Word: nam
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...crowd of about 200 gathers outside the Ho Chi Minh City People's Court to hear the scuttlebutt on Vietnam's spiciest trial in memory. Nam Cam, Vietnam's most powerful and vicious gangster, is in the dock on seven charges, including murder, along with at least 154 co-accused. He will probably face a firing squad. Suddenly, police throw seven women into a jeep and drive them away. "A threat to the peace," one policeman explains. The women's crime: they were trying to sell fans and cold drinks to the spectators...
...infuriated the community. One neighbor snarls, "They are too rich to even look at ordinary people." So there was no sympathy on Jan. 7 when police arrested Thieu, 38, then raided his house, hauling off reams of documents and more than $250,000 in cash. The charge: his Dong Nam Telecom Trade and Service Co., the sole domestic distributor for Nokia and Samsung, was accused of dodging at least $6.5 million in import and value-added taxes last year...
...fraudsters, getting rich and cheating the government. If we're not careful, we'll lose our country to such people." Thieu's case will only intensify the suspicions. State media has reported that 33 companies, some of them government owned, are being investigated due to their ties to Dong Nam Telecom...
...trial date has been set for Thieu. As for his brother, he's been questioned and released without being charged. Thieu's family insists that both are innocent. Meanwhile, some sympathizers wonder if Dong Nam is being targeted not because it was unusually corrupt but because its owners lost the support of patrons within the government who had previously looked away. After all, tax evasion is so pervasive in Vietnam, says Thai, that he's been called a "sucker" for bothering to pay them. In Thieu's neighborhood, people don't much care whether he's guilty...
...Fermenting fish into a sauce dates back thousands of years: a similar sauce, known as garum or liquamen, was the most common seasoning in the Roman Empire. Southeast Asians still have the taste. Thais produce nam pla, Filipinos patis. In Vietnam, though, nuoc mam is more than just an important ingredient. "I can't cook without it," says Tran Cong, 33, chef of Le Tonkin restaurant in Hanoi. "Vietnamese food would turn into nothing without nuoc...