Word: givens
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...looking at the other half who might soon buy Chinese-made T-shirts, shoes and bicycles. China's Ministry of Commerce, through banks and export agencies, is offering cheap loans and tax and export credits to Chinese state-owned companies seeking to build a base in Africa. Incentives are given to Chinese manufacturing and retail businesses in addition to exploration and construction companies. In return for so-called "no-strings-attached" aid and cheap loans to African countries, Beijing expects privileged access to oil and resources, political support in institutions like the U.N., and African governments - be they good...
...this year, more car sales than anywhere else on the planet. But the story behind those numbers, of the coal miners and assembly-line workers, of the parents and children they've left behind and the arduous journeys made out of sheer desperation to find work, has rarely been given the same attention as the country's impressive economic achievements...
...Given the demographic that makes up the primary readership of this newspaper, you can probably identify with my friends who use smartphones. At any given college function, it seems as if the number of people with BlackBerries or iPhones outnumber the number of those without. A busy and overscheduled lifestyle is par for the course in this country in general—and students here, whose mantra can be summed up “I’ll sleep when I die,” are particularly prone to the lifestyle that the smartphone represents...
Grade deflation is tricky to execute because it is by nature a negative academic move. In 2004, Princeton officially implemented a grade-deflation policy intending that As would make up only 35 percent of the grades given out in each department. However, five years later in the 2008-2009 academic year, As still made up 39.7 percent of all grades—and even this relatively high number was considered a major accomplishment. This situation reflects complications that grade deflation encounters at the individual level. Even if a grade-deflation policy were announced, high-achieving Harvard students would expect...
...Given this reality, the idea of As should be welcomed as a positive and easier path. The central issue with the glut of As and A-minuses currently awarded by the college is not that they make students’ GPAs too high, but that they make their GPAs too similar. Grades lose meaning when everyone gets the same ones, whether they are As or Cs. Extending the GPA scale higher to 4.3 would differentiate grades a substantial amount and accomplish much of what grade deflation would...