Word: archipelagos
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...requirements needed to declare an immediate winner - a 50% national threshold and at least 20% in 17 of the country's 35 provinces. A delay in the elections is unlikely given the tens of millions of dollars that have been spent preparing for the event. Logistics in the sprawling archipelago are daunting, with some voters having to walk miles to reach the nearest polling station. (Watch a video about a destructive mud volcano in Indonesia...
President Obama, who is trying to close Gitmo, has said different fates await the more than 200 prisoners still held there. Some can be sent back to their homelands, some will be tried in reformed military commissions, and some will be transferred to third countries. The Pacific archipelago of Palau may take 17 Chinese Muslims who've been at Gitmo for years. Others, Obama has hinted, will never face trial because there isn't a court in the land that would allow evidence obtained through torture...
...Ocean sea routes - want to leave, and Nasheed knows the sovereign fund is a last resort. Efforts now aim at shaping the country into a climate-change laboratory. In mid-March, the government announced its intention to be the world's first carbon-neutral nation within 10 years. The archipelago's coral reefs can also provide an invaluable testing ground for scientists. "Coral is the bedrock of our nation," says Azeez, who works at a coral-research and -regeneration facility at the Banyan Tree resort. With enough investment, he reckons the country can not only pioneer methods to mitigate rising...
...Gayoom's supporters point to the influx of foreign cash that flooded into the country after he assumed power. His government opened dozens of the archipelago's islands to international tourism, which now directly contributes to 30% of the Maldives' GDP. In a country short on land, construction became a lucrative business: the cramped capital Malé, where more than a third of the population lives, is a maze of concrete. Rents sometimes match those of world cities such as Hong Kong or New York City, and a bleary-eyed community of foreign laborers hammers away at building sites daily...
...government lays down the architecture of a decentralized liberal state. Nasheed has already embarked on trips to Europe and the Middle East to gin up private investment in public projects, from treating sanitation to investing in green energy to establishing the much-needed ferry network linking the archipelago's far-flung islands. Election fever is growing: Nasheed sits in office with the tenuous backing of a coalition of increasingly fractious parties, fitful after decades in which politics could not exist at all. Parliamentary elections on May 9 could give him and the MDP a stronger mandate - or cripple his ability...