Word: assess
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Starting on Aug. 26, world leaders will convene in Johannesburg for 10 days to assess the state of the planet and chart a course of action. The focus will be on "sustainable development": how to keep growing and lifting living standards without exhausting the globe's natural resources. In an essay written for TIME, Kofi Annan, the U.N. Secretary-General, articulates a future that could be bright or disastrous, depending on the policies we adopt...
...last international inspector to have had the opportunity to assess Iraq's weapons, Butler is in a unique position to judge how they might have evolved. He hesitates to make "wild remarks" but notes that there's every reason to believe Saddam Hussein's arsenal now includes far more weapons of mass destruction than during his tenure...
...imports and a commitment?backed by South Korea and Japan?to build two light-water nuclear power plants in North Korea. Ground has been broken for construction of one in the port city of Kumho. But under the agreement, North Korea must allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to assess whether Pyongyang is living up to its promise to come clean on all of its nuclear programs, a process that could take several years. The U.S. and its partners want to begin soon. So far, Kim has refused to allow inspections to resume, and the standoff goes on. Says...
...these tiny centipedes (about 0.4 in. long) were retrieved from samples of leaf litter as part of a biological dragnet conducted in 1998 for the Central Park Conservancy by researchers Liz Johnson and Kefyn Catley of the American Museum of Natural History. Their mission: to assess the health of the park's somewhat trampled woodland ecosystem in order to better preserve it. The creatures they collected were sorted and sent to various taxonomists for positive ID, which is how this one ended up in the hands of Richard Hoffman, curator of invertebrates at the Virginia Museum of Natural History...
These portraits are, like any obituary, colored by friends' and families' loving remembrances of the departed. But there is something else at work here. At times, Longman describes the passengers as if they were job candidates. They were "self-directed, independent thinkers," he writes, "people who could assess a situation and work in teams." If this reads like Management Secrets of Flight 93, in a way it is; Longman is explaining these heroes using the terms by which the world measured them. (And nearly a year and WorldCom later, it is heartening to see business skills treated as noble...