Word: longing
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...China, it continues to arm Taiwan against any threat of reunification by force - a policy regarded by Beijing as provocative interference in an internal Chinese dispute. Beijing has declared it will take the island back by force should its leaders seek formal independence, and the U.S. has long hinted it would come to Taiwan's defense if war broke out. The sale of defensive weapons by the U.S. to Taiwan is required under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act passed by Congress...
...unscrupulous candidates in Philippines politics, murder has long been the ultimate political tool for eliminating rivals to steal a win at the polls. "This is especially so at the level of local rather than national politics," says Benito Lim, a political science professor at the University of the Philippines, who believes the baleful tradition of "guns, goons and gold" at elections will be hard to uproot. Still, Comelec, the national election commission, hopes the tough gun ban (the early arrests have been widely publicized in the local media) will reduce the potential for violence...
...Google has long struggled to expand its China operations. After its search engine was routinely blocked or slowed by China's system of Internet controls, it created the filtered Google.cn in 2006. The hope was that by censoring select results, it would speed up searches for Chinese users...
...Since the Maguindanao massacre, President Gloria Arroyo has faced a clamor of calls to dismantle the long-established private armed groups run by regionally powerful strongmen to protect their political and economic interests. Elections routinely become a dirty showdown when a clean sweep isn't anticipated, as armed goons intimidate rival candidates, cow voters and coerce Comelec officials with bribes and threats to rig votes...
Police have 68 armed groups on a watch list; most are concentrated in long-standing election trouble spots, such as the autonomous region for Muslims on Mindanao Island and a clutch of clannish northern provinces. "Based on our estimates there are at least 200 private armed groups nationwide if you include those run by landlords, businessmen and gambling lords," says Rommel Banlaoi, director of the Philippine Institute for Political Violence and Terrorism Research. Many are small units with under a dozen members. But some - it is not clear how many - are virtual armies. The one operated by the Ampatuan clan...