ФІЛЬТР ДЛЯ ВІДОБРАЖЕННЯ ОДНОГО ТОВАРУ З БАГАТЬОХ

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A.

No Time like the Present

(From Burma by Malcolm Beith)

Time stands still for no man. Time takes its toll. During my visit to Burma’s Shan state, the heart of the infamous Golden Triangle, I think of these commonplace English expressions – partly because none of the clocks tell the correct time here.

Perhaps there’s good reason. Burma is half an hour behind Thailand. But the town of Mongla, on the Chinese border, ticks on Chinese time – an hour ahead of Thailand. If you traverse a mere 200 kilometers, south to north you will zigzag between three time zones. Why should you even bother with precise timekeeping?

In Burma it is hard to know what year it is, let alone what time it is. The country is stuck in 1962, when it invented its own brand of socialism – as if the Burmese stopped walking with the rest of the world.

Strolling around the market in Kengtung, I was struck to find a copy of Newsweek from Aug.9, 1999. A cover story that week – a piece I had reported on as a London intern – was on the solar eclipse of the century. Quite apt. If anyone has experienced a total eclipse, it’s Burma.

Yet time is a river, moving on. Though most inhabitants still walk around town, Chinese motorcycles are multiplying like cockroaches. Capitalism is everywhere, at least unofficially. In the market, money changers calculate kyat into yuan into dollars with the hustle of Wall Street traders. And finally there’s the new road from Tachilek to Mongla, funded largely by drug money. It now provides an easy transportation route for Chinese goods to Thailand, and tourists the other way.

Time takes its toll, clearly. The town of Mongla, capital of Special Region No.4, is under the control of Chinese narcotics boss Lin Mingxian. Here there once were beautiful poppy fields. Today it’s a sleazy mini-Las Vegas for day-trippers from Chinese Yunnan province.

Mongla is an example of what can be achieved when opium is eradicated – at least it was until a few months ago, when Beijing imposed a cash limit for exiting Chinese and banned most overnight stays.

(From ‘Newsweek’, abridged)

B.

Mother Can Stay -

- after 50 Years

A grandmother who faced deportation after 50 years in Britain has been given a reprieve. Mary Martin, 55, - who has never left the country since arriving from the US at the age of two – was told by the Home Office she had to leave by today.

But the immigration minister, Beverly Hughes, said yesterday: “I have reviewed the case and decided to grant Mrs Martin indefinite leave to remain in Britain. The decision to refuse her application for a passport was clearly a mistake and defies common sense.”

Mrs Martin, a school cleaner, learned of the decision yesterday: “It’s such a relief. I almost felt sick when I heard it. I could not understand how they could treat me like this – it was so ridiculous. I have been here ever since I arrived as a child and have not been abroad for a holiday. Whoever is responsible for putting me through all this should be sacked before they do the same thing to someone else.”

“I was extremely alarmed when I was told by the Home Office that I was being sent back to the United States where I was born. I just couldn’t believe they could send this sort of a letter to a person. I did not dare answer the door every time there was a knock because I thought it might be the immigration people coming to deport me,” she said.

She continued: “My troubles started when I applied for a passport for the first time since I arrived in Britain with my mother from Baltimore, Maryland, at the age of two. Since then I have had four children and 15 grandchildren and have been married twice. I went to school here, I have a national insurance number and I have paid all my contributions. I have never applied for a British passport because I have never had the money to go abroad.”

Mrs Martin discovered there was a problem with her citizenship status after her mother, June, died two years ago. Checking through her belongings she discovered she had never been registered as a British citizen.

The Home Office initially turned down her application for British citizenship because civil servants refused to believe that she had lived in the UK for an interrupted period of 14 years.

Her MP, the former Conservative cabinet minister John Gummer, was given a verbal assurance yesterday that the deportation threat was being lifted: “I am determined that the Home Office should find out why this has been allowed to happen. I don’t see why people should be frightened in this way and I want to know what is being done about whoever it was who behaved in this manner,” he said.

(From ‘The Guardian’, abridged)

International Terrorism

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