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How is Angkor wat

Nineteen-year-old Ra Pheap is a garbage sweeper at Cambodia’s world-famous Angkor Wat archaeological site, and is keenly grateful for the influx of tourists to the centuries-old monuments — it’s because of them she has her $50 a month job.
Suos Samnang, a 17-year-old souvenir vendor, also knows that her livelihood is closely linked to the busloads of camera-toting foreign visitors that arrive everyday.
But as they witness the frenzied construction of hotels and guest houses to tap the flow of visitors’ dollars in this once-quiet town, even these two poor country girlsrealize that the blessings of tourism are mixed ones.

“I am worried that this will cause more pollution and migration to the town. The number of people living here just keeps growing. The streets are getting more crowded now,” Suos Samnang said.

And some experts are even more concerned than that. They fear the unregulated development — specifically, unrestricted local pumping of underground water to meet rapidly rising demand — may literally be undermining Angkor’s foundations, destabilizing the earth beneath the famous centuries-old temples so much that they might sink and collapse.
Tourism is a key moneymaker for cash-strapped Cambodia, about one-third of whose 14 million people earn less than 56 cents a day.
Last year, about half of the 1.4 million visitors who came to Cambodia went to see the Angkor monuments, architectural masterpieces built at the height of the Khmer empire from the 9th to the 15th centuries. Total tourist arrivals for Cambodia in 2005 were an impressive 34.7 percent above 2004’s figures.

The steady boom has already transformed Siem Reap into a bustling town filled with luxury hotels and vehicles. Its streets are adorned with billboards promoting the latest mobile phones, pizza and burger joints and shopping malls. Several notable old buildings have been razed to make way for visitors’ lodgings, and honky-tonk strips have sprung up catering to low-budget travelers.

“The identity Siem Reap had for centuries is gradually disappearing, or maybe almost disappeared,” said Teruo Jinnai, director in Cambodia of the U.N. cultural organization UNESCO, and a 10-year resident of the country. “You have restaurants, massage parlors, hotels, and it’s very sad to see that.”

Culture shock aside, the health and quality of life of many of its 120,000 residents is imperiled by the boom, as is plain to see when traffic snarls the roads and streets get flooded by rain because of clogged sewers.

“This tremendous growth added to population increase has been exacerbating pressure on infrastructure,” said a World Bank report on Cambodia’s tourism sector last year. “Energy, water, sewage and waste are all significant problems.”

It noted that hotels are not legally required to have sewage treatment facilities, though larger ones do have their own plants.

“But most guesthouses reportedly dump used water directly into the river, causing noticeable river pollution,” it said, adding that E. coli, the bacteria found in human feces, has reportedly begun seeping into local wells.

At least as threatening over the long run is the uptake of water, with unrestricted pumping from the water table underlying the area.

“Water is being drawn from 70-80 meters (230-260 feet) underground by hotels and treated for use,” warned the World Bank, noting that no one was quite certain how this affects the aquifers, or underground layers of rocks and sand, from which it is pumped.

Already though, “one of Angkor’s temples is reportedly falling into a sinkhole, suggesting that the underground aquifers may be rapidly disappearing,” said the report.

Japanese Ambassador Fumiaki Takahashi, whose country has drawn up a development master plan for Siem Reap to deal with the tourism boom, said most of its hotels are pumping underground water for their own use, “and there is no control.”

It is the Cambodian government’s “urgent task” to control the practice, he said, because “if you take too much water, it might affect the Angkor site. In the long run, the underground water will go down and the site would sink.”

The plan of the Japan International Cooperation Agency calls for tapping underground water from near Phnom Kraom, a hill near the edge of the Tonle Sap lake about 7.4 miles south of the town, to avoid depletion of Siem Reap’s underground water and reduce the risk of endangering the fragile temples, he said.

Deputy Tourism Minister Thong Khon said the government is ready to accept the master plan to address existing problems and accommodate future growth.

He sees a bright future for Siem Reap, in which the province won’t just be a destination for touring the temples but will also become a hub providing air links for tourists to enjoy the sandy beaches of southwestern Cambodia and ecotourism in the jungles of the northeast.

He envisions that by promoting a diversity of destinations, the crowds will be distributed around the country, and the Angkor temples won’t get “too jammed up.”

