Writer: BangkokPost.com
Published: 22/09/2009
The National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) has deferred until Sept 29 its ruling on the 44 people, the majority former ministers of the Samak Sundaravej government, charged in connection with the cabinet approval on June 17 last year of a joint communique with Cambodia without parliament's approval, commissioner Klanarong Chanthik said on Tuesday.
The anti-graft agency had been expected to decide today whether to indict any of the accused on negligence of duty and/or disciplinary charges.
However, today's meeting was able to consider only 12 of them, because the NACC chairman had to attend another meeting on the selection of senators, Mr Klanarong said.
He did not confirm whether the 12 were politicians or permanent ministry officials.
Mr Klanarong said the NACC will meet against on Sept 29 to look into the evidence against the 32 others, individually. He expected a ruling would be issued that day.
He was adamant the NACC did not intend to specifically find fault with former foreign minister Noppadon Pattama.
Mr Noppadon on June 18 last year signed the joint communique to support Cambodia's bid to list Preah Vihear temple as a World Heritage site after receiving the cabinet's approval.
This led to other cabinet members who attended the meeting on June 17 last year also being charged with violating Article 190 of the constitution. which requires parliamentary approval for all foreign agreements.
Cambodian couple finds new home for 41st Donut House
By JONDI GUMZ
Posted: 09/22/2009
CAPITOLA -- It cost a lot of dough -- close to $100,000 -- to move the 41st Ave. Donut House across the street.
Keang Siv Lim and Hour Chiv, who have been in the doughnut business locally for 23 years, discovered the exhaust hood and fan would not fit through the door of their new smaller location in the King's Plaza shopping center.
That didn't stop them.
They paid a contractor to cut a hole in the roof and use a crane to set the equipment in place. When they opened for business Monday morning, they were all smiles.
"First day," said Lim, handing over a doughnut and coffee to Marshall Jones, who lives nearby.
Jones, 68, admitted, "I'm a doughnut lover."
Lim, 61, and her husband Chiv, 62, are Cambodian natives of Chinese descent. They lived near the Thai border and made a living selling merchandise at a local marketplace until their country was taken over in 1975 by the Khmer Rouge.
They lost everything.
When Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1979 and fought off the Khmer Rouge, the couple escaped and spent two years in a refugee camp in Thailand. After another six months in a refugee camp in the Philippines, Lim and her husband, their five children, including one born in the refugee camp, and Lim's mother were allowed to resettle in the United States.
They arrived in November 1982.
The couple found work at a garment factory in Los Angeles, then in 1986 got an opportunity in Santa Cruz.
A fellow Cambodian who had purchased Ferrell's Donuts on Mission Street offered them jobs.
Lim took care of customers at the counter; her husband made the doughnuts, a job for early risers.
They learned the business, and in 1989, bought the shop. Two years later, they bought another doughnut shop on Ocean Street in Santa Cruz and changed the name to Ferrell's.
Their friend Yong Sip said most of the doughnut shops locally are owned by Cambodians.
That is true across California, according to Henry Chen, who married Lim and Chiv's second oldest daughter, Lena.
"When we first arrived, we were very hungry for the opportunity to succeed and bring about a better life for ourselves and our families," Chen said. "Most of us knew very little English."
For that reason, the seven-day-a-week doughnut business was a very good fit.
In the mid-1980s, it was not uncommon to find a Cambodian baker working in a doughnut shop at night, training four or five of his friends, Chen recalled. Most of these friends went on to become bakers themselves, and they in turn taught others.
Chen, for example, has a doughnut shop in Alameda.
He also has an expresso shop in Pacifica, managed by the youngest of Lim and Chiv's children, who was born in America.
That's another family tradition: Having the children help out at the doughnut shop.
After the children were on their own, Lim and Chiv downsized, selling the two Santa Cruz shops and buying 41st Ave Donut.
When Goodwill bought the shopping center where they were located for the Shoreline cosmetology school, they were not ready to retire.
They found space at the Kings Plaza shopping center owned by the Ow family.
Patriarch George Ow Jr., whose father immigrated to America at 16, is impressed by their resilience.
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