Word: hocks
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Already, the 64-year old former civil servant has launched a campaign against corruption and cronyism that, for the first time in four decades, resulted in the arrest of a cabinet minister, Kasitah Gaddam. Indicted in the same week was top businessman Eric Chia Eng Hock, a favorite of Mahathir who headed one of the then leader's pet projects, the Perwaja Steel Works. Abdullah also indefinitely postponed what would have been the country's biggest infrastructure project, a $3.8 billion replacement for the dilapidated railway system awarded by Mahathir in his final days in office to a consortium...
...CHARGED. KASITAH GADDAM, 56, Malaysia's Minister of Land and Cooperative Development, and ERIC CHIA ENG HOCK, 71, a prominent Malaysian industrialist; with separate alleged corruption-related offenses; in Kuala Lumpur. Kasitah served as a minister three times under former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. Chia, a poor fishmonger's son who built an auto-and-heavy-machinery empire, led various Mahathir-championed commercial projects. The two arrests are considered to be signs that Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, who took office in October and is expected to call elections soon, is cracking down on corruption. "My first hundred days were...
...social tragedy. South Koreans, who once adhered to the Confucian nostrum of assiduous saving, are now struggling to cope with harassment by creditors and the shame of personal bankruptcy. Newspapers have reported a rash of suicides, violent crime, kidnappings and prostitution attributed to overborrowing. In September, a deep-in-hock housewife leaped to her death from a ninth-floor apartment, taking her 13-year-old daughter with her. In August, two young women with heavy credit-card bills killed themselves by drinking a cocktail of alcohol and poison. "I often speak to debtors [who are] on the verge of suicide...
...Indeed, debtors have set up websites to share tips on how to dodge payment, even how to get loans and new cards while deep in hock. Collecting bad debt is already a headache for lenders, because card debt is unsecured. Solomon Credit Information, a Seoul collection agency, says that only 0.5% of bills more than six months overdue are ever repaid and that recovery is costly in any case."If you lend $20,000 to someone, you can spend the same amount to get it back," says Brendan Carr, an American lawyer with Aurora Law Offices in Seoul...
...look at modern urban China in his On the Wall series, in which a schoolgirl sits astride walls facing the cold skyscrapers of Guangzhou, Shenzhen and other cities. Comment on the brash new consumerist society sprouts up in Beijing artist Song Dong's Edible Bonsais, miniature landscapes of ham hock mountains, prosciutto hills and broccoli-flower trees. "What About China?" doesn't pretend to be comprehensive - it doesn't include unofficial artists or those from the worldwide diaspora - but it does provide an introductory look at some of the creative instincts within the awakening giant. Thanks to its playful presentation...