Word: claime
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...While those unfamiliar with conkers assume that the game is based on luck, some serious participants claim that practice refines their game. Ian Moss, a technical support engineer from Wisconsin, has attended eight consecutive world championships, and hones his skills on the small but growing international circuit, which includes at least five competitions throughout Europe. "I try to strike it from the side where you get a nice line right across the nut," he says. Although he lost in the first round to a man dressed as a scarecrow, his spirit remains in tact. "You lose and you get bruises...
...politics as in medicine, there are some contagions that spread despite the most prudent vaccines. Witness the news this week that the United Kingdom has decided to lay claim to 385,000 sq mi (1 million sq km) of seabed off the coast of Antarctica, despite being a signatory to the 1959 treaty that was supposed to protect the earth's most desolate continent from the vagaries of international competition...
...Britain playing the role of the Russian bear at the other end of the globe? Not exactly. Six other countries (Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, New Zealand and Norway) have also laid claims to sectors of Antarctica; those of Chile and Argentina overlap with the British claim. (The United States recognizes none of them, but reserves the right to make its own claim down the line.) Each of those seven claims include coastline, and every coast presents an opportunity under Article 76 of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea: If you can prove that the continental shelf extends...
...will the British claim be the last, since all claims under the law of the Sea have to be submitted by the spring of 2009. And that's the point. A spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry told reporters that London was merely "safeguarding for the future," and that no challenged claim - as the British one is sure to be - can be acted on. But the claim points out the limits of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, and a codicil adopted in 1991. It does an admirable job of protecting the land - banning nuclear material, declaring the Antarctic to be a "natural...
...ecosystem that could be endangered. So could the ban on mining on the Antarctic continent itself, which can be lifted by unanimous agreement at any time. That is highly unlikely, but just a couple of decades ago, so was the prospect that the ice caps would melt. The British claim, and those that are sure to follow, amounts to a long-shot move that enables resorting to a future temptation. For the sake of Antarctica, let's hope we've got beyond oil and gas before that temptation ever arises...