Word: aid
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...second-largest foodmaker revealed on Monday, Sept. 7, that it had launched a $16.7 billion bid for British confectioner Cadbury, a bold effort to create "a global powerhouse in snacks" worth $50 billion a year in revenues. Cadbury rejected the offer, but Kraft, maker of Oreo cookies and Kool-Aid, showed its sweet tooth. The firm is "committed to working toward a transaction," it said in a statement, "and to maintaining a constructive dialogue...
...surge of roadside bombings and rocket attacks over the past year have taken the lives of several soldiers and shut down projects. Many aid workers have fled. According to one Western diplomat, construction is increasingly going to unsupervised Afghan contractors who are often forced to pay-off militants not to attack them in the districts they now control or contest. More ominously, police in the area say that among the militant ranks are groups of foreign fighters - mostly from Uzbekistan - seeking to open another front against the coalition and the Kabul government, drawing forces away from fighting the Taliban...
...less than three months to go before his impoverished Central American nation holds new presidential elections - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton jabbed harder at the coup leaders to get them to let Zelaya back into Honduras and finish his democratically elected term. The U.S. cut all non-humanitarian aid to the de facto government, about $32 million; revoked the visas of all civilian and military officials who backed the June 28 coup, and threatened not to recognize the results of the Nov. 29 elections unless Zelaya is returned to office...
...legal semantics matter. If the State Department labels a coup "military" - the most brutal and anti-democratic kind of overthrow - it automatically triggers a suspension of all non-humanitarian and non-democracy-related U.S. aid. In the case of Honduras, State Department officials insist that those measures have already been taken without the military-coup tag. But critics, who fear Obama is keeping the Honduras coup designation downgraded to mollify conservative Republicans, argue that further steps, like freezing Honduran bank accounts in the U.S., are still available to the Administration. (Read about President Obama's challenge in Latin America...
...have it both ways. In the future, restless militaries in other countries may look at the U.S.'s Honduras ruling and decide coups are worth chancing as long as they don't install a guy wearing epaulettes in the president's chair. In that scenario, a full-bore U.S. aid cut-off won't kick in by default - and there's always the possibility, they'll reason, that the White House won't adopt enough punitive steps to make them cry uncle...