"Discovered" may not be the most accurate term. Frequently, local villagers have known that a cave existed, but they had never ventured very far within because they feared ghostly occupants or lacked proper lights and equipment. The recent teams of foreign cavers therefore have often found themselves to be the first people to enter an underground chamber with a 15-metre high roof or to see a thousand-year-old flowstone resembling a frozen waterfall.
* Reviews from the Bangkok Film Festival—Culture Vulture
The most repugnant deception is the fairy-tale time and place. The narrator tells us that his parents met "40 years ago." Yet in the late 1950s, the entire country was wracked by a Mao-induced famine that killed up to 30 million people. Emaciated or bloated from dropsy, the villagers would be scrounging for grass, weeds and bark. And this isn't a fertile, rice-growing area. It appears to be low, thinly-forested hills--the sort of area where the half-dead fed on human flesh. If we push the time up to 1960, there still wouldn't be such abundance ...
* Phase-out of chemicals wins backing at Bangkok meet—The Nation
Although there's isn't a single replacement for methyl bromide, there are chemical and non-chemical alternatives for many of its current applications. Niche markets are expected to emerge with the development of substitute compounds tailored for particular plants or for grain fumigation. At the Copenhagen meeting last year, many developing countries voiced ...
* 48 Heroes of Philanthropy—Forbes Asia
Announced at his 80th birthday celebration in August 2006 that he was giving half of his shares of the company—worth $200 million then—to the Gokongwei Brothers Foundation, which he chairs. That donation is the country's largest ever and is now funding the first batch of 34 Filipino postgraduates—GBF China Scholars—who are in Beijing for 14 months to study the country's language and culture.
Susan J Cunningham 