Word: land
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...Wade is the law of the land, and I don't plan on overturning it, but I've always felt that, you know, I'm against partial-birth abortions and believe in parental consent, a strong parental-notification law." - The Boston Globe...
When Christopher Columbus arrived in 1492, he named the land La Isla Española. It served as a Spanish colony and base for the empire's further conquests, though it was never particularly profitable. In 1697 the Spanish formally ceded the western third of the island to the French, who were already present and more heavily invested. The Hispaniolan outposts of both empires imported African slaves, though the latter did so to a much greater extent. The colonies - Santo Domingo and Saint-Domingue, respectively - subsequently developed vastly different demographics. According to a study by the American Library of Congress...
...revolution raged in France in the 1790s, its colonial slaves in Hispaniola revolted; in 1804, they declared independence, and Haiti, which was named after the Taino word for "land of mountains," became the world's first sovereign black republic. The Dominican Republic wasn't established until 1844, after not just European rule but also 22 years of Haitian occupation. Strife between (as well as within) the neighbors, rooted in deep class, racial and cultural differences, was constant. Interference by foreign powers was often the norm. The Spanish took back the Dominican Republic in the early 1860s, and for periods during...
...Meanwhile, Basu himself developed a reputation for nepotism. He gave choice land and government contracts to his son's friends and business partners and, in March, his own biographer was named vice chancellor of Calcutta University. Basu never hid his bourgeois tastes - which included a fondness for Scotch and annual trips abroad for health checkups - but critics derided his increasingly lavish, state-sponsored birthday celebrations and Prime Minister-level security detail. The Marxist poet Samar Sen described Basu as "the most well-protected Marxist leader east of the Suez Canal...
...increasingly out-of-touch communists, sensing the state's slipping grip on power, tried to push through a belated industrial expansion by force. In 2007, at least a dozen villagers in Nandigram were killed by state police during protests against the seizure of their land for a chemical plant. In 2008, similar protests pushed Tata Motors to cancel plans to manufacture its $2,500 Nano in the village of Singur, a political debacle that contributed to the communists' severe losses in the 2009 national elections. Basu had retired in 2000, but his high-handed rule left permanent damage, says Tathagata...