Word: local
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Indonesia is ASEAN's largest economy. It is also where Obama spent part of his childhood, snacking on his favorite bakso meatballs and learning the local language. (In Singapore, the U.S. President is slated to hold a bilateral meeting with his Indonesian counterpart Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.) But the U.S. President's scheduled joint appearance with ASEAN leaders is about more than childhood sentimentality. For decades, the U.S. held a comfortable position as ASEAN's third-largest trading partner. No more. China displaced America last year. Even with persuasion from the popular U.S. President, it will be hard to convince Southeast...
...collapse of three Icelandic banks in October 2008 meant cranes across the country came to a halt. A broken economy has led to rock-bottom rents. And while the new lows may have hit local landlords hard, it enabled a kind of tenant once prohibited from the high-traffic destination to move in - emerging fashion designers. "Creativity doesn't stop when the money goes," says Runar Omarsson, co-owner of Nikita, a street-wear line that caters mainly to skate- and snowboarders. "It is important to look at what we have and make something out of it. There are valuable...
...addition to its historical significance, water on the moon holds prospects for the future. If humans are ever going to establish a long-term presence on the moon, they will need water to drink, and tapping a local supply would be a lot more convenient than lugging it from Earth. Beyond that, water can be split into hydrogen and oxygen - the former makes pretty good rocket fuel, and the latter is useful for breathing...
...raised over $13,500 selling lemonade and cookies to build a new playground for a local park. A year later, she mobilized classmates to record and distribute 150 books-on-tape to help disadvantaged children in her community learn to read. And earlier this year, she e-mailed over 100,000 elementary school teachers across the nation, asking their classes to participate in a card-making campaign for nursing home residents. This last effort resulted in her family’s e-mail service being temporarily shut down because she was suspected of running a spam operation...
...having citizens complain to your superiors is not good for the careers of Chinese officials. Local and regional governments arrange teams of "retrievers" who round up petitioners before they can put their complaints before higher authorities. The petitioners are held in black jails - which could be anything from a hotel to an empty school - for weeks or even months before being sent home. Human Rights Watch interviewed 38 former black-jail detainees who described beatings, sleep deprivation and lack of food and medical care. A black-jail guard went on trial in Beijing this month for allegedly raping...