Word: localness
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...year-old Chinese writer (Mo Yan is a pen name, Guan Moye his real one) is in his hometown of Gaomi, Shandong province, a place he has described as the wellspring of his creativity. It's also the location of most of his vivid, at times brilliant, novels. Local Communist Party officials are honoring the town's famous son with a lavish lunch, but as the dishes are served - three kinds of fish, oysters, sea cucumber - the author looks increasingly surprised. "I had no idea that Gaomi had a restaurant of such high quality," he finally blurts, to the amusement...
...economy is finally growing after a prolonged recession, that growth is so tender that many fear it will shrivel and give way to a second, deeper contraction. Britons are downcast, their politicians discredited. In one of the world's oldest democracies, there's little enthusiasm for the national and local elections due in early May. Polls show that neither of the two largest parties - the Labour incumbents or their Conservative challengers - is on course for an overall majority in Parliament. There's little enthusiasm, either, for their respective leaders, Prime Minister Gordon Brown and David Cameron...
...racial tensions suit the politics of the BNP, which controls 12 of 51 local council seats, making it the second largest party after Labour. There are concerns it will grow even stronger after the May 6 council elections. And national BNP leader Nick Griffin is campaigning to unseat Barking's veteran Labour MP, Margaret Hodge. Griffin, once convicted of inciting racial hatred, has pledged to represent "the interests of our people instead of all sorts of others and all sorts of greedy banks who ponce on [freeload off] every council in the country...
Gourmet food trucks are democratizing the local- and slow-food trends that started with restaurateur Alice Waters in Berkeley, Calif., and were spread by the Food Network. Although the goal of these trucks is to be quick, convenient and cheap, they are decidedly anti--fast food. They're about dispensing Alice Waters food in a McDonald's manner...
Google appears ready to leave China and its more than 380 million Internet users behind. When the search giant launched a local service in China in 2006, it agreed to censor query results on controversial terms like Tibet--while reserving the right to alert users that it was doing so. Initially sanguine, Beijing began to add restrictions in 2009. Tensions reached a breaking point in January after a China-based cyberattack on Gmail. Google then vowed to stop self-censoring--a move that, according to a Beijing spokesman on March 12, would have "consequences." Ironically, those consequences might be gravest...