Word: grips
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...have stepped from the delicate pages of Kazuo Ishiguro or Jane Austen. Watanabe, resourceful despite his youthful delusions, would interest David Foster Wallace or Nick Hornby. Only Mary, fluent in Japanese but blind to the signals and intrigues of nearly everyone around her, can't seem to get a grip. Of course, in that failing she is no worse than all those other Westerners who imagine they know Japan...
...Temperatures can drop to ?30C in April, so players have to tee off in the type of gear usually sported by polar explorers. Competitors need crampons to grip the icy course, tinted goggles to reduce glare and golf clubs with steel shafts, as graphite can shatter in extreme cold. The local wildlife also creates some unique challenges. The course is watched over by spotters with rifles in case one of the archipelago's 3,000 polar bears starts taking too close an interest in a caddy...
...lambaste Syria’s presence in Lebanon, subsequently imposing sanctions on the country—an ironic demand considering the American occupation of Iraq. Thus, Damascus may have wanted to assassinate Hariri, a prominent Syrian opposition advocate, in a bid to reassert its government’s shaky grip on power in the face of U.S. pressure. The other scenario is that another organization or country was responsible for the assassination. Undoubtedly, this entity would have sought to exploit the Syrian leadership’s vulnerable position by committing an act that would guarantee invigorated international pressure...
Syria has more immediate worries in Lebanon itself. Outrage at the assassination threatens its long domination there and could even fuel opposition to the Baath regime in Damascus. For nearly three decades Syria has kept a tight grip on its client state, exercised through the 14,000 military and intelligence forces still based around Beirut and the Bekaa Valley. But opposition to the Syrian presence has grown. Damascus made a serious miscalculation last August when it manipulated the constitution. Hariri resigned in protest and quietly backed the U.N. resolution sponsored by France and the U.S. calling on Syria to depart...
...Jong Il, who runs North Korea like a murderous schoolmaster, has recently identified a new threat to his grip on power. Men in the North are letting their hair grow longer, a social trend so disturbing to Kim?who is instantly recognizable for his gravity-defying bouffant?that he is trying to eradicate it at its roots. The Dear Leader recently decreed that extravagant male locks, defined in the state media as exceeding 5 cm in length, are a bourgeois affectation that could undermine socialism. In a televised campaign called "Let's Trim Our Hair According to the Socialist Lifestyle...