Word: malacca
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...subsequent centuries, thanks to increasingly vigilant militaries and the development of the steam engine. But amid a drop in naval patrols and a boom in international trade following the end of the Cold War, it has flourished anew - particularly in narrow choke points such as Asia's Strait of Malacca and the Gulf of Aden, which links the Red and Arabian seas. Buoyed by fast boats, fearsome weaponry and high-tech communications gear, pirates carried off 263 reported heists in 2007 - 28% of which occurred in the treacherous waters off Nigeria and Somalia, where vast coastlines and feckless transitional governments...
...subsequent centuries, thanks to increasingly vigilant militaries and the development of the steam engine. But amid a drop in naval patrols and a boom in international trade following the end of the cold war, it has flourished anew--particularly in narrow choke points such as Asia's Strait of Malacca and the Gulf of Aden, which links the Red and Arabian seas. Buoyed by fast boats, fearsome weaponry and high-tech communications gear, pirates carried off 263 reported heists in 2007--28% of which occurred in the lawless waters off Nigeria and Somalia. With its vast coastline and crippled government...
Revathi Masoosai should be the perfect embodiment of Malaysia. Her ethnic Indian parents were both born in the ancient port of Malacca in 1957, the very year the colony of Malaya gained independence from the British. Her father was Christian, her mother came from a Hindu family, but they both officially converted to Islam, the religion practiced by Malaysia's majority Malays. Yet Revathi does not feel welcome in her ethnically and religiously diverse homeland. According to Malaysian law, Muslims can only marry other Muslims. Revathi, who was actually raised in the Hindu faith, had fallen in love with...
...disgorging cheap electronics, fruits, vegetables and every kind of plastic gadget imaginable. River traffic runs both ways: in December 2006, the first shipment of refined oil chugged up the Mekong bound for energy-hungry China, opening up a potential alternative shipping route to avoid the pirate-infested Straits of Malacca through which roughly half of its imported oil now passes. And with China needing somewhere to park its ballooning foreign-exchange reserves, the riverfront capitals of Phnom Penh and Vientiane now gleam with Chinese-built roads, buildings and other infrastructure. The torrent of investment will likely grow even greater next...
...whole host of dangers such as climate change, the threat of viral pandemics and mass humanitarian crises. How much better, says Chanda, to have the geopolitical and economic grasp of the 16th century Portuguese trader and diplomat, Tomé Pires, as he gazed upon the spice markets of Malacca. "Whoever is lord of Malacca has his hand on the throat of Venice," Pires wrote. "[It is at] the end of monsoons and the beginning of others." An equally informed appreciation of our interconnected fates would better prepare us for the storms ahead...