Word: 1990s
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...government has taken some steps to fix this situation. Labor deregulation in the late 1990s allowed firms to cut costs and become more competitive by hiring temporary, part-time and irregular workers. This change has been, if anything, too successful. Part-timers and temps today make up a third of the labor force, and most of them are young. This group should be a wellspring of domestic demand. Young people starting out in life are usually prodigious consumers as they purchase cars, buy homes and raise children. But part-timers and temps are not eligible for company benefits and certainly...
...With funding so limited, many donors argue, why invest in an expensive product that faces deep skepticism from the people who would use it? Female condoms, originally introduced in the early 1990s, have struggled to gain widespread acceptance because they are more expensive and less familiar than male condoms - they're big and baggy, make rustling noises during sex, and you need instruction and practice to learn how to insert them properly. (Read "The Pope's Anti-Condom Remarks: Candor Over...
...Uganda sees the female condom as one way to regain the success the nation had in the fight against HIV/AIDS in the 1990s. After slashing its AIDS rate from more than 20% in the late '80s to about 6% in 2000, Uganda saw a leveling off of AIDS cases and then a slight rise. No one has been able to explain the reversal. Some say it's related to failed distribution programs for the male condom in the past. Other experts suspect that it's a result of foreign NGOs and governments pushing Uganda away from effective domestic programs that...
...Japan's economy, however, has been suffering since the so-called "lost decade" of the 1990s following the bursting of Japan's banking and real estate bubbles. The LDP, says Curtis, failed to respond to the changing needs of the people, particularly those living in rural areas. The electorate system, which changed in 1994 to include single-member districts, also chipped away at what helped insulate the LDP from political competition. Before the switch from multi-member to single-member districts, voters who disapproved of the incumbent could vote for another LDP member if they wanted a change. With...
...have things gotten so hard for ETA? The weakening of the group is in large part due to a revolutionary change in French attitudes. Until the early 1990s, the French viewed ETA violence as Spain's problem so long as France wasn't attacked. And as a hedge against that happening, Paris benignly ignored the ETA logistical and planning networks that were preparing strikes on Spain from France's Basque country. But when Algerian jihadists unleashed terror attacks in France in 1995, Paris was awakened to the importance of cross-border cooperation in battling extremists. It kicked its then-nascent...