Word: backe
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...Reputation aside, however, politicians abuse their ability to borrow just like any spendthrift with too many credit cards, and often pile up more bills than they can handle. Argentina, Russia, Mexico and others have stiffed their bankers over the past 30 years. In fact, the sovereign-debt crisis goes back as far as the concept of the sovereign state. The first recorded government default took place in the 4th century B.C., when Greek municipalities failed to pay back loans granted by a temple. (Read "The Party's Over for Spendthrift Greeks...
...fourth Olympics I've covered, and Vancouver drinks Athens, Torino and Beijing under the table. I asked a few journalists who have covered more Games than I have to rate Vancouver on the intoxication scale. Vahe Gregorian of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, who has covered eight Olympics, dating back to Atlanta in 1996, agreed with my chart-topping assessment. In reference to downtown Vancouver's main strip of nightclubs, he said, "Granville Street itself is unlike anything I've seen at an Olympics." And he noted that all the drinking has led to a lot of public urinating...
...extremely high magnitude - more than a dozen major earthquakes since 1973. Richter can assign them a number, but it is difficult to describe how feverish and angry the earth feels here. The aftershocks this weekend have come fast and hard. Periodically, the ground shrugs and heaves like the back of some restless beast, sending pedestrians suddenly staggering around like drunks or rabid dogs. Thin skyscrapers sway like metronomes. Scientists reported more than 50 aftershocks on Saturday alone. (Read why Chile's earthquake wasn't unexpected...
...Back at the Plaza de Armas, oil painter Juan Jouregue had the whole square to himself - he usually shares it with about 30 other artists - as he put the finishing touches on a depiction of a seaside idyll he created in an effort to "cheer people up with my art," he said. "We are still a beautiful country, a beautiful people. We must not forget that...
...resident remembered a minor tsunami from decades ago, how it sucked the water out of a canal and then came back as a six-inch wall of water. "It didn't crest or foam," he recalled, "it was a wall." Locals in Hawaii know which areas to worry about when a tsunami warning goes off. Phonebooks have maps in the front indicating the likeliest inundation zones. Authorities also know which harbors to evacuate. That's why as soon as state officials were notified about the tsunami rippling out from the quake in Chile, ships were evacuated from the harbors...