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...someone money. You go to pay him back. He takes your money - and then charges you $15 for having paid him. That might seem unfair. Yet a few years ago, the Government Accountability Office found it to be standard practice for certain credit-card companies when customers made payments over the telephone. The investigatory arm of Congress couldn't say exactly how many card companies imposed such phone-payment fees - nowhere were the firms required to disclose their policies...
Take sponsors. In theory, with several backers cutting ties with the sport - the recently nationalized Royal Bank of Scotland, for one, has other things on its mind - new ones could have negotiated more in the way of exposure than they might have three or four years ago. But amid squabbles over the future of Formula One, "at the moment it's not a good proposition," says Mick de Haas, a sports-sponsorship consultant with a history of involvement in Formula One deals. The sport, he says, is "destroying itself...
...taping after a couple of years, he found a way to pass the material to a few trusted friends who had also been high-level party officials. Each was given only some of the recordings, evidently to hedge against their being lost or confiscated. After Zhao died four years ago, some of the people who knew about the recordings - they can't be named here because of fears of retaliation from Chinese authorities - launched a complex, clandestine effort to gather the material in one place and transcribe it for publication. Later, another set of tapes, perhaps the originals, was found...
...doubts about China. They fear their way of life is not something [China] can accept, particularly in terms of freedom and democracy, so obviously the time has not come for the two sides to negotiate something called unification. But on the issue of security, two years ago, [China President] Hu Jintao formally extended an offer to Taiwan, that we should sign a peace agreement. At the time, I was running for president, and I responded positively. But I think that we want to make it clear this is not an agreement on Taiwan's future buy rather...
...banned the wearing of blue jeans, for fear of a Taliban attack. In the capital, Islamabad, the Red Mosque's prayer leader, Abdul Aziz, sanctioned vigilante squads of baton-wielding women to go out and threaten video stores, barbershops and massage parlors for being un-Islamic. Two years ago, his followers kidnapped six Chinese masseuses, calling them prostitutes, and held them hostage. The army eventually cracked down, launching a siege and battle that saw the death of nearly 100 militants. Last month, Aziz was released from prison on the condition that he would not preach against the state. But residents...