Word: basically
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...That sounds vague. It is, and deliberately so. When a joint committee of experts from Hong Kong and China wrote the document in the late 1980s, the clauses on democratic evolution were among the thorniest. The best the negotiators could produce were the vague formulations reproduced above. The Basic Law clearly offered Hong Kong the promise of direct elections. But it left the important questions?when and how?to years that seemed very distant back...
...however, China's leaders have decided to enter the lab and shake the beaker. This week, they are expected to announce a tweak to the Basic Law, the closest thing Hong Kong has to a constitution. Beijing says it's simply conducting an exercise in "interpretation." But the move has ignited a furious debate among Hong Kongers over its necessity, and has even sparked unrest. Last Thursday some 3,000 people held a candlelight vigil to protest what they feel is unwarranted Chinese interference, and the following day police forcibly removed 100 demonstrators besieging the main government office building...
...What's the issue? A very basic one: whether Hong Kong people will be allowed to directly elect their Chief Executive and all of their legislators. The Basic Law promises direct elections as an "ultimate aim." Currently, the Chief Executive is chosen by an 800-member electoral college that is overwhelmingly pro-Beijing, and 60% of the Legislative Council, or Legco, the territory's law-making body, is appointed or elected from business and social groups that strongly favor the status quo. The Basic Law says that setup can be changed "if there is a need...
...Just as perverse, the French often opt for "le petit oiseau va sortir," Spaniards say "patata," while the Japanese have adopted the English term "whisky." As the relator of such delightful trivia, the latest elicitor of the smile is author Angus Trumble, whose A Brief History of the Smile (Basic Books; 226 pages) produces an abundance of them. Begun as a speech delivered to the Royal Australasian College of Dental Surgeons in 1998, Trumble's book artfully deconstructs the smile "into more lines than are in the new map with the augmentation of the Indies," as Malvolio is described...
...film is a very loose, very Americanized remake of the Alec Guinness comedy of 1955, with which it shares a title, a basic situation and not much else. Tom Hanks--sporting a goatee, a white suit and a mellifluous Southern accent--expertly essays the Guinness part as a criminal mastermind bent on separating a casino from its take. To this end, Hanks' character, Professor G.H. Dorr, rents a room in a house owned by Marva Munson (the splendid Irma P. Hall). He thereby obtains access to the basement; ostensibly it's a rehearsal space for his period-instrument group...