Word: cemented
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Bible has the logic backward. In ancient times, when a man of royal blood married a foreign woman of royal blood, it wasn't on a romantic whim. It was part of foreign policy, a way to cement relations with another nation. And that cement was strengthened by paying respect to the nation's gods. Solomon's many wives didn't lead to his many gods; his politics led to both the wives and the gods...
...between 2007 and 2008 alone, according to Yesh Din, an Israeli organization suing to stop outpost settlements. So much building has happened since the mid-1990s that the West Bank resembles a Jackson Pollock drip painting of Jewish and Arab lands, connected and disconnected by bypass roads and cement blocks. The old Green Line border, now morphing into a wall, has literally doubled in size to account for myriad new thrusts into, twists around and enclosures of Arab lands. (See a video about Israel's lonesome doves...
...three months, Pikalyovo's citizens had been living in crippling poverty after the town's recession-hit cement and brick factories started closing down. Thousands of workers were laid off, and almost overnight nearly 25% of Pikalyovo's 20,000 residents were unemployed. After making several pleas to their employers for back pay - at one point crashing a meeting at the mayor's office to demand their jobs back - the workers turned to desperate measures. On June 2, they staged a strike along a major highway linking the city of Vologda to St. Petersburg, blocking the route for hours. Finally...
...wouldn't have seen anything like this - people were fed up and angry," says Alexander Plush, 41, another former factory worker standing in line at the ATM. Plush had worked for 17 years at one of the Pikalyovo cement factories until it closed a few months ago. "Before we got paid, people were living on bread and water and the food they could grow in their gardens this early in the year," he says...
...right. Pikalyovo is one of hundreds of cities across Russia whose populations are supported by just one factory or one industry. If that factory or industry is wiped out by the global economic downturn - as Pikalyovo's was when the price of cement dropped and Deripaska's company Basic Element put half its workforce on forced leave - the whole town is sent into a tailspin. (See pictures of the global financial crisis...