Word: backgrounder
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...Williams warned, this obsession with human sexuality seems incomprehensible. In his letter to English bishops about John last week, Williams also wrote of the "violent conflict, epidemic disease, instability and poverty" afflicting millions in Africa. "It does us no harm to think about our own priorities against such a background, and perhaps learn in some matters to give each other a little more time and space for thought." Many believers would say amen to that...
...white noise” filling the background of my youth will always be the bells of St. Matthew’s Church ringing, house sparrows chirping and the J train roaring in the near distance as it decelerates its approach toward the Woodhaven Boulevard stop. They were the audio background to the baseball games I played with my friends outside my house. Like clockwork, the train would rumble by at the same time as the bells’ 5 p.m. tolls—the two sets of noises teaming up to create a bizarre cacophony that I have never heard...
...week, aviation-security experts and Congressmen were surprised when it was disclosed that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the agency that protects the nation's air-traffic system, had to fire more than 1,200 airport screeners because security checks had turned up problems, including felony convictions, in their backgrounds. The TSA also admitted that it still has not completed background checks on 22,000 screeners, almost half the 52,000 screeners who are supposed to be helping guard the country's aviation system against terrorist threats...
Even worse, sources tell TIME, the TSA has had to put scores of federal air marshals (FAMs) on leave for discrepancies in background checks. The large number of grounded FAMs--the armed men and women who fly undercover and are authorized to use deadly force--has industry veterans worried. "It raises concerns about the entire TSA vetting process," says Captain Bob Lambert, who flies for a major airline and is president of the Airline Pilots' Security Alliance. "FAMs are arguably the most important part of our security system, but now, after several months of them flying around with weapons...
...getting people [as contestants] who watch the show already, not someone from a shack in Kampala," says Doug Mitchell, a lecturer in television at South Africa's Rhodes University. But Lorraine Onyango, 19, an information-technology student in Kenya, disagrees. "It's better with everyone from a different background," she says, chatting with friends in a Nairobi hotel. "They're learning about each other, and that's interesting." Even if, in the end, all they collectively learn is that a household of African twentysomethings can be as self-obsessed, vacuous and obnoxious as reality-television contestants in other parts...