Word: breakdown
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...More important, the patina of cultural homogeneity that camouflaged 1950s suburbia has vanished. We have become more obviously multiracial. There are lifestyle choices that were nearly unimaginable in 1960 - the widespread use of the birth control pill, the legalization of abortion, the feminist and gay-rights revolutions, the breakdown of the two-parent family. With the advent of television, these changes became inescapable. They intruded upon the most traditional families in the smallest towns. The political impact was a conservative reaction of enormous vehemence...
According to Sidney Jones, a Jakarta-based terrorism expert with the International Crisis Group, the breakdown of negotiations may have freed the most radicalized faction of a fluid coalition of homegrown separatists, criminals, and foreign jihadis trained by Jemaah Islamiyah, the al-Qaeda-linked international terrorist group. "The MILF was keeping a fairly tight lid on the radical elements," Jones says. "When things were looking bright for a peace agreement, they were even providing intelligence on foreign jihadis to the armed forces of the Philippines." Such cooperation is unlikely to continue, Jones says...
...women's side. Chellsie Memmel, who limited her competition to the uneven bars after hurting her ankle, revealed after the team event that she had been competing - and landing - on a broken bone. "Right after I got the X-ray, I got the diagnosis and had a little breakdown," she told TIME. "And the reason was that I didn't want to be asked off the team. We talked to our doctor, and got the opinions of others, and I didn't think I would make it worse by competing, because the bone was still in alignment...
Power-sharing talks in Zimbabwe are on the verge of a complete breakdown, according to sources inside the negotiations, with President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai unable to agree on who should wield greater power in a unity government. Underlining how the mood between the two sides has soured, one general in Zimbabwe's army reiterated a threat to defend Mugabe's regime "even if it means going to war," adding that Tsvangirai would be arrested if talks fail. And that would not appear to be an idle threat: the opposition leader, who won more votes than Mugabe...
...Although the opening of negotiations had raised hopes for resolving the conflict in Zimbabwe, their breakdown is a sharp reminder that Mugabe and Tsvangirai have simply transferred the ongoing political contest to a new arena. "What we are witnessing is a power struggle," says political analyst Isaiah Sithole. "Mugabe is trying to cheat Tsvangirai into believing that he will be in charge. But Tsvangirai smells a rat." Chaka Bosha, a journalist and political analyst with the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists, concurred with that pessimistic assessment. Bosha also warned that, in a week when Zimbabwe's inflation hit 11.2 million percent...