Thomas Soria appeared to be a devoted single parent to his son Thomas Sorea, Jr. known as «T.J.» – even as he seduced the youngster, turning him into a sex slave. When T.J. reached dating age, he pimped his girlfriends to his dad and watched while they had sex. But it wasn't enough. Soria Sr's fantasies turned increasingly violent, culminating in an obsession with cutting and torturing young females while sexually assaulting them. On March 19 2000, in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, T.J., 19,...
The daily robbing, bashing, drugging, extortion and murder of foreign tourists on Thai soil, along with numerous scandals involving unsafe facilities and well established scams, has led to frequent predictions that Thailand's multi-billion dollar tourist industry will self-destruct. Instead tourist numbers more than doubled in the decade to 2014. The world might not have come to the hometowns of the many visitors fascinated by Thailand, but it certainly came to the Land of...
The Tax Administration Management Information System (TAMIS) Tool Kit was developed with the objective of guiding and helping tax agents in developing countries undertake a holistic transformation of tax administration using information and communication technology. The tool kit provides guidance on key activities any tax agency should undertake in introducing TAMIS in various stages–including diagnostic assessment, prioritization of target taxes and services, implementation approaches, and...
Infrastructure projects sometimes physically displace households and disrupt income sources and livelihoods. The Asian Development Bank offers several good governance practices to its borrowers to minimize such adverse impacts, especially since the absorption of such best practices by countries is usually slow and erratic. This publication presents an in-depth case study from a complex and sensitive infrastructure project in Sri Lanka, where international best practices in involuntary...
Governments and nonstate actors around the world have signed mutual recognition arrangements (MRAs), but while most of them share the goals of streamlining the recognition of foreign workers' qualifications and boosting labor mobility, the MRAs vary considerably. Implementation challenges faced in the Americas, Asia and the Pacific, and Europe offer lessons for Asian policymakers seeking to operationalize the MRAs of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). This report is the...
Uzbekistan has achieved sustained growth through its gradual transition to a market-based economy through cautious economic policy reforms. Despite its gradual approach to development challenges, the country experienced the smallest output decline among former Soviet economies and enjoyed high rates of economic growth from 2004 to 2015, largely driven by the high prices of its major export commodities. However, the drop in the global prices of many key commodities in recent years have severely...
“There is little dispute that the Internet should continue as an open platform,” notes the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. Yet, in a curious twist of logic, the agency has moved to discontinue the legal regime successfully yielding that magnificent platform. In late 2010, it imposed “network neutrality” regulations on broadband access providers, both wired and wireless. Networks cannot (a) block subscribers’ use of certain devices,...
This is the story of how Title IX, a 1972 law intended to ban sex discrimination in education, became a monster that both the federal government and many college administrators treat as though it supersedes both the U.S. Constitution and hundreds of years of common law. It's a story about the victims of this law—men and women both—and of the unaccountable government bureaucrats at the Departments of Education and Justice who repeatedly prioritize an extreme brand of...