Word: lacking
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...third minority in the city's legislative assembly. In Hong Kong's Byzantine political structure, set up by the British to forestall grassroots political organizing, only half of the city's legislators are elected by voters; the rest are elected by largely pro-Beijing business interest groups. Legislators also lack any meaningful power, since they can only veto laws proposed by the city's chief executive, who is elected by a pro-Beijing klatch of 800 appointees. Last year, Beijing indicated that it could introduce direct elections for Hong Kong's legislature and the chief executive by 2017, potentially robbing...
...officials say the go-slow drawdown is driven by the fragility of the security gains in Iraq, where attacks by insurgents have fallen 80% since last year. But a lack of political progress in the country could trigger more violence, especially if large U.S. units pull out, Pentagon officials say. When the British pulled out of the southern city of Basra in 2007, the resulting vacuum was filled by Shi'ite militia units until the Iraqi government sent in its improving army in March and brought it under Baghdad's control. Petraeus also doesn't want to risk a security...
There are opportunity costs to this system. Collaboration suffers as scientists guard their work to keep the money coming. Because the funding process favors experienced grant writers, young investigators can lose out. Such friction and lack of funds, some argue, are causing a brain drain to Singapore and other regions that are actively seeking to develop their biotech industries. "The incentives are totally misaligned. The repetitive nature of funding the same universities and the same people--all of these things add up to the stagnant position that we're in," says Doug Ulman, president of the LAF and chairman...
...McCain adversary and champion of the mythic bridge. Rather than putting "country first," her husband had been a member of a local secessionist fringe group called the Alaskan Independence Party, whose slogan is "Alaska first," and Palin apparently attended or spoke at several of the group's meetings. Her lack of interest in foreign policy and national security was the opposite of McCain's obsession with such issues. She called the Iraq war a "task that is from...
...Palin selection - peremptory, petulant - was another example of McCain's preference for the politics of gesture over the politics of substance, as is his sudden fondness for oil exploration ("Drill here, drill now.") and hair-trigger bellicosity abroad (Syria, Iran, Russia). His lack of interest in actual governance is disappointing; his aversion to contemplation seems truly alarming. He has done us all a favor with this pick: he has shown us exactly what sort of President he would...