Meanwhile, though, the tourist hordes continue to tramp through fabled Angkor Wat and its satellite temples of Angkor Thom, Bayon, Ta Prohm and Bakheng. Even at the lesser-known 10th-century Bakheng temple, an average of 3,000 tourists climb the 223 feet just in the two hours before dusk each day to view the spectacular sunset.

Ra Pheap, the 19-year-old sweeper, said she knows the onslaught could damage the delicate monuments.

She is employed by a Cambodian company that sells entry tickets to the temple site, and the visitors there are essentially paying her salary. With her earnings, she has reduced her family’s reliance on rice farming and been able to help pay for Japanese-language classes for her younger brother and sister.

“I want them to become tour guides because I am confident more tourists will visit here,” she said.


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Senators Harry Reid and Chris Dodd lay out their terms

Senators Harry Reid and Chris Dodd lay out their terms
Republican critics of the bail-out plan are worried about both its cost and how it would involve the government in the financial sector.

The BBC's Adam Brookes in Washington predicted a tough day of negotiations ahead.

"Republicans in the House are going to continue, they say, to try to resist this plan," he said.


HAVE YOUR SAY This is not permanent problem-solving but rather a temporary fix
Asmarlak, Houston, Texas
Send us your comments"They are also trying to convince Senator John McCain, the presidential contender, to jump in their direction."

Instead, the rebels want a government-backed insurance policy to cover the huge amounts of bad debt built up by US banks.

House Republican leader John Boehner said "we need to act quickly and protect the American taxpayer first and foremost".

Democrats meanwhile want to secure limits to payments for executives of failed banks and ensure there is adequate help for struggling US homeowners.

Impact

Financial markets are gummed up because banks do not know exactly how much bad debt they hold and are therefore reluctant to lend to businesses, consumers and each other.

The fall-out of this credit crunch continues to have a huge impact:

The United States suffered its largest bank failure yet, when regulators moved in to close down Washington Mutual and then sold it to US rival JP Morgan Chase for $1.9bn
In a co-ordinated move the European Central Bank, the US Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, Bank of Japan and the Swiss National Bank announced new short-term loans to the banking sector worth tens of billions of dollars
Banks continued to cut costs, with UK banking giant HSBC saying it would axe 1,100 jobs
Shares in UK bank Bradford & Bingley fell another 20% to 17 pence before recovering slightly

'Full-throated discussion'

Talks to agree the huge bail-out of the financial industry ended in a "shouting match" on Thursday.

After several hours of discussions with President Bush, a group of Republican members of Congress blocked the government plan, which would have seen the government buy bad debts from US banks to prevent more of them collapsing.

The intense discussions reportedly saw US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson literally down on one knee, begging Ms Pelosi to help push through the bail-out package.

However, the agreement unravelled when a group of Republican legislators objected to the principle of the plan.

The talks at the White House, led by Mr Paulson and US President George W Bush, then descended into what one participant described as "a full-throated discussion".


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Bush says bail-out will be passed

Bush says bail-out will be passed

President Bush on the ongoing bail-out talks
President George W Bush has said that legislators will "rise to the occasion" and pass the proposed $700bn (£380bn) Wall Street rescue plan.

He said disagreements remained as "the proposal is big and the reason it's big is because it's a big problem".

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, said lawmakers would stay in session until a deal was reached.

But rebel Republicans remain unhappy at the plan to buy mortgage-backed assets from US banks.

However there were some positive signs later on Friday, when Democratic House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said progress was being made on a financial rescue bill.

She said Congress was "back on track" in its efforts, and that lawmakers would continue to work over the weekend to reach agreement.

And Barney Frank, Massachusetts Democrat Representative and chairman of the House Financial Committee, said: "I am convinced that by Sunday we will have an agreement that people will understand on this, on this Bill".

'Harmful'

Speaking earlier in the day Mr Bush said were "disagreements over aspects of a rescue plan but there is no disagreement that something substantial must be done".

Republicans in the House are going to continue, they say, to try to resist this plan


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US bail-out plan provokes doubts

US bail-out plan provokes doubts
Wall Street traders
Markets have seen huge volatility recently

Doubts over the speed at which the US financial bail-out plan can be introduced have emerged from both Democrats and Republicans.

Contentious issues include limiting compensation for bosses of rescued firms and wider help for Americans who could lose their homes.

Lawmakers from both sides say they need more time for debate, but a leading Democrat said progress was being made.

The White House says Congress must back the plan to prevent more economic harm.

President George W Bush said the world was watching to see if "we can act quickly to shore up our markets".

Details of the $700bn (£382bn) package are still being worked out.

Meetings took place over the weekend between Federal Reserve head Ben Bernanke, US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and members of Congress to try to seek consensus on the plan.

However uncertainty over how the programme will work caused the Dow Jones share index to fall by more than 370 points, or 3.27%, wiping out the gains made during Friday's rally.

'Unreasonable' expectation

Lawmakers from both sides have raised a number of concerns with the bail-out plan.

Democratic Congressman Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said Democrats would want certain changes, such as guaranteeing that the pay for bosses of the firms being bailed out was limited.


Never before in the history of our nation has so much power and money been concentrated in the hands of one person
John McCain
Republican presidential candidate

"The private sector got us into this mess," said Mr Frank. "The government has to get us out of it. We do want to do it carefully."

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama joined those Congressional Democrats asking for limits to be placed on personal benefits given to bankers, whose unwise loans contributed to the crisis.

He also called for a wider bail-out that helps homeowners at risk of losing their homes as well as those on Wall Street.

His Republican opponent, John McCain, also raised doubts about the mega bail-out, calling for greater supervision of US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the architect of the plan, who will decide how the $700bn is spent.

"Never before in the history of our nation has so much power and money been concentrated in the hands of one person. This arrangement makes me deeply uncomfortable," Mr McCain said.

While neither candidate can hold up the plan themselves, they can create the space for its opponents in Congress to delay it, BBC North America editor Justin Webb notes.

In a statement, Mr Bush said that failure to act would have "broad consequences". White House officials have emphasised that they expect "strong, transparent oversight" of the rescue plan.

After a day of talks, Democratic Congressman Barney Frank - who chairs the Financial Services Committee - told the Associated Press news agency that "a great deal of progress" had been made.

Changing landscape

The Group of Seven (G7) most wealthy nations said it welcomed the US move and reaffirmed its strong commitment to "protect the integrity of the international financial system".

"We pledge to enhance international cooperation to address ongoing challenges in the global economy and world markets," said the G7.

It added it would do whatever was necessary to ensure stability in the international financial system.

The financial sector has seen huge upheaval in recent days, with Lehman Brothers folding and Merrill Lynch being bought by Bank of America.

Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs - for decades independent investment banking firms - requested to change their status that will see them regulated by the Fed.

The move, which means they will expand into the commercial banking sector, arguably marks an end of an era on Wall Street.


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75 Gitmo detainees hold hunger strike

WASHINGTON, May 30 -- About 75 detainees have been staging a new wave of hunger strike since last weekend in the prison of the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, U.S. media reported Tuesday.

Robert Durand, the U.S. commander at Guantanamo, was quoted as saying that the hunger strike is a "short term, sympathy" protest to gain attention from the outside world in advance of the June 12resumption of war-crimes trial proceedings there.

He said the protest "reflects detainee attempts to elicit mediaattention to bring international pressure on the United States to release them back to the battlefield."

According to U.S. definition, a hunger strike refers to a detainee refuses nine meals in a row, which means the 75 detaineesbegan fasting overnight last Thursday.

The U.S. military did not disclose the names of hunger strikers,nor their nationalities, but said the 10 men facing war-crimes trials are not among them.

Food has frequently been the subject of a struggle for international legitimacy of the Guantanamo prison, where the United States holds about 460 detainees on suspicion of links to al-Qaeda or the Taliban.

The U.S. military has emphasized from the opening of the prisoncamps in January 2002 that captives are well fed, and given Islamic-approved halal meals in keeping with a cultural sensitivity.

Still, detainees have staged on-again, off-again fasts since the earliest days of the detention center.

Human rights groups said the hunger strikes reflect the growingfrustrations of the detainees, many of whom are being held indefinitely without a trial.

Many in the international community, including the United Nations and U.S. allies, have been urging the United States to close the prison for the concerns of the conditions of the detainees. Enditem



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