Word: englands
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...more than half of municipalities approaching bankruptcy. Cynics now predict that South Africa will become the next Zimbabwe. This is Mandela's real legacy. He is the genial, smiling fig leaf that duped the world into believing South Africa would prosper under an ANC administration. Allan Banfield, Hatfield, England...
...July 17, Kay Ryan became the 16th U.S. poet Laureate, one of the most coveted positions in American letters. Yet when Senator Spark Matsunaga, himself an amateur poet, pushed Congress to create the post in 1985, the American literary community was appalled. With its roots in 17th century England, where the laureate still writes occasional verses marking royal births and weddings, the title was one that few American poets rushed to adopt. "It's in the field of politics," scoffed Allen Ginsberg. With artists serving renewable eight-month terms, the U.S. "may be down to third-rate poets pretty quickly...
...between Barack Obama's first trip abroad since capturing the Democratic nomination and a genuine state visit by a sitting President, well, that was sort of the point of the whole exercise. Obama stopped in Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan, Israel and the West Bank before heading to Germany, France and England. There was the extraordinary security at every stop: police in Baghdad set up new roadblocks and checkpoints to secure the Iraqi capital while he was in town. There was the picture-perfect stagecraft: speaking at a police station in Sderot, Israel, Obama was flanked by hundreds of mortar shells, stacked...
...Arguments like that have unexpectedly cast Mosley as the poster boy for the U.K.'s BDSM (bondage, domination, submission and sadomasochism) community. Deborah Hyde, director of Backlash, a group campaigning against legislation that would outlaw BDSM-themed pornography in England and Wales next January, says Mosley has helped BDSM practitioners realize they have a community and that they shouldn't remain silent when others deem their practices sick and unusual. "Max Mosley has stood up for himself," she told TIME. "And that's inspired other people in the community to talk out loud about their experiences...
...John Dryden was the first to bear the official title of "laureate," which was bestowed on him in 1670. He received an honorarium of ?100 for writing birthday poems for the royal family. Since then, poets including William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson have held the post in England. Their only duty was to write poems for national occasions. Their compensation: some 60 cases of sherry per annum, for inspiration. (In 1999, the U.K. laureateship became a 10-year post with a ?5,000 stipend. Andrew Motion is the current beneficiary of both fee and sherry...