Word: bleaker
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...climate-change negotiations can be a depressing experience - maximum rhetoric expended on minimum accomplishment. In Poznan the atmosphere seems even bleaker. For one thing, economic catastrophe has made it harder for leaders to justify cutting carbon. A recent study by the Government Accounting Office (GAO), the independent investigative arm of Congress, sharply criticized the Clean Development Mechanism, the U.N. body that oversees the Kyoto Protocol's carbon-trading practices. The GAO found that carbon offsets - whereby a company in a rich nation pays for a carbon-reducing project elsewhere in lieu of cutting emissions itself - were at best a "temporary...
...areas, both spending and lending are being squeezed all across the country. Consumer lending contracted last month--that's practically un-American. Car dealers may fold by the hundreds, as customers can't get credit to buy and manufacturers won't finance dealer inventories. Holiday-shopping forecasts are getting bleaker. Declining home values mean more homeowners could default, further driving down property values. All that crimps tax revenues, and states such as Pennsylvania and New York are now trying to plug gaping holes in their budgets, while California is looking for $7 billion from Washington in part to make payroll...
...chaotic melee of betjak drivers and army lorries, and any other form of life except for the artist, who is stripped of the mobility of Sudjojono's figure and stands pickled in stiff solitude. "We are living in a different age from Sudjojono," says Suwage of his bleaker version. "We are fed up with politics." Nostalgic for the social engagement of artists like Sudjojono, he adds, "In the '90s there was a booming art market, but we artists are not necessarily happy. [Sudjojono] was closer to reality...
...funny bone in a way that can still smart nearly 100 years later. The nation's highest official accolade for comedy is the Kennedy Center's Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, which will be awarded this November to the late George Carlin--another man whose commentary grew bleaker and more biting in his last years. But old Mark, unvarnished, might be too hot for cable, even, today...
...unhealthiest places on earth. Millions of people still suffer from diseases and ailments that simply no longer exist almost anywhere else on the planet. Four out of five children are anemic. Almost one in four women who give birth receives no antenatal care. What makes the picture even bleaker is the fact that India's economic boom has had, so far at least, little impact on health standards. Think of it this way: in the five years between 2001 and 2006 India's economy grew almost 50%, the country's biggest expansion in decades. Meantime, its child-malnutrition rate...