Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus is establishing the Yunus Centre at the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) in Bangkok which will focus on non-conventional ways to tackle poverty.
In developing countries in Asia, 690 million people live off less than US$1 a day, and many earn their meagre living by subsistence farming. But the global economic crisis and volatile prices of staple foods have made it all the more difficult. Yet there is much that can be done.
Microcredit pioneer, Professor Yunus, who is also the founder of Grameen Foundation, maintains that targeted and sustainable assistance can be a vital key to lifting people out of poverty.][Prosecutors disagree, claiming the Greens paid more than $1.8 million to Juthamas Siriwan, a former governor of the Tourism Authority of Thailand, to help secure festival rights and related agreements. They also contend the couple inflated their company’s operating budget to hide payments, and disguised payments as “sales commissions” which they then paid into the account of a third party or directly to Siriwan in cash.
Legal experts say it all comes down to the purpose and intent of the payments. If the Greens did in fact alter company documents, then prosecutors could point to that as evidence of a nefarious purpose.
Obviously, the Greens intended to secure certain rights to the film festival, but it will be a leap for prosecutors to show they actually bribed government officials in exchange for the privilege. The law does not prohibit “facilitating payments” for “routine government action” such as police protection, phone service, unloading perishable products, or the processing of government papers such as work permits or visas. Arguably, the Greens paid well-connected people for their consulting services and nothing more. If so, prosecutors may be left with a case showing nothing more than possible tax evasion.]
BP: Article is slightly misleading and refers to Juthamas as a former governor. Yes, she is now a former governor but at the time she was the governor.
A single one off payment of say $10,000 to an actual former governor would be possible to explain away as consulting, but $1.8 million to the actual head of the organization in multiple payments to offshore bank accounts and labeling it as a sales commissions on internal records is something different.[CS Monitor] 70 years of traditional brew
[“Grandpa” Lee scoops ground coffee into a long sock and slowly pours boiling water through it into a pan. He then decants the rich brew through another stockinglike filter into a tumbler.
He takes an appraising sip and nods. Another cup of kafe boran, or traditional Thai-style coffee, is ready. Customers can drink it straight or syrupy-sweet with lashings of caramel and condensed milk.
Lee Sata, or “Pae” (“grandpa”) Lee, brews coffee the same way he’s done it for 72 years – and in the same cramped plywood shop where he began serving it in 1937.]
BP: 72 years? Hmm, have a long way to go![AP] French to Make Their Nationals Pay
[France's foreign minister is urging that French tourists who travel to risky parts of the world be required to pay for their rescue, if needed.
He's proposing a draft law that would cover tourists, but not diplomats, reporters, aid workers and others engaged in professional activity abroad. He says the bill would promote responsible tourism at a time of rampant piracy and kidnappings across the globe.
Late last year, the French government paid to fly home 500 tourists stranded in Thailand during civil unrest.]
BP: Sacré bleu!
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
