Word: across
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...reason for their angst is clear enough: throughout 2009, the most severe global downturn in decades, China's economic growth remained intact. This year, China's GDP will likely rise 9% or more, in contrast to a merely subpar recovery in the U.S. and Europe. For thousands of companies across the globe, anything that threatens China's buoyancy threatens their own bottom lines. (Witness the sell-off in the S&P 500 on Feb. 12, when Beijing's central bank raised by a tick the so-called reserve ratio requirement for its banks.) And nothing, not even massive government infrastructure...
...moves are belated. According to data compiled by real estate consultancy Colliers International, residential prices in 70 large and medium-sized cities across China soared in 2009, with 50% to 60% increases in Beijing and Shanghai. Real estate mania has become so intense that it has spilled over into pop culture. Last year one of the most popular television shows was a weekly drama entitled Wo Ju (literally "Dwelling Narrowness"), which focused on the plight of a young couple who spend two-thirds of their monthly income keeping up the mortgage on a tiny Shanghai apartment. Their tale...
Marjah is just a scattering of dusty villages set amid 17,000 hectares of poppy fields. But its backwater appearance is deceptive: until last month, it was the hub of a dozen international drug syndicates reaching across borders as far away as Europe, Russia and the Far East. The U.N. reckons Marjah has the world's highest concentration of opium production. So Operation Moshtarak is more than a military offensive; it is also the biggest counternarcotics operation ever attempted. It marks a new emphasis by the White House and the Pentagon on choking off the Taliban from their drug funds...
...Western troops to strike alliances with Afghan officials, getting them to play the Taliban's role of protectors of the drug trade. Khan, the farmer, has seen it happen before. "When there is no Taliban, the government men take money from the smugglers to help them move drugs across the border," he says. NATO commanders say they will be on the lookout for bribe taking and will ensure that Kabul makes examples of corrupt officials. But given the prevalence of graft in the capital, it's hard to imagine Marjah will remain clean...
...courts, which make up 2% of the state budget, have thus joined the slash-and-cut regimen that has befallen school districts, cities, and social services across California as the state deals with a $21 billion shortfall this year. (That comes on the heels of last year's $40 billion deficit.) (See how California's crisis has hit its prized universities...