Mariane

Pearl, wife of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was kidnapped and

murdered in Pakistan in 2002, is coming to Cambodia this week. She has been hired

by Glamour magazine as a monthly columnist to file dispatches from around the world.

According to the New York Times she will be writing about a former sex slave who

escaped her captors and now works to help fight the sex-slave industry.

** Bar and restaurant owners on the north side of Wat Phnom are up in arms about

the Municipality's decision to order them to close within one year "in order

to keep safety, order and beauty of Wat Phnom," according to the March 23 announcement

signed by Chhay Tirith, Chief of Srah Chork Commune.

One bar owner said he'd heard from a source in the Municipality that the decision

was made at the request of the US embassy over security concerns. US embassy Public

Affairs Officer Jeff Daigle said "We absolutely deny that that is the case."

He also said that the accusation of embassy involvement in the Municipality's decision

"makes no sense whatsoever."

** The shipwreck discovered near Koh S'dech has professional salvagers with extensive

international experience interested in helping the government rescue the artifacts.

One company representative that just completed a salvage operation in Indonesian

waters in which over a $100 million in artifacts were taken off a wreck recently

visited the Koh S'dech operation and says that around 50 percent of the roughly 1,000

artifacts brought up by the navy-supervised team are being damaged in the process.

Pity that.

** The Phnom Penh Post is honored to tip its hat to one of its own. Journalist Sam

Rith, above, received a top prize of the 2006 Developing Asia Journalism Awards presented

by the Asian Development Bank.

Over 250 entries were submitted from across the ADB's developing member countries.

There were 16 finalists from 11 nations. Rith was the only journalist from the Kingdom

and was awarded the Youngest Development Journalists 2006 Award at a ceremony held

in Manila, the Philippines, on April 19. His submission was the article "Widows

still fighting the demons of war" published on March 11, 2005.