Word: lands
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Humans won't be the only animals to benefit. Clearing land for palm-oil plantations is Indonesia's leading cause of deforestation, says a 2007 U.N. report, with Sumatra, Kalimantan and Papua the three worst-affected provinces. Thanks largely to the global appetite for palm oil, which is found in everything from chocolate bars to biofuels, the natural habitat of endangered animals such as the orangutan and Borneo rhino shrinks further each year. REDD could save them, said a recent study of Kalimantan by researchers from the University of Queensland in Australia. They believe that the revenues generated by preserving...
...That's not only because of government largesse. As wages and land prices rise precipitously in China's coastal cities, Chinese companies based there are investing in operations in less-developed Xi'an to capitalize on its lower costs and tap a cheaper labor market. About 70% of Xi'an's domestic investment comes from the southeast coast. For example, in late 2008 Shenzhen-based cell-phone maker ZTE announced it would invest $880 million in manufacturing and research facilities in Xi'an that will ultimately employ 26,000 people. Hybrid-car maker BYD, also headquartered in Shenzhen, has turned...
...lone can of Coca-Cola is a treasure, encounter no miraculously budding tree in the wasted landscape, no fish jumping from a dead ocean. The best they get is a rheumy-eyed old man (the great Robert Duvall) who considers death a luxury. Bands of cannibals rule the land, favoring children as meals. It's hopeless except for, as in McCarthy's book, the driving force of the narrative: a father's fierce devotion to his child. "The child is the warrant," Mortensen tells us in voice-over, the only reason for being...
...President Hamid Karzai embarks on his second five-year term, he maintains that his primary agenda is to bring the war in Afghanistan to a peaceful close through negotiations with members of the Taliban insurgency. Karzai has gone so far as to invite his "Taliban brothers" to "embrace their land" and join him in talks. The U.S. too is growing weary of the war. As President Barack Obama finalizes his new strategy for Afghanistan and deliberates over how many more troops he should send to the front, he is facing pressure to define a clear exit strategy. What was once...
...morning of the 26th, that Panglossian prose initially confronted this writer as merely irritating. All joyful anticipation of the evening’s potatoes-and-pie promised land had just buckled under the triple knockout blows of a flat tire, a Weather Channel-defying drizzle, and a carnivorous version of Microsoft Office (one that apparently thrives on devouring junior papers-in-progress without a trace). No curmudgeon by nature, I couldn’t help but note that the “unexpected” seemed to get its kicks in somewhat perverse ways. In the end, however, holiday cheer...