More than 2,000 Cambodians marked the 56th anniversary of the loss of a large territory called Kampuchea Krom to Vietnam with a Buddhist ceremony in Phnom Pehn yesterday.
Princess Norodom Sisowath Pongneary Monipong presided over the ceremony near the royal palace, where people offered colorful flowers, fruit, noodles and rice to 1,949 saffron-robed monks -- the number representing the year of agreement signed by France.
Kampuchea Krom, or Lower Cambodia, is home to about 12 million ethnic Khmers. The region was incorporated into what is now Vietnam during the French colonial era.
"We celebrate this ceremony to remember our lost territory, which was handed to Vietnam, and we also remember the people dead in the cause of defending us," Senator Thach Sitha said.
The issue last made world headlines in the late 1970s when Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge declared its aim to reclaim Kampuchea Krom and launched cross-border incursions. This led to the Christmas 1978 invasion of Cambodia by the Vietnamese and the ousting of the Khmer Rouge.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Filipino farmers like Romeo Wagayan have been left with little choice but to let their vegetables rot in the field rather than sell them at a loss, as rising oil prices linked to the Iran war drive up the cost of harvesting, labor and transport. “There’s nothing we can do,” said Wagayan, a 57-year old vegetable farmer in the northern Philippine province of Benguet. “If we harvest it, our losses only increase because of labor, transportation and packing costs. We don’t earn anything from it. That’s why we decided not to harvest at all,” he said. Soaring costs caused by the Middle East
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s officially declared wealth is fairly modest: some savings and a jointly owned villa in Budapest. However, voters in what Transparency International deems the EU’s most corrupt country believe otherwise — and they might make Orban pay in a general election this Sunday that could spell an end to his 16-year rule. The wealth amassed by Orban’s inner circle is fueling the increasingly palpable frustration of a population grappling with sluggish growth, high inflation and worsening public services. “The government’s communication machine worked well as long as our economic situation remained relatively good,” said Zoltan Ranschburg, a political analyst
RSS