Word: agreements
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Iraq began a new chapter at midnight on New Year's Day, amid the sporadic flares of small fireworks and the crackle of gunfire. Jan. 1 marks the formal implementation of the Iraqi-U.S. Security Agreement that was labored over for months by officials from the two countries. Rituals for the media and the Iraqi public gave national sovereignty a new face on Thursday morning: a formal celebration marked the handover of Baghdad's Green Zone, the center of the U.S.-aided Iraqi government for the past 5 1/2 years, to Iraqi control. And poles bearing the Iraqi flag...
...rotation, within a few hundred years the position of the sun in the sky would noticeably differ with the time on your kitchen clock, an aspect of earthly timekeeping that has caused much consternation historically, vexing everyone from Julius Caesar to Pope Gregory XIII. So, in 1972, an international agreement decreed that instead of continually revising the definition of a second, atomic clocks would be adjusted by adding a leap second each time an appreciable discrepancy was detected by observations made at the International Earth Rotation Service in Paris. Since then, 24 leap seconds have been added, either on June...
...North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has never been without its critics or its champions. Since its inception in 1994, the deal still provides some of America's most reliable debate fodder, from campaign trails to the break rooms of Midwestern factories. NAFTA's fifteenth anniversary this week comes at a tumultuous time: with U.S. unemployment at a 26-year high and many American companies facing grave operational challenges, the controversy over the free-trade pact is not likely to subside anytime soon...
...concept behind NAFTA - promoting economic growth by easing the movement of goods and services between the U.S., Mexico and Canada - had existed for years before it was born. President Ronald Reagan spoke of a North American agreement in his campaign in 1979, and the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement had existed since 1989. NAFTA, which was launched January 1, 1994 and finally saw the last of its policies implemented on January 1, 2008, stipulates the removal of most tariffs and restrictions on trade between the three nations and codifies a wide range of agreements on agricultural, textile and auto...
...cease-fire proved to be untenable. "Calm for calm" - as Israelis call the agreement to simply refrain from military strikes and rocket fire - didn't work for Hamas, since it was unable to deliver economic relief to the long-suffering Palestinian civilian population. Indeed, the renewed campaign of rocket fire by Hamas was widely interpreted as a bargaining tactic aimed at securing more favorable truce terms, particularly lifting the economic siege. Israel, in the meantime, suffered from confusion in its goals. On the one hand, it wanted to destroy the Hamas government; on the other hand, it sought to coexist...