Word: islanders
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...like for Greenland's 56,000 residents. But as the increasingly alarming news of its melting 1.8 million square kilometer (695,000 square mile) ice cap has trickled south and the race for polar resources has officially started, the international community is paying more attention to its largest island. By the end of this summer, some 3,400 scientists from 60 countries were working on the landmass. Both German Chancellor Angela Merkel and U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had dropped by to see the melting glaciers for themselves. And singer Björk dedicated a song to Greenland...
...when a Norwegian Danish priest came to what is now the capital city of Nuuk, Greenland remains part of the Danish kingdom. In 1979, its predominantly Inuit population fought for management of domestic affairs, which it was granted, but Copenhagen still handles its foreign relations and supports the island with a whopping $600 million yearly subsidy. Diplomatic relations between territory and crown are very cordial - indeed, some Greenlanders consider themselves lucky to have been colonized by Denmark and not the United States or Canada - but some also feel that the same well-intentioned Danish money that keeps the island...
...those years, environmental and social change have hit Greenland hard and fast. In Nuuk, drying musk ox hides hang over the balconies of the monolithic blocks of public housing that absorb exiles from the quickly emptying outlying villages stationed around the island's rocky fringe. The island's transition to a cash economy has rendered subsistence hunting a less and less viable way to live, and the effects of climate change on sea ice has made hunting seasons shorter and less predictable. Poverty, alcoholism and high suicide rates haunt the population. Alfred Jakobsen, deputy minister of the environment...
Hoping to maintain the tenuous peace between Taipei and Beijing, which considers the island an inseparable part of China, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte has called Chen's proposal "a mistake," urging Taiwan's leaders to "behave in a responsible manner." China's Taiwan Affairs Office warned that it has "made necessary preparations to cope with any serious situation" across the strait. Yet the criticism does not seem to have dampened enthusiasm for the referendum. On Sept. 15, more than 100,000 people rallied to support the idea in Taiwan and New York City. And Chen--whose government...
...Michigan Sen. Carl Levin and Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed certainly hope so. In this week's congressional tug-of-war over Iraq policy, their amendment to the defense spending bill - the latest version of one they've introduced four times before - has the best chance of ultimately winning the 60 votes required to give it a fuller Senate consideration. Finding 60 votes this time around is unlikely. But it is steadily gaining support...