Word: boom
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...belief," wrote critic Zhang Hong in the highbrow Wenhui Readers' Weekly. "The book is like a stimulant injected into the decadent contemporary spirit that allows people to fantasize about becoming aggressive and successful." Fittingly, those are the very qualities demanded by the new society evolving from China's economic boom...
...Shandong province city of 580,000. More than 60 mines operating in the hills around Zhaoyuan annually unearth about 15% of China's gold - enough to qualify the little city as the de facto gold capital of China. Yet even with gold prices soaring, Zhaoyuan is hardly a boom town. Beyond the sycamore-lined downtown streets, which display the modest prosperity of a midsize Chinese city, you find block after block of drab, low houses. At night, the closest thing to an entertainment district is an unlit street with two drafty karaoke bars...
...several new studies show the biofuel boom is doing exactly the opposite of what its proponents intended: it's dramatically accelerating global warming, imperiling the planet in the name of saving it. Corn ethanol, always environmentally suspect, turns out to be environmentally disastrous. Even cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass, which has been promoted by eco-activists and eco-investors as well as by President Bush as the fuel of the future, looks less green than oil-derived gasoline...
Biofuels do slightly reduce dependence on imported oil, and the ethanol boom has created rural jobs while enriching some farmers and agribusinesses. But the basic problem with most biofuels is amazingly simple, given that researchers have ignored it until now: using land to grow fuel leads to the destruction of forests, wetlands and grasslands that store enormous amounts of carbon...
Behind the CIA's insurance boom lurks a fear that the number of agency employees who become targets of legal action could multiply with a new President. Candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have unambiguously opposed torture, while John McCain, a prisoner in Hanoi during the Vietnam War, has sponsored legislation to ban interrogation methods like waterboarding. If Congress holds new hearings, anyone called to testify will need a lawyer. And with more detainees being released and claiming they were tortured, some CIA officers' need for legal counsel?and insurance to cover the cost?is sure to rise